Portrait of Sir John Bingham, 5th Bt., of Castlebar, half-length, seated at a table in a green coat, holding a pen in his right hand, beside a column

The Bingham family had much in common with other families of the Ascendancy, such as the Boyles, who consolidated the land gains of their adventurous Elizabethan forebears with judicious marriages and the acquisition of titles. By the late 17th Century the Bingham family occupied a position of considerable importance in Co. Mayo, and exercised from their seat in Castlebar the quasi-hereditary office of that county.

Sir John Bingham, 5th Bt. (1696-1749), was the eldest son of Sir George Bingham, 4th Bt., and his first wife, Mary Scrots, who were married in 1688. He was Governor and Member of Parliament for Co. Mayo and High Sheriff of that county in 1721. He married, in 1730, Anne, daughter of Agmondesham Vesey, of Lucan, Co. Dublin, whose mother Charlotte was the daughter and heiress of William Sarsfield, of Lucan, elder brother of the celebrated General Patrick Sarsfield, Earl Lucan, who fell at the battle of Landen in Flanders, by Mary Crofts his wife, illegitimate daughter of King Charles II, and sister of James Duke of Monmouth.
He was succeeded by his son John, whose brother Sir Charles Bingham was in turn to succeed him and was created 1st Earl of Lucan.

Robert Hunter, who was born in Ulster, was the principal portrait painter of his time in Ireland.