Guinness Family – Ireland’s Dark Beer Dynasty

House of Guinness, Ireland’s dark beer dynasty. When the Guinness family saw the turmoil and scandal of other great historic dynasties, they literally said, “Hold our beer.” The new series House of Guinness dramatizes just one generation of the famous Irish family, the four children of Benjamin Guinness, who took over the brewery in 1868.

And while we’ll cover what’s fact and fiction in the show, there’s so much juicy gossip going on in the rest of the family tree, including some rather creative cases of looking for dates at the family reunion. From how they turned cold Irish porter into hard cash in the 1760s to the 1960s drug imprario whose tragic death inspired the Beatle song A Day in the Life and plenty of fuel for the rumors of a family curse.

This clan has a history as dark as their famous stout. So order up a pint of plain and let’s get to know the Guinness family. Their origins are, as the Times put it, hidden in the mist. The Guinness’s long claimed descent from nobility with two literally waring legends. Their progenitor Richard Guinness was born in 1690, a big year in Irish history. That’s when following the Glorious Revolution, deposed King James II sailed to Ireland to raise support amongst his fellow Catholics.

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One who rallied to the call was Brian McInness, fifth Viccount Iva. He was the scion of the chiefs of clan McInness, nobility who traced their origins to the prehistoric Kelts. According to Guinness family lore before Sir Brian fought in the battle of the boy, he fathered an illegitimate child, Richard Guinness.

Brian survived the battle but died soon after from disease as he left no legitimate offspring. The Iva Vicans died with him. King James and his band of Irish Catholics were defeated by the new king William III. He was hailed as good King Billy by Irish Protestants. The other legend asserts that it was an English Protestant lord fighting on Billy’s side who was enjoying the local hospitality when he sired Richard Guinness.

Incidentally, this very conflict is represented in the Irish flag. Green represents Catholics, orange Protestants in honor of William of Orange, and white in the middle, the hope for a lasting peace between them. For years it was argued which side, Catholic or Protestant, Jacobite or Williamite, had launched the Guinness dynasty.

Later Guinnesses named their Earlddom Iva and revived the ancient McInness clan’s code of arms. So you might think Brian was the baby daddy, but the Guinnesses were also part of the Protestant ascendancy, the Anglican minority who ruled over the Catholic working majority. So, you might expect my to announce that the English lord was the father.

In 2007, a member of the family solved this mystery through DNA. Stay tuned to learn the answer. Whatever his parentage, Richard Guinness married Elizabeth Reed, the daughter of a wealthy farmer from County Kildair. They had five children. The eldest, Arthur, was named for the Anglican bishop Arthur Price, who employed his father. His mother died when he was 18 and he went to work with his dad.

The clergyman taught both father and son to read, write, and do sums. Highly unusual skills outside of the nobility. In addition to running the ecclesiastical household, the father-son team managed a malt house Price owned. Richard remarried Elizabeth Clare, a widow who had inherited the White Heart Inn from her first husband.

The family ran the pub together and she taught her stepson how to brew beer. In 1752, the archbishop died, bequeething 100 a piece to his faithful employees, Richard and Arthur. This was equivalent to 4 years wages. 20-year-old Arthur used his windfall to purchase a brewery. The property was ideally located between the river and the main Dublin Gowway road. He got water from the river, barley and hops from neighboring farms, and sent cartloads of his brew to both Dublin and Goway.

When the 7 Years War broke out, several Irish banks collapsed, and a financial crisis ensued. Suddenly, property was going for a song, Arthur left his original brewery in the hands of his younger brother, Richard, and leased a 4 acre abandoned brewery in St. James Gate in Dublin. He made a 100 down payment and signed a lease for £45 a year for 9,000 years.

The now wealthy 36-year-old brewer settled down and married up to Olivia Whitmore. She came from a political gentry family. Her 1,000 lb dowry helped to expand the brewery. Over the next 26 years, Olivia had 21 pregnancies. Sadly, 11 babies were miscarried, but 10 survived. Arthur was voted master of the Dublin Corporation of Brewers. At the time, Irish beer was taxed at a rate five times higher than beer imported from England.

Arthur petitioned Parliament to make the rate fair. And in the midst of the great taxation crisis caused by the American Revolution, the House of Commons agreed. This opened up the market for Irish brewers to import to England. Beer soon became a staple of the Irish economy. Guinness initially brewed ale, but he couldn’t compete with Dublin’s most popular libation, English porter, so he added the darker beer to his lineup in 1778.

