John King

Sir John King (c.1560 – 4 January 1637) was an Anglo-Irish administrator, politician and landowner. He sat in the Irish House of Commons and was a member of the Privy Council of Ireland. He was one of the most valued Irish Crown servants of his generation. Several of his children were notable in their own right. He was the ancestor of the Earl of Kingston.

Career His background and parentage are obscure, but he is generally thought to have been born in Yorkshire, probably at Northallerton. Edward King (1612-1637), the poet and friend of John Milton, who wrote Lycidas in his memory after his early death from drowning; John King, who married Margaret Edgeworth (died 1676), daughter of Francis Edgeworth, his father's colleague in the Hanaper office, and Jane Tuite; after his death, she remarried John Bysse, Chief Baron of the Irish Exchequer, by whom she had an enormous family, most of whom died young; Dorothy Dury (c.1613-1664), a noted writer on the education of women; she married firstly Arthur Moore, a younger son of Garret Moore, 1st Viscount Moore, and secondly the leading Scots Calvinist preacher John Dury; Mary King (died July/August 1663), who married William Caulfeild, 2nd Baron Charlemont; Margaret King (died 1658), who married Sir Gerard Lowther, Chief Justice of the Irish Common Pleas.

Death

He died at Lichfield, Staffordshire in January 1637. His body was brought back to Boyle for burial, apparently against his own wish, which was to be buried in Lichfield.