Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 48.djvu/111

 peer, and his patent as Baron Monteagle is said to have been found unsigned in Dublin after the Boyne (Memoirs of Grace Family, p. 42). He married Mary, daughter of Thomas Fitzgerald of co. Limerick, and had several children. His eldest son Edward conformed to the established church to save his estate from passing in gavelkind under the penal law. The present Lord Monteagle is of the same family [see ].

[Authorities as for Sir Richard Nagle [q. v.] and Thomas Nugent, titular baron of Riverston [q. v.]; other authorities given in the text; information from Lord Monteagle.]

 RICE, THOMAS SPRING, first (1790–1866). [See ]

 RICEMARCHUS, RYTHMARCH, or RIKEMARTH (1056–1099), cleric of St. David's. [See .]

 RICH, BARNABE (1540?–1620?), author and soldier, born about 1540, doubtless of Essex origin, was distantly connected with the family of Lord-chancellor Rich. In his books he often dubbed himself ‘gentleman.’ Enlisting in boyhood in the army, he engaged in Queen Mary's war with France in 1557–8. Writing in 1585, he says: ‘It is now thirty yeares sith I became a souldier, from which time I have served the king in all occasions against his enemies in the fielde; the rest of the time I have continued in his garrisons. In this meane space I have spent what my friends left me, which was something; I have lost part of my bloud, which was more; and I have consumed my prime of youth and florishing yeares, which was moste’ (Adventures of Brusanus). In campaigns in the Low Countries in the early part of Elizabeth's reign he served with Thomas Churchyard, Gascoigne, and other adventurers of literary tastes, and emulated their example as writers. He rose to the rank of captain. Churchyard, in his ‘True Discourse of the Netherlands,’ makes frequent quotation from ‘Captain Barnabe Rich his Notes.’ At Antwerp Rich met Richard Stanyhurst [q. v.], of whom he formed an ill opinion. Afterwards he saw prolonged service in Ireland. On 17 July 1573 he sailed thither in the Black Bark in charge of the armour and other furniture of his kinsman, Lord Rich (Cal. Irish State Papers). Like Barnabe Googe [q. v.], he appears to have taken part in the efforts of Walter Devereux, first earl of Essex, to colonise Ulster, and the rest of his life was mainly passed in the neighbourhood of Dublin. But in 1574, during an interval of peace, he determined to try his fortune with his pen. He paid a brief visit to London, and fell in with some of his literary companions-in-arms, who introduced him to Thomas Lodge and other men of letters. With their encouragement and aid, he designed a long series of popular tracts. For nearly fifty years his leisure was thenceforth devoted to the production of romances imitating Lyly's ‘Euphues,’ or of pamphlets exposing the vices of the age, or reminiscences of his past life, or denunciations of papists and tobacco. On most of his title-pages he inscribed the prudent motto, ‘Malui me divitem esse quam vocari.’ He found a warm encourager of his literary ambition in Sir Christopher Hatton, whose house at Holdenby he minutely described in a work he brought out in 1581 under the title of ‘Riche his Farewell to Military Profession.’ This attractive collection of romances—from which Shakespeare borrowed the plot of ‘Twelfth Night’—was apparently intended as a valediction to his career as a soldier; but it proved premature. He soon resumed military duty in Ireland. After Sir John Perrot became lord deputy there in 1584, Rich had under his command one hundred soldiers at Coleraine. To descriptions of Ireland he subsequently devoted much of his literary energy, asserting with wearisome iteration that the rebellious temper of the Irish was due partly to their religion and partly to a lack of consistent firmness on the part of their English rulers. In 1593 Rich was reported to be without employment; but he continued in Ireland, he wrote later, ‘on a poor pay, the full recompence of forty-seven years' service’ (A New Description of Ireland, 1610). After James I's accession he sought assiduously Prince Henry's patronage. On 16 Oct. 1606 he was in receipt of a pension of half a crown a day from the Irish establishment, and in July 1616 he was presented with 100l. as a free gift, in consideration of his being the oldest captain of the kingdom (Cal. State Papers, 1611–18, p. 378). His latest work—the ‘Irish Hubbub,’ a general denunciation of contemporary society—he dedicated to the lord deputy, Sir Oliver St. John, from Dublin on 14 May 1617. He probably did not long survive its publication.

Rich, brought up, as he says, ‘in the fields among unlettered soldiers,’ was wholly self-educated. He extended his reading to French and Italian, and was acquainted with the classics mainly through translations. His verse is contemptible, but much literary feeling is often apparent in his prose. He boasted that he wrote thirty-six books, and