Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 40.djvu/28

 who constituted the congregation an order of the catholic church. It was thus that systematic education was, since the days of the Reformation, first brought within reach of the poor in Ireland.

Worn out by her hard work and by austerities, Miss Nagle died at her convent in Cork on 20 April 1784, at the age of fifty-six.

There is an oil-painting of her in the Ursuline convent, Blackrock, co. Cork.

The Ursuline order, which Miss Nagle introduced into Ireland, has numerous convents in that country, offshoots of her foundation; and in 1874 her own order (the Presentation) has had fifty-two houses in Ireland, one in England, twelve in British North America, four in Australia, three in the United States, and one in India.



NAGLE, RICHARD (fl. 1689), attorney-general for Ireland, was of an ancient family in co. Cork. By old authors the name is often incorrectly written Nangle. Carrigacunna Castle, on the Blackwater, between Mallow and Fermoy, belonged to him, and some neighbouring hills still bear the family name. According to the commonly received but very scanty authorities, he was educated by the jesuits and intended for the priesthood. Preferring the law, ‘he arrived to a good perfection, and was employed by many protestants, so that he knew the weak part of most of their titles’ (, ch. iii. sec. iii. p. 9).

Charles II died 6 Feb. 1684–5, and Ormonde, though ‘with dismal sadness at his heart,’ proclaimed James II in Dublin. He was at once removed, and, earl of Clarendon [q. v.], was made lord-lieutenant in October, and landed in Ireland 29 Dec.; but, earl of Tyrconnel [q. v.], who was in London, thwarted him at every step, and soon took Nagle into consultation. In February 1685–6 Nagle proposed to the lord-lieutenant that the outlawries on which the protestant settlement rested should be reversed (Clarendon Correspondence, i. 273). In May he became a privy councillor, but refused to be sworn, ostensibly on account of the great professional loss likely to follow (ib. i. 445). At the end of July 1686 Nagle was consulted by Clarendon and dined with him, the lord-lieutenant regarding him as the authorised representative of the Irish Roman catholics (ib. i. 516). He was already contemplating a parliament (ib. p. 538) which might dispossess the English settlers, though he as yet admitted that they would have to be compensated (ib. p. 564). At the end of August Tyrconnel went to London again to arrange with James for the supersession of Clarendon, and for the further depression of the protestant interest in Ireland. Nagle accompanied him, and was consulted by the king as well as by Sunderland. He returned to Ireland before Tyrconnel, after addressing to him the famous letter, bearing date 26 Oct., in which the repeal of the Act of Settlement was first seriously suggested (Jacobite Narrative, p. 193). Clarendon did not see a copy of this letter until January following (Corresp. ii. 142). Though dated from Coventry and nominally written on the road, this document bears no mark of haste, and was probably composed in London after careful consultation with Tyrconnel and Sunderland (, p. 107). Nagle was knighted by James, and at the end of 1686 was appointed attorney-general for Ireland, displacing a protestant who had held the office since the Restoration. In August 1687 Tyrconnel, who had then superseded Clarendon as viceroy, went to Chester with Nagle and Rice, and Bishop Cartwright entertained the party during James II's visit (Diary, pp. 73–5).

The anti-English interest in Ireland was strengthened by this meeting, and Nagle was active in the matter of the quo warrantos which destroyed the protestant corporations, often by means of mere legal quibbles (, ch. iii. sec. v. p. 2). In the spring of 1688 Nagle joined in the attempt to force Doyle upon Trinity College, Dublin, as a fellow (ib. sec. xv. p. 2). A little later he was more friendly to the college (, p. 127), but its protestant character would have been destroyed if James had succeeded. Outlawries arising out of the rebellion of 1641 were reversed wholesale, and Nagle told those who were in a hurry to sue for their confiscated estates ‘to have a little patience, perhaps they would come more easily’ (, ch. iii. sec. xii. p. 2). He went to France about the end of 1688, and returned with James (Jacobite Narrative, p. 316), who landed at Kinsale 12 March 1688–1689. Means were at once taken to carry out the new policy. A parliament was called, which met in Dublin on 7 May, and Nagle sat for the county of Cork with [q. v.] as a colleague. He was at once chosen speaker, and had a principal part in repealing the Acts of Settlement and Explanation, and in passing the great Act of Attainder, which deprived 2,455 landowners of their estates and vested them in the crown. King says that when Nagle