Corruption and crown government in late Elizabethan Ireland: the career and writings of Robert Legge

Corruption was often said to be endemic in Elizabethan Ireland. Yet, few studies have been conducted to assess exactly what was involved in this ‘corruption’ and whether or not it was egregious or simply the species of profiteering from office which was tolerated, and in many ways expected, in early modern Europe. This paper explores this issue by providing a case study of one English official, Robert Legge, the deputy remembrancer of the Irish exchequer in late Elizabethan Ireland, who was particularly troubled by the levels of peculation he claimed to encounter in the Irish administration. Legge spent ten years in Ireland from the mid-1580s until his disappearance from the official record in 1593, during which time he composed many treatises and reports detailing the alleged corruption of the lord deputy, Sir William Fitzwilliam, and many other officials in the country. In assessing his writings, this paper examines the nature of corruption in Elizabethan Ireland and how it contributed to the problems faced by the regime there on the eve of the Nine Years War.