And the homegrown brew was an instant hit. Guinness brewed his last ale in 1799. Arthur was a devoted Protestant, but he had a strong belief in religious tolerance. He supported equal treatment for Catholics and treated his majority Catholic employees well.

Arthur was, however, opposed to the violence of the Irish Rebellion in 1798, which aimed to overthrow British rule. This led many rebels to refer to his beer as Black Protestant Porter. Arthur supported numerous charities and hospitals and started the first Sunday school in Dublin. He believed it was the duty of the wealthy to set a good moral example.

He lived in a modest home, Bumont House, and believed in moderation, but stopped short of sobriety. He claimed that drunkenness was caused by liquor, not beer. Arthur died in 1803, age 77. He was buried beside his mother. His eldest child, Elizabeth, married Frederick Darly in 1809, the same year he became Lord Mayor of Dublin. Arthur’s firstborn son, Hosiah, was expected to inherit the brewery, but he instead felt called to the clergy. He became recctor of St. Worber’s Church.

His son Frank immigrated to New Zealand and worked as a police officer. His son Arthur was speaker of the House of Representatives. Louisa and Mary both married clergymen. Benjamin and William assisted their elder brother Arthur in running the brewery. John left home to join the East India Company. His son Henry also had wonderlust.

At 17, he set sail for the West Indies where he fell terribly ill. He vowed that if God would spare him, he would devote his life to faith. He recovered and became a preacher. He traveled the world spreading the gospel and his belief that the earth was only 6,000 years old and that the end times were nigh.

In London he started a school and trained over 1300 missionaries including his daughter Geraldine. At 22 she set off for China. She wrote biographies of other missionaries which became a popular genre in the Victorian era. Arthur’s only economically unsuccessful child was Edward. In a bold attempt to strike out on his own, he invested in an iron works, but it failed.

To escape his debtors, he ran away to the aisle of man. The brewery went to Arthur’s second son, Arthur Hart. He was still a teenager when he started helping his dad. Arthur Senior’s confidence in his son inspired him to expand the business. At 25, Junior married Anne Lee and his father gave them the brewery as a wedding gift. Junior brought in a steam engine to pump water into the brewery.

Sales grew from 360,000 gallons in 1800 to over 2 million gallons in 1815. In the 1820s, Guinness extra stout was developed. While traditional porter is brewed with maltted barley and is sweeter and lighter in color and flavor, stout is made with roasted barley and is richer and higher in alcohol. The word stout originally referred to a higher ABV.

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This preserved the product for shipment to England and as far away as North America. The original porter was referred to as a pint of plain. Modern brewers often use porter and stout interchangeably. But when you order a Guinness in a pub today, you’re getting a stout. By the time of Arthur Junior’s death in 1855, age 87, Guinness was producing over 4 million gallons a year. He had nine children.

His eldest son, William, had followed his uncle into the clergy. second son, Arthur III, was in training to take over the brewery, but he had an affair with a male clerk who blackmailed him to keep quiet. To avoid scandal, Arthur was forced to resign. The business went to third son, Benjamin. He took over in 1839 and was energetic and ambitious to continue expansion, particularly overseas. He married his first cousin, Elizabeth Guinness.

In 1845, a blight struck Ireland’s vital food crop, the potato. Mass starvation ensued, and over a million people died. Millions more fled for North America and Australia, carrying their culture and their love of Guinness with them. But rather than feed the starving people, the Guinness Company hired armed guards to protect their barley fields.

They prioritized profits by shipping their liquid bread to England, and they took advantage by buying up cheap land. Benjamin moved out of Bowmont House and into a neocclassical mansion in Dublin, which he called Iva House. He somewhat redeemed himself by funding the restoration of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, originally built in 1191.

In recognition for this, he was created a baronet. In 1862, he adopted the harp as the Guinness logo. Harps have long been associated with Gaelic culture. Music lover Henry VIII incorporated one into the Irish code of arms in 1541. Guinness’s harp faces right instead of left to distinguish it from the code of arms. Benjamin was elected Lord Mayor of Dublin, then to the House of Commons.

He died in 1868, age 69. Benjamin’s one daughter and three sons, Anne, Arthur, Benjamin, and Edward, are the main characters in House of Guinness. Anne devoted herself to charity and founded St. Patrick’s nursing home. She married William Baron Plunkett who became Archbishop of Dublin and they had six children.

Anne suffered from a mysterious degenerative disease and died at 50. Her son William inherited his father’s title. He joined the diplomatic service and was governor of New Zealand from 1904 to 1910. Arthur Guinness received an elite education at Eaton and Trinity College. He inherited his father’s baronetsy and half the brewery.

