Life

He was second son of Sir Anthony St Leger by his wife Agnes, daughter of Sir Hugh Warham, brother of Archbishop William Warham

William Warham

William Warham , Archbishop of Canterbury, belonged to a Hampshire family, and was educated at Winchester and New College, Oxford, afterwards practising and teaching law both in London and Oxford....

, and was born probably about 1525. His eldest brother, William, was disinherited; the third brother, Sir Anthony St Leger, was made Master of the Rolls in Ireland

Master of the Rolls in Ireland

The office of Master of the Rolls in Ireland originated in the office of the keeper of the Rolls in the Irish Chancery and became an office granted by letters patent in 1333. It was abolished in 1924....

 in 1593. Warham may have served in Protector Somerset's invasion of Scotland in 1547, and he was a prisoner there until January 1550, when he was ransomed.

In 1553 he fought against supporters of Wyatt's rebellion

Wyatt's rebellion

Wyatt's Rebellion was a popular uprising in England in 1554, named after Thomas Wyatt the younger, one of its leaders. The rebellion arose out of concern over Queen Mary I's determination to marry Philip II of Spain, which was an unpopular policy with the English...

 in Kent

Kent

Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...

, and he may have served in Ireland under his father during Mary's reign. About 1559 he was named a commissioner to transfer to England John Bale

John Bale

John Bale was an English churchman, historian and controversialist, and Bishop of Ossory. He wrote the oldest known historical verse drama in English , and developed and published a very extensive list of the works of British authors down to his own time, just as the monastic libraries were being...

's manuscripts and books. In 1560 he was sheriff of Kent. He was soon a member of the Irish privy council, and in July 1565 he was knighted. Queen Elizabeth

Elizabeth I of England

Elizabeth I was queen regnant of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. Sometimes called The Virgin Queen, Gloriana, or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth was the fifth and last monarch of the Tudor dynasty...

 had decided to establish a presidential government in Munster

Munster

Munster is one of the Provinces of Ireland situated in the south of Ireland. In Ancient Ireland, it was one of the fifths ruled by a "king of over-kings" . Following the Norman invasion of Ireland, the ancient kingdoms were shired into a number of counties for administrative and judicial purposes...

, and in January 1566 St Leger was nominated President of Munster, but locally by Sir Henry Sidney, the lord deputy; he received instructions dated 1 February, and in the following month was given command of all the levies in Munster. Elizabeth, however, refused to confirm St Leger's appointment. The reason was that St Leger was a bitter enemy of Thomas Butler, 10th Earl of Ormond, and correspondingly friendly with Gerald Fitzgerald, 15th Earl of Desmond

Gerald FitzGerald, 15th Earl of Desmond

Gerald FitzGerald, 15th Earl of Desmond was an Irish nobleman and leader of the Desmond Rebellions of 1579.-Life:...

; and the queen accused St Leger of lukewarmness in arresting Desmond early in 1565. St Leger was consequently recalled, and in November 1568 Sir John Perrot became president of Munster.

In 1569 St Leger returned to England, residing at his house in Southwark

Southwark

Southwark is a district of south London, England, and the administrative headquarters of the London Borough of Southwark. Situated east of Charing Cross, it forms one of the oldest parts of London and fronts the River Thames to the north...

 or Leeds Castle

Leeds Castle

Leeds Castle, southeast of Maidstone, Kent, England, dates back to 1119, though a Saxon fort stood on the same site from the 9th century. The castle is built on islands in a lake formed by the River Len to the east of the village of Leeds....

, Kent, and serving as High Sheriff of Kent

High Sheriff of Kent

The High Sheriff is the oldest secular office under the Crown. Formerly the High Sheriff was the principal law enforcement officer in the county but over the centuries most of the responsibilities associated with the post have been transferred elsewhere or are now defunct, so that its functions...

 for 1560. There from 1570 to 1572 he had custody of Desmond and his family (see Desmond Rebellions

Desmond Rebellions

The Desmond Rebellions occurred in 1569-1573 and 1579-1583 in the Irish province of Munster.They were rebellions by the Earl of Desmond – head of the FitzGerald dynasty in Munster – and his followers, the Geraldines and their allies against the threat of the extension of Elizabethan English...

). He left his wife at Carrigaline

Carrigaline

Carrigaline is a single-street town in County Cork, Ireland. It is about 12 km from Cork City which can be reached by car in 25 minutes...

, County Cork

County Cork

County Cork is a county in Ireland. It is located in the South-West Region and is also part of the province of Munster. It is named after the city of Cork . Cork County Council is the local authority for the county...

, a manor he held from Desmond; during his absence it was ravaged by the rebels. He remained in England until 1579, when his repeated petitions for employment and reward were answered by his appointment as provost-marshal of Munster, a new office, the functions of which seem to have been purely military. In this capacity St Leger was actively engaged against the Irish rebels for ten years. On 7 April 1583 he was appointed an assistant to the court of high commission in Ireland, and in the following year he visited England. While there he accused Ormond of treason, and laid before the queen proposals for the government of Ireland. In November 1589 he was succeeded, probably on account of his old age, as provost-marshal by George Thornton, but in 1590 he was governing Munster in the absence of the vice-president.

He was in England again in 1594, and died at Cork in 1597. His will is in the Heralds' College, London.

Family

He married: first, Ursula (d. 1575), fifth daughter of George Neville, 5th Baron Bergavenny. His eldest son, Sir Anthony St Leger, succeeded to the estates at Ulcombe, Kent, married Mary, daughter of Sir Thomas Scott (of Scot's Hall)

Thomas Scott (of Scot's Hall)

Sir Thomas Scott , of Scot's Hall in Kent, was an English Member of Parliament .He was the eldest son of Sir Reginald Scott, a member of one of the leading families in the county, and quickly became prominent in public affairs. He was knighted in 1571, served as MP for Kent in the parliaments of...

, Kent, and was father of Warham St Leger who was knighted in 1608, sold Leeds Castle, went with Walter Ralegh to Guyana

Guyana

Guyana , officially the Co-operative Republic of Guyana, previously the colony of British Guiana, is a sovereign state on the northern coast of South America that is culturally part of the Anglophone Caribbean. Guyana was a former colony of the Dutch and of the British...

, and died in 1631, leaving a son Sir Anthony (d. 1680), who was made master of the mint in 1660. Of St Leger's daughters, Anne (1555–1636) married Thomas Digges

Thomas Digges

Sir Thomas Digges was an English mathematician and astronomer. He was the first to expound the Copernican system in English but discarded the notion of a fixed shell of immoveable stars to postulate infinitely many stars at varying distances; he was also first to postulate the "dark night sky...

 and was mother of Sir Dudley Digges. St Leger married, secondly, Emmeline Goldwell (d. 1628), by whom he had a son Walter, who obtained his father's Irish property.

The Warham St Leger who died in combat in 1600 was his nephew.