The grandson and representative of Frederic was Richard Trench, Esq., of Garbally (born 1710, died 1768), who was a member of the Parliament of Ireland in 1761, representing county Galway. His wife, Miss Frances Power, whom he married in 1732, was the heiress of the wealthy families of Power and Keating, and the blood of the heir of the King of Cork, MacCarty-More, Earl of Clancarty, flowed in her veins; she also represented the Barons of Le Poer. The heir of Richard was William Power Keating Trench, Esq., a popular country gentleman, who represented the county of Galway in the Irish Parliament from 1768 to 1797. At the latter date (on 27th Nov.) he was transferred to the Upper House as Baron Kilconnel of Garbally; and was further promoted in the Peerage of Ireland on 3d January 1801 as Viscount Dunlo, and Earl of Clancarty in the county of Cork. The Earl died on 27th April 1805, having had (by his wife Anne, eldest daughter of Right Hon. Charles Gardiner and sister of Luke, first Viscount Mountjoy) seven sons and seven daughters. His heir, Richard Le Poer Trench the 2d Earl (born 1767, died 1837) was our ambassador at the Hague, and brought to his family the additional honour of peerages of the United Kingdom, and a hereditary seat in the House of Peers — receiving the title of Baron Trench in 1815 and of Viscount Clancarty in 1824; he also was offered and permitted to accept the title of Marquis of Heusden in the Netherlands. He married Henrietta Margaret, daughter of Right Hon. John Staples, and was the father of William Thomas, 3d Earl of Clancarty (born 1803, died 1872) an excellent and influential nobleman, and zealous Protestant, The present and 4th Earl is Richard Somerset Le Poer Trench, Earl of Clancarty, eldest son of the 3d Earl by Lady Sarah Juliana Butler, daughter of Somerset Richard, 3d Earl of Carrick. The present Earl was born on 13th January 1834, and married in 1866 Lady Adeliza Georgiana Hervey, daughter of Frederick William, 2d Marquis of Bristol; his heir apparent is William Frederick, Viscount Dunlo, born in 1868. The family motto for Le Poer is “Consilio et prudentia,” and for Trench, “Dieu pour la Tranche, qui contre?”
The second line of the refugee family of La Tranche begins with the Very Rev. John Trench, Dean of Raphoe, younger son of Thomas and Anne La Tranche. The Dean married Anne, daughter of Richard Warburton, Esq., and dying in 1725 was succeeded by his eldest son, Frederic (who died in 1758), of Moate, county Galway. He was succeeded by his son Frederic (born 1720, died 1797) of Moate and Woodlawn, who by his wife Catherine, daughter of Francis Sadleir, Esq., of Sopwell Hall, had seven sons and five daughters. His eldest son Frederic Trench of Woodlawn (born in 1757) represented Portarlington in the Irish Parliament, and on 27th Dec. 1800 was created Baron Ashtown in the Peerage of Ireland, the patent being in favour of himself and his late father’s heirs-male. Lord Ashtown died without issue on 1st May 1840, aged 83, and the representation of his house devolved upon the family of his next brother Francis Trench of Sopwell Hall (born 1758, died 1829), by his wife, Mary Mason. Frederic Mason Trench, 2d Lord Ashtown (born in 1804) is the present Baron. His apparent heir (by Henrietta, daughter of Thomas Phillips Cosby, Esq.) is the Hon. Frederick Sidney Charles Trench (born in 1839), who has strengthened his link with Huguenot ancestry by his marriage with Lady Anne Le Poer Trench, daughter of the 3d Earl of Clancarty, and has an heir, Frederick Oliver Trench (born in 1868).
The Trench family are best known to fame through having produced two Archbishops — one of the Clancarty family, and the other of the Ashtown line. The second son of the 1st Earl of Clancarty was Power Le Poer Trench. This esteemed Divine was born in Dublin on 10th June 1770. His father not having been raised to the peerage till the end of the century, he was entered as “filius Gulielmi equitis” in the books of Trinity College Dublin) in 1787; he was declared to have been “educatus sub ferula majistri Ralph.” He had only been ten years a clergyman, when (in 1802) he was elevated to the episcopal bench as Bishop of Waterford. In 1809 he became Bishop of Elphin; and in 1819 he was promoted to the Archbishopric of Tuam. He is known as “The last Archbishop of Tuam” — because that diocese was reduced to a bishop’s see, two of the four archbishoprics of Armagh, Dublin, Cashel, and Tuam having been doomed to abolition as unnecessary. At his death in 1839 he
