Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 40.djvu/29

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presented the bill for the royal assent he remarked that many of these persons had been attainted on common fame. Pardons granted after 1 Nov. were made null and void, and the act was not published, but kept carefully secret, lest absentees should return within the specified time. We are told that James himself did not know what was in the act, that he had read without understanding it, thus destroying his own prerogative by mistake, and that he upbraided Nagle for deceiving him (King, ch. iii. sec. xii.). The attorney-general was also zealous in depriving protestants of their churches (ib. sec. xviii.), and in making the position of their clergy intolerable (ib. sec. xx.).

Schomberg landed at Carrickfergus in August, and advantage was taken of the subsequent mortality among his troops to tamper with them. A letter bearing Nagle's imprimatur, and perhaps written by him, was circulated among the soldiers reminding them of the fate of Sennacherib's host, and exhorting them to return to their legitimate king (Jacobite Narrative, p. 251). At Tyrconnel's request, James in September made Nagle his chief secretary as well as attorney-general, with Albeville for a colleague (Berwick, i. 360). After the Boyne, 1 July 1690, he was one of those who urged James's immediate flight to France. In the September following, if not sooner, he was at St. Germain with Tyrconnel and Rice, and returned with them to Galway in January 1690–1, bringing about 8,000l. and some inferior stores (Story, Cont. p. 51). Chief-justice Nugent acted as Jacobite secretary during his absence. After the battle of Aughrim in July following, and the consequent fall of Galway, Nagle remained at Limerick with Tyrconnel, who trusted him in the most secret matters (Macariæ Excidium, p. 109), and he remained in the city during the siege by Ginkel. Tyrconnel died on 14 Aug., and a commission from James was produced which left the wreck of his authority in the hands of Fitton, Nagle, and Francis Plowden, as lords justices, but without power in military matters (Jacobite Narrative, p. 155). After the surrender of Limerick they all three sailed together in the same vessel with Sarsfield on 22 Dec., and reached France in safety (ib. p. 191; Cardinal Moran, Spicilegium Ossoriense, ii. 303). With the title of secretary of state for Ireland Nagle was for a time one of the junto of five who ruled at the melancholy court of St. Germain (Clarke, ii. 411). He probably died abroad, but the date is uncertain. He had a large family, and one son at least was married in France to Margaret, younger daughter of Walter Bourke of Turlogh. Mr. Garrett Nagle, now a resident magistrate in Ireland, is Sir Richard's descendant.

Berwick (i. 360) says Nagle was a ‘very honest man, of good sense, and very clever in his profession, but not at all versed in affairs of state.’ At the beginning of 1686 Clarendon wrote of him as ‘the lawyer, a Roman Catholic, and a man of the best repute for learning as well as honesty among that people’ (Corresp. i. 273), and for some months after he often backs that opinion; but in his diary a year later is ‘sure that he is both a covetous and an ambitious man,’ and does not in the least believe his most solemn asseverations (ib. ii. 150).

[Archbishop King's State of the Protestants under James II, with Charles Leslie's Answer, 1692; Singer's Clarendon and Rochester Correspondence; Journal of the Parliament in Ireland, 1689; Clarke's Life of James II; Macariæ Excidium, or Destruction of Cyprus, ed. O'Callaghan; Bishop Cartwright's Diary (Camden Soc.); Stubbs's Hist. of Dubl. Univ.; Mémoires du Maréchal de Berwick, Collection Petitot and Monmerqué; Harris's Life of William III; Story's Hist. and Cont. 1693; Lodge's Peerage of Ireland, ed. Archdall; Jacobite Narrative, ed. Gilbert, from Lord Fingall's manuscript. This last is the work quoted by Macaulay as ‘light to the blind.’]

R. B-l.

NAIRNE, Baroness. [See Elphinstone, Margaret Mercer, 1788-1867.]

NAIRNE, CAROLINA, Baroness Nairne (1766–1845), Scottish ballad writer, born at Gask, Perthshire, 16 Aug. 1766, was the daughter of Laurence Oliphant. The latter, like his father, whom he succeeded in 1767, was an ardent Jacobite, and married in 1755 his first-cousin Margaret, eldest daughter of Duncan Robertson of Strowan, Perthshire, chief of the clan Donnochy. Carolina was named after Prince Charles Stuart; in a list of births and deaths in her father's hand it is written ‘Carolina, after the King, at Gask, Aug. 16th 1766’ (Oliphant, Jacobite Lairds of Gask. p. 349). She soon became ‘a sturdy tod’ in her mother's esteem, and a nonjuring clergyman, who was her tutor for a time, reported that she was a very promising student. Although somewhat delicate in her early years—‘a paper miss’ her nurse called her—she became a skilful rider, and sang and danced admirably. Her beauty gained for her the title of ‘pretty Miss Car,’ and subsequently of ‘the Flower of Strathearn.’

Carolina induced her brother Laurence to become a subscriber to Burns's poems, announced from Edinburgh in 1786. She followed with eager interest Burns's improvements on the old Scottish songs in Johnson's