Moryson (Morrison), Richard (c.1571–1625/8?), soldier and administrator, was fifth son of Thomas Moryson (d. 1591), of Cadeby, Lincolnshire, England, clerk of the pipe, and his wife Elizabeth (d. 1587), daughter of Thomas Moigue, of Willingham, Lincolnshire. In 1585 he matriculated at Peterhouse, Cambridge, but unlike his more cerebral older brother Fynes (qv), Richard did not pursue a career in academia and instead joined the army. He served in the company of Sir Roger William, stationed in Brittany, and took part in the unsuccessful siege of Rouen (November 1591–April 1592). By April 1592 he was the lieutenant of the company, and at some point between then and June 1593 (when he appears as captain under the command of Henry IV of France at the siege of Dreux) he purchased the captaincy of the company from Williams for £300. During the mid 1590s he was based with his men at Flushing in the Low Countries before participating in the 1597 English naval expedition to the Azores as lieutenant-colonel in the regiment of Sir Charles Blount (qv), Lord Mountjoy.
Military service and plots in Ireland In early 1599 he came to Ireland as part of a large army under Robert Devereux (qv), 2nd earl of Essex and lord lieutenant of Ireland, charged with suppressing the rebellion of Hugh O'Neill (qv), 2nd earl of Tyrone. Essex knighted him on his arrival in Ireland and he probably took part in the gruelling and largely unsuccessful campaigns by the lord lieutenant in Munster, the midlands (where Moryson was part of a detachment sent into Leix to subdue the O'Mores that summer), and Ulster. Following Essex's unauthorised and ignominious departure to England in late 1599, Moryson's former commander and close friend Lord Mountjoy was appointed lord deputy of Ireland in his stead. On arriving in Dublin in spring 1600, Mountjoy immediately promoted Moryson to the rank of colonel and briefly appointed him governor of Leix (Queen's County), but the queen forced him to give this post to another officer. Instead, Moryson was installed as governor of the border town of Dundalk, from where he launched a series of attacks on the rebel territory of the Fews in south Armagh. As well as harrying the rebel captains in south-east Ulster, he also accompanied Mountjoy on his campaigns in the midlands and Ulster during 1600, leading his regiment into three fiercely contested battles between the main royal and rebel armies in Ulster at Moyry Pass (May, October), and Carlingford (November).
Having pacified the region to the immediate north of Drogheda by forcing the submission of the main rebel leader in the Fews in March 1601, he became governor of Lecale, Co. Down, that summer. In June 1601 he led six companies north from Dundalk by night to seize Downpatrick from the rebels, which became his base in the area. Given command of 500 men, he was expected to provide support for the previously isolated garrison at Carrickfergus under Arthur Chichester (qv), although Chichester believed that Downpatrick was too far from the rebel heartland of mid-Ulster to be of much use.
Despite making good headway against the rebels in 1600–01, all was not well within the royal army. Many leading officers, including Mountjoy and Moryson, were adherents of Essex and felt that the secretary of state in London, Sir Robert Cecil, had deliberately sabotaged the 1599 campaign in a successful bid to disgrace his political rival. Prior to his return to England in autumn 1599, Essex had been urged by his followers to invade England with his forces and seize power, while during 1600 Mountjoy contemplated doing something similar to assist Essex in a planned coup. Alarmed by these rumours, the English privy council chided Mountjoy in summer 1600 for relying too much on young counsel, which the lord deputy took to be a reference to his closeness to Moryson and two other officers known to be partisans of Essex. Mountjoy declined to take the hint, dismissed this complaint by noting that the three men were no younger than Alexander the Great when he achieved his conquests, and praised Moryson's military service on numerous occasions. News of Essex's failed coup in London and execution in February 1601 threw the earl's followers in Ireland into a panic, as many of them were complicit in this treason. Cecil appears to have hinted to Mountjoy that he had reason to believe that Moryson in particular was heavily implicated in the Essex plots, as a result of which the lord deputy became noticeably more distant towards his friend for a time.
