Family and Education b. 1528/9, reputed illegit. s. of Henry VIII by Mary, da. of James Berkeley of Thornbury, Glos., w. of Thomas Perrot of Islington, Mdx. and Haroldston; half-bro. of Sir Henry and Richard Jones. educ. St. Davids. m. (1) Anne (d. Sept. 1553), da. of Sir Thomas Cheyne(y)† of Shurland, Kent, 1s. Sir Thomas; (2) by 1566, Jane, da. of Hugh Prust of Hartland, Devon, wid. of Sir Lewis Pollard of Oakford, Devon, 1s. 2da.; at least 1s. illegit. James 2da. illegit. suc. Thomas Perrot 1531. Kntd. 17 Nov. 1549.2

Offices Held

Sheriff, Pemb. 1551-2; commr. goods of churches and fraternities, Pemb. 1553, concealed lands 1561, armour 1569; commr. musters Pemb. 1570, Denb. 1580, Haverfordwest 1581, piracy Card., Carm. 1575, Pemb. 1577; j.p. Pemb. 1555-8, q. Card., Carm., Pemb. 1559-d., q. all Welsh counties 1579-d., marcher counties 1582; steward, manors of Carew, Coedraeth and Narberth, Pemb., and St. Clears, Carm. 1559, lordship of Cilgerran, Pemb. 1570; constable, Narberth and Tenby castles, Pemb. 1559; gaoler, Haverfordwest 1559; mayor, Haverfordwest 1560-1, 1570-1, 1575-6; custos rot. Pemb. by 1562; pres. of Munster 1570-3; member, council in the marches of Wales by 1574; ld. dep. Ireland 1584-8; dep. lt. Pemb. in 1587; PC 10 Feb. 1589.3

Biography In both the Marian Parliaments in which he sat, Perrot opposed government measures, and he was one of the ‘right protestants’ who met at ‘Harondayles home’ to discuss parliamentary tactics in 1555. He sheltered protestants at Haroldston, and served under the 1st Earl of Pembroke at St. Quentin in 1557. Upon Elizabeth’s accession he became a favoured courtier. Freed from a sentence of outlawry for non-appearance at court on an attachment for debt (which he expiated in the Marshalsea), Perrot rapidly became a key man in the administration of his own shire and the recipient of profitable crown offices there, as well as grants of land and advowsons both there and in England. His commissionership for concealed lands brought into his net some of the former lands of the dissolved priory of Haverfordwest—not without violent quarrels, carried into Star Chamber in 1561, with those whose titles were challenged. He also made a successful bid for some of the lands forfeited to the Crown 30 years earlier by the attainder of his stepfather’s great kinsman Sir Rhys ap Gruffydd. The grant made on his petition in 1554 (for his ‘service heretofore and hereafter to be done’) of Rhys’s old lordship and castle of Carew does not seem to have become effective, since it was only in 1559 that he received the stewardship and not until 1562-6 that a succession of crown leases rounded off his control of the lordship. The castle he largely rebuilt, and eventually made his principal seat.4

Perrot was returned to the 1559 Parliament for Wareham, presumably through pressure exerted on the Rogers family by the 2nd Earl of Bedford, his former commander. In the next Parliament he came in for Pembrokeshire, and was appointed to the succession committee, 31 Oct. 1566. He was one of 30 MPs summoned on 5 Nov. to hear the Queen’s message on the succession. His mayoralty of Haverfordwest in 1570 gave him control of the borough machinery, and although his departure for Ireland enabled an anti-Parrot faction to put up a candidate for the borough in the 1571 parliamentary election, the pro-Parrot sheriff fraudulently returned his patron’s man, John Garnons. By 1572 the opposing faction controlled the borough and was able to return its man, Alban Stepneth, but Perrot’s partisans (Wogans and Bowens) kept up a running faction fight with Stepneth’s family group (Philipps of Picton, Owen of Henllys and Barlow of Slebech) in the streets of Haverfordwest for most of the year, with soldiers recruited for Perrot’s bodyguard in Ireland, or returning thence as deserters, to add to the turmoil. Perrot came home from Ireland in 1573, and settled in Pembrokeshire. He had been replaced as vice-admiral by Sir William Morgan of Pencoed with Richard Vaughan of Whitland as his deputy in the west. But Perrot was himself one of the Pembrokeshire commissioners for piracy, and there were conflicts of jurisdiction and mutual accusations of trafficking with the pirates. In 1579 Perrot was entrusted with a squadron of ships to clear the seas not only of pirates, but of Spanish vessels making for Ireland. In this, to the glee of his enemies, he had no great success, nor did he make much progress in his allotted task of fortifying Milford Haven. In a different sphere, he was one of a commission appointed in 1581 by the Privy Council to inquire into irregularities in the diocese of St. David’s, with whose bishops he was on chronically bad terms.5

