Robert Payne

Robert Payne (d. 1593) was an English planter who settled in Munster, Ireland and became an advocate of the plantations of Munster.

Payne was a projector who started promoting schemes in Nottinghamshire for the production of Jersey wool for stockings and woad as a dye. In this he had the backing of Francis Willoughby.

For his Munster venture, he recruited 25 business partners in his project, each of whom received 400 acres. He was accompanied by five farmers, fourteen freeholders, forty copyholders and twenty five cottagers and labourers. He took 1,600 acres for himself and his family and also managed the estates of absentee landowners. Payne maintained his connection with Willoughby whilst in Ireland. Willoughby was a sleeping partner in a project aimed at establishing an ironworks in Kinalmeaky, to be run by an English ironmaster and using woods which Willoughby had already bought nearby. Writing shortly after the Second Desmond Rebellion, he puts the Irish in a good light saying that they should be "judge charitably, for such was the misery of the time that many were driven to this bad choice, whether they would be spoiled as well by the enemy as the worser sort of soldiers at home, or go out to the rebels and be hanged, which is the fairest end of a traitor." The pamphlet was composed of letter he had written to his 25 partners, primarily living in Nottinghamshire.