Robert Nugent (1702-1788), was both a politician and poet. He was born at Carlanstown, County Westmeath. Nugent inherited an estate of £1,500 per year. This he augmented by his skill in marrying rich widows, which caused Horace Walpole to invent the, description ‘to Nugentize’. His first wife Emilia was the daughter of the Earl of Fingal and died in 1731; he married Anne Knight, already twice a widow, in 1736; she died in 1756 and he again married, this time Elizabeth, the widow of the 4th Earl of Berkeley, from whom he secured a large fortune. He was elevated to the Peerage as Baron Nugent on 19 January 1769, and was created Earl Nugent on 21 July 1776. He served as a member of the English House of Commons, representing St. Maws, in Cornwall, in 1741 and 1747. Nugent was appointed a Privy Councillor in 1759 and served in both the offices of a Privy Councillor and Vice-Treasurer of Ireland until 1765. See H. Boylan, Dictionary of Irish Biography (Dublin, 1978), p. 265.
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