During the years 1583-4 he was consolidating his influence round Haverfordwest by obtaining the lease of further rectories and granges in the former priory lands, extending it eastwards by acquisitions across the Carmarthenshire border, and exploiting what he already possessed by rack-renting and encroachments, all in face of a deteriorating financial situation. Several disputes arising out of these transactions came before Star Chamber in 1583. Now that he was a member of the council in the marches of Wales, the Privy Council would not allow his suits to be heard there, but referred them to the local assizes. In one quarrel (with Griffith Rice of Newton in 1581) the Council itself intervened. In general, however, it protected this ‘inward favourite of the Earl of Leicester’ from his many detractors, two of whom served sentences of imprisonment for slander before Perrot’s return to Ireland in 1584.6

His lord deputyship proved as stormy as his presidency of Munster, and included a spectacular brawl (before members of the Irish Council) with old Sir Nicholas Bagnall the marshal. In 1588 Perrot returned to Pembrokeshire, living in the renovated Carew castle. In this critical Armada year the Earl of Pembroke as president of the council in the marches of Wales chose him as his deputy while he was busy elsewhere. Bent on reasserting himself in his old sphere of influence, he put up successfully for Haverfordwest at the 1588 election, receiving wages for the ensuing Parliament. Early in 1589 he became a Privy Councillor, and with this added prestige took a more active part than hitherto in the business of the House. On 18 Feb. 1589 he was given charge of the bill for reforming abuses in the Exchequer. Two days later he asked for more time in committee, and on 25 Feb. he took the bill to the Lords, asking them to expedite its passage. On 6 Mar. he was summoned to discuss it with the Queen. He was added to the committee of the Hartlepool harbour bill (1 Mar.), and reported this to the House (12 Mar.) He served on a committee about fish (l 2 (11 Mar.), on another concerned with Lincoln (15 Mar.), took a bill about forestallers to the Lords (28 Mar.), and spoke on an unrecorded subject (29 Mar). A bill to amend the law relating to the hue and cry was committed to him (18 Mar.), and the next day he reported that the committee recommended no change. On 26 Mar. he reported that the Queen had told him that she needed a bill against the embezzling of her armour and weapons; this was read three times and he took it to the Lords. As a Privy Councillor Perrot was appointed to committees on the subsidy (11 Feb.), purveyors (15, 27 Feb.), Dover harbour (5 Mar.), forestallers (5 Mar.), captains and soldiers (19 Mar.), husbandry and tillage (25 Mar.) and a declaration of war with Spain (29 Mar.).7

By this time, Perrot’s star was falling. Leicester was dead; Essex, though his sister had married Perrot’s son, lent his weight in west Wales to the anti-Perrot faction; and Hatton, whose daughter Perrot was reported to have seduced, bore him a personal grudge. A concerted attack by his enemies resulted in charges of treason which may have had no more solid basis than his own intemperate speeches. In 1591 he was imprisoned in the Tower. Sending home for money for his defence, he raised without difficulty £1,500 from current rents alone, without resort to the iron chest in which he kept his (possibly less legitimate) reserves at Carew.8

Volume 72 of the Lansdowne manuscripts in the British Library is largely concerned with Perrot, his lands, quarrels with the Welsh gentry, demands for his trial, and a long account of it. Attainted on 17 Apr. 1592, he died in the Tower, an inquisition post mortem being taken on 26 Sept. His estates included 15 or more well stocked manors. The town of Haverfordwest still benefits from the ‘Perrot Trust’ he endowed in 3579 for municipal improvement. His son Sir Thomas Perrot was restored in blood within six months of the father’s death, and was thus able to inherit Haroldston; Carew was granted by the Queen for a term of years to Sir John’s widow. Both Sir Thomas and his father’s illegitimate son James Perrot represented the shire in Parliament, but with the latter’s death the family came to an end.9

