After the Desmond Rebellion, the Supple family suffered serious financial loss when Edmund Supple was obliged to mortgage 1150 acres of his 5200 acre estate to raise money to replace stock seized by the marauding armies of both English and Irish. Most of these mortgages went to the Dean of Cloyne, a FitzGerald, who duly forged all necessary documents to verify that these same lands had been sold to him and not mortgaged.
Edmund died in about 1604, leaving a minor heir, William Supple. At this time, English policy dictated that minor heirs of Catholic landowners be raised as Protestants. Thus, wardship of the heir of Aghadoe devolved upon Richard Boyle, lord of the manor of Inchiquin and notorious as the 1st Earl of Cork. He duly took young William into his care at Lismore. In 1613, Boyle sent the boy to live with his brother John, the clergyman, in England and there finish his education. By 1616 William was attending Cambridge University. The Boyles seem to have been genuinely fond of William and he, educated as a Protestant, adapted to their world with ease. He returned to Ireland in 1620, a useful propaganda tool for the government, a native convert to Protestantism. He may have subsequently been employed as some sort of agent or middleman for the Boyle estates in Munster. In early 1622, for instance, he escorted Boyle's 15 year old daughter, Sara Boyle, on a journey from County Louth to Lismore.
William's marriage in 1622 to the Earl of Cork's niece, Kate Smyth of Ballynatray, County Waterford, and his subsequent admission as a freeman to the town of Youghal, may be taken as further proof of Boyle consolidating his patronage over the Killeagh landlord. Supple did not escape the scorn of his peers. A few months after his marriage, his face was disfigured when attacked by an Englishman with a cudgel. The Earl continued to act as patron to the Supples for many years.
On 11th January 1634, he wrote: 'My necc Katherye Smyth's son was Xtened at Ballynetra by my daughter, Countess of Barrymore, Sir Richard Smyth and my self, and named Boyle Burt: God bless him'.
On 31st December 1634, he noted:'I sent my poor cozen Crips 20s to Ballynetra, by my Cozen Kate Supple'.
The younger William continued to forge a close alliance with the Boyle family, serving as Sheriff of Cork City in 1681. He was a direct ancestor of the De Capel Brookes, Bart, of Oakley. The Supple (or Capel) family continued to hold the Aghadoe estate until the 20th century.
1. The principal evidence supporting this grant actually comes from the diary of Earl of Cork, written when he himself had become Lord of Inchiquin. On April 8th 1636, he notes: 'Mr. William Supple [of Aghadoe] showed me the deed of his lands made by Robert FitzStephen unto his ancestor Philip de Capella'. Although this deed has not survived, legal records from the early 14th century also hold that the Capel or Supple family held their land under a feoffment of Robert FitzStephen to Philip de Capella. It was also for Philippe de Capella that Capel Island took its name. He is sometimes referred to as Philip de la Chapelle.
2. A stone representation of a female exposing her genitalia, it appears to have had a talismanic function against evil in pagan times.
3. William and Kate Supple also had an unnamed daughter who was the first wife of the Catholic landowner, Sir William Fitzgerald of Glenane. She bore Fitzgerald's eldest son around 1657.