He was elected to parliament that year, but it was later discovered that his campaign had bribed men to vote for him and he was removed from office. He ran again successfully in 1874 during which there was no assassination plot as depicted in the show. The family did live in a time of growing tension between the Protestant ruling class and the Catholic working class.

The Irish Republican Brotherhood was a real organization, but Patrick and Ellen Corkran and many of the other events in the show are fictional. Arthur inherited most of the land his father had accumulated during the famine. In the 1880s, the land wars saw tenant farmers rise up against absent landlords who pocketed their rents and did nothing to improve the land.

Two of Arthur’s baifts were murdered and he decided to sell. Arthur gave back to Dublin by building St. Steven’s Green. He wed Lady Olivia Hedge White, daughter of the Earl of Bantry. because of the couple’s lack of warmth and children. It has long been speculated that it was a mirage blanc or a union to cover up Arthur’s homosexuality, but there is no evidence that Arthur actually had any male lovers. In fact, the couple were both deadly dull and respectable.

In 1861, they hosted the equally prude Queen Victoria and Prince Albert at their country estate. Ahead of the royal visit, they made massive improvements on the house and dug themselves into debt. In 1876, Arthur sold his half of the brewery to Edward for 600,000. From then on, he focused on politics and philanthropy. He was created Baron Ardolon. Arthur died in 1915, age 75.

Benjamin II was alcohol dependent. His father had little faith in him and did not leave him a share of the brewery. He married Lady Henrietta St. Lawrence, daughter of the Earl of House and they had two sons. Aldrenon inherited the Barreny from his childless uncle. Both he and his brother Kennelm were race car drivers.

Kenom won several Grand Pris and set a land speed record in 1922. In 1924, he suffered numerous injuries in a car crash. Brain damage ended his career and altered his personality. He lived for another 13 years, but spent his final months in a nursing home suffering delusions. He was found dead at 49, having intentionally inhaled poisonous gas.

Edward Guinness was the most ambitious of his siblings. Contrary to the show, he did not introduce Guinness to the US. It had already been served in bars from Boston to the Bahamas for over 50 years. But he did continue expansion. In the novel Ulisses, James Joyce refers to brothers Arthur and Edward Guinness, a crystal cup full of foamy eban ale, which the noble twin brothers brew ever in their divine ale vats.

For they garner the succulent berries of the hop and mass and shift and bruise and brew them. And they mix there within sour juices and bring the must to a sacred fire and cease not night or day from their toil. Those cunning brothers, lords of the vat. Edward bought out Arthur, and at 29 he was the sole owner of the Guinness Brewery. He married his third cousin, Adelaide, from the banking branch of the family that we’ll meet later.

In 1886, Edward floated 2th3 of the company stock on the London Stock Exchange. He became the richest man in Ireland and retired a multi-millionaire at 40. With his time freed up, he focused on collecting art, yaching, and philanthropy. He sponsored public housing and funded medical research.

He helped to welcome the Prince of Wales to Dublin and was rewarded with the title Baron Iva, reviving the legacy of his supposed GIC ancestors. In 1902, he built the Guinness Storehouse, one of Ireland’s top tourist attractions today. In 1919, Edward was promoted to Earl of Iva. He died in 1927, age 79. His son Rupert was a rower at Cambridge, then fought in the Boower Wars in South Africa.

He succeeded his father as Earl and chairman of the brewery. He ran it for 35 years and built new facilities in London, Nigeria, and Malaysia. In the 30s, falling sales pushed the company to hire a London ad agency. Beer mats and posters emlazed with the slogan, “Ginness is good for you,” have become iconic.

Rupert’s managing director was at a shooting party when he got into an argument about which gamebird was the fastest in Europe. This inspired him to hire a factf finding agency and the result was the first Guinness Book of Records. It topped the Christmas bestseller list in 1955 and has since sold over 80 million copies. Rupert married Lady Gwindelyn Enslow.

Their only son, Arthur, was killed in a rocket strike in World War II. He had already fathered three children, including Henrietta. She was touring at the French Riviera in her boyfriend’s Aston Martin. When the pair were involved in a crash, she never recovered from her injuries. Though she went on to marry and have children, she suffered depression.

She once said, “If I had been poor, I would be happy.” In 1978, Henrietta took her own life by jumping off a bridge in Umbria, Italy. Her brother Benjamin inherited his grandfather’s Earlddom and leadership of the brewery. He was not a brilliant businessman. He led Guinness into decline in the 1960s.

