Portrait of William Pelham (1577). Oil on panel. 90 x 72. Sale $91,400 (2009, Sotheby's, L09682, 2). Sir William Pelham was an English soldier and Lord Justice of Ireland, which was a military and political role rather than a judicial one. He was third son of Sir William Pelham of Laughton, Sussex, by his second wife, Mary, daughter of William Sandys, 1st Baron Sandys of the Vyne near Basingstoke in Hampshire and his wife Margaret Bray. His full brothers included Edmund Pelham, Chief Baron of the Irish Exchequer: their eldest half-brother was Sir Nicholas Pelham. His father died in 1538, and Pelham was probably thirty when he was appointed captain of the pioneers at the siege of Leith in 1560. Among the siegeworks, his pioneers built a sconce with four bastions which was called Mount Pelham. William was commended on that occasion; but, according to Humfrey Barwick, his bad engineering was responsible for the wound inflicted during the assault on Arthur Grey, 14th Lord Grey de Wilton, the son of the army's commander. He commanded the pioneers at Le Havre in November 1562 under Ambrose Dudley, 3rd Earl of Warwick; and, despatched to the assistance of Admiral Coligny in February 1563, was present at the capture of Caen. Returning to Le Havre in March, he was wounded during a skirmish with the forces of the Rhinegrave in June. He assisted at the negotiations for the surrender of Le Havre, and was a hostage for the fulfilment of the conditions of surrender. Subsequently, on his return to England, he was employed with Portinari and Jacopo Aconcio in inspecting and improving the fortifications of Berwick upon Tweed. Confidence was reposed in his judgment, and, appointed lieutenant-general of the ordnance, he was chiefly occupied for several years in strengthening the defences of the kingdom. He accompanied Henry Brooke, 11th Baron Cobham, and Secretary Francis Walsingham on a diplomatic mission to the Netherlands in the summer of 1578, and in the following summer he was sent to Ireland to organise the defence of the Pale against possible inroads by the O'Neills. He was knighted by Sir William Drury, and, on the latter's death shortly afterwards, was chosen by the Privy Council of Ireland to be Lord Justice of Ireland ad interim. The situation of affairs in Munster, recently convulsed by the rebellion of James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald, and the menacing attitude of Gerald FitzGerald, 15th Earl of Desmond and his brother Sir John of Desmond, obliged him to go there. His efforts at conciliation proving ineffectual, he caused the earl to be proclaimed a traitor; but, finding himself not sufficiently strong to attack Askeaton, he returned to Dublin by way of Galway, leaving the management of the war in Munster to Thomas Butler, 10th Earl of Ormond. His proceeding gave considerable offence to Queen Elizabeth, reluctant to involve herself in a new and costly campaign; and Pelham, though pleading in justification Drury's intentions and the necessity of the proclamation, asked to be relieved of his office. Yielding to pressure from England, Pelham in January 1580 prepared to go to Munster himself. At Waterford, where he was detained till about the middle of February for want of victuals, he determined, in consequence of rumours of a Spanish invasion, to entrust the government of the counties of Cork and Waterford to Sir William Morgan, and in conjunction with the Earl of Ormonde to direct his march through Connello and Kerry to Dingle. He carried out his intention ruthlessly, killing indiscriminately according to the Annals of Four Masters. Returning along the sea-coast, he sat down before Carrigafoyle Castle on 25 March. Two days later he carried the place by assault, and put the garrison to the sword, sparing no one. Terrified by the fate of Carrigafoyle, the garrison at Askeaton surrendered without a blow, and Desmond's last stronghold of Ballyloughan fell at the same time into Pelham's hands. With his headquarters at Limerick, the lord justice garrisoned the Desmond district, his object being to confine the struggle to Kerry, and, with the assistance of the fleet, under Admiral Winter, to starve the rebels into submission. He also summoned a meeting of the noblemen and chief gentry of the province; but the attendance was meagre. He and Ormonde then entered Kerry together. From Castleisland, where they narrowly missed capturing the Earl of Desmond and Nicholas Sanders, they advanced along the valley of the River Maine, scouring the country as they went, to Dingle. At Dingle they found Admiral Winter, and, with his assistance, Pelham ransacked the coast between Dingle and Cork, while Ormonde harried the interior of the country. The western chiefs one by one submitted to Ormonde.