great lerninge, couradge, and temperancie to his owne great comendation and satisfaction of most of his audience’ (Narrative of an Eye-witness, Sloane MS. 4793, f. 130). The lord deputy, Arthur Grey, fourteenth Lord Grey de Wilton [q. v.], who ‘sate vpon the benche to see justice more equallie mynistered’ (State Papers, Ireland, Eliz. xci. 22), addressed the jury, and ‘praid God, like an vpright judge and a noble gentleman, to pute in ye juries harts to do as they ought, p'testing yt he had rather Mr N. weare found trew than otherwise’ (Narrative, Sloane MS. 4793, f. 130). Thereupon the jury retired, and it soon appearing that they were in favour of an acquittal, Sir Robert and Sir Lucas Dillon compelled them by menaces to alter their verdict. Judgment followed, and two days later, on Easter eve, 6 April, Nugent was hanged, ‘to wch death he went resolutly and patiently, protesteinge yt sith he was not found trew, as he said he ought to have ben, he had no longinge to liue in infamie’ (ib. f. 132). His death, and the manner of his trial, caused a profound sensation, and there is little reason to doubt that the popular opinion attributing his death to the private malice of Sir Robert Dillon was well founded. After his death his widow Ellen, daughter of Sir John Plunket, chief justice of the king's bench, succeeded notwithstanding the remonstrances of Wallop, in obtaining a reversal of his attainder; and on 27 Aug. 1584 the queen granted his estate to her for life, with remainder to her son Richard.
Richard Nugent (fl. 1604), son of the above, is said by Lodge (Peerage, ed. Archdall, i. 231) to have succeeded his mother on 9 Nov. 1615. He received a good education, and was apparently the author of ‘Ric: Nugent's Cynthia, containing Direfull Sonnets, Madrigalls, and passionate intercourses, describing his repudiate affections, expressed in Loues own Language,’ London, 1604, wrongly ascribed (Hunter, MS. Chorus Vatum, vi. 120) to Richard Nugent, fifteenth baron Delvin and first earl of Westmeath [q. v.] The grounds for attributing it to Nugent are: (1) the sonnets bear traces of having been written long before they were published, and, as the Earl of Westmeath was only twenty-one when they were published, it is not likely they were written by him; (2) the dedication is to ‘the Rt. Hon. the Lady of Trymleston,’ whom we can hardly be wrong in conjecturing to be Catherine Nugent, wife of Peter Barnewall, sixth lord Trimleston, who was old enough to be the mother of the Earl of Westmeath; (3) one of the ‘passionate intercourses’ is addressed in familiar language to ‘Cosin Maister Richard Nugent of Donower,’ who died in 1616, about sixty years of age, and was therefore, as the verses require, Nugent's contemporary. It is uncertain when he died. He married Anne Bath, daughter of Christopher Bath of Rathfeigh, co. Meath, and left issue Christopher.
[Lodge's Peerage, ed. Archdall, i. 231; Cal. State Papers, Ireland, Eliz.; Cal. Carew MSS.; Kilkenny Archæol. Soc. Proceedings, 1855, p. 341; Cal. Fiants, Eliz.; Sloane MS. 4793, ff. 127–40; Addit. MS. 24492.]
NUGENT, Sir RICHARD, tenth Baron Delvin (d. 1460?), lord-deputy of Ireland, was eldest son of Sir William Nugent, who was sheriff of Meath in 1401 and 1402, and was much employed in Irish local government. Sir William was descended from Christopher Nugent of Balrath, third brother of Sir Gilbert de Nugent, who had accompanied Hugh de Lacy [q. v.] to Ireland in 1171. Sir Gilbert had received from de Lacy after 1172 the barony of Delvin; but, as Sir Gilbert's sons died before him, the barony devolved on his brother Richard, whose only child and heiress carried the title about 1180 to her husband, one John or FitzJohn. The marriage in 1407 of Sir William Nugent (father of the subject of this notice and the collateral descendant of Sir Gilbert, first lord of Delvin) to the sole heiress of John FitzJohn le Tuit, eighth baron Delvin since the creation of the title, restored that title to the Nugent family, and Sir William succeeded his father-in-law as ninth baron Delvin. But genealogists often regarded Sir William's peerage as a fresh creation, and described him as first baron of a new line. About 1415 Sir William died, and his son Richard thereupon became, according to the more commonly accepted enumeration, tenth Baron Delvin. In 1416 the tenth baron appended his signature to the memorial sent to Henry V by the leaders of the Anglo-Irish settlers, entreating the king to support with larger funds Sir John Talbot (afterwards Earl of Shrewsbury), the lord-lieutenant of Ireland, in his efforts to protect Ireland from rebellion and disease. The memorial is preserved among the Lansdowne manuscripts. Delvin was sheriff of Meath in 1424, and long distinguished himself as a leader in the wars against the native Irish. In 1422 he had a grant of 10l. a year from Henry VI for services performed during the reign of his predecessor; in 1427 a further grant of 20l. for the capture of O'Conor, who, with Hubert Tyrrell, had robbed and spoiled his majesty's subjects near Mullingar; and in 1428 he received an order, dated at Trim, to receive twenty marks out of the exchequer, as a recompense for ‘having impoverished his fortune in the king's wars.’
