The Scully Family

(Crest No. 1. Plate 1.)

THE Scully family is descended from Milesius, King of Spain, through the line of his son Heber. The founder of the family was Cormac Cas, son of Olliol Ollum, King of Munster, A. D. 177, and his consort, Sabia, daughter of Con Kead Caha, or Con of the Hundred Battles, King of Ireland, A. D. 148. The ancient name was O’Brien and the name Scully signifies “Hospitable.” The possessions of the O’Scullys were located in the present Counties of Limerick, Clare, and Tipperary. The O’Scullys were chiefs also of Dealbhna Iarthar, or West Delvin, in the County of Meath.

Denys Scully, one of the ablest and most effective leaders in the cause of Catholic Emancipation, was a native of Kilfeacle, County of Tipperary, where he was born in 1773, and was the son of a large landed proprietor. He entered Cambridge University, England, in 1794, being the first Catholic who had been admitted for more than two hundred years. He was called to the Irish bar in 1796 and devoted himself from the outset to the task of emancipating his co-religionists. He wrote, spoke, and labored with unwearied energy in the cause and lived to see the realization of his desires. He died in 1830, the year after the passage of the Emancipation Act.

Scully is best known by his works on “The Penal Laws,” a book that powerfully contributed to the success of the Catholic cause, and for the issue of which the publisher was fined £200 and imprisoned for eighteen months by the Government of the day. His son, Vincent Scully, who died in 1871, was for many years member of Parliament for Cork and was the author of several pamphlets on the Irish land question and kindred subjects. There are many of the name still in the south of Ireland and it is quite numerous in Canada, where the Scullys are prosperous and highly respectable.