John Perrot
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Sir John Perrot (c. 1527 - September, 1592) was lord deputy of Ireland under Queen Elizabeth I of England and is best known for his part in the Tudor re-conquest of Ireland. He was reputed to be an illegitimate son of Henry VIII of England.
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[edit] Early life
Perrot was born at Harroldston to Mary Berkley - who soon afterwards married Thomas Perrot, a Pembrokeshire gentleman - and was reputed to be a son of Henry VIII (whom he was said to resemble in temperament and appearance). He was attached to the household of William Paulet, 1st Marquess of Winchester, and thereby gained his introduction to the king. Before the promise of advancement could be fulfilled, the king died, but Perrot did receive a knighthood at the coronation of the king's successor, Edward VI.
In June 1551 Perrot visited France in the train of William Parr, 1st Marquess of Northampton, which had been sent to arrange the marriage of the king to Elizabeth of Valois, the infant daughter of Henry II of France and Catherine de' Medici. His skill as a knight and in the hunt fascinated the French king, who sought to retain him for reward, but Perrot declined and on his return to the Kingdom of England his debts were paid by Edward VI.
During the reign of Mary I of England, Perrot suffered a brief imprisonment in the Fleet with his uncle, Robert Perrot, on a charge of sheltering heretics at his house in Wales. Following his release, he declined to assist William Herbert, 1st Earl of Pembroke, in seeking out heretics in south Wales, but went on to serve with him at the capture of St Quentin in 1557. In spite of his Protestantism Perrot was granted the castle and lordship of Carew in Pembrokeshire, and at the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's reign the naval defence of South Wales was entrusted to his care.
[edit] Munster
In 1570 Perrot reluctantly accepted the newly created post of lord president of the Irish province of Munster, which was then undergoing the first of the Desmond Rebellions. He landed at the port of Waterford in February of the following year and, during the course of a vigorous campaign in which he pursued the rebel James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald, the province was reduced to peace. In one grisly incident, after his forces had slain fifty rebels, Perrot sought to awe the Geraldine loyalists by having the heads of the dead men fixed to the market cross in Kilmallock. Fitzmaurice remained elusive and, out of frustration, Perrot issued him with a challenge to single combat, which the rebel declined with the comment, "For if I should kill Sir John Perrot the Queen of England can send another president into this province; but if he do kill me there is none other to succeed me or to command as I do." However gallant the offer, it provoked mutterings from the more level-headed servants of the crown, and Perrot's reputation for rashness grew. Soon after, he was ambushed by the rebels, who outnumbered his force ten to one, but was saved when the attackers retired on mistaking a small cavalry company for the advance party of a larger crown force. After a second and successful siege of the Geraldine stronghold of Castlemaine, Perrot had the satisfaction of receiving Fitzmaurice's submission in 1572.
Perrot's presidency was marked by over 800 hangings - most of them by martial law - but it can be judged overall as fairly successful. The reinstatement after the rebellion of the chief nobleman of Munster, Gerald Fitzgerald, 15th Earl of Desmond, was criticised by Perrot and, having vainly sought his own recall, he departed Ireland without leave in July 1573. Upon presenting himself at court he was permitted to resign his office, in which he was succeeded by Sir William Drury.
Perrot returned to his Welsh home, where he became fully occupied with his duties as vice-admiral of the Welsh seas and as a member of the Council of the Marches. In 1578 he was accused by the deputy-admiral, Richard Vaughan, of tyranny, subversion of justice and of dealings with pirates; but he evidently retained the confidence of the crown, for he was made commissioner for piracy in Pembrokeshire in 1578, and in the following year was put in command of a naval squadron charged with the interception of Spanish ships on the Irish coast.
