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Life
?1540-1617 [Barnaby Rich]; fought in Queen Mary’s war with France, 1557-58; in Low Countries, as captain; produced romances in style of Lyly’s Euphues from 1574, when he began with pamphlets; Riche His Farewell to Militarie Profession (1581) provided a plot for Twelfth Night; patronised by Sir Christopher Hatton, and held military post in Ireland, 1584; issued A New Description of Ireland (1610), containing accusations of Irish cannibalism which he disowned two years later in a defence of the work; by The Irish Hubbub or the English Hue and Cry (1617), admirers chiefly drawn from less cultivated classes; expressed belief that ‘a conquest should draw after it Lawe, Language, and Habit’ (Description); 24 printed works, and others in MS. ODNB
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Works
A Right Excelent and Pleasaunt Dialogue, betwene Mercury and an English Souldier, Contayning his Supplication to Mars, Bewtified with sundry worthy Histories, rare inventions and politike devises (London 1574); Riche His Farewell to Militarie Profession (1581); A Path-way to Military Practise (London 1587); Roome for a Gentleman, or the Second Part of Faultes (London 1609); The Irish Hubbub or the English Hue and Cry (London 1617). Reprints, Stockwell, ed., A New Description of Ireland by Barnabe Rich, Gent, Printed at London for Thomas Adams, 1610 [Irish Office of Pamphlets: Vol 4] (Library of Dáil Éireann [q.d.]); A True and Kinde Excuse written in defence of that booke, intituled A new Description of Irelande (London 1612); C. Litton Falkiner, PRIA, ed., ‘Remembrances of the State of Ireland’, in Archaeology 26 (1906-07).
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Criticism
Sidney Lee, ‘Barnaby Rich’, in ODNB; ‘Gender and Genre’, Maculinty and Militarism in the Writings of Barnaby Rich’, in Irish Studies Review, Winter 1995/96, pp.2-5. [accredits him with 26 works].
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Commentary
R. F. Foster, Modern Ireland (London: Allen Lane 1988), quotes Barnaby Rich in 1610: ‘It is popery [..., &c.’, as in Quotations, infra.] Gives Rich’s subtitle in full: ‘[...] Wherein is described the disposition of the Irish, whereunto they are inclined. No less admirable to be perused than credible to be believed; neither unprofitably nor unpleasant to be read and understood by those worthy citizens of London that now be undertakers in Ireland’ [i.e., Ulster settlers].
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Quotations
The Irish Hubbub (1617), p.4, ‘Such brutish kinde of lamentation, as in the iudgement of any man that should but heare, and did not know their custome, would thinke it to be some prodigious pre[s]agement prognosticating some unlucky or ill successe, as they use to attribute to the howling of dogs, to the croacking of Ravens, and to the shrieking of Owles, fitter for Infidels and Barbarians, then to be in use and custome among Christians’; Barnaby Rich also inveighs against fosterage and intermarriage (Description, p.100; Remembrance, ed., Falkiner, p.128).
Popery: ‘It is popery that hath drawn the people from that confidence and trust that they should have in God ... It is popery that hath alienated the hearts of that people from that faith, fidelity, obedience, love and loyalty that is required in subjects towards their sovereigns. It is popery that hath set afoot so many rebellions in Ireland, that hth cost the lives of the multitudes, that hath ruined that whole realm and made it subject to the oppression of thieves, robbers, spoilers, murders, rebels and traitors.’ (A New Descripton of Ireland, London 1610, pp.90-91; quoted in R. F. Foster, Modern Ireland, London: Allen Lane 1988, as supra)
To weepe Irishe: ‘It is an usuall matter amongst them, upon the buriall of their dead, to hire a company of women, that for some small recompence given them, they will follow the corps, and furnish out the cry ... with such howling and barbarous outcries that hee that should heare them, and did not know the ceremony would rather think they did sing then weep.’ (Quoted in Andrew Hadfield, ‘The Trial of Jove: Spenser’s Allegory and the Mastery of the Irish’, in Bullán: An Irish Studies Journal, 2, 2 (Spring/Summer 1996), pp.39-53; p.41; see also under Spenser.
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