Viscount Gort - Viscount Gort, Peerage of Ireland

Viscount Gort, Peerage of Ireland

The title was created in 1816 as an advancement or 'step' for an existing peer. John Prendergast Smyth had already been created Baron Kiltarton of Gort, in the County of Galway, also in the Peerage of Ireland, in 1810. John Prendergast-Smyth, Viscount Gort and Lord Kiltarton, was the nephew of Sir Thomas Prendergast, 2nd Baronet, and had succeeded to the Prendergast estates on the death of this uncle in 1760 (see Prendergast Baronets, of Gort). He was ineligible to inherit the title of his uncle, but the bequest enabled him to develop the status to merit a title of his own, of a higher degree, and subsequently to advance himself higher in the peerage system. Lord Gort had no sons to inherit his two titles but, unusually, he had been able to secure a special remainder both in 1816 and in 1810, the remainder being in favour of his nephew Charles Vereker, the son of his sister Juliana by her marriage with Thomas Vereker.

On the death of John Prendergast-Smyth in the following year, the Gort viscountcy, plus the barony, passed to the Vereker family according to the special remainder. Charles Vereker, the second Viscount, represented Limerick in the House of Commons and sat in the House of Lords as an Irish Representative Peer from 1824 until his death, in 1842.

John Vereker succeeded his father, both as the third Viscount and as Member of Parliament for Limerick. He was also an Irish Representative Peer, in the year in which he died, in 1865.