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603 Author: A.H.D. Notes 1. Did not serve for the full duration of the Parliament. 2. DNB; Arch. Camb. (ser. 3), xi. 108-29; xii. 312-25, 337-9, 478-81, 484-7; Wards 9/129, f. 164; Dwnn, Vis. Wales , i. 89, 134; C142/119/114; Lit. Rem. Edw. VI , i. p. ccvii. 3. DNB; DWB; CPR, 1553, p. 418; 1558-60, p. 45; 1560-3, pp. 445, 447; 1563-6, pp. 30, 317; 1569-72, p. 252; St. Ch. 5/P8/32; Flenley, Cal. Reg. Council, Marches of Wales, 60-9, 216; APC, ix. 267-8; xii. 364; xvii. 76; Arch. Camb. loc. cit. and (ser. 5), xiii. 195; P. H. Williams, Council in the Marches of Wales, 60-9, 354-7; CSP Dom. 1547-80, pp. 537-41, 615; HMC Foljambe, 26; Haverfordwest Recs. 30, 184. 4. SP11/4 nos. 22-3; 11/8 no. 35; CPR, 1558-60, pp. 45, 136, 239, 305; 1560-3, pp. 222, 608; CSP Dom. 1547-80, pp. 266, 615; Augmentations, ed. E. A. Lewis and J. C. Davies (Univ. Wales Bd. of Celtic Studies, Hist. and Law ser. xiii), 477, 479, 481-3, 488, 502-3; St. Ch. 5/P8/32; Arch. Camb. (ser. 5), iii. 27-41; xiv. 309-18; Spurrell, Hist. Carew, 9-11, 36-42. 5. D’Ewes, 126-7; Camb. Univ. Lib. Gg. iii. 34, p. 209; EHR, lxi. 18-27; Arch. Camb. (ser. 5), xiii. 193-211; xiv. 318-23; xv. 298-311; CSP Dom. 1547-80, pp. 398, 406, 414, 517-19, 541, 590-1, 629, 631, 636-7, 695; St. Ch. 5/G12/25; APC, ix. 267-8; x. 231, 262; xiii. 142. 6. Augmentations, 245, 257, 487, 499; CSP Dom. 1547-80, pp. 454, 522; St. Ch. 5/P50/21, P53/14, W69/30; APC, x. 283, 297; xii. 24; xiii. 88, 118; J. Wynn, Gwydir Fam. ed. Ballinger, 64; Arch. Camb. (ser. 3), xi. 112-13. 7. Cal. Wynn Pprs. 115; NLW Jnl. ix. 170; D’Ewes, 430, 431, 432, 434, 436, 437, 439, 440, 441, 442, 443, 445, 446, 448, 453, 454; CSP Dom. 1591-4, p. 21. 8. P. H. Williams, 239, 282; Arch. Camb. (ser. 3), xi. 124-5. 9. Arch. Camb. (ser. 3), xi. 116-25; D’Ewes, 510-11; LJ, ii. 182-3; DWB, 749; Exchequer, ed. T. I. J. Jones (Univ. Wales Bd. of Celtic Studies, Hist. and Law ser. xv), 303-4, 306, 308-9

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Perrot

John Perrott 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.

Perrott was born at Haroldston St Issells, near Haverfordwest, Wales, to Mary Berkley--who soon afterwards married Thomas Perrott, 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 Perrott did receive a knighthood at the coronation of the king's successor, Edward VI.

In June 1551 Perrott 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 Perrott declined and on his return to England his debts were paid by Edward VI.

During the reign of Mary I of England, Perrott suffered a brief imprisonment in the Fleet with his uncle, Robert Perrott, 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, Perrott 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.

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.

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 Perrott was appointed in 1584; at about the same time, Sir Richard Bingham was appointed governor of Connaught. Perrott'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, Perrott 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. Perrott 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 Perrott 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 Perrott 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, Perrott 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 Perrott wilfully aggravated by his interference with the authority of Loftus as lord chancellor. Perrott 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, Perrott'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.

Ruin

Perrott 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 Perrott, the suggestions were anything but vague, since a former priest and condemned prisoner, Dennis O'Roghan, presented Fitzwilliam with correspondence purportedly addressed by Perrott 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 Perrott'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 Perrott'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 Perrott 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.

Perrott 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. Perrott 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 Perrott 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 Perrott, 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 Perrott'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 (1595-1603).

Family

Perrott 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. Perrott also fathered several bastard children, including Sir James Perrott (1571-1637), whose manuscript A life of Sir John Perrott was published in 1728.

