Christopher St Lawrence, 8th Baron Howth

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.

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.

[1] The 1570s were a time of conflict between Sussex's successor as Lord Deputy, Sir Henry Sidney, and the Anglo-Irish nobility over his taxation policies, and especially over the cess, the tax for maintaining garrisons in the towns of the Pale.

Howth, despite his previous record of loyalty to the Crown, emerged as one of the leaders of the opposition, and gave grave offence to the Queen as a result.

[1] He was imprisoned for 5 months in Dublin Castle, and then made a full submission to the Crown, arguing that he had never intended to question the Royal Prerogative or the Queen's power to tax her Irish subjects.

[3] 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".

[5] 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.

[6] A famous legend, which may have some basis in fact, records that about 1575 Grace O'Malley, or Granuaile, the celebrated Pirate Queen of Galway, called at Howth Castle only to find the gates barred.

To make amends Lord Howth promised that in future his gates would always be open at dinner time and a place would be set at table for unexpected guests, a tradition which later generations maintained.

Elrington Ball[2] calls the eighth Lord Howth the most striking member of his family and the most forceful Irish statesman of the Elizabethan era.

Crawford[5] takes a much more severe view of Howth's faults, arguing that his killing of his daughter Jane was certainly at least manslaughter, and possibly murder, and notes that her mother was forced to flee from home in order to avoid a similar fate.