Robert Craggs Nugent [Earl Nugent] (1702-88)


Life
b. Carlanstown, Co. Westmeath; son of Michael Nugent of Carlanstown and Mary, dg. Lord Trimlestown; m. Lady Estelle Plunkett, dg. Lord Fingall, 1730; m. sister of James Craggs, Sec. of State, 1736; and m. Dowager Countess of Berkeley, 1757; three times MP for Bristol; Viscount Clare i, 1767; Earl Nugent, 1776; ‘hooked nose and wide countenance’ referred to in John O’Keeffe’s Recollections; his dg. became Marchioness of Buckingham; a favourite of the Prince of Wales;
 
Laetitia [Mrs.] Pilkington claims that the poem “Happiness” was actually written by Rev James Sterling (Pilkington, Memoirs, Vol. 2, pp.176-78); poss. auth of Merit, a Satire (Dublin 1746); Port. in European Magazine (1784); Walpole coined the phrase to ‘Nugentize’ in reference to his marriage of rich widows; friend of Prince Regent; Goldsmith’s The Haunch of Venison dedicated to him. ODNB PI DIB OCIL.

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Works
Essay on Justice, poem (Lon 1737; fol. 1738); Essay on Happiness, poem (Lon 1737); Ode to Mrs. Pulteney (1739); Odes and Epistles (1739 anon.); Faith, a poem (anon. 1774); The Genius of Ireland, poem addressed to Lord Clare (1775); Life and Select Poems; printed in The British Poets. [PI]

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Criticism
Claud Nugent, Memoir of Robert, Earl Nugent, with Letters, Poems and Appendices (Chicago & NY 1898).

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Commentary
Robert E. & Catherine Ward, eds., Letters of Charles O’Conor (Washington 1988); letter to J. C. Walker takes the form of an encomium of Nugent and some account of his family, ‘Through the course of sixty years I have attended to him from his first motions as Bob Nugent of Carlonstown ... He threw lustre back on an illustrious ancestry often, however, ill-treated by English and Irish thorugh a cours eof 350 years. They placed their glory in moderation between two jealous parties, each claiming and each rejecting their best friends, occasionally, through the vicissitudes of domestic animosities. ... To do good, public and private, was Earl Nugent’s passion in life ... [&c.] (Pearse St. Public Library, Gilbert MS 203; p.494)

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