Henry Bagenal's home: Greencastle

... whose cousin Eleanor, daughter of Sir John Savage of Rock Savage, in the Wirral, Cheshire, he had married, inquiring if the earl had a parliamentary borough to spare; on 29 September he was returned at Grantham and in the event also returned for Anglesey, which he preferred.  

His marriage to Eleanor produced three sons: Arthur, mentally handicapped, according to some authorities, [although he went on to marry and produce Nicholas, the last Bagenal in the Newry line who survived to a ripe old age dying in 1712) became a ward of his uncle Sir Patrick Barnewell; Dudley, who founded the County Carlow branch of the family (not to be confused with Henry's brother Dudley, killed by the Kavanaghs in May 1587); and Ambrose.  Their six daughters married into the families of wealthy Palesmen.

In September 1587 Bagenal went back to Ireland to deputize for his father, Sir Nicholas, and Perrot was commanded to allow him to do so 'without any trouble, molestation or impeachment' (APC, 1587-8, 169-70, 226-7).

With the active co-operation of the new lord deputy, Sir William Fitzwilliam, he led the invasion in 1588 against Sir Ross McMahon in Monaghan who, at O'Neill's behest, had refused to have a sheriff appointed there.  In the final settlement of Monaghan, Bagenal received substantial termon (ecclesiastical) lands nominally outside the control of the McMahons.

In October 1590 Sir Nicholas Bagenal formally resigned his office of marshal of the army provided only that his son succeed him; Henry did so on 24 October and on the same day was sworn of the Privy Council.  On 18 May 1591 he succeeded his father as chief commissioner for the government of Ulster, in effect an empty title. 

In the following year he wrote to Lord Burghley with a detailed analysis of his situation:

'The chiefest, or rather the only means to reduce these barbarous people to obedience is to so disunite them as all may be enforced to depend of the queen'

 
(PRO, SP 63/163/no. 29). His proposals were little heeded; Burghley and the Privy Council had by then adopted a conciliatory attitude to Hugh O'Neill, even to the extent of exempting the earl's country from Bagenal's jurisdiction. 

… more later …