Piers (Pierse), Sir Henry (d. 1638), administrator, whose parentage is unknown, served as secretary to Sir Arthur Chichester (qv) throughout his eleven years as lord deputy of Ireland, from 3 February 1605 to 30 August 1616. For some time (1607–11), he combined the duties of this post with the position of constable of Dublin Castle. Little direct evidence remains of the services he performed for Chichester in the early years, but their nature is revealed by the rewards he received. In 1607, 1609 and 1611 Piers, both alone and jointly with two fellow officials, received a total of twenty-one grants of land in fourteen counties, each for a period of twenty-one years, in consideration of their having discovered that these properties were crown lands whose true ownership had been concealed. After 1611, his investigative skills were re-directed into the finding of royal title in those parts of Wexford and the midlands to which the government had determined to introduce plantations.
Piers represented the newly created borough of Baltimore, Co. Cork, in the parliament convened in 1613. In 1621 he acquired Sir James Hamilton's 3,000 acre proportion in the barony of Clonkee in Cavan, in response to which half of the tenants removed themselves to Hamilton's estate in Co. Down. When Piers was created a baronet at Dublin on 21 June 1622, he was described as being of Piers Court, Cavan. He was knighted on 21 December following. On 4 July 1629 he received a confirmatory regrant of his Cavan lands which became the manor of Pierscourt.
Piers, who married a daughter of Sir Francis Strafford, a servitor and member of the Irish privy council, died 6 November 1638 and was succeeded by his only son George who died without issue about 1649, when the baronetcy was extinguished. He has been confused with his namesake Henry (d. 1623), the eldest son of William Piers (qv), of Tristernagh, Co. Westmeath, whose grandson Henry received a baronetcy in 1661.