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(c.1547–1627), merchant and moneylender, was born in Utrecht in the Netherlands, the third son of Maurice van Loor and his wife, Stephania. He arrived in England about 1568. By 1571 he was lodging with one William Pickarde in the parish of St Dunstan-in-the-West, London; by March 1578, when he was called before the privy council to account for his activities, he was operating as a jewel merchant in the city. Before 19 July 1585, when he was living in the parish of St Benet Sherehog, he had married Jacoba or Jacomina, daughter of Henry Teighbott.

The foundations of Vanlore's extensive fortune seem to have been laid in the 1590s through the supply of jewellery to the royal court. On 17 December 1594 the queen authorized payment of £1700 to him for a single pearl chain. Profits increased dramatically with the accession of James I … he also became one of the most prominent alien merchants lending money to the crown, advancing at least £35,000 by 1625. With Sir Baptist Hickes and Sir William Cockayne he lent an equal share of £30,000 to the government in 1621 to subsidize the proposed Palatinate expedition. In return the king knighted him at Whitehall on 5 November, but he had to wait until after Charles I's accession, and lend further, in order to secure any repayment.

Other securities came in the form of licences. In January 1604 Vanlore was granted a licence to export 15,000 broadcloths for ten years free of duty … Vanlore also speculated in crown lands, acquiring temporary interests in manors in Sedgemoor, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Devon, and elsewhere. While he evidently continued to make regular use of his city contacts from his residence in Fenchurch Street, in 1604 he bought the manor of Tilehurst, near Reading, Berkshire, and over the years he consolidated his property in the locality through purchase and foreclosing mortgages. In 1625 the privy council intervened to assert, against the counter-claims of Sir Richard Lydall, his possession of the manor of Sonning, also in Berkshire, which had come to him as a creditor of the earl of Kellie. By the end of his life:
Sir Peter owned one of the largest estates in Berkshire and, although he had not occupied any important administrative office in the shire, he possessed a great potential influence over county affairs and a social parity with any of his fellow landowners. (Durston, 209)

Yet as a major crown creditor and a conspicuously successful immigrant, Vanlore had been, and had felt himself to be, vulnerable. His naturalization, finalized on 5 May 1610, was no protection against the Star Chamber case brought in 1619 against him and other Dutch merchant strangers alleging illegal export of bullion. The charges were almost certainly fabricated as a pretext for the crown to duck its financial obligations ...
In the event, Vanlore remained in England until his death on 6 September 1627. His will of 29 June that year reveals strong ties both to his native community and to the establishment of his adopted country. Sir Paul Bayning was an overseer and Lord Keeper Sir Thomas Coventry among special friends singled out; the Dutch church, his local parish, and Christ's Hospital all received legacies. This bifurcation was repeated in his children's marriages: those of Peter (bap. 1586) to Susanna Becke of Antwerp and of Elizabeth to Hans van den Bernden; those of Jacquemine (bap. 1587, d. 1606) to Johannes De Laet, newly arrived immigrant, and of Anne to Sir Charles Caesar, master of chancery and third generation immigrant; and those of Mary to Sir Edward Powell, eventually master of requests, and Catherine to Sir Thomas Glemham. Vanlore left each of his grandchildren £1000, but it is unclear to what extent his estate was ever fully reimbursed for his loans: in July 1628 his widow, Jacoba, and her son-in-law Powell were still seeking £13,000 due from the crown. Peter the younger obtained a baronetcy on 6 September that year, but the estates so spectacularly built up were dispersed when he died in 1645 leaving three daughters.

In autumn 1917 Clarke was appointed assistant lecturer in the department of English at University College, Dublin. As civil unrest intensified, his mental health deteriorated and in March 1919 his mother committed him to St Patrick's Hospital, where he was confined for over a year with severe depression and physical breakdown. Before his hospitalization he had met Cornelia Alice Mary Cummins (1889–1943), daughter of Edward Cummins, a bank manager from Drogheda, co. Louth, and his wife, formerly Winifred Blake. A well-educated older woman with a small private income who had lived abroad, Cummins established a career as a journalist who also published short stories and poor-quality verse under the pseudonym Margaret Lyster. She was considered eccentric, even mad; violently antisemitic, she harboured strong Nazi sympathies in later life. She and Clarke married secretly in a register office in Dublin on 31 December 1920, but the union was probably unconsummated and lasted less than a fortnight. About 1928 Clarke instigated unsuccessful divorce proceedings.

I've done a quick bit of research and neither Edward nor Winifred Cummins appear in either the 1901 or 1911 census in Louth. I've checked all Edward Cummins (39 in 1901 and 47 in 1911) and none of them appear to hold occupations related to banking. Of course he could have died by then. I also checked all Cummins in Louth and Meath and nothing can be found there either.

Searchs on Ancestry.com and GenesReunited.com didn't yield anything.

However - on www.jbhallfreeservers.com (an excellent site for Louth geneaology) - under the index to gravestone inscriptions, a Winifred Cummins (alias Blake) is buried in Cord Cemetery in Drogheda. However there is no mention of Edward Cummins (either in Cord or any other graveyard) - it's possible of course he's buried in a graveyard that hasn't been transcribed, but usually a husband and wife would be buried in the same grave.

Novelist, playwright, art critic and psychic medium, Lia Clarke (1889-1943) was a woman of many parts. Born Cornelia Comyn (or Cummins) the daughter of Nicholas Comyn of Balinderry, Co. Galway, her mother’s family were Blakes from Co. Cork, from whom she inherited a private income derived from her grandfather’s business as a glass maker. She was raised in Waterford by an aunt’s family, the Jennings, but later moved to Dublin, where she became involved in literary and theosophical circles. Possibly it was her experiments in automatic writing that interested Æ, who has captured her here with an inspired yet far away expression. In 1920 she married Austin Clarke, but the marriage lasted barely a fortnight. She later settled in Nassau Street, where she wrote articles for the Irish Press. A later portrait of her, by Gaetano de Gennaro, sold through these rooms (27 May 2006, lot 135) ...