The Ashes and the Athboy connection

Cricket’s Ashes tournament, currrently running at the Melbourne Cricket Club in Australia, has a link with Athboy and the Earls of Darnley, the Bligh family.
The term ‘Ashes’ was first used after England lost to Australia - for the first time on home soil - at The Oval on 29th August 1882. A day later, the Sporting Times carried a mock obituary to English cricket which concluded that: “The body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia”. The concept caught the imagination of the sporting public. A few weeks later, an English team, captained by the Honourable Ivo Bligh, who was later to become the eighth Lord Darnley, set off to tour Australia, with Bligh vowing to return with “the ashes”; his Australian counterpart, WL Murdoch, similarly vowed to defend them. 
As well as playing three scheduled matches against the Australian national side, Bligh and the amateur players in his team participated in many social matches. It was after one such match, at the Rupertswood Estate outside Melbourne on Christmas Eve 1882, that Bligh was given the small terracotta urn as a symbol of the ashes that he had travelled to Australia to regain. On the same occasion, he met his future wife - Florence Morphy - who was the companion to Lady Janet Clarke of Rupertswood, and governess to the Clarke children.
In February 1884, Bligh married Florence. Shortly afterwards, they returned to England, taking the urn - which Bligh always regarded as a personal gift - with them. It stayed on the mantelpiece at the Bligh family home - Cobham Hall, near Rochester in Kent - until Bligh died, 43 years later. At his request, Florence bequeathed the urn to Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC). Today, the tiny, delicate and irreplaceable artefact resides in the MCC Museum at Lord’s. Each year, it is seen by tens of thousands of visitors, from all parts of the world.
In the 1990s, recognising the two teams’ desire to compete for an actual trophy, MCC commissioned - after discussions with the England & Wales Cricket Board (ECB) and Cricket Australia - an urn-shaped Waterford Crystal trophy.
The Earl’s grandson, the then Lord Darnley, appeared on the radio in December 2002 to argue that the Ashes should not be returned to Australia as they were essentially the property of the Darnleys and only given to the MCC for safe-keeping.
The present Darnley title was created in 1725. John Bligh, a member of an old Yorkshire family which had settled in County Meath, married Theodosia Hyde, 10th Baroness Clifton. He represented Athboy in the Irish House of Commons from 1709 to 1721. In 1721 he was raised to the Peerage of Ireland as Baron Clifton of Rathmore. In 1723 the Darnley title held by his wife’s ancestors was revived when he was made Viscount Darnley, of Athboy, in the Peerage of Ireland. In 1725 Bligh was made Earl of Darnley, in the County of Meath, also in the Peerage of Ireland. The family held substantial land holdings around Athboy, including the Fair Green which was presented to the people of the town by them a century ago, and they are remembered in the local hotel, the Darnley Lodge Hotel.