Page:Biographia Hibernica volume 2.djvu/455

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NUGENT. 451 tions of Sir John Norris, would be to recapitulate what has been sufficiently mentioned in the memoirs of his contemporaries. Sir John was certainly a very unfortunate commander: the frequent accidents and misfortunes which befel the ships and squadrons under his command, and which could not be warded off by any human prudence or sagacity, procured him the appellation of “ Foul weather Jack.” Perhaps Sir John Norris would have acquired the celebrity of a Russel or a Rooke, had he been fortunate enough to have experienced the same opportunities. In the duties of his profession no man could be more assiduous; but the incidents of war, for the space of forty years after the battle of Malaga, in 1704, were wholly uninteresting. He died, after sixty years service, on the 19th of July, 1749. ROBERT CRAGGS, EARL NUGENT, A nobleman who acquired some poetical celebrity in his day, was a descendant from the Nugents of Carlans town, in the county of Westmeath, and was a younger son of Michael Nugent, by Mary, daughter of Robert, Lord Trimleston. He was chosen M. P. for St. Mawes, Cornwall, in 1741; appointed comptroller of the house hold of Frederick, Prince of Wales, in 1747; a lord of the treasury in 1754; one of the vice-treasurers of Ireland in 1759; and a lord of trade in 1766. In 1767, he was created Baron Nugent and Viscount Clare, and in 1776, Earl Nugent, with remainder to his son-in-law, the late Marquis of Buckingham. His lordship was thrice mar ried; his second wife was Anne, sister and heiress to secretary Craggs, the friend of Pope and Addison, by whom he acquired a large fortune. She was, at the time of her marriage to him, in 1736, in her second widowhood, having been first the wife of Newsham, Esq. of Chadshunt, in Warwickshire; and secondly, of John Knight, Esq. of Bellowes, or Belhouse, or Gosfield-hall, in Essex. Much of Pope's correspondence with this lady is inserted in the supplementary volume of the last