Henry Gosnold

Henry Gosnold, or Gosnell (c.1560 – c.1655) was an English-born lawyer who spent most of his very long life in Ireland. He sat in the Irish House of Commons and held office as Chief Justice of Munster and Deputy Admiralty judge. He is now mainly remembered for his friendship with Francis Bacon. He was also famous in his own lifetime for his wit: a few of his jokes still survive.

He was the son of John Gosnold, a member of the well-known Gosnold family of Otley, Suffolk and his wife Katherine Kinellmarsh; the explorer Bartholomew Gosnold was his cousin. The family name is also spelt Gosnell or Gosnard. The year of his birth is uncertain, but was probably shortly after 1560, as we know from his own testimony that he was over 80 in 1646. Henry went to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he matriculated in 1577, and Staple Inn; he entered Gray's Inn in 1581. As a student he had a reputation for wit, and it may have been this which earned him the friendship of Francis Bacon, who may also have been a distant relative. The closeness between the two men continued after their student days; in July 1592 they visited Twickenham together, and the friendship survived Henry's departure to Ireland in 1594.

At least one of his jokes (perhaps for modern tastes a rather laboured one) survives, concerning Bacon's determined but ultimately unsuccessful battle to persuade Elizabeth I to appoint him, rather than Sir Edward Coke, as Attorney General. Gosnold quipped: "if it please her Majesty, the Bacon may be too hard for the Cook (Coke)"."

Gosnell first went to Ireland as secretary to Lord Russell, the Lord Deputy of Ireland, a post for which Bacon (whose aunt Elizabeth Cooke was married to Russell's brother John) probably recommended him. He wrote to Bacon about the expedition to relieve Enniskillen Castle, which was under siege (this was one of the first military actions of the Nine Years War), and gave his first impressions of the country. Unlike some English settlers of the time he found the Irish climate agreeable, praising "the clemency of the air and the healthiness of the soil", but he disliked the Irish people: "for cruelty and beggary I would never wish (to be in) a worse place".

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