Nicholas St Lawrence, 11th Baron Howth  Nicholas St Lawrence, 11th Baron Howth (1597–1643) was an Anglo-Irish nobleman of the seventeenth century. The Lords of Howth for over a century had played a crucial role in Irish politics; but Nicholas, unlike many of his ancestors, preferred a quiet domestic life. During the English Civil War, his loyalty to the English Crown led to the forfeiture of much of his estates, and the troubles he endured during the conflict are said to have hastened his death. He was the elder son of Christopher St Lawrence, 10th Baron Howth (d. 1619) and Elizabeth Wentworth (d. 1627), daughter of Sir John Wentworth of Gosfield, Essex and his first wife Elizabeth Heydon. His childhood is unlikely to have been happy, as his parents' marriage was notoriously troubled and they separated when he was still a small boy. Nicholas and his mother (who after his father's death remarried Sir Robert Newcomen, 1st Baronet) were never close: in her last will she graciously forgave him for the "great grief" he had caused her over a lawsuit. He succeeded to the title at the age of 22, by which time he was a married man with several children, and by his own wish led "an uneventful and domestic life"; although he did play some role in politics. In 1625 he announced his willingness to make a "free gift " to King Charles I, and was on the committee to raise a subsidy for the maintenance of troops. In 1627 Lord Dunboyne killed his relative James Prendergast in a dispute over an inheritance and was charged, not with murder, but the lesser crime of manslaughter. He claimed the privilege of peerage i.e. the right to be tried by his peers and Lord Howth was one of the judges who sat to try the case. With only one dissenting vote they found him not guilty of manslaughter; Howth voted with the majority. In 1629 Howth joined with his fellow peers in protesting against the level of Irish taxation and in 1630 he petitioned the English Crown for the summoning of the Irish Parliament. When the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford summoned the Irish Parliament in 1634 Howth played a prominent part in its proceedings, sitting on two key committees. He took his duties as Lord of the Peninsula and Port of Howth seriously, and was much occupied in trying to suppress piracy, an endemic problem in seventeenth-century Ireland.