Christopher St Lawrence, 8th Baron Howth

Christopher St Lawrence, 8th Baron Howth (died 1589) was an Irish politician and peer. He was a member of the Privy Council of Ireland, and played a leading part in the Government of Ireland in the 1560s, but he later went into opposition and was imprisoned as a result. He was nicknamed the Blind Lord.

He was a man of intelligence and some learning, who is believed to have written part of the historical compilation called The Book of Howth. On the other hand, he was notorious for his domestic cruelty: he was imprisoned and fined for severely ill-treating his wife and for causing the death of his teenage daughter through his ill-treatment of her.

Early life He was born sometime after 1509, the third of the four sons of Christopher St Lawrence, 5th Baron Howth and his wife Anne Bermingham of Baldongan. He was the brother of Edward St Lawrence, 6th Baron Howth and Richard St Lawrence, 7th Baron Howth. Since he was a younger son without much prospect of inheriting the title, not a great deal is recorded of his early years. He entered Lincoln's Inn in 1544 and was practising at the English bar ten years later: his legal knowledge later made him an effective leader of the opposition to the Crown's Irish policies. It is not known when he was afflicted with blindness, nor whether he went totally blind. By 1556 he had returned to Ireland and was managing one of the family estates. He succeeded to the barony in 1558 on the death of his brother Richard without issue.

Politician

The Barons of Howth were always well positioned to play a major part in Irish politics: Christopher had the additional advantage of enjoying the trust of the Lord Deputy of Ireland, the Earl of Sussex. He was made a member of the Privy Council immediately after the accession of Elizabeth I and sat in her first Irish Parliament in 1560. Sussex sent him to negotiate with Shane O'Neill, the effective ruler of Ulster, in 1561: Howth persuaded O'Neill to go to London and submit himself to the Queen's mercy, although little good came of this in the long run. Even more serious was the evidence that he had beaten his 13-year-old daughter Jane so badly that she died as a result- "some said he gave her forty strokes, some said sixty, on her bare back". His other children also lived in fear of him. Howth in his defence pleaded that his treatment of his wife was nothing out of the ordinary, while Jane had died of a fever, unrelated to the beatings, which he admitted to having administered.

Howth was found guilty of both charges, of cruelty to his wife and of causing the death of his daughter. He was sentenced to a brief term of imprisonment and fined heavily; he was ordered to pay alimony to his wife, who was allowed to live apart from him and was given custody of the children. While the Government in imposing these penalties may have intended to rebuke Howth for his opposition to its taxation policy, the verdict also suggests that the Court felt genuine sympathy for Lady Howth and her daughter.

Last years

In the 1580s Howth briefly resumed his role as leader of the opposition, and succeeded in temporarily blocking further proposals for tax reform by the Lord Deputy, Sir John Perrot. On this occasion he was quickly brought to admit his faults: he was reconciled with Perrot, and sent him a present of a goshawk, a bird which has always been a great rarity in Ireland. It argues that the Anglo-Irish nobility of whom Howth clearly saw himself as a leader, are the proper rulers of Ireland in the name of the Crown: to replace them with ignorant and ill-informed English officials will simply leave the Crown at the mercy of the Old Irish, its real enemies. The Book also contains specific criticism of recent Crown policies such as the cess.