Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Moore, Garret
MOORE, Sir GARRET, Baron Moore of Mellifont, Viscount Moore of Drogheda (1560?–1627), second and eldest surviving son of Sir Edward Moore [q. v.], was born about 1560. He was associated, in March 1594, with commissioners Loftus and Gardiner, and again in January 1596 with commissioners Wallop and Gardiner, in trying to arrange matters between the English government and the Earl of Tyrone (Cal. State Papers, Eliz. Ireland, v. 222, 454). On 8 Sept. 1595 he was appointed register and scribe of the supreme commissioners for ecclesiastical causes and clerk of recognisances (Morrin, Cal. Pat. Rolls, ii. 350), and on 1 May 1598 he was placed on the commission for the execution of martial law in the counties of Meath and Louth (Cal. Fiants, Eliz. 6223). He succeeded on the death of his father, in 1602, to the office of constable of the castle of Philipstown (ib. 6590), and on 12 April 1604 he obtained a confirmation of all the leases he inherited from his father (Erck, Repertory, pp. 173-81; Cal. State Papers, James I, Ireland, i. 157). Being a man of considerable standing, 'paying the greatest rent to the king of any man in the kingdom,' he was, in October 1604, sworn a privy councillor (ib. i. 208, iii. 423). He resided chiefly at Mellifont, and was the terror of the idle swordsmen of the district (Shirley, Monayhan, p. 111).
Like his father, he had always lived on terms of friendly intercourse with the Earl of Tyrone, and the fact that the earl visited him at Mellifont on the eve of his flight from Ireland (September 1607) furnished his enemies with a plausible pretext to reflect on his loyalty. Lord Howth, whom Moore had personally offended, carried his malice so far as openly to charge him with complicity in Tyrone's schemes. So persistently did he urge his accusation that Chichester, who had at first scouted it as ridiculous, was obliged to place Moore under bonds to the extent of 9.000l. (State Papers, James I, Ireland, ii. 463, 496, 515, 534-7). But when called upon to substantiate his charge, Howth flatly declined to produce his evidence before the council at Dublin, on the ground of its partiality to Moore. The case accordingly was transferred to England, and after a patient hearing of all that could be alleged against him, Moore was, in April 1609, fully acquitted and his bonds cancelled (ib. iii. 25, 41, 48, 113, 115, 134, 150, 162, 164-8, 201).
Unabashed, however, by his failure, Howth shortly afterwards preferred a new charge against Moore, of conspiring with Chichester to take his life. This time the charge was made so apparently recklessly that the lords of the council, after sharply reprimanding Howth and ordering him 'to retire himself to his own house and the parts adjoining, that the world may take notice that his majesty disliketh his proud carriage towards the supreme officers of the kingdom,' assured Moore that the king did not question his loyalty (ib. iii. 380, 387, 427). As an undertaker in the Ulster plantation, Moore obtained a thousand acres in the precinct of Orier, co. Armagh, and according to the inquisition of 1622 he had built a good bawn with two flankers, in one of which was a good strong house, where an Englishman, Townly, with his family resided (Sloane MS. 4756). In 1613 he represented the borough of Dungannon in parliament. He was created Baron Moore of Mellifont on 15 Feb. 1615, and on 7 Feb. 1621 Viscount Moore of Drogheda. He died, aged 67, on 9 Nov. 1627, at Drogheda, and was buried in St. Peter's Church in that town.
Moore married Mary, daughter of Sir Henry Colley of Castle Carbery, co. Kildare, by whom he had seven sons and five daughters, viz. Sir Edward, who was M.P. for Charlemont in 1613, but predeceased his father; Sir Thomas, who died aged 30 on 1 Dec. 1623; Sir Charles [q. v.], who succeeded as second Viscount Moore of Drogheda; Sir James of Ardee, who married Jane, daughter of Edward, first lord Blayney, and died 27 Feb. 1639; Arthur of Dunmoghan, co. Louth; Lieutenant-colonel Francis, who died unmarried in 1662; and John; Ursula, who married Sir Nicholas White of Leixlip, co. Kildare; Frances, who married Sir Roger Jones of Dollardstown, co. Meath; Anne, who married Sir Faithful Fortescue [q. v.]; Eleanor, who married Sir John Denharn, chief justice of the king's bench in Ireland, and second baron of the exchequer in England; and Jane, who married Henry, second lord Blayney, died 22 Oct. 1686, and was buried in St. Michan's Church, Oxmantown, Dublin. Lady Moore subsequently married Sir Charles Wilmot [q. v.], lord president of Connaught.
[Lodge's Peerage, ed. Archdall, vol. ii.; Cal. Fiants, Eliz.; Morrin's Cal. Patent Rolls; Cal. State Papers, Ireland, ed. Hamilton, and Russell and Prendergast; Erck's Repertory; E. Shirley's Hist. of Monaghan; Pynnar's Survey in Harris's Hibernica; Sloane MS. 4756; E. Rowley-Morris's Family of Blayney; D'Alton's Hist. of Drogheda; Lord Clermont's Hist. of the Family of Fortescue.]