Adam Cusack

He was born in Rathgar (then in the countryside, but now a suburb of Dublin), the second son of Robert Cusack of Rathgar Castle (which Adam inherited on the death of his elder brother) and his wife Alice, second daughter of Sir George Sexton of Limerick (died 1631), Secretary to the Lord Deputy of Ireland, and his first wife Katherine Osborne.

In the relaxed political atmosphere of the early 1670s his Anglo-Irish background and his notably tolerant attitude to Roman Catholics[7] were not professional disadvantages.

His cousin Lord Barry was in fairly good standing at Court, although his health was failing (he was a much older man than Adam).

[12] Rathgar Castle fell into decay in the eighteenth century, and was a ruin by 1769, when the Dutch-born artist Gabriel Beranger did a watercolour which shows two men surveying the remains.

It was built by the Segrave family in the sixteenth century, on what had previously been monastic land,[13] and was bought by Adam's grandfather John in 1609.