Walsh, Sir Nicholas (d. 1615), government official and judge, may have been a son of James Walsh, who was mayor of Waterford in 1547. He appears to have been a favourite of Thomas Butler (qv), earl of Ormond. Little is known of his early life, save that he entered Lincoln's Inn in December 1561 and, following his return to Ireland, became recorder of Waterford, a position he held until his death. His closeness to Ormond and his protestantism greatly furthered his career. On 14 December 1570 he was appointed second justice in the Munster presidency, in which capacity he assisted the lord president of Munster, Sir John Perrot (qv), in quelling the rebellion of James fitz Maurice Fitzgerald (qv), who submitted in February 1573.
Perrot left Ireland later that summer, leaving Walsh as the senior crown official in the province. Aware that it was weakly garrisoned, he asked that a new president be dispatched quickly in order to prevent a recurrence of violence. His fears were borne out in November 1573, when Gerald Fitzgerald (qv), 15th earl of Desmond, escaped from Dublin and resumed command of his forces in Munster. Desmond's men seized two castles from royal garrisons and attacked and intimidated government supporters. Walsh responded by arresting some of Desmond's men, but was not adequately supported by the Dublin administration. Desmond accused Walsh of hiring gallowglass to attack his supporters. Despite the growing acrimony, both sides drew back from full-scale conflict and an uneasy truce was agreed in early March 1574. However, low-level violence prevailed in Munster until Desmond finally submitted to the government in September 1574.
Thereafter Walsh was one of three commissioners charged with the government of Munster, being responsible for the administration of justice until the appointment of another president in 1576. That year he was made chief justice of Munster. Following the outbreak of the second Desmond rebellion in summer 1579, Walsh remained in the province, but as a judicial official he did not play a major role in the conflict, which finally came to an end in November 1583. With the return of peace, he was again appointed a commissioner for the government of the province and in 1584 was made joint governor of Co. Cork.
In this role, in preparation for the plantation of Munster, he held the early inquisitions into attainted lands formerly held by rebels. However, he became increasingly uneasy about this process as he realised that many of his relatives were to be dispossessed by the government. Moreover, he himself had bought land cheaply from rebels and therefore opposed plans to hand such lands over to English colonists; later he successfully challenged grants of land that had been made to English colonisers and obtained control of substantial portions of them. He became a very wealthy man and in 1586 was described as the richest commoner in Munster. As well as the lands he had grabbed in the legal chaos caused by the second Desmond rebellion and subsequent plantation of Munster, he had property at Clonmore in Co. Kilkenny, where he lived, and by 1587 held a lease on large tracts of lands owned by the Kavanaghs in Wexford. His lands at Clonmore were very profitable, supplying Waterford city with foodstuffs and malt. Further, in 1576, he had been granted a twenty-one-year lease of the former lands of the monastery of Mawer in Co. Cork. This lease was subsequently renewed and extended.
Recognising that Walsh was both an obstacle to the plantation of Munster and a capable official, Perrot, by then lord deputy of Ireland, summoned him to Dublin and on 8 February 1585 gave him a role in the central administration as second justice of queen's bench. In the same year he was elected to the Irish parliament as MP for Waterford and then, as the government candidate, was elected speaker of the house of commons. This parliament exposed the breakdown in trust between the crown and the previously loyal Anglo-Norman magnates, gentry, and burghers of Leinster and Munster. Walsh's roots and private sympathies lay with the latter, but his own interest was bound up with the former. This conflict was apparent in his closing speech to the house of commons at the dissolution of the parliament on 14 May 1586. In a verbose address he chided his fellow MPs for failing to vote the government the taxes it urgently needed, but delivered an implied rebuke to the government for undermining the autonomy and liberties of the kingdom of Ireland. His efforts to straddle the widening chasm between crown and country were in vain. As a protestant and royal official, he was becoming widely disliked even in his native Waterford.
Soon after parliament ended Walsh travelled to London, remaining there probably till summer 1587. As a result of this visit he was confirmed in the lands he had acquired, secured an increase in his salary, and was appointed to the Irish privy council. He intended returning to Munster to resume his chief justiceship of the province but local officials successfully spoke against this, owing to his views on the land disputes still raging there. Instead he remained in Dublin and was assured by the queen that he would receive the next senior judgeship that fell vacant.
In the event, his career was nearly derailed by the power struggle between Perrot, who stepped down as lord deputy in 1588, and his successor, Sir William Fitzwilliam (qv). In 1590 Fitzwilliam decided to ruin Perrot by resurrecting charges that had been made against him made by a renegade priest, Sir Denis O'Roughan. In March 1590 Walsh was one of a number of commissioners assigned to interrogate O'Roughan about his allegations. However, as a longstanding supporter of Perrot, Walsh probably refused to further Fitzwilliam's plot. Fitzwilliam succeeded in securing Perrot's conviction for treason in spring 1592 and Perrot's allies also suffered: Walsh was expelled from the Irish privy council, denied his promised promotion, and threatened with trial in the court of castle chamber for wilfully mishandling the interrogation of O'Roughan in 1590.
In the event Walsh escaped lightly. Fitzwilliam valued him and had not wanted him punished, but the powerful lord treasurer of England, Lord Burghley, appears to have demanded a thorough purge of Perrot's clients. By June 1592 Fitzwilliam was beseeching Burghley to restore Walsh as a privy councillor because his legal expertise was sorely needed, and these efforts bore fruit after an acceptable interval. Walsh was sent to Munster as commissioner to settle land disputes arising from the plantation in autumn 1592, and from March 1593 was permitted to attend privy council meetings once more. On 15 November 1597 he secured his deferred promotion and was made chief justice of the common pleas; he was also knighted in that year. By this time the nine years war was well under way and the fighting spread to Munster in 1598. During 1598–1600 Walsh was mainly at Waterford, helping the civic authorities to further the crown's war effort. From spring 1600 he mostly attended on the lord president of Munster, Sir George Carew (qv), in his campaigns against the rebels, acting as the chief judicial officer in Munster.
The end of the war in spring 1603 coincided with the death of Elizabeth I. In April Walsh ordered the mayor of Waterford to proclaim the accession of James I as king. The mayor, backed by the citizens of Waterford, refused to do so, demanded toleration for catholicism, and tried to seize the proclamation order from him. Walsh said he would have been killed but for the fact that he was related to many of those present. Lord Deputy Mountjoy (qv) was forced to march south to suppress this pro-catholic uprising and others in towns throughout Munster. In May Walsh provided Mountjoy with legal advice in Cork city as he prosecuted the leading rebels there. With the establishment of largely peaceful conditions following the end of the war in 1603, Walsh spent the next decade dispensing justice, largely on circuit in Munster and south Leinster. In this role he clashed angrily with the president of Munster, Sir Henry Brouncker (qv), one of whose officials he had prosecuted for abuse of his martial law commission in hanging two jesters at Limerick. He served as treasurer of King's Inns, Dublin, in 1609. By 1611 Walsh was described as old and weak, and in April 1612 the king accepted his resignation as chief justice of common pleas.
Walsh was married twice, first to Catherine Comerford, and second to Jacquet, daughter of Sir Anthony Colclough (qv), of Tintern Abbey, Co. Wexford. Days before his death in April 1615, he converted to catholicism. His public burial as a catholic scandalised the government and was a great propaganda coup for the catholic church.