[edit] Lord Deputy of Ireland
In 1582, the recall of Arthur Grey, 14th Baron Grey de Wilton, left vacant the office of lord Deputy of Ireland, to which Perrot was appointed in 1584; at about the same time, Sir Richard Bingham was appointed governor of Connaught. Perrot's chief instructions concerned the Plantation of Munster, by the terms of which the confiscated estates of the defeated Earl of Desmond - some 600,000 acres (2,400 km²) - were to be parcelled out at nominal rents, on condition that the undertakers of the plantation establish English farmers and labourers to build towns and work the land.
Before his government had time to embark on the plantation enterprise, Perrot got wind of raids into Ulster by the Highland clans of Maclean and MacDonnell at the invitation of Sorley Boy MacDonnell, the Scoto-Irish constable of Dunluce Castle. In response the lord deputy marched into the northern province at the head of an army, but Sorley Boy escaped him and crossed over to Scotland, only to return later with reinforcements. Perrot was roundly abused by Elizabeth for launching such an unadvised campaign, but by 1586 Sorley Boy had been brought to a mutually beneficial submission by the somewhat abashed lord deputy. At about this time Perrot also sanctioned the rather crafty kidnapping of Hugh Roe O'Donnell (who was lured to a wine tasting on a merchant ship and then sealed in a cabin and brought to Dublin), a move which gave the crown authority some leverage in western Ulster. A further achievement in his Ulster strategy came with the submission of Hugh Maguire, Lord of Fermanagh.
The establishment of the plantation of Munster was to prove a painfully slow affair, but in 1585 Perrot did enjoy success on the perfecting of the composition of Connaught, an unusually even-handed contract between the crown and the landholders of that province, by which the queen was to receive certain rents in return for settling land titles and tenant dues. Of similar significance in that same year was the opening of parliament at Dublin, the first since 1569; the spectacle was enhanced by the attendance of many Gaelic lords, and high hopes were held for the coming sessions. Even though the act for the attainder of Desmond (which rendered the rebel's estates at the disposal of the crown) was passed, Perrot's legislative programme soon ran into difficulty, particularly over the suspension of Poynings Law, and at the close of parliament in 1587 he was so utterly frustrated with the influence of factions within both chambers of the house (orchestrated to a large degree by Sir Thomas Butler, 3rd Earl of Ormonde) that he sought a recall to England, which was eventually granted.
As lord deputy, Perrot had established peace and deserved well of Elizabeth; but his rash and violent temper, coupled with unsparing criticism, not to say abuse, of his associates, had made him numerous enemies. A hastily conceived plan for the conversion of the revenues of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin to fund the erection of two colleges led to a sustained quarrel with Adam Loftus, archbishop of Dublin, which Perrot wilfully aggravated by his interference with the authority of Loftus as lord chancellor. Perrot also interfered in Bingham's government of Connaught, and in May 1587 be actually struck Sir Nicholas Bagenal, the elderly knight marshal, in the council chamber at Dublin (an incident blamed on the deputy's drunken temper).
Elizabeth decided to supersede him in January 1588, and six months later his successor, the experienced Sir William Fitzwilliam, arrived in Dublin. After his return to England, Perrot's enemies continued to work his ruin, which was precipitated by a treacherous intrigue, of the kind that marred the final decade of the queen's reign.
[edit] Ruin
Perrot was appointed to the privy council upon his return to England, where he maintained his interest in Irish affairs through correspondences with several members of the council at Dublin. During the period after the defeat of the Spanish Armada it was not difficult to raise suspicions over a man's loyalty, with vague suggestions about his religion and his closeness to Spanish authority; when it came to Perrot, the suggestions were anything but vague, since a former priest and condemned prisoner, Dennis O'Roghan, presented Fitzwilliam with correspondence purportedly addressed by Perrot during his time as lord deputy (with his signature attached) to King Philip II of Spain and the Duke of Parma, in which certain treasonable promises and bargains were put forward concerning the future of England, Wales and Ireland.
