William Henry Jephson (1756-1813)

He was heir to Mallow Castle which had passed to the Jephsons by marriage when their ancestor married the eldest daughter of Sir Thomas Norreys in 1607. William was a Lieutenant in the 28th Foot with a "rakish reputation" when he was secretly married at New York in 1777 to the stepdaughter of Goldsbrow Banyer. But, shortly after the birth of their son, William, at Mallow Castle, he was divorced by his first wife, Elizabeth, for "keeping women" in London and the West Indies. He returned to Ireland in 1783 and married a daughter of the 10th Viscount Mountgarret, who died in childbirth two years later. His third marriage was in 1798 to the daughter of a Kent wine merchant and they settled in Surrey. In 1803, William was sentenced to six months’ suspension from pay and rank following a drunken brawl with another officer.