Terence Francis MacCarthy
Terence Francis MacCarthy (born 21 January 1957), formerly self-styled Tadhg V, The MacCarthy Mór, Prince of Desmond and Lord of Kerslawny, is a genealogist, historian, and writer, best known for being a pretender to the Irish chiefly title of MacCarthy Mór. He was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. His last name is sometimes published as McCarthy.
In 1992, having presented falsified documentation regarding his ancestry for official perusal, MacCarthy gained Chief of the Name recognition as the MacCarthy Mór. He worked to organise an affiliation of clan associations in Ireland and North America, building on heritage tourism. He also became active in the International Commission on Orders of Chivalry (ICOC), in which position he promoted an order known as the Niadh Nask. His claims were challenged in 1999 by The Sunday Times, which had conducted an investigation of his ancestry and found that his father was an ordinary working man in Belfast. Later that year, recognition of MacCarthy was withdrawn and he resigned the title; in 2003 the government discontinued the practice of granting courtesy honours to claimed chiefs of the name of Irish families.
MacCarthy Mór[edit]
On 28 January 1992, the Irish Genealogical Office conferred courtesy chief of the name recognition to Terence MacCarthy as the MacCarthy Mór, the title of the chief of the MacCarthy sept or clan. The title literally means "the great MacCarthy". The MacCarthys had been princes of Desmond, and earlier, through the Eoghanacht of Cashel, the kings of Munster.
MacCarthy claimed the title based on tanistry rather than primogeniture, and said that his father renounced the title in his favour in 1980. He led an affiliation of MacCarthy clan associations in Ireland, Canada, and the United States, which appealed to heritage tourism trends of the time. MacCarthy instituted a quasi-chivalric order, the Niadh Nask, and conferred titles of nobility on his supporters.
In the early 1990s, MacCarthy joined the International Commission on Orders of Chivalry (ICOC), an organisation whose stated purpose is to examine orders of chivalry to determine their legitimacy. By 1996, he was vice-president under the ICOC's founder and president, Robert Gayre. Gayre and MacCarthy used the ICOC's influence to promote the claimed legitimacy of the Niadh Nask, and MacCarthy's fraudulent nobiliary claims. At the same time, Gayre served as MacCarthy's "constable" in the Niadh Nask.[1] The other eight members of the Board of the ICOC in 1996 included Patrick O'Kelly, who claimed to be "Baron O'Kelly de Conejera"; and six others who were members of the Niadh Nask. The ICOC's register listed its vice-president matter-of-factly as "The MacCarthy Mór, Prince of Desmond".[1]
In 1996, Robert Gayre died and Terence MacCarthy assumed his position as president of the ICOC. For the next three years, he continued to use its offices, influence, and publications to lend credence to his nobiliary claims.