After him, the family stepped out of leadership roles, though they still own 51% of the brewery, worth an estimated $4 billion. In later years, Benjamin was alcohol dependent. He died in 1992, age 55. His son Edward is the current Earl of IVA. He married interior designer Clare Hazel and they have two sons. Their 2021 divorce was estimated to be one of the most expensive in British history.

His sister Louisa married the editor of Country Life magazine. Their 19-year-old daughter, Honor, drowned in a swimming pool during a family barbecue in 2020. Lady Bridg Guinness was a nurse during World War II. That’s how she met Prince Frederick, grandson of Kaiser Vilhelm of Prussia. He had been interred in England at the time.

The pair fell in love and married in 1945. Frederick was visiting his German castle, Reinhardtsen, when he went missing. He was found 2 weeks later floating in the Ryan River. Whether his death was suicide or accidental was never determined. The couple had five children. Youngest, Princess Antonia, married Charles Welssley, Duke of Wellington.

The Queen, Princess Margaret and Prince Charles, attended their wedding. Antonia served as president of the Guinness Partnership for affordable housing and received an OBBE. Ernest was the family’s tech nerd. He introduced numerous innovations and was put in charge of building an all-new brewery in London.

He lavished money on his three daughters. When they were teenagers, he sent them on a world tour on his yacht, Phantom 2, but was too busy to go with them. They came out as debutants in the 1920s and were known as the golden Guinness girls amongst the bright young things. Eileen received Letterston Castle as a wedding present.

She spent her time redecorating it and throwing lavish parties where the extensive bar did not include anything as pedestrian as beer. Her first husband was killed in World War II. Her second interior designer, Valyrian Rybar, was famous for his opulent taste. He spent all of Eileen’s money and she had to sell her beloved castle and move into Elden Hall with her relatives. She died in 1999, age 95.

Moren loved to throw elaborate themed parties and play practical jokes. She wore a penisshaped plastic nose and disguised herself as a drunk Irish maid and hid on her male guests. The life of the party did what was expected of her and married Basil Hamilton Temple Blackwood. Marquis of Duffren and Ava and they had three children. But Moren was not the mothering type.

While she socialized in London, the children were left with a neglectful nanny. They were frequently seen bicycling around their estate, asking local farmers for food. Basil was killed in World War II and Moren married twice more.

Between parties, she squeezed in philanthropy and was the first woman to serve on the Guinness board. She was a friend of Margaret Campbell, Duchess of Argyle, and was on the sidelines of their messy 1963 divorce. Moren was portrayed by Julia Davis in the 2021 series, A Very British Scandal. She never stopped partying. She was the inspiration for popular drag persona Dame Edna Everidge.

Moren died in 1998, age 91. Her daughter Caroline was eager to leap into the party scene herself. In the 1950s, she was drinking with Bohemians and artists. She refused to wash her hand for 3 days after Picasso doodled on it. She eloped with Lucian Freud, expressionist artist and grandson of psychoanalyst Sigman Freud. They divorced and Caroline married Polish composer Israel Chitkowitz.

They had three daughters, but Caroline was frequently unfaithful. Her youngest, Ivana, long suspected that her real father was her mother’s editor, Robert Silvers. But Caroline revealed on her deathbed that her daughter was actually fathered by screenwriter Ivan Moffett. Caroline wrote magazine articles and popular novels. She left Israel for poet Robert Lol.

Israel died of a heart attack in the back of a New York City taxi cab, clutching a portrait of Caroline. The following year, her 17-year-old daughter, Natalia, died of a drug overdose. After so many personal tragedies, Caroline became alcohol- dependent and neglected her appearance and hygiene. She behaved erratically and was blacklisted from several hotels and abandoned by her friends.

She died of cancer in 1996, age 64 at the Mayfair Hotel on Park Avenue in New York City. Her brother Sheridan became fifth Marquis of Duffren and Ava at 6. He opened a pop art gallery and produced homoerotic films. Despite being gay, he married his fourth cousin, Lindy Guinness.

They were a fixture in swinging London and close friends with Princess Margaret. Sheridan died in 1988 from an AIDS related illness. Youngest golden girl Una made an enchanted home at Lugala Estate where she hosted artists, intellectuals, and celebrities. She married three times and had five children, including Tara Brown. He was a hard partier in the swinging 60s.

