Life
fl.1689-1691; attorney general, regarded by Lord Clarendon, Viceroy, as
the representative of Irish Roman Catholics; speaker of the 1689 Parliament;
secretary to James II after the Battle of the Boyne, urged his retreat
to France and followed him into exile. ODNB
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Commentary
Conor Cruise O’Brien, The Great Melody (1993), p.411,
writes that Richard Nagle of Carrigacunna (fl.1689) was James II’s
Attorney-General and Speaker of the Irish House of Commons; Archbishop
William King, in his The State of the Protestants [ ... &c.]
(Dublin 1699), says that Nagle ‘was at first dsigned for a Clergy-man,
and educated among the Jesuits; but afterwards betook himself to the Study
of Law, at which he arrived to a good Perfection, and was employed by
many Protestants, so that he knew the weak Part of most of their titles’,
giving instances of his ‘malic and jesuitical principles’ which
deprived many Protestants of their estates and ‘even put it out of
the King’s power to pardon them’. The 2nd Earl of Clarendon
wrote of Nagle as ‘a man of the best repute for learning, as wwe
as honesty among that people’, but later thought him ambitious, covetous,
and unreliable. Bibl., J. S. Clarke, The Life of James II, vol.
II, published from the original Stuart manuscript in Carlton House London,
1816’. Note that O’Brien establishes a further link with Nano
Nagle, and cites Walsh, Nano Nagle and the Presentation Sisters
(Dublin 1959).
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