CLARE, Lord. Verses Addressed to The Queen, with a New Year’s Gift of Irish Manufacture.

London: Printed for J. Dodsley, 1775. Quarto. pp. 11, [1]. Modern marbled wrappers. A very good copy.

Robert Craggs Nugent (1702-88), 1st Earl Nugent, poet, and politician, was born in Carlanstown, County Westmeath, second son of Michael Nugent of Carlanstown and his wife Mary, fifth and youngest daughter of Robert Barnewall, 9th Lord Trimlestown. He succeeded his father in the Carlanstown property on 1739. Frequently overlooked by historians, the details of Nugent's life are sparse, often merely anecdotal, and remain heavily coloured by the polemics of his own age. He was tersely described by Richard Glover as a jovial and voluptuous Irishman who had left popery for the Protestant religion, money and widows.
His wife's property included the borough of St Mawes in Cornwall, and Nugent sat for that constituency from 1741 to 1754, after which date he represented Bristol until 1774, when he returned to St Mawes. By 1782, he had become the longest continually-serving member of the Commons, and so became the Father of the House.
In 1747 he succeeded Lord Doneraile as Comptroller of the Household to the Prince of Wales. Nugent lent the Prince large sums of money, which were never repaid; the appointments and peerages he received later in life have been attributed to the wish of the Prince of Wales's son, George III, to compensate Nugent.
His support of the ministry was so useful that he was created in 1767 Baron Nugent and Viscount Clare, and in 1776 Earl Nugent, all Irish peerages.
Apart from his political career Lord Nugent was also the author of some poetical productions, several of which are preserved in the second volume of Dodsley's Collections (1748).
Nugent also published poetry, including an Essay on Justice (1737) and the anonymous Odes and Epistles (1739). Several pieces are suspected of being ghost-written. Nugent's activities were increasingly political, though here, too, credit for his success is often given to others.
Renowned for his wit and a talented debater who never lost a strong Irish accent, Nugent seems to have worked consistently, with allies such as Edmund Burke, to effect trade resolutions favourable to Ireland and, by so doing, to secure its relationship in the empire. At Westminster he strongly supported removing trade restrictions on Ireland in 1777-8. These attempts aroused great animosity in Britain and were only moderately successful. In parliament he attempted, but failed, to unite Pitt and Fox before his retirement (1784). In his last years, having been a member of the established church for half a century - he was also grand warden of Dublin's grand lodge of Free and Accepted Masons (1732) - Nugent returned to catholicism. He died in 1788 at the home of a ‘General O'Donnel’ (possibly Manus O'Donnell, major-general of the Austrian army) at Rutland Square (latterly Parnell Square), Dublin. He is buried at Gosfield. At his death, Earl Nugent was one of the wealthiest men in Britain or Ireland and his personal fortune was bequeathed to his grandsons.
Writing shortly after Nugent's death, the historian Charles O'Conor of Belanagare, who claimed to have followed his long career, wrote to the historian Joseph Cooper Walker that ‘to do good, public and private, was Earl Nugent's passion through life; genius under the spur of activity supplied him with the means; he was one of the best friends to his native country that this island ever produced, and he left us a legacy in our most excellent viceroy [Buckingham] to operate as it were posthumously for the good of a people now united in a single creed of loyalty and constitutional politics

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