Thomas Preston, 1st Viscount Tara
Irish noble and general
Thomas Preston, 1st Viscount Tara (1585 – October 1655) was an Irish soldier of the 17th century. After lengthy service as a mercenary in the Spanish Army, Preston returned to Ireland following the outbreak of the Rebellion of 1641. He was appointed to command the Leinster Army of the Irish Confederacy, enjoying some success as well as a number of heavy defeats such as the Battle of Dungans Hill in 1647 where his army was largely destroyed. Like other Confederate leaders, Preston was a Catholic Royalist. He remained in close contact with the Lord Lieutenant the Marquess of Ormonde, and was a strong supporter of an alliance between Confederates and Royalists against the English Republicans.
Following the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, he left for France where he joined the Royalist court-in-exile and was made Viscount Tara by Charles II.
Lineage
Preston was a descendant of Robert Preston, 1st Baron Gormanston, who in 1363 purchased the lands of Gormanston, County Meath, and who was Lord Chancellor of Ireland in 1388. The Prestons came originally from the Lancashire town of that name, and arrived in Ireland some time before 1320.
Sir Robert's great-grandson, Robert Preston, was created Viscount Gormanston in 1478; and the latter's great-grandson was Christopher, 4th Viscount Gormanstown (died 1599), whose second son was Thomas Preston. Thomas's mother was Catherine FitzWilliam, daughter of the wealthy Dublin landowner Sir Richard FitzWilliam of Baggotrath Castle. He was thus a close relative of Viscount FitzWilliam.
“Thomas Preston, 1st Viscount Tara” enters the record as irish noble and general. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Thomas, Preston and Viscount can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2466049. VIAF identifies the subject as 16200337. The Library of Congress control number is n85114781. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1585, 1655, 1641 and 1647.
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This entry incorporates text from “Thomas Preston, 1st Viscount Tara” 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.