Jenet Sarsfield, Baroness Dunsany ( c.1528-1598 ) was an Anglo-Irish noblewoman, memorable for having six husbands.
She was born in Meath in the late 1520s, daughter of the merchant John Sarsfield. Her brother William was an alderman of Dublin.[1] Jenet's first husband was Robert Shilyngford, Lord Mayor of Dublin 1534-5.They had one daughter, Katherine, who was to be Jenet's only surviving child. After Robert's death Jenet married James Luttrell, who died in 1557. She was pregnant at the time but the child died at or shortly after birth.
After Luttrell's death Jenet married as his second wife Robert Plunkett, 5th Baron of Dunsany . The marriage was short-lived and their two sons died in infancy.[2] Jenet in later years insisted on being described as the Dowager Lady Dunsany, despite three further marriages.
Dunsany died in 1559 and Jenet quickly remarried the former Lord Chancellor of Ireland, Sir Thomas Cusack (Irish judge).[3] Cusack , born about 1490, was probably old enough to be her grandfather. Though an immensely respected and generally upright public figure, his own marital career had been somewhat troubled. He had divorced his first wife Joan Hussey, and later refused to acknowledge that they had ever been married[4].His second wife, Maud Darcy, was widely believed to have murdered her previous husband. Her marriage to Cusack however was happy, and there is no evidence that Cusack and Jenet were unhappy, although she quarelled bitterly with her stepson Edward.
Cusack died in 1571. A widow was normally entitled to one-third of her husband's income, but Jenet, who was clearly a shrewd businesswoman, received a great deal more: Cusack left her most of his personal property, and the abbey of Lismullen, which he had acquired on the Dissolution of the Monasteries. These arrangements led to years of litigation between Jenet and Edward Cusack, to whom it has been suggested Jenet must have appeared as the archetypal " wicked stepmother ".[5] Jenet sued him for ransacking Lismullen and trying to destroy his father's will; he counterclaimed that she had unlawfully retained his mother's jewels. The litigation dragged on into the 1580s, when Edward appealed to Lord Burghley for aid. Interestingly he claimed that the parties were not evenly matched since Jenet through her numerous marriages was now connected with most of the great families of the Pale. Jenet eventually vacated Lismullen, although Edward claimed that she had removed most of the valuables.
Her fifth husband John Plunkett died in 1582; she made a sixth marriage to John Bellew who outlived her. She died in 1598: she chose not to be buried with any of her husbands but in a tomb of her own under the title Lady Dunsany, a decision which confirms her reputation as a woman of exceptional independence and strength of character.