‘a hard, iron, pitiless man, careful of things and careless of phrases, untroubled with delicacy and impervious to Irish enchantments.’ According to a more reasoned estimate he was ‘a man of resolution and industry, who cared little for popularity, and might be trusted to carry out his orders’ (Bagwell, Ireland under the Tudors, ii. 50). Sussex resented the inquiry, especially into the military mismanagement, and put obstacles in Arnold's way; but Arnold made out a case too strong to be neglected by the English government, and in 1564 he was sent back to Ireland with Sir Thomas Wroth (1516-1573) [q. v.] and a new commission. Sussex was granted sick leave, and on 24 May 1564 Arnold was appointed lord justice during the lord deputy's absence (Hist. MSS. Comm. 15th Rep. App. iii. 135). He made a rigorous inquisition into military abuses, but in the character of ruler he was hardly so successful. He trusted too implicitly in Shane O'Neill's professions of loyalty, and encouraged him to attack the Scots in Ulster; he treated the O'Connors and O'Reillys with harshness, archbishop Loftus with rudeness, and was unduly partial to Kildare. His intentions were excellent, ‘but he was evidently quarrelsome, arbitrary, credulous, and deficient in personal dignity.’ His request to be appointed lord deputy was refused, and on 22 June 1565 he was recalled. Sir Henry Sidney [q. v.] being selected to succeed Sussex.
After Arnold's return to England a series of articles was presented against him by Sussex, but, beyond calling up Arnold to reply, the council took no further steps against him. Arnold henceforth confined himself to local affairs; he had been returned to parliament for Gloucester city in January 1562-3, and on 8 May 1572 was again elected for the county. He was commissioner for the collection of a forced loan in 1569, and he was also on commissions for the peace, for the restraint of grain, and for enforcing the laws relating to clothiers. Much of his energy was devoted to improving the breed of English horses; as early as 1546 he had been engaged in importing horses from Flanders, and in his ‘Description of England,’ prefixed to Holinshed, William Harrison (1534-1593) [q. v.] writes, ‘Sir Nicholas Arnold of late hath bred the best horses in England, and written of the manner of their production.’ No trace of these writings has, however, been discovered.
Arnold died early in 1581, and was buried in Churcham parish church (Gloucestershire Notes and Queries, iv. 270, 271; Inquis. post mortem Eliz. vol. cxcv. No. 94; the order for the inquisition is dated 19 June 1581, but the inquisition itself is illegible). He married, first, on 19 June 1529, Margaret, daughter of Sir William Dennys of Dyrham, Gloucestershire, by whom he had issue two sons and a daughter; the elder son, Rowland, married Mary, daughter of John Brydges, first baron Chandos [q. v.], and was father of Dorothy, wife of Sir Thomas Lucy (1551-1605) [see under Lucy, Sir Thomas (1532-1600)]. By his second wife, a lady named Isham, Arnold had issue one son, John, who settled at Llanthony.
[Cal. Letters and Papers, Henry VIII; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1547-80, For. 1547-53, Irish 1509-75, and Carew MSS. vol. i.; Cal. Fiants, Ireland, Eliz.; Hist. MSS. Comm. 15th Rep. App. iii. passim; Acts of the Privy Council, ed. Dasent; Lascelles's Liber Munerum Hib.; Lit. Remains of Edward VI (Roxburghe Club); Wriothesley's Chron.; Chron. Queen Jane and Machyn's Diary (Camden Soc.); Off. Ret. Members of Parl.; Visitation of Gloucestershire, 1623 (Harl.Soc); Bagwell's Ireland under the Tudors, vol. ii.; Froude's Hist. of England; Burke's Landed Gentry; Notes and Queries, 7th ser. vi. 287, 394.]
ARNOLD, THOMAS (1823–1900), professor of English literature, second son of Dr. Thomas Arnold [q. v.] of Rugby, and younger brother of Matthew Arnold [q. v. Suppl.], was born at Laleham, Staines, on 30 Nov. 1823. Like his brother Matthew he was privately taught by Herbert Hill, a cousin of Robert Southey, and then, after a year at Winchester (1836-7), was entered at Rugby, where his master was James Prince Lee. The vacations were spent at Fox How in Westmoreland, and Arnold had a clear recollection of Southey and of Wordsworth at Rydal Mount reciting the sonnet that he had just composed, ‘Is there no nook of English ground secure?’ He was elected to a scholarship at University College, Oxford, in 1842, matriculating on 26 Feb., graduated B.A. 1845, M.A. 1865, and was entered of Lincoln's Inn on 25 April 1846. His college rooms were opposite those of Arthur Stanley, and a small debating society, ‘The Decade,’ brought him into intimate relations with Stanley, Jowett, Shairp, and Clough. He met Clough near Loch Ness in the long vacation of 1847, and supplied the poet with one or two of the incidents forming the staple of his ‘Bothie of Tober-na- Vuolich’ (in which poem he himself figures with little concealment as 'Philip'). In the same year he accepted a clerkship in the colonial office, but held it for a few months only, for in November 1847 he took a cabin passage to
