Christopher Barnewall

Sir Christopher Barnewall (1522–1575) was a leading Anglo-Irish statesman of the Pale in the 1560s and 1570s. He was the effective Leader of the Opposition in the Irish House of Commons in the Parliament of 1568–71. He is remembered for building Turvey House, where he sheltered the future Catholic martyr Edmund Campion, for his impressive tomb in Lusk Church, and for the eulogy to him in Holinshed's Chronicles, which was written by his son-in-law Richard Stanyhurst. Background He was the son of Patrick Barnewall, Solicitor General for Ireland (died 1552), and Anne Luttrell, daughter of Richard Luttrell of Luttrellstown Castle by his wife Margaret FitzLyons. Through both his father's parents, Roger Barnewall and his wife Alison, (also born Barnewall), he was closely related to the senior branch of the Barnewall family, who held the title Baron Trimleston. His father, a protege of Thomas Cromwell, was a key figure in the Irish administration between 1535 and 1542. Patrick initially opposed the Dissolution of the Monasteries, but quickly changed his mind, and profited handsomely from the Dissolution, acquiring Grace Dieu Abbey in Dublin and Knocktopher in Kilkenny. Christopher himself built Turvey House near the ruins of Grace Dieu, reputedly using the Abbey's stones as the building material. The dispossessed nuns of Grace Dieu were however allowed to live nearby at Portrane. Turvey House stood till 1987, when it was demolished, in controversial circumstances, on the orders of Dublin County Council. Unlike his father and his maternal uncle Thomas Luttrell, who both went on to become eminent judges, he did not practice at the Irish Bar. Nor was he a Bencher of the King's Inns, which his father had helped to found, although he was a party to the renewal of the lease of the Inns from the Crown in 1567. He may have had some legal training, since Thomas Butler, 10th Earl of Ormonde, of whom he was a close associate, appointed Barnewall in 1556 as steward and receiver of all the Earl's lands within the Pale. Politics He sat in the Irish House of Commons as a member for County Dublin in the Parliament of 1568–71, and was Sheriff of County Dublin in 1560. He played a major role in Elizabeth I's second Irish Parliament, especially in the crucial year 1569. He was the effective leader of the Anglo-Irish landowners of the Pale, who were opposed to the Court party, which supported the Lord Deputy of Ireland, Sir Henry Sidney.