They were staunch Roman Catholics, who opposed the Penal Laws, and supported the Irish Confederacy in the 1640s.
Philip Burnell is recorded as living in County Meath in 1306, when he was one of the defendants in a case of serious assault brought by four members of the Netterville family (who later became one of the most prominent landowning families in Meath) and was ordered to pay heavy damages.
In 1462 he was granted £20 a year to repair the city walls (normally a special tax called the murage, was levied for this purpose).
A royal writ survives from 1381 ordering him to grant to John Cruys (this was Sir John Cruys or Cruise of Booterstown and Mount Merrion, a prominent soldier and diplomat, who died in 1407) a two-thirds share in a watermill called Luttrell's Mill in County Dublin.
[8] Robert married Matilda Tyrrell, heiress to the Irish feudal barony of Castleknock.
[11] In about 1490 Sir Robert Burnell was Lord of the Manor of Balgriffin: he married Margaret Holywood, daughter and co-heiress of Sir Robert Holywood of Artane (Tartaine was the older spelling), who brought him substantial lands at Swords, north of Dublin.
Of his nine children, his daughter Eleanor is still remembered as one of the few Irish women poets of her time, although not much is known of her personal life, and only a few of her poems, all of which were written in Latin, survive.