Vescy was now growing old and infirm. He had married Isabella, daughter of Adam de Perinton and widow of Robert de Welles, who survived him (Calendarium Genealogicum, p. 558). But their only son, John, died before his father in the spring of 1295 (Chron. de Lanercost, p. 163). This made William very eager to procure the succession to his estates and dignity for a young bastard son, born in Ireland, and generally called William de Vescy of Kildare. With this object he fell in easily with the policy that Edward I was then employing with regard to Roger Bigod, fifth earl of Norfolk [q. v.], and many other nobles. On 18 Feb. 1297 he surrendered his castle and liberty of Kildare to the king on condition of his and his brother's debts to the exchequer being forgiven. Having abolished its palatine privileges and annexed it for the time to the county of Dublin, Edward regranted Kildare to Vescy on 22 June, but for life only (Cal. Doc. Ireland, 1293–1301, pp. 172–3, 300). On 16 Feb., two days before the Kildare surrender, Vescy resigned Malton and his Yorkshire estates to Antony Bek, bishop of Durham, and received them back for life and entailed after his death on his illegitimate son and his heirs in tail (ib. p. 174). He also enfeoffed Bek with his castle of Alnwick on trust, to restore it to the young William when he came of age. Soon after Vescy the elder died.
In 1300 the bastard William was summoned against the Scots as possessing lands worth 40l. or more in Lincolnshire, besides other estates in Yorkshire (Parl. Writs, i. 887). However, on 19 Nov. 1309, the young William, irritated with the bishop, sold Alnwick to Henry de Percy [see Percy, Henry, first Baron Percy of Alnwick], thus first securing the establishment of the Yorkshire house of Percy on the ruins of the power of the Vescys of Northumberland, just as the Geraldine authority in Kildare was based upon their fall in Ireland. William the bastard was slain at Bannockburn (Chron. de Melsa, ii. 301). The catalogue of his possessions in ‘Calendarium Inquisitionum post mortem’ (i. 261) shows that his father had not been unsuccessful in establishing him in the north. He was summoned, despite his birth, to the parliaments from 8 Jan. 1313 to 29 July 1314. He left no issue, and the estates devolved upon Gilbert de Ayton, who represented a brother of Eustace de Vescy.
[Rymer's Fœdera, Calendar of Documents relating to Ireland, Calendar of Patent and Close Rolls, Cal. Inquis. post mortem, Calendarium Genealogicum, Parl. Writs, Rot. Parl., Matt. Paris's Hist. Major, Flores Hist., Annales Monastici, Chronicles of Edw. I and Edw. II, Chron. de Melsa, Rishanger (all in Rolls Ser.); Hemingburgh (Hist. Soc.); Chron. de Lanercost (Maitland Club); Nicolas's Hist. Peerage, ed. Courthope, p. 491; Dugdale's Baronage, i. 93–4; Blaauw's Barons' Wars; Tate's Hist. of Alnwick; Gilbert's Viceroys of Ireland; Foss's Biographia Juridica, pp. 693–4.]
VESEY, Lord (1783-1843). [See Fitzgerald, William Vesey.]
VESEY, ELIZABETH (1715?–1791), one of the ‘blue-stocking’ coterie in London, born about 1715, was the second daughter of Sir Thomas Vesey, bishop of Ossory, who married Mary, only surviving daughter of Denny Muschamp of Horsley, Surrey [see under Vesey, John]. Elizabeth married, first, William Handcock of Willsbrook, Westmeath, M.P. for Fore; and secondly, before 1746, Agmondesham Vesey, M.P. for Harristown, co. Kildare, and Kinsale, co. Cork, who held the appointment of accountant-general of Ireland, probably from 1767. In the summer of 1762 the Veseys went with Lord Bath, Elizabeth Montagu [q. v.], and Dr. Monsey to Lord Lyttelton's seat of Hagley (Doran, Lady of Last Century, p. 132), and Vesey assisted Lyttelton in his ‘Life of Henry II’ (Hist. MSS. Comm. 8th Rep. app. i. 491). In 1777 they visited Burke at Beaconsfield. Vesey was made a privy councillor in Ireland in the spring of 1776, and on 2 April 1773, through the friendship of Burke, who described him as ‘a man of gentle manners,’ he was elected a member of ‘The Club.’ Malone wrote that his desire for election was so great that he had ‘couriers stationed to bring him the quickest intelligence of his success’ (ib. 12th Rep. app. x. 344).
Johnson, when forming from the members of ‘The Club’ the staff of an imaginary university, erroneously assigned to Vesey ‘Irish antiquities or Celtic learning.’ Vesey was quite ignorant of any such subjects. Architecture was his hobby, and he indulged it in his house at Lucan, near Dublin. The old house, which he had improved in 1750, was in 1776 removed to make way for a new structure ‘in Mr. Vesey's correct Grecian state’ (Mrs. Carter to Mrs. Montagu, iii. 39–40). Sir William Chambers refers to Vesey's ‘new method of slating’ (Hist. MSS. Comm. 12th Rep. app. x. 319, 332). The grounds surrounding the house were much praised by Arthur Young (Tour in Ireland, 1892 edit. i. 30). Vesey died without issue early in June 1785, and by his will made ‘very inadequate provision for his widow; but
