Christopher Nugent

Sir Christopher Nugent, 6th (or 14th) Baron Delvin (1544–1602) was an Anglo-Irish nobleman and writer. He was arrested on suspicion of treason against Queen Elizabeth I of England, and died while in confinement before his trial had taken place.

He was the eldest son of Richard, 5th (or 13th) Baron Delvin, and Elizabeth, daughter of Jenico Preston, 3rd Viscount Gormanston, and widow of Thomas Nangle, styled Baron of Navan. Richard Nugent, fourth or twelfth Baron Delvin, was his great-grandfather. He succeeded to the title on the death of his father, on 10 December 1559, and during his minority was the ward of Thomas Ratcliffe, third earl of Sussex, for whom he conceived a great friendship.

He was matriculated a fellow-commoner of Clare Hall, Cambridge, on 12 May 1563, and was presented to the queen when she visited the university in 1564; on coming of age, about November 1565, he repaired to Ireland, with letters of commendation from the queen to the lord deputy, Sir Henry Sidney, granting him the lease in reversion of the abbey of All Saints and the custody of Sleaught-William in the Annaly, County Longford.

As an undertaker in the plantation of County Laois and County Offaly, he had previously obtained, on 3 February 1563–64, a grant of the castle and lands of Corbetstown, alias Ballycorbet, in Offaly (then known as King's County): land confiscated from Garret FitzGerald. In the autumn of the following year he distinguished himself against Shane O'Neill, and was knighted at Drogheda by Sidney. On 30 June 1567 he obtained a lease of the abbey of Inchmore in the Annaly and the abbey of Fore in County Westmeath, to which was added on 7 October the lease of other lands in the same county.

In July 1574 his refusal, with Lord Gormanston, to sign the proclamation of rebellion against the Earl of Desmond laid his loyalty open to suspicion. He grounded his refusal on the fact that he was not a privy councillor, and had not been made acquainted with the reasons for the proclamation. The English Privy Council, thinking that his objections savoured more of 'a wilful partiality to an offender against her majesty than a willing readiness to her service', sent peremptory orders for his submission. Fresh letters of explanation were proffered by him and Gormanston in February 1575, but, being deemed insufficient, the two noblemen were in May placed under restraint. They thereupon confessed their 'fault', and Delvin shortly afterwards appears to have recovered the good opinion of government: for on 15 December Sir Henry Sidney wrote that he expected a speedy reformation of the country, 'a great deal the rather through the good hope I conceive of the service of my lord of Delvin, whom I find active and of good discretion'; and in April 1576 Delvin entertained Sidney while on progress. Before the end of the year, however, there sprang up a controversy between government and the gentry of the Pale in regard to cess, in which Delvin played a principal part.

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