James Freney
Irish highwayman
Captain James Freney (c. 1719–1788) was an 18th-century Irish highwayman and memoirist, who remains a popular anti-hero in Irish folklore. To enthusiasts of Victorian era English literature and modern costume dramas, Captain Freney is particularly significant for his fictionalized appearances in the novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackery and its 1975 film adaptation by director Stanley Kubrick.
Early life
James Freney was a native of County Kilkenny, and was descended from a respectable Old English noble family who had been wealthy and powerful since the 13th century, having their seat at Ballyreddy Castle. But during the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland they lost their estates and were reduced to poverty.
His father, John Freney, was a household servant for Anglo-Irish landlord Joseph Robbins at Ballyduff, Thomastown. In 1718 he married Robbins's housemaid, Alice Phelan, and their son James was born the following year at Alice's father's home at Inistioge.
He received a good education locally, including tuition in the Robbins household—and in 1742 moved to Waterford where he opened a pub with his wife Anne.
Criminal career
Unable to pay the exorbitant fees charged by the town corporation, the couple closed up their pub and moved back to Thomastown. Here, Freney fell in with the Kellymount highway gang, led by fellow Thomastown man John Reddy.
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This entry incorporates text from “James Freney” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.