Ellis Lynch was a companion and business partner to Peregrine Tasburgh and connected her English husband with the Catholic society of Connacht. When Peregrine was summoned to the Church of Ireland consistory courts of Tuam and of Killala, it being ‘impossible for him to be at both places at one time’, Ellis wrote that she ‘appeared for him, with my friend a lawyer to direct me’ at Tuam.
She was head tenant in her own right for ten years and as a young widow in very comfortable circumstances she probably had suitors, though she was described as ‘having views of her own’. She did not remarry until 1721, and then only when abducted. Fearing that she was to be married ‘by force’ to one of her abductors, ‘she told him in order to get out of his hands that she was married to George Macnemara’. She proceeded to marry George, who was probably somewhat younger than her, and she was said to be ‘intoxicated’ by him.
Thomas Tasburgh found Ellis—or ‘Madam’ as he called her—to be a formidable adversary while he investigated the management and accounts of the estate in 1726. After her death, George wrote that ‘no man on earth ever had a better manager within and without doors’.