Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 41.djvu/275

 Nugent of Moyrath, by whom he had issue, besides two sons who died in infancy: (1) Christopher, lord Delvin, who married Mary, eldest daughter of Richard Butler of Kilcash, co. Tipperary, and, predeceasing his father, left issue by her: Richard, third earl of Westmeath, who died in holy orders in 1714, Thomas, fourth earl of Westmeath [q. v.], and John, fifth earl of Westmeath [q. v.]; (2) Thomas, created baron Nugent of Riverstown [q. v.]; (3) Joseph, a captain in the service of France; (4) William, M.P. for co. Westmeath in 1689, and killed at Cavan in 1690; (5) Mary, who married Henry, second viscount Kingsland; (6) Anne, who married, first, Lucas, sixth viscount Dillon, and, secondly, Sir William Talbot of Cartown, co. Meath; (7) Alison, who married Henry Dowdall of Brownstown, co. Meath; (8) Elizabeth, who died young; (9) Jane, who married Alexander MacDonell, called Macgregor of Dromersnaw, co. Leitrim. 

NUGENT, ROBERT, (1702–1788), who afterwards assumed the surname of, politician and poet, born in 1702, was the son of Michael Nugent of Carlanstown, co. Westmeath, by his wife Mary, youngest daughter of Robert Barnewall, ninth baron Trimleston. His property at the outset produced about 1,500l. a year, but on his death he was considered one of the millionaires of the day, both in personalty and in real estate; and this accession in wealth was caused by his skill in marrying rich widows, a talent so marked that Horace Walpole invented the word ‘Nugentize’ to describe the adventurers who endeavoured to imitate his good fortune. Among the pamphlets in the British Museum is ‘The Unnatural Father, or the Persecuted Son, being a candid narrative of the … sufferings of Robert Nugent, jun., by the means and procurement of his own father’ (1755), and the writer, then a prisoner in the Fleet prison, alleged that he was a son of Nugent ‘by his first cousin, Miss Clare Nugent, daughter of a gentleman in Ireland of 2,500l. per annum,’ and that he was born in the parish of St. George, Hanover Square, in 1730. This was, no doubt, an illegitimate son, whose pertinacity in urging his claims on Nugent must often have caused trouble to the father. His first recognised marriage was to Emilia, second daughter of Peter, fourth earl of Fingal, whom he married on 14 July 1730 and lost in childbed on 16 Aug. 1731. The child, Lieut.-col. Edmund Nugent, whose two sons, Charles Edmund [q. v.] and George [q. v.], are noticed separately, survived his mother, but died many years before his father. His second marriage (23 March 1736–7) was to Anne, a daughter of James Craggs, the postmaster-general, and a sister of James Craggs, the secretary of state [q. v.], who divided with her two sisters the property both of her father and brother. Her first husband was John Newsham of Chadshunt in Warwickshire, by whom she had an only son, and her second marriage was to John Knight. Several letters addressed by Pope to her during the earlier period of her life are in Pope's ‘Works,’ ix. (Letters, vol. iv.) pp. 435–59 (1886). John Knight, her only son by her second husband, died in June 1727, and her husband thereupon bequeathed all his estates to her, and at his decease on 2 Oct. 1733 she became possessed of all his property. By his marriage to this fat and ugly dame (whose name he assumed in addition to his own) Nugent became the owner of the parish of Gosfield in Essex, of a seat in parliament for St. Mawes in Cornwall, and about 100,000l. besides; but she brought him neither happiness nor the children which he desired. He amused himself by forming an extensive park at Gosfield, and the taste shown in the setting of the woods and ornamental water is highly praised by Arthur Young. A visit which Horace Walpole made to this house in 1748 is described in his ‘Correspondence’ (ii. 118–20). His second wife died in 1756, aged 59, and was buried in Gosfield Church, where an inscription to Nugent himself was also subsequently placed. Nugent sat for his borough of St. Mawes from 1741 to 1754, and was re-elected at the general dissolution in that year, but preferred to sit for the city of Bristol, which had also returned him, and to secure the return of a relative for his Cornish borough. The voters of Bristol remained faithful to him until the dissolution of 1774, when even the arguments of Dean Tucker in ‘A Review of Lord Vis. Clare's Conduct as Representative of Bristol,’ which praised Nugent's zeal to advance the interests of the poor in legislation, his anxiety to serve the interests of his constituents in parliament, and his liberality in promoting from his own purse improvements in the city, could not effect his re-election. In 1774 he returned to St. Mawes, and for it he sat until he retired in June 1784, his interest in the borough being supreme then and afterwards, although his son did