Pagestown 1233
One of those charged at the "Pleas of the Crown at Drogheda on the side of Uriel before Edmund le Botiller, Friday next after Easter in the Quinzane", in the year 1313 was Philip Burnel. He was charged that he had ". . . . freely put himself at war in the company of Robert de Verduno, and his accomplices, notorious felons, by the perpetration of murders and other evils in the said county (Meath), and that he, together with the said Robert and other felons of his company, robbed the town of Callan of 200 cows, oxen and afers, 300 sheep, and other goods to the value of 20 marks . . ." He was found not guilty by the 12-man jury and acquitted. One of the jurymen was William Page. (Callan-Collon, Co Louth). The other three listings of this surname in The Justiciary Rolls (1308-1314) were Roger Page, Dublin; Thomas Page, Limerick; Walter Page associated with Counties Louth and Meath, and William Page with Meath. Pagestown names a townland the Co Meath parish of Kilclone.
The English surname Page is an occupational one, from one who filled the post of page. Mac Lysaght's The Surnames of Ireland says that this name is in Ireland since the 16th-century, and in a few isolated cases earlier, and is well known in east Galway as well as in Ulster, where it is gaelicised as Mac Giolla (giolla, a lad, a youth . . . caddy or page). Entries in telephone directories show 43 of the 98 entries in the 01 Dublin area, with the remainder throughout the country, barring Munster and Ulster. There are currently 44 in the Phone Book of Northern Ireland.
A Fiant of 1551 shows Thomas Padge to be one of two recipients of a lease of land of Lyaghdi, a parcel of the manor of Farriny llyallor, Pobleimkeffraghe and Poblelysse. (There is no indication as to where these places are, and The Index of Townlands (1851) contains nothing similar.) Among the commissioners for ecclesiastical causes in Munster in 1596 was Edward Page, chancellor of Limerick. Some time around 1635 the Earl of Cork lent "Mr Page, the clothier at Kilmiacke (?), £100 sterling to set forward the work of clothing".
"The term `Settlement' of such great import in the history of Ireland in the 17th century, means nothing less than the settlement of the balance of land according to the will of the strongest; for force, not reason, is the source of law. And by the term Cromwellian Settlement is to be understood the history of the dealings of the Commonwealth of England with the lands and habitations of the people of Ireland after the conquest of the country in the year 1652. As their object was rather to extinguish a nation than to suppress a religion, they seized the lands of the Irish, and transferred them (and with them all the power of the state) to an overwhelming flood of new English settlers, filled with the intensest national and religious hatred of the Irish" (The Cromwellian Settlement: John P. Prendergast 1865). "Settled" then in the North-West Quarter Number 4 of the Co Tipperary barony of Middle-third were Mary Page and Anne Shepcott. We estimate this to be the New Inn-FethardGolden triangle. And though Mary Page's descendants - if any - would not have borne the surname Page, there was a Page presence in the Co Tipperary parish of Ardfinnan in 1828, and in Castletownarra in 1850.
The Census of 1659 lists Francis Page, Gentleman, A Titulado of the parish of Cloghan, in Co Offaly, and Thomas Page, gent, Titulado of the Co Kilkenny parish of Ballineclehy.
John Page, the younger, Dundalk, Esq., was witness to a will in 1795; in 1798 Samuel Page is listed in the Account of Secret Service Money, Ireland, as having received £17 1s 10 1/2 p, "his expenses to Dundalk and back", and Chas page witnessed the will of John Galvin, Naas, Co Kildare, in 1817. There are 12 of the name Page in the 1836 Dublin Alamanac - a notary public and stock broker agent, a watchmaker, a salt manufacturer, a printer, an attorney, two hosiers, and the Rev Lewis Paige, seminary, 9 North Cumberland Street. Subscribers to Lewis's Topo- graphical Dictionary of Ireland (1837) were Pages resident at Beau parc, Slane, Co Meath; at Ringsend near Dublin; at Ballina and Crossmolina, Co Mayo, and the Rev Lewis Paige, A.B. Kildare. None of the name was to be found in Owners of Land of One Acre and Upward (1876).
Tomas Page (1889-1955), Irish language enthusiast and poet, was largely responsible for the standardised spelling of the Irish language Litriu na Gaelige - Lamhleabhar an Chaighdean Oifigiuil, first published in 1945.