Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Nugent, William
NUGENT, WILLIAM (d. 1625), Irish rebel, brother of {{DNB lkpl|Nugent, Christopher (1544-1602)|Christopher, fourteenth baron Delvin [q. v.], was the younger son of Richard Nugent, thirteenth baron Delvin, from whom he inherited the manor and castle of the Rosse in co. Meath. He first acquired notoriety in December 1573 by his forcible abduction and marriage of Janet Marward, heiress and titular baroness of Skryne, and ward of his uncle, Nicholas Nugent [q. v.] He was for a short time in May 1575 placed under restraint on suspicion of being implicated in the refusal of his brother, Lord Delvin, to sign the proclamation of rebellion against the Earl of Desmond. On 10 April 1577 he and his wife had livery granted them of the lands of the late Baron of Skryne, valued at 130l. 5s. a year. He was suspected of sympathising with the rebellion of Viscount Baltinglas, but eluded capture by taking refuge with Turlough Luineach O'Neill [q. v.], who refused to surrender him. He was excluded by name from the general pardon offered the adherents of Lord Baltinglas, and by the unwise severity of Lord Grey he was driven to take up arms on his own account. With the assistance of the O'Conors and Kavanaghs, he created considerable disturbance on the borders of the Pale; but the rising, though violent, was shortlived. Nugent himself was soon reduced to the most abject misery. He was exposed without covering to the inclemency of the winter season. His friends were afraid to communicate with him, and though his wife, out of ‘the dutiful love of a wife to a husband in that extremity,’ managed to send him some shirts, she was found out, and punished with a year's imprisonment. Finally, in January 1582, with the assistance of Turlough Luineach, he escaped to Scotland, and from there made his way through France to Rome.
He at first met with a chilling reception; but when the scheme of a Spanish invasion of England began to take definite shape, he was frequently consulted by the Cardinal of Como and Giacomo Buoncompagno, nephew of Gregory XIII, as to the prospects of a general insurrection in Ireland. About Easter 1584 he was ordered to Paris, where he had audience with Archbishop Beaton and the Duke of Guise, by whom he was sent, ‘in company of certain Scottish lairds and household servants of the king of Scots,’ with letters in cipher to James VI and the Master of Gray. Later in the summer he made his way back to Ulster, disguised as a friar. Information reached Perrot in September that he was harboured by Maguire and O'Rourke, but that otherwise he had not met with much support. Perrot hoped to be shortly in possession of his head; but November drew to a close without having realised his object, and he finally consented to offer him a pardon. The offer was accepted, and in December Nugent formally submitted.
Meanwhile his wife had, on the intercession of the Earl of Ormonde, been restored to her possessions, and Nugent, though figuring in Fitzwilliam's list of discontented persons, quietly recovered his old position and influence. He had never forgiven Sir Robert Dillon for the pertinacity with which he had prosecuted his family, and in the summer of 1591 he formally accused him of maladministration of justice. His case was a strong one, and, it was generally admitted, contained strong presumptive evidence of Dillon's guilt. The Irish government was in an awkward fix, for though, as Wilbraham said, there was little doubt that Sir Robert Dillon had been guilty of inferior crimes dishonourable to a judge, ‘it was no policy that such against whom he had done service for her majesty should be countenanced to wrest anything hardly against him unless it was capital.’ This was also Fitzwilliam's opinion; and so it happened that, while commissioners were appointed to try the charges against Dillon, obstacles of one sort and another were constantly arising. In November 1593 the foregone conclusion was arrived at, and Dillon was pronounced innocent of all the accusations laid to his charge. The rest of Nugent's life was uneventful. On 31 Oct. 1606 James I consented to restore him to his blood and inheritance. A bill for the purpose was transmitted to the privy council in 1613, but, being found unfit to pass, it was not returned. Nugent died on 30 June 1625. By his wife, Janet Marward, he had three sons: Robert, who died on 1 May 1616; Christopher, who died unmarried; and James, marshal of the army of the confederates and governor of Finagh, by whose rebellion the family estate was finally forfeited.
[Lodge's Peerage, ed. Archdall, i. 232; Cal. State Papers, Ireland, Eliz. and James I, passim; Cal. Carew MSS.; Cal. Fiants, Eliz.; Gray Papers (Bannatyne Club), p. 30; Repertory of Inquisitions, Meath, Charles I, No. 80.]