Victory in Ireland However, the landing of a Spanish expeditionary force in Munster that autumn helped persuade the English to set aside the factionalism that had threatened to undermine their military efforts in Ireland. Although his company remained stationed in Lecale, Moryson commanded a regiment during the siege of the Spanish at Kinsale (October 1601–January 1602). The savage winter of 1601–2 took a heavy toll on the exposed besiegers and by 23 December his regiment, originally 1,100-strong, had been reduced to 541 effectives. However, two days later Mountjoy won a famous and decisive victory over Tyrone's relieving army outside Kinsale. Moryson played only a minor role in this battle, which was won by the English cavalry. In January 1602 he went to London on an important mission to brief Cecil on Mountjoy's behalf on the reasons for the lord deputy's failure to attempt an all-out assault on Kinsale prior to the arrival of Tyrone's forces, and his decision to agree relatively lenient terms with the Spanish for their surrender and withdrawal from Kinsale. Aided by a recommendation from Sir George Carew (qv), president of Munster and confidant of Cecil, he also took the opportunity to assure Cecil of his loyalty, which seems to have satisfied the secretary of state.
On his return to Ireland Moryson played a prominent role in Mountjoy's summer 1602 campaign, whereby the royal forces overran the rebels’ heartland in middle Ulster. In June he had the distinction of leading a detachment from Mountjoy's field army into Tyrone's abandoned capital of Dungannon. Thereafter he resumed his command in Lecale till the victorious conclusion of the war in Ireland in spring 1603. An illuminating account by Capt. Josias Bodley relates how he and some other English officers visited their friend Moryson at his base in Downpatrick in January 1603. He proved a convivial host, and as the night progressed the officer colleagues gambled on dice and cockfighting, discussed the history of ancient Rome, and shuddered at the memory of the privations they had endured exactly a year previously outside Kinsale. While a terrible famine brought about by the scorched-earth tactics of the royal army ravaged Ulster, they dined on geese, venison, mince pies, and tarts, washed down with copious amounts of whiskey and claret. Barely two months later, the relative comfort he enjoyed was put in horrific contrast to the suffering around him when he came across three children feeding on the corpse of their mother in Down.
Governor of Waterford and Wexford The end of the war rendered obsolete Moryson's governorship of Lecale, but in June 1603 Mountjoy appointed him governor of Waterford city and of Co. Wexford. This was a high profile and important posting: Waterford was the centre of counter-reformation catholicism in Ireland, and in spring 1603 had staged a brief rebellion in tandem with a number of other Munster towns, demanding the right to practise openly the catholic faith of its inhabitants. Moryson's first act on arriving in Waterford in June 1603 was to attempt to have one of the ringleaders of this revolt, a catholic priest named James White, convicted of treason, but the city magistrates unanimously found White to be innocent. This incident set the tone for Moryson's subsequent fraught relationship with the citizens of Waterford, who were accustomed to a great deal of autonomy and accordingly resented the unprecedented imposition on them of a military governor accountable only to the crown, and of the burden of maintaining poorly paid and ill-disciplined royal soldiers. Tensions between the catholic citizenry and the protestant military were heightened by the crown's unwillingness to continue its policy of practical toleration of catholicism. Moryson repeatedly advocated the construction of a citadel within the city in order to intimidate its restless inhabitants.
In July 1604 the government ran down its military establishment and he was among a number of colonels who were discharged. The same month his governorship of Waterford city and Co. Wexford was confirmed by royal patent and he was thereby continued on the same pay as before, 10s. per day. By 1607 he had also been appointed to the council of Munster. His effectiveness was undermined by the crown's inability to pay his salary, and some leading figures in Waterford offered him money, but he refused. From 1 April 1606 he was omitted from the royal military establishment and his governorship appears to have lapsed temporarily. Although clearly smarting from this slight, he expressed his confidence that he would be compensated for this, and was vindicated when he was granted a royal pension in September and also appointed to the Irish privy council in the autumn. In summer 1608 he purchased another royal pension from Sir William Clerk; further benefiting his personal finances was his leasing from the crown of the castle and manor of Ferns, Co. Wexford. As a result he was able to continue as governor of Waterford and Wexford; he also retained command of a company of foot in Munster.
