Robert St Lawrence, 3rd Baron Howth

The reason for revising the identity of his mother has been a reference (considered reliable) to Robert's descendants being distant cousins of Christopher Plunkett, 1st Baron Killeen.

In 1468 he was charged with piracy, the particulars of the offence being that he has attacked a Breton merchant ship off nearby Lambay Island, pursuing it as far as Drogheda, and seizing the anchor.

[1] He was an associate of the powerful and charismatic Thomas FitzGerald, 7th Earl of Desmond, whose supposed ambitions to rule Ireland aroused the suspicion and hostility of the English Crown.

In 1474, he was chosen to be one of the thirteen Knights of the Brotherhood of Saint George, a standing army charged with defending the Pale against invasion by neighbouring Gaelic clans, and with keeping the peace generally.

Lord Howth's continued employment by the Yorkist kings after his second marriage in 1478 is surprising, given that his second wife Joan Beaufort was a close relative of Henry Tudor, who was to overthrow the House of York in 1485.

Somerset's seemingly remote claim to the English Crown as the legal heir of John of Gaunt was inherited by his cousin Margaret Beaufort's son Henry VII, who became the first Tudor monarch.

In the years following the marriage the St Lawrences, unlike most of the Anglo-Irish nobility, were reliable supporters of the Tudor dynasty: clearly, the family connection was too valuable to them not to be taken full advantage of.