Fitzwilliam set up an investigation, but the prisoner's record for forgery was quickly exposed, and it seemed that the allegations would run into the sand. Rather than let the matter lie, it was decided (probably at Perrot's urging) to pursue an inquiry into the manner in which the allegations had been raised in the first place, a process that would tend to embarrass Fitzwilliam. Accordingly, a commission was established, including several of Perrot's favourites on the Irish council, who set about their interrogation of the prisoner.
It was at this point that the affair took a wretched twist: the prisoner made allegations of torture against the commission members, and before long Fitzwilliam was directed to resume his own investigation with strict instructions from the queen to forward the findings to the Privy Council in London, where a decision would be taken on how to proceed. For Perrot it was the moment of crisis, and further allegations were soon made, most notably by his former secretary, of his frequent use in private conversation of violent language against the queen; allegations were also made about his prior knowledge of the rebellion in 1589 of Sir Brian O'Rourke (later extradited from Scotland and hanged at London), which had occurred under the government of Bingham in Connaught.
Perrot was confined to the Tower, and his trial before a special commission on charges of high treason came on in 1592. The forged letters and the evidence concerning the O'Rourke rebellion played their part in the prosecution case, but it was the evidence of his remarks about Elizabeth that really determined the outcome of the jury's deliberation. He was said to have called the queen a "base bastard piskitchin", and to have made many disparaging remarks on her legitimacy. Perrot protested his loyalty and, in reaction to a hectoring prosecution counsel, eloquently cried out, "You win men's lives away with words". But his defence fell into confused blustering, and a verdict of guilty was returned. His sentencing was put off for some months, in the expectation of a royal pardon, but Perrot died while in custody in the Tower in September 1592.
Whether or not there was a guiding hand in these events, their consequence was that several experienced native-born members of the Irish council, who had been allied in some degree with Perrot, were replaced with English members, who fully equated the protestant cause with the state and were inclined to take a harder line in dealing with Gaelic Ireland. Fitzwilliam was thus free to pursue a policy opposed in crucial aspects to Perrot's, and the northern lords (including Hugh O'Neill) found themselves subjected to increasing government encroachment on their territories, which resulted in the outbreak of the Nine Years War (Ireland) (1595-1603).
[edit] Family
Perrot was twice married, to Anne Chayney of Kent who bore his son and heir Thomas, and to Jane Pruet of Devonshire who bore him three children. After his death the attainder on his property was lifted so that his son could inherit. Perrot also fathered several bastard children, including Sir James Perrot (1571-1637), whose manuscript A life of Sir John Perrot was published in 1728.
| Preceded by Thomas Cathern |
Custos Rotulorum of Pembrokeshire bef. 1562–1592 |
Succeeded by The Earl of Essex |
| Preceded by Lord Grey de Wilton |
Lord Deputy of Ireland 1584–1588 |
Succeeded by William Fitzwilliam |
[edit] Sources
- Richard Bagwell, Ireland under the Tudors 3 vols. (London, 1885–1890).
- John O'Donovan (ed.) Annals of Ireland by the Four Masters (1851).
- Calendar of State Papers: Carew MSS. 6 vols (London, 1867-1873).
- Calendar of State Papers: Ireland (London)
- Colm Lennon Sixteenth Century Ireland — The Incomplete Conquest (Dublin, 1995) ISBN 0-312-12462-7.
- Nicholas P. Canny Making Ireland British, 1580–1650 (Oxford University Press, 2001) ISBN 0-19-820091-9.
- Steven G. Ellis Tudor Ireland (London, 1985) ISBN 0-582-49341-2.
- Hiram Morgan Tyrone's Rebellion (1995).
- Cyril Falls Elizabeth's Irish Wars (1950; reprint London, 1996) ISBN 0-09-477220-7.
- Gerard Anthony Hayes McCoy Irish Battles (Belfast, 1989) ISBN 0-86281-212-7.
- Dictionary of National Biography 22 vols. (London, 1921–1922).
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
