Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Barnewall, Patrick
BARNEWALL, or BARNWALL, Sir PATRICK (d. 1622), was the eldest son of Sir Christopher Barnewall of Turvey, Gracedieu, and Fieldston, son of Sir Patrick, who in 1534 was made serjeant-at-law and solicitor-general, and in 1550 master of the rolls. Sir Christopher was sheriff of Dublin in 1560, and is described by Holinshed as ‘the lanthorn and light as well of his house’ as of that part of Ireland where he dwelt; who being sufficiently furnished as well with the knowledge of the Latin tongue, as of the common laws of England, was zealously bent to the reformation of his country.’ Sir Patrick Barnewall ‘was the first gentleman's son of quality that was ever put out of Ireland to be brought up in learning beyond the seas’ (Cal. State Papers, Irish ser. (1611–14), p. 394). He succeeded his father in his estates in 1575, and in 1582 (ibid. (1574–85), 359) he married Mary, daughter of Sir Nicholas Bagenal, knight mareschal of Ireland. Shortly afterwards he began to attend the Inns of Court in London, one ‘of the evident tokens of loyalty’ which led Elizabeth in November of the same year to make him a new lease of certain lands without fine for sixty years. Loyal he undoubtedly was, but he had inherited in a great degree both the principles and the disposition of his father, and was thus inclined to ‘demean himself frowardly’ when the true interests of Ireland were threatened by the government. In December 1605 he was brought before the council at Dublin on the charge of having contrived the petition of the lords and gentlemen of the Pale in favour of those persons who had refused to comply with the enactment requiring attendance at the protestant church on Sundays. He denied having been the contriver of the petition, but on account of his ‘obstinate and indecent manner of defending it’ (ibid. (1603–6), p. 447) was regarded as having been more deep in the offence than he who first wrote it. He was therefore retained in prison, and ultimately was sent to England, where he was committed to the Tower. On account of illness he was, however, first ‘enlarged to his own lodgings,’ and on 31 Dec. 1606 he was sent to Ireland upon bond to appear before the lord deputy and council within four days to make his submission. While in London he was supposed to have acted as the agent of the recusants in obtaining a relaxation of the law, but whether this was so or not, his spirited resistance to it had made it practically a dead letter, and no attempt was ever again made in Ireland to enforce attendance at church through a fine in the council chamber. In 1613 he strongly opposed the creation of new boroughs in Ireland ‘as being designed only to pass votes’ (ibid. (1611–14), p. 395), and on this account was summoned to England to answer to the council. He died on 11 Jan. 1622. His son Nicholas [q. v.] became Viscount Kingsland.
[Lodge's Peerage of Ireland, v. 44–8; Gardiner's History of England (1883), i. 395–9, ii. 288; Cal. State Papers, Irish Series, vols. from 1574 to 1625.]