Author: Nugent, Robert Craggs
Biography:
NUGENT, Robert Craggs (1709-88: ODNB)
Published in 1774, Faith was the swansong of a writer whose literary career belonged to an earlier era and had never been more than a pastime. One final poem only eight pages long came out in 1775: Verses addressed to the Queen, with a New Year’s Gift of Irish Manufacture. By then the author was an Irish peer with the title of Viscount Clare, a prominent MP, and one of the richest men in England. In 1776 he was raised to the title of Earl Nugent in the Irish peerage. But he had been born into an Irish Catholic family and christened Robert Nugent, the son of Mary (Barnewall) and Michael Nugent, landowners in Count Meath, Ireland; he had his schooling at Fagan’s Academy in Dublin. It is possible that he fathered a child with his cousin Clare Nugent; her son (b 1730) later made public accusations that Nugent denied. In July 1730 he married Lady Emily (or Emilia) Plunkett at St. Mary’s, Dublin. She died in childbirth on 16 Aug. 1731; their son Edmund (d 1771) predeceased his father. Nugent renounced his Catholic faith, embraced the Anglican church, and spent most of the rest of his life in England, only reverting to the Catholic church towards the end of his life. He married twice more, in both cases choosing wealthy widows. From his marriage to Anne (Craggs) Knight in 1737 there were no further children, but Nugent took on the Craggs name and gained, besides her fortune of £150,000, a country estate (the Gosfield estate in Essex) and the safe seat of St. Mawes in Cornwall. He served as MP for St. Mawes from 1741 to 1754 and again from 1774 until his retirement from politics in 1784; between 1754 and 1774 he was MP for Bristol. He held increasingly important positions as a Tory MP—lord of the Treasury, privy councillor, vice-treasurer of Ireland, etc. Following the death of his wife in 1756 he married Elizabeth (Drax) Berkeley (d 1792), widow of the Earl of Berkeley, on 2 June 1757. They had two daughters but Nugent disowned one of them on suspicions of his wife’s infidelity, and they lived apart. Nugent died on 13 Oct. 1788 at the Dublin home of a friend, and was buried at Gosfield on 26 Oct. (ODNB 6 Mar. 2024; DIB 6 Mar. 2024; findmypast.com 7 Mar. 2024) HJ
Other Names:
- Robert Nugent