Josias Bodley

Josias Bodley
Born	1550 Exeter, Devon, England
Died	1618 Ireland
Nationality	English
Occupation	Engineer, soldier

Sir Josias Bodley (1550-1618) was an English military engineer noted for his service in Ireland during the Nine Years' War. Following the end of the war he remained in Ireland where he oversaw the rebuilding of several major forts. In 1609 he was entrusted with the Bodley Survey which mapped out terrain for the Ulster Plantation.

He was the son of John Bodley a merchant from Exeter, and the younger brother of the scholar Sir Thomas Bodley, known for his involvement in the Bodleian Library. Josias spent some of his youth abroad, where his Protestant father had gone as a Marian exile during reign of the Catholic Mary I. He attended Merton College, Oxford before travelling around Europe. He then joined the English forces fighting for the Dutch Republic against Spain in the Low Countries. By 1598 he had reached the rank of Captain.

Bodley served during the Nine Years' War in Ireland, where Crown forces were battling against the rebellion of Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone. At the decisive Battle of Kinsale Bodley was appointed as "Trenchmaster" (Chief Engineer) of the Anglo-Irish troops under Lord Mountjoy besieging a Spanish expeditionary force. He later served in Ulster, taking part in the storming of one of Tyrone's great fortresses at Lough Lurcan (modern-day Moyrourkan Lough). He commanded the post of Armagh with 700 troops as a garrison. When the Treaty of Mellifont brought the war to an end he was given a command in the peacetime Irish Army like several other veterans. He was knighted in March 1604 and was subsequently appointed Inspector of Fortifications in Ireland. He was also made Governor of Duncannon Fort.

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