The issue of Sir Richard de Wellesley by Johanna were William Wellesley, who married Katherine ----, and dying in 1441 was succeeded by his next brother, Christopher Wellesley, whose recorded fealty in the same year proves all the latter links; his succession to William as brother and heir, and the titles of Johanna as widow of his father Richard, and of Katherine as widow of William, to dower off said estates. (_Rot. Claus. 19 Henry VI._, _C. H._) At and previous to this time, another line of this family, connected as cousins with the house of Dangan, flourished in the co. Kildare, where they were recognised as Palatine Barons of Norragh to the close of the seventeenth century. William Wellesley of Dangan was the son and heir of Christopher. An (unprinted) act of Edward IV. was passed in 1472 in favour of this William; and his two marriages are stated by Lynch (_Feud. Dig._): the first was to {88} Ismay Plunkett; the second, to Maud O'Toole, was contracted under peculiar circumstances. The law of Ireland at the time prohibited the intermarriages of the English with the natives without royal licence therefor being previously obtained, and not even did the licence so obtained wash out the _original sin_ of Irish birth; for, as in this instance, Maud, having survived her first husband, on marrying her second, Patrick Hussey, had a fresh licence to legalise that marriage. It is of record (_Rot. Pat. 21 Henry VII., C. H._), and proves the second marriage of Sir William clearly: yet it is not noticed in any of the peerage books, which derive his issue from the first wife, and not from the second, as Lynch gives it, that issue being Gerald the eldest son, Walter the second, and Alison a daughter. Gerald had a special livery of his estate in 1539; Walter the second son became Bishop of Kildare in 1531, and died its diocesan in 1539 (see Ware's _Bishops_); and the daughter Alison intermarried with John Cusack of Cushington, co. Meath. (Burke's _Landed Gentry_, Supp. p. 88.)