This surname is derived from a geographical locality. 'of Hovenden.' I cannot find the spot.

Alan de Hoveden, Yorkshire, 1273. Hundred Rolls.

Though now very rare this name was formerly much more numerous in Ireland and, moreover, one of considerable note. According to Prof. Hayes-McCoy the family came to Ireland as Scottish mercenaries under O'Neill,but Fr. Paul Walsh says they were an English family which settled in Co. Tyrone under the Great Earl. There is no doubt that they were closely associated with the O'Neills, for one Robert Hovenden married an O'Neill widow, Richard and Henry Hovenden are described in 1594 as foster brothers of the Earl of Tyrone and Henry Hovenden had been the earl's secretary for ten years at the time of the Flight of the Earls in 1607*; and in the subsequent Plantation of Ulster we find them classed as “natives” in Co. Tyrone. In 1664 a Hovenden appears in the lists of Co. Armagh householders.

The name Hovenden, though less prominent in Leinster, is also closely associated with Queen's Co.

(mod. Leix) where their main seat has been at Tankardstown since 1550. Not far away Egidius Hovenden, of Levediston, Co. Kildare, is described as “gent” in a Fiant of 1557.

In the “census” of 1659-60 Hovendens appear as tituladoes in four counties viz. Cork, Tipperary, Clare and Down, i.e. only one Ulster county; but in the attainders of Jacobites in 1691 there are two from Co. Armagh, one from Tyrone and one from Queen's Co. Three Hovendens, transplanted in 1657 as Papists were from counties Limerick and Mayo.

In several of the references to which I have referred, and notably in the Ormond Manuscripts lists of seventeenth century army personnel, the name is given as Hovenden alias Ovington; and going back to the fifteenth century, de Offington occurs quite frequently, e.g. in the Ormond Deeds. We do, in fact, find the name in Ireland long before that, as for example David de Offynton, who was Seneschal of Kilkenny in 1295.

Ovington is now almost obsolete but a modern synonym in Co. Derry is Huffington.

There was a twelfth century annalist called Roger de Hoveden, whose work dealt with Ireland. In modern times Robert Hovenden, born at Dunmanway, Co. Cork in 1840, was a landscape and subject painter of note. He was killed in 1895 endeavouring to save the life of a child at a railway crossing.

A work on the Hovenden families is listed in the bibliography printed in Irish Families, p. 324.

*See also Fiant quoted on p. 154 infra.

V. Howden3.

Now rare this name, originally de Offington or Ovington, is that of a family which settled in Tyrone under O’Neill at the end of the sixteenth century. They soon became hibernicized and at the time of the Plantation of Ulster they were classed as “native”. In modern times the name is not confined to Ulster. Bibl; SIF 92