He threw a lavish 21st birthday party where two private jets flew 200 guests, including Mick Jagger and Brian Jones, to Lugala. Tara took his friend Paul McCartney on his first acid trip in 1966. Tara was driving his Lotus Alain through London when he didn’t notice that the lights had changed. He blew his mind out in the car. His girlfriend survived, but Tara died at 21.

The incident was immortalized in the Beatles song, A Day in the Life. Walter Guinness distinguished himself in World War I and was then elected to the House of Commons. He became good friends with Winston Churchill and served in several government positions.

In 1942, he was appointed minister to the Middle East and sent to British controlled Palestine to ease tensions between Arabs and Jewish immigrants. Walter and his chauffeur were shot and killed by a Zionist terrorist group. His assassination sent shock waves through the world. His eldest son, Brian, was a poet and heartthrob amongst the bright young things.

He married it girl Diana Midford and they had two sons but Diana caused scandal when she left him for fascist party leader Oswald Mosley. Brian remarried and had eight more children. Eldest son Jonathan was a prominent anti-immigration activist and member of the conservative Monday club. He married three times and fathered eight children, including Catherine, who was close friends with Andy Warhol and appeared in his factory films.

Her daughter, Lady Mary Charterus, is a model and vocalist in the rock band The Big Pink. When her aunt Daphne was five, she was held hostage at Knife Point by a 25-year-old family friend, Plastics’s heir, Tony Bakeland. A housekeeper intervened and got Daphne away from Tony and he left the house. The next day, Tony stabbed his mother, Barbara, to death.

Daphne grew up to be a model, fashion designer, and muse to Alexander McQueen and Carl Loggerfeld. Desmond purchased and restored Lexlip Castle. His son Patrick is a historian. In 2007, he conducted genetic research and solved the 300-year-old mystery of the paternity of Richard Guinness.

So, was it the Irish Catholic Jacobite or the Protestant English Williamite? Drum roll, please. It was neither. Turns out Richard’s ancestors were all farmers living on clan McInness land, which is how they got their name. They were not clan leaders and not English lords.

The Guinnesses certainly weren’t the first family to falsely claim noble heritage, and they won’t be the last. Patrick’s daughter Jasmine is a model, designer, and toy store owner. Brothers Finn and Kieran both had affairs with Mary Wilson Price, who was married to author JP Don Levy at the time. JP was unaware that his two children were each fathered by a different Guinness brother.

Mary eventually left her husband and married Finn. Half sibling cousins Rory and Rebecca changed their name to Guinness. That concludes the brewing branch of the family. However, there is another Guinness branch that struck it rich. Arthur’s younger brother Samuel worked as a gold beater in Dublin hammering gold leaf for decorative gilding.

His sweat afforded his son Richard a fine education and he became a barristister. His son Robert founded Guinness, a land and lending agency in 1836. His descendants continued to grow the banking business. Benjamin Seymour moved to New York and was director of numerous railroads.

He left his first wife to marry Italian princess Maria de Minano, 18 years his junior. When Benjamin died, his widow and his son lol were involved in a lengthy legal battle over the estate. LOL became a famous pilot during the battle of Britain. He married Joan Yard Buller, but she left him for Prince Ali Khan, who later left her for actress Rita Hworth.

Lol married again to Lady Isabel Manners, but he left her for third wife, Mexican socialite Gloria Rubio E. Altori. She was one of Truman Capot’s swans. Her daughter Dolores Baroness vonfenberg married Lol’s son, Patrick. The steps sibling marriage produced three children before Patrick died in a car crash at 34. Widow Dolores fell in love with her husband’s half-brother Aak Khan, but they broke up before making the family tree any more twisted. Me was a painter and writer.

She married Chilean painter Alvaro Guavara and they lived in the south of France. Meow’s work was part of Peggy Guggenheim’s 1943 exhibition by 31 women. A distant member of the family, John Henry, was targeted because of his last name. In 1986, his wife, Jennifer, was kidnapped by armed men who demanded a $2 million ransom.

She plead with them that her husband was not part of the brewing dynasty and didn’t have that kind of money. She was held for 8 days. After a tense hostage negotiation, she was rescued by police and her capttors arrested. Just 2 years later, the couple and their three children were hiking Mount Snowden in Wales. John lost his footing and fell off a cliff, plunging 500 ft. He died at 52.

This story and the many other tragedies which have befallen the famous Guinness family have led to rumors that there is a curse on the house of Guinness. So, what do you think? Is the Guinness family cursed? Perhaps by all the people praying to the porcelain god after embibing too much of their famous stout, or do you chalk all the misfortune up to rich people hijinks? Let me know in the comments.

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