--------------------

Sir John Perrot (c. 1527 - September, 1592) served as Lord Deputy of Ireland under Queen Elizabeth I of England, and is best known for his part in the Tudor re-conquest of Ireland. Some historians have regarded him as an illegitimate son of King Henry VIII of England.[1]

Early life

Perrot was born at Haroldston St Issells, near Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire as the third son of Mary Berkeley and Thomas Perrott, Esquire of Haroldston. Perrot was rumoured to be the son of Henry VIII, whom he allegedly resembled in temperament and appearance.[2] However, these reports are erroneous.[citation needed] The allegation of Henry VIII's fatherhood originated with Sir Robert Naunton, John's enemy and husband to his granddaughter, Penelope.[3].[Need quotation on talk to verify]

Perrott 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 progress, the king died (January 1547), but Perrot did receive a knighthood at the coronation of Henry's successor, King Edward VI (February 1547).

In June 1551 Perrot visited France in the train of William Parr, 1st Marquess of Northampton. The Marquess travelled to arrange the marriage of the king to Elizabeth of Valois, the infant daughter of Henry II of France and of Catherine de' Medici. Perrot's 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 England Edward VI paid his debts.

During the reign of Mary I of England (1553-1558), Perrot suffered a brief imprisonment in the Fleet with his uncle, Robert Perrott, 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 Saint-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.

Munster

In 1570 Perrot reluctantly accepted the newly-created post of Lord President of Munster in Ireland, 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, reduced the province 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 saw over 800 hangings - most of them by martial law - but it can be judged[by whom?] overall as fairly successful. Perrot criticised the reinstatement after the rebellion of the chief nobleman of Munster, Gerald Fitzgerald, 15th Earl of Desmond, 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 the deputy-admiral, Richard Vaughan, accused him of tyranny, of subversion of justice and of dealings with pirates; but Perrot evidently retained the confidence of the Crown, for he became commissioner for piracy in Pembrokeshire in 1578, and in the following year received the 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 as 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 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. Queen Elizabeth roundly abused Perrot 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 would 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, 10th Earl of Ormond) 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, 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 correspondence with several members of the council in Dublin. In the heated politics following the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, Perrot found himself accused of treason in Dublin on the basis of certain allegations presented by a former priest and condemned prisoner, Dennis O'Roghan. The evidence was contained in 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 O'Roghan's record of forgery soon emerged, and it seemed that the allegations would run into the sand.[clarification needed] 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 arisen in the first place, a process that was likely 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.

The prisoner made allegations of torture against the commission members, and Fitzwilliam was directed[by whom?] to resume his own investigation with strict instructions from the queen to forward the findings to the Privy Council in London, which would determine how to proceed. Perrot faced a moment of crisis, and further allegations were made - most notably by his former secretary - of his frequent use in private conversation of violent language against the queen. Allegations were also made of 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.

The authorities confined Perrot to the Tower, and in 1592 he was tried before a special commission on charges of high treason. The forged letters and the evidence concerning the O'Rourke rebellion played their part in the prosecution case, but the evidence of his remarks about Elizabeth guided the jury's deliberations. 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.

Following Perrot's arraignment several of his allies who had sat on the commission to inquire into O'Roghan's allegations were replaced[by whom?] with English members, who fully equated the Protestant cause with the state and 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 (1595-1603).

[edit]Family

Perrot married twice; first to Anne Chayney of Kent, who bore his son and heir Thomas, and later to Jane Pruet [Prust] of Hartland in Devonshire. Pruet bore him a son, William Perrot, and two daughters: Anne, who married Sir John Phillips, 1st Baronet, of Picton Castle, ancestor of the Viscount St Davids and Lettice, who married Sir Arthur Chichester.

After his death the attainder on his property was lifted so that his son Thomas - who had married a daughter of Walter Devereux, 1st Earl of Essex - could inherit.

Perrot also fathered bastard children. The best known is Sir James Perrott (1571-1637), whose manuscript The life, deedes and death of Sir John Perrott, knight was published in 1728. A son John, born about 1565, appears in an entry in the Inner Temple Register dated 5 June 1583: "John Perot, of Haryve, Co. Pembroke, 3rd son of John Perot, Knight"[4]. A daughter Elizabeth, who married Hugh Butler of Johnston, was the granddaughter of Sir Christopher Hatton, later enemy of Sir John. -------------------- Believed to be an illegitimate son of Henry VIII -------------------- Died in The tower 1583