Bagenal, Dudley (d. 1712), Jacobite, was eldest son of Col. Walter Bagenal (qv) of Dunleckney, Co. Carlow, and his wife Elizabeth, daughter of John Roper, 3rd Lord Teynham, and widow of John Plunkett of Dunsoghly. His father, a staunch supporter of the Ormondist interest in the confederation of Kilkenny, was executed in 1652 and forfeited his estate of 15,000 acres at Dunleckney, Co. Carlow. Walter's wife, Elizabeth, received a yearly sum of £40 for certain lands settled on her by her first husband. Her children retained this allowance on her death in 1655, but they were taken to Dublin to be brought up as protestants; Dudley later reverted to catholicism. The lord lieutenant, Henry Cromwell (qv), showed a particular interest in his welfare, and when Dudley turned 18 he tried to procure him an apprenticeship at the bar under a Mr Hamden. Dudley finally secured a fellowship at St John's, Oxford, where he matriculated on 8 December 1658.
His ancestral lands and mansion at Dunleckney had passed into the hands of John Corbet, a relation of the chief baron Miles Corbet (qv), who married Bagenal's sister Catherine. Dudley was restored to his estate on the express orders of the restored Charles II. The king's order of 26 February 1661 noted the execution of Col. Walter ‘in which barbarous proceedings Col. Daniel Axtell (qv), one of the murderers of our said royal father, was a principal contriver and actor’, the death of Dudley's brother George (killed at Loughrea, 12 May 1651) ‘while serving under our authority’, and the fact that Dudley ‘hath given testimony of his zeal for our service even when a student in Oxford’ (RSAI Jn., iii (1860–61), 171).
Bagenal petitioned James II (qv) on his accession in 1685 for a place at court, pointing to his father's loyalty to Charles I and his trials and tribulations with Oliver Cromwell (qv) and the papal nuncio, Archbishop Rinuccini (qv). He also noted that he himself served under James as a volunteer during the first Anglo–Dutch war and that he had been forced to flee to France (with the permission of the duke of Ormond (qv)) during the popish plot. He represented Carlow in the 1689 Jacobite parliament along with Henry Luttrell (qv), served as lord lieutenant of the county, and was one of nine men appointed in Carlow (April 1690) to levy a tax of £20,000 towards the war effort. He later commanded an infantry regiment of 515 men that served at Dundalk and Drogheda.
Attainted in 1691, Bagenal forfeited his life's interest in his estate. However, William III (qv) bestowed £400 a year on his wife, possibly as a result of the intercession of the 2nd duke of Ormond (qv). Dudley emigrated shortly afterwards, and secured a post as gentleman of the bedchamber at James II's court in exile. He remained for a time a member of James III's household but retired to Flanders, where he died 27 July 1712 in Bruges.
He married first Anne, only daughter of Edward Butler of Ballyragget, Co. Kilkenny. In 1668 he married her cousin Anne Mathew of Thomastown, Co. Kilkenny, a daughter of George Mathew, the result of a match made by Mathew's half-brother, the duke of Ormond. Their children included Walter, the heir (who converted to protestantism but probably remained a Jacobite at heart); Sister Catherine Dominic, abbess of the convent of the Poor Clares at Gravelines, a close associate of her kinsman Ormond, and an energetic but indiscreet Jacobite conspirator; and George, a Jacobite agent, accomplished linguist, musician, and rake. Mrs Bagenal also served as a Jacobite courtier; her name continually appeared in the correspondence of James III, the earl of Mar (d. 1732), and the duke of Berwick (qv), and she may have played a prominent part in Ormond's decision to embrace the Jacobite cause.