Following the death in summer 1607 of the president of Munster, Sir Henry Brouncker (qv), he and Donough O'Brien (qv), 4th earl of Thomond, were appointed caretaker governors of the province. As such they were preoccupied with the fallout from Brouncker's vigorous legal proceedings against leading catholic townsmen who refused to attend Church of Ireland services. Both men sympathised with Brouncker's policies and defended him from allegations of tyrannical conduct; but the resolve of the catholics had been stiffened by the president's death, and the government was unwilling to risk widespread unrest within the province. As a result, Moryson concluded that little could be done to advance religious conformity, and he and Thomond discontinued Brouncker's anti-recusancy measures. After Sir Henry Danvers (qv) was appointed president of Munster in late 1607, Moryson returned to his base in the south-east. There he kept a wary eye on the traffic between Waterford and catholic Europe; the city was the main point of entry for catholic priests entering Ireland on missionary work. During 1607–9 he incurred £100 in expenses on rewarding spies and informers.
Vice-president of Munster Unhappy with the conditions of his office, Danvers left for England indefinitely in early 1609 and Moryson was appointed vice-president and effective governor of Munster in April. This promotion coincided with Waterford corporation's lodging a complaint against him in London for having quartered 100 soldiers on the city when it had been agreed that he could only lodge fifty soldiers there. The furore over this eventually led to a royal order commanding Moryson not to do this again. Infuriated by this, he claimed that he had only done so out of necessity as he had no other means of providing for his men. His adversarial relations with Waterford corporation were replicated elsewhere in Munster: in 1610 he arrested the mayor of Limerick for refusing to obey one of his warrants, only releasing him in May when ordered to do so by the government. Meanwhile, Waterford corporation continued to complain to London about Moryson's heavy-handedness, forcing him to produce detailed accounts of exactions levied on civilians by his soldiers during 1609–13.
These allegations would appear to relate to the manner in which he carried out the collection and disbursement of the royal composition, a tax paid by landowners to support the military establishment. A royal commission sent to investigate the government of Ireland in 1622 found that he enforced the composition by illegally quartering soldiers on areas where the collection was taking place; and it generally criticised the manner in which he was not held accountable for his discharge of this duty. The commission also reported that whereas the composition had yielded revenues of £1,687 a year during the mid 1590s, under his stewardship – a time of greater political stability and economic prosperity – it typically yielded only £1,457.
The crown's decision to call an Irish parliament in 1613 presaged a further battle of wills between Moryson and the catholic leadership. He believed that the creation of eight new protestant-controlled boroughs, and the ability of the royal sheriffs to manipulate election proceedings elsewhere, would result in Munster's returning a protestant majority of six MPs. Embarrassingly, he badly underestimated the strength and determination of the catholic freeholders, and as a result the catholics won a narrow 20:18 majority of the MPs returned from the province. Despite being the leading royal official in Munster, he did not contest a shire election and was returned to parliament for Bandonbridge, one of the newly created boroughs. In a further act of defiance, later that year all of the established corporations in Munster elected catholic officials, having been specifically warned against doing so by the king in 1612. Moryson's attitude towards the Old English catholics who controlled these corporations can be inferred from the Itinerary published by his brother Fynes in 1617. In this work Fynes writes that while the Gaelic Irish remained in a state of subjection, the Old English remained powerful and had become more defiant in their catholicism and in their opposition to the crown. He criticised the king's decision to renew what he termed the exorbitant charters of the Munster corporations, and predicted the onset of a future rebellion led by the Old English. Fynes had visited Richard in Munster in autumn 1613, and these passages were clearly influenced by his brother's outlook.
Richard's critics were by no means exclusively catholic, and he clashed repeatedly with the leading protestant landowner in Munster, Sir Richard Boyle (qv), who had acquired vast estates by dubious means and blatantly flouted government regulations as he set about developing them. Boyle routinely defeated Moryson's efforts to hold him to account by dispensing his considerable largesse among leading royal ministers in Dublin and London, and generally sought to undermine his authority. Moryson's role as enforcer of various government initiatives that attacked their economic interests did not endear him to the English settlers. These included his inquiries into the progress of the Munster plantation in August 1611 and his reserving – for the construction of ships for the royal navy – of some 40,000 trees from private exploitation.
