Pynnar, Nicholas
(fl.
He left Ireland soon afterwards and spent some time in Venice, where he was employed as a military engineer. In December 1607 he was sent to London on diplomatic business by the English ambassador, Sir Henry Wotton. His efforts to find employment were unsuccessful, and before May 1609 he went to Sweden in charge of a band of Irish troops raised to fight for King Charles IX of Sweden. While engaged in this service he applied for a servitor's portion of land in the plantation then under way in Ulster, and on 7 May 1611 he received a grant of 1,000 acres, created as the manor of Pynnar, in the barony of Tullyhaw in north-west Cavan. Pynnar was appointed to a committee to determine disputes between grantees in the county, but he appears to have made no progress in developing his property. In the following year he left Ireland for France in the company of Lord Cromwell, and subsequently made his way back to Venice.
He reappeared in Ireland before 10 March 1617, when he was commissioned to view the forts of Ulster and Connacht, and it soon became clear that he had developed influential connections with men who were associated with the new royal favourite, the marquis of Buckingham. On 27 February 1618 he was appointed jointly with Sir Thomas Rotheram, governor of Connacht, to the office of director-general and overseer of the fortifications and buildings in Ireland; in July he was employed as muster master in Munster and Connacht; in November, with Rotheram and William Parsons (qv), he undertook a survey of the acreage of Co. Longford and the Ely O'Carroll country in north Munster. On 27 November 1618 he was appointed to lead a commission to inquire into the extent to which the grantees in the plantation of Ulster had fulfilled the conditions required of them. The survey, which followed from the unfavourable reports on the progress of the plantation presented by Sir Josias Bodley (qv), was conducted from 1 December 1618 to 28 March 1619. It reviewed the state of development in close detail, barony by barony, disclosing wide variations in compliance but revealing in general a considerable degree of improvement on the situation described by Bodley. It passed silently over the previous history of the manor of Pynnar, noting only that that this portion ‘called Larga’ was in the possession of William Parsons (Hill, Plantation, 338, 474).
In October 1621 Pynnar was one of a small group of officials who received the first warrants for grants in the plantation of Leitrim, but there is no evidence that he developed his 700 acres. In the same year he was named as a burgess of Londonderry, but there is no record that he lived there. He was chiefly employed in surveying and repairing the fortifications around the coast of Ireland. In 1621–3 he made surveys of the castle of Limerick and the forts of Galway, Duncannon, Haulbowline, Castle Park, and Banagher, sending in estimates for the necessary repairs, and drawings to illustrate what was required. In 1625 he and Rotherham received £1,000 to build three new citadels at Waterford, Cork and Galway. The amount was insufficient, but it was supplemented by local contributions, most notably from Richard Boyle (qv), earl of Cork, and all three were completed to Pynnar's design.
In 1630 Pynnar was removed from the Irish establishment and went to London to petition for his position and his arrears, carrying letters of recommendation from Parsons and Lord Wilmot (qv), commander-in-chief of the army, to the new secretary of state, Lord Dorchester, whom he had known during his second period in Venice. The outcome, four years later, was a proposal that he should forgo half of the sum due to him in return for a renewal of the patent, to himself alone, at half of his original salary. He accepted the offer, and between 1637 and 1640 continued to inspect the fortifications and assisted in the surveys of Connacht and Wicklow. In 1643, when Sir William Parsons was removed from all his offices, Pynnar was appointed surveyor general of the lands, plantations, and mines, a position he combined with that of director general of the fortifications. The latter post was granted to Capt. John Paine in 1644 on a temporary basis, which suggests that Pynnar may have died in that year.