Robert Forth

Sir Robert Forth (c.1600-c.1665) was an Irish statesman of the seventeenth century, and an influential figure in the political crisis of 1640–41. He sat in the Irish House of Commons and was a member of the Privy Council of Ireland. He was again a political figure of some importance in the early 1660s.

He was the eldest son of Sir Ambrose Forth and Anne Cusack, daughter of Edward Cusack of Lismullen, County Meath and Elizabeth Aylmer. His father was an English-born lawyer who came to Ireland in 1573 to serve as the Irish Probate judge, and in 1575 became the first judge of the Irish Court of Admiralty. His mother belonged to the leading Anglo-Irish landowning Cusack family: her grandfather Sir Thomas Cusack had been Lord Chancellor of Ireland. Unlike his father, Robert apparently never became a lawyer, although he may have had some legal training. Robert was still living there in 1663.

He had at least one son, John, and one daughter, Mary, the second wife of the wealthy former Cromwellian army officer James Stopford of Newhall, County Meath. They had two daughters, Emily and Dorothy ("Countess Doll"). Dorothy was a close friend of Jonathan Swift: she married firstly Edward Brabazon, 4th Earl of Meath and secondly General Richard Gorges MP of Kilbrew. Emily married Theophilus Butler, 1st Baron Newtown-Butler.

A letter from John to his father dated 16 July 1663 is now in the National Archives. John, writing from Navan, describes a discovery of stores (possibly weapons?) there, which he believed might be connected with a recent conspiracy against the Crown.