Most controversial of all was his largely unsuccessful campaign against the colony of English pirates, some eleven ships and 1,000 sailors strong, who had established a base on the west coast of Munster by summer 1609. These marauders wreaked havoc on English and continental ships, but the trafficking of their booty proved a boon for the local economy. Moryson's proclamation forbidding any trade with the pirates was widely ignored even by many royal officials. He disrupted this commerce somewhat by deploying military contingents to certain harbours, but he lacked the manpower to root them out of their bases. In autumn 1609 he opened negotiations with the pirate leader with a view to enlisting their support for royal naval ventures such as the proposed colonisation of Virginia, but this came to nothing. Aware that many suspected that he and his subordinates connived at the pirates’ activities, in late 1610 he interrogated a number of local officials in Co. Cork regarding their dealings with pirates, but there was very little he could do to prevent such arrangements. Moreover, admiralty officials in London may also have been willing to accept bribes from the pirates; he complained that admiralty officials routinely arrived from London with commissions to negotiate with the very pirates he was trying to apprehend.
Departure from Munster and final years Moryson spent much of 1612–13 in England, leading the government to command him to return to his charge in Munster in summer 1613. Most likely he was preoccupied with private business, but he was also attempting to buy Danvers out and thereby succeed as president of Munster. In January 1613 it was reported that Danvers had agreed to sell him his office for £3,000. However, he was outbid by Thomond, who eventually became president in spring 1615. Setting financial factors aside, Moryson was the superior candidate in terms of experience and ability, but he was undone by political considerations. The depth of the catholic resistance to Moryson's rule of Munster had been strikingly demonstrated by the 1613 elections, and in summer 1614 the king had commanded Danvers to return to Munster for the first time in five years in order to mollify his discontented subjects there. Clearly, Moryson was too polarising a figure for this role. As a great nobleman with strong roots in the province, Thomond was a far more acceptable figure to the catholic and protestant elites of Munster, who probably regarded Moryson as a meddling bureaucrat and outsider. Rather unusually, given the length of his service, he does not appear to have bought much or possibly any land in Ireland, although he did make some private investments in the country.
Dejected by his failure to become president, he left Ireland in April 1615. However, his superiors sought to salve this blow by continuing him as governor of Co. Wexford and of Waterford city (June 1615) and as collector and receiver of the composition rents of Munster (14 May 1616), and by appointing him lieutenant of the ordnance in London (1 January 1616). He stayed in England to execute his duties as lieutenant of the ordnance, which involved the maintenance of the royal artillery and defensive fortifications; in January 1621 he was appointed to the newly established council of war. In England he divided his time between London and his country residence at Tooley Park, Leicestershire, where he sat as MP for Leicester (1621) and served as a JP. Nonetheless, Ireland remained a valuable source of income: his combined annual income from his two Irish government pensions and from his governorship amounted to £668, while he would also have derived significant financial perquisites from his command of a company of foot and especially from his patent to collect the Munster composition, a function which he delegated to a deputy. Although he experienced difficulties in getting paid his Irish pensions and salary, his role as collector of the Munster compositions enabled him to pay himself out of the composition revenues that came into his hands. The king formally accepted this practice in 1625 when he agreed that the composition revenues that Moryson owed to the royal treasury could be offset against the arrears in his salary and pensions.
He continued to nurture ambitions of becoming president of Munster, and in 1619 obtained a reversion to this position. However, his claims were again overlooked, apparently due to his infirmity, after Thomond's death in 1624. He is said to have died in 1628, but may have died in 1625, as by 1626 he no longer held his various government offices and military commands. He married (1603×1608) Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Henry Harrington; they had at least one son, Henry, knighted on 8 October 1627, and one daughter, Letitia, who married Lucius Carey, 2nd Viscount Falkland.