eight weeks in June, July, and August 1534, during the absence in England of the Earl of Kildare. When in 1535 Thomas FitzGerald, tenth earl of Kildare, ‘Silken Thomas,’ threw off his allegiance to the English crown, Delvin was nominated by Lord-deputy Skeffington (13 March 1535) to take charge, with others, of the garrisons at Trim, Kenles (Kells?), Navan, and Westmeath. Delvin signed the letter to Henry VIII, dated from the camp (27 Aug. 1535), giving an account of the final surrender of O'Conor and FitzGerald. On 21 May 1536 Lord Leonard Grey, writing to Cromwell, described the lord-treasurer and the Baron of Delvin ‘as the best captains of the Englishry, except the Earl of Ossory, who cannot take such pains as they’ (Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, Foreign and Dom.), and Delvin on this account was refused a license to visit the king in England on business of his own. In 1536 Robert Cowley, in sending to Cromwell a scheme for the ‘readopting’ of the king's dominion in Ireland, recommended that, should all the native Irish join O'Conor, Delvin and his son, with six hundred men, should be entrusted with winning Athlone, and making war on O'Melaghlyn, McGoghegan, and others (ib.) In August 1536 Lord James Butler wrote to Cromwell, reporting that Delvin had failed to come to the hosting in Limerick. In October 1536 Delvin received a reward of 26l. 13s. 4d. for his military services. When in June 1537 a new expedition was decreed against the rebel O'Conor, the army was met at the king's manor of Rathwere by Delvin, who accompanied the deputy on the march to O'Conor's country, and advised the invasion of the countries of Omulmoy, McGoghegan, and O'Melaghlyn, adherents of O'Conor. Subsequently Delvin attacked O'Conor, and besieged and razed the strong castle of Dangan (ib.) In 1537 Robert Cowley informed Cromwell that Delvin and his sons were the most worthy for their truth, power, and ability of any in the land to protect the marches of the English Pale. In December Delvin accompanied the deputy in pursuit of the traitor Brian O'Connor, through McGoghegan's country to Offaly.
But Delvin was held by some competent observers to be in part personally responsible for the grievances which led to the dissatisfaction of the native Irish. He permitted the ‘taking of coyne and livery,’ which was declared to be the root of all disorders in Ireland. He probably died when on an expedition against O'Conor early in February 1538. St. Leger, in writing to Wriothesley on 10 Feb., says ‘the Baron of Delvin, who was one of the best marchers of this country, is departed to God’ (State Papers). It was stated that the scandalous words of Lord Leonard Grey, the deputy in the camp, and the ‘reproacheous handeling of the late Baron of Delvin, was a great cause of the death of the said baron.’ Grey called Delvin a traitor, and constrained the king's subjects to pass over a great water ‘overflowen,’ where their horses did swim, whereof divers took their death (ib.) In June 1538 Aylmer and Alen, in their articles of accusation against Lord Leonard Grey, assert that, in the hosting against O'Conor, Grey took horses from Delvin and others, and gave them to their Irish enemies. From Lord Delvin's will, set out in the inquisition taken in 1538, it appears that Drakestown formed part of the estates of the family. Archdall states that Delvin was of great age at the time of his death, and that his services to his country are briefly summed up in this distich:
In patria natus, patriæ prodesse laboro,
Viribus in castris consiliisque domi.
By his wife Isabella, daughter of Thomas FitzGerald, son of Thomas, seventh earl of Kildare, he left two sons. From Sir Christopher, the elder, descended the Nugents, earls of Westmeath (through Christopher, fourteenth baron Delvin [q. v.]), the Nugents of Coolamber, co. Longford, the Nugents of Ballina, and the Nugents of Farrenconnell, co. Cavan; from his younger son, Sir Thomas of Carlanstown, Robert, earl Nugent [q. v.] (ancestor in the female line to the Dukes of Buckingham, who were Earls Nugent in the peerage of Ireland) derived descent.
[Historical Sketch of the Nugent Family, 1853, printed by J. C. Lyons; Burke's Peerage; Lodge's Peerage, ed. Archdall, i. 227–8; Pedigree of the Nugent Family by D'Alton; Cal. of State Papers, Ireland, 1509–73; Letters and Papers of Henry VIII; Gilbert's Viceroys of Ireland.]
NUGENT, Sir RICHARD, fifteenth Baron Delvin, first Earl of Westmeath (1583–1642), eldest son of Christopher, fourteenth baron Delvin [q. v.], and Marie, daughter of Gerald Fitzgerald, eleventh earl of Kildare, was born in 1583. His father had died while labouring under a charge of treasonable correspondence with the Earl of Tyrone, but his death was regarded as sufficient atonement for his offence, and Nugent was allowed to succeed to the title without opposition. A grant of lands made to his father in 1597, but which had hitherto remained unexecuted, was, on 10 Aug. 1603, also confirmed to him and his mother, and on 29 Sept. he was knighted by Lord-deputy
