The Friends of the National Collections of Ireland also donated €7,500 to the Waterford Museum of Treasures towards the purchase at auction of the Wyse Papers, the records dating back to 1315 of one of the most important Waterford families (one of its members, Thomas Wyse, married Laetitia Bonaparte, a niece of the Emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte, despite the disapproval of the Wyse family, who regarded her as unsuitable).
The survival of such a large corpus of family records, covering a period of six centuries, is quite rare in Ireland, owing to our turbulent history. They include a Letters Patent issued on the 22nd of March 1758 by King George II granting a royal pardon to John Wyse for having served in the Irish Brigade under King Louis of France. This enabled him to return to Ireland without danger of arrest and to succeed in due course to his father’s estate.
