Life
?1540-1617 [Barnaby Rich]; fought in Queen Mary’s war with France,
1557-58; in Low Countries, as captain; produced romances in style of Lyly’s
Euphues from 1574, when he began with pamphlets; Riche His Farewell
to Militarie Profession (1581) provided a plot for Twelfth Night;
patronised by Sir Christopher Hatton, and held military post in Ireland,
1584; issued A New Description of Ireland (1610), containing accusations
of Irish cannibalism which he disowned twoe years later in a defence of
the work; by The Irish Hubbub or the English Hue and Cry (1617),
admirers chiefly drawn from less cultivated classes; expressed belief
that ‘a conquest should draw after it Lawe, Language, and Habit’
(Description); 24 printed works, and others in MS. DNB FOST
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Works
A Right Excelent and Pleasaunt Dialogue, betwene Mercury and an English
Souldier, Contayning his Supplication to Mars, Bewtified with sundry worthy
Histories, rare inventions and politike devises (London 1574); Riche
His Farewell to Militarie Profession (1581); A Path-way to Military
Practise (London 1587); Roome for a Gentleman, or the Second Part
of Faultes (London 1609); The Irish Hubbub or the English Hue and
Cry (London 1617). Reprints, Stockwell, ed., A New Description
of Ireland by Barnabe Rich, Gent, Printed at London for Thomas Adams,
1610 [Irish Office of Pamphlets: Vol 4] (Library of Dáil Éireann
[q.d.]); A True and Kinde Excuse written in defence of that booke,
intituled A new Description of Irelande (London 1612); C. Litton Falkiner,
PRIA, ed., ‘Remembrances of the State of Ireland’, in Archaeology
26 (1906-07).
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Criticism
Sidney Lee, ‘Barnaby Rich’ [entry] in DNB; ‘Gender and
Genre’, Maculinty and Militarism in the Writings of Barnaby Rich’,
in Irish Studies Review, Winter 1995/96, pp.2-5. [accredits him with 26
works].
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Notes
Roy Foster (Modern Ireland, 1988), quoting Barnaby Rich,
in 1610, ‘It is popery that hath drawn the people from that confidence
and trust that they should have in God ... It is popery that hath alienated
the hearts of that people from that faith, fidelity, obedience, love and
loyalty that is required in subjects towards their sovereigns. It is popery
that hath set afoot so many rebellions in Ireland, that hth cost the lives
of the multitudes, that hath ruined that whole realm and made it subject
to the oppression of thieves, robbers, spoilers, murders, rebels and traitors.’
Barnaby Rich, A New Descripton of Ireland (London 1610), pp.90-91;
Rich’s subtitle is, ‘Wherein is described the disposition of
the irish, whereunto they are inclined. No less admirable to be perused
than credible to be believed; neither unprofitably nor unpleasant to be
read and understood by those worthy citizens of London that now be undertakers
in Ireland’ [i.e., Ulster settlers].
The Irish Hubbub (1617), p.4, ‘Such brutish kinde of
lamentation, as in the iudgement of any man that should but heare, and
did not know their custome, would thinke it to be some prodigious preagement
prognosticating some unlucky or ill successe, as they use to attribute
to the howling of dogs, to the croacking of Ravens, and to the shrieking
of Owles, fitter for Infidels and Barbarians, then to be in use and custome
among Christians’; Barnaby Rich also inveighs against fosterage and
intermarriage (Description, p.100; Remembrance, ed., Falkiner,
p.128).
To weepe Irishe: ‘It is an usuall matter amongst them, upon the buriall of their dead, to hire a company of women, that sfor some small recompence given them, they will follow the corps, and furnish out the cry … with such howling and barbarous outcries that hee that should heare them, and did not know the ceremony would rather think they did sing then weep.’ (Cited in Andrew Hadfield, ‘The Trial of Jove: Spenser’s Allegory and the Mastery of the Irish’, in Bullán: An Irish Studies Journal, 2, 2 (Spring/Summer 1996), pp.39-53; p.41; see also under Spenser.
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)