Sir Richard Bulkeley, 1st Baronet

Sir Richard Bulkeley, 1st Baronet (7 September 1634 – 17 March 1685)[1] was an Irish politician and baronet.

Born at Tallaght, County Dublin, he was the oldest son of William Bulkeley, Archdeacon of Dublin, a son of Lancelot Bulkeley, Archbishop of Dublin, and his first wife Elizabeth Mainwaring, daughter of Henry Mainwaring, Archdeacon of Ossory.[2] Bulkeley was High Sheriff of Wicklow in 1660 and sat in the Irish House of Commons as MP for Baltinglass between 1665 and 1666.[2] On 9 December 1672, he was created a baronet, of Old Bawn, in the County of Dublin, and of Dunlaven, in the County of Wicklow.[3]

In 1659, he married as his first wife Catherine Bysse, daughter of John Bysse, Chief Baron of the Irish Exchequer, and his wife Margaret Edgeworth, and had by her two sons.[3] She died in 1664,[4] and on 8 February 1684, Bulkeley married secondly Dorothy Whitfield, daughter of Henry Whitfield MP and his wife Hester Temple, at the Church of St Nicholas Without, Dublin.[2] He died only a year later, and was succeeded in the baronetcy by his eldest son Richard.[1] His widow two years after his death remarried as his third wife William Worth, Baron of the Court of Exchequer (Ireland); she died in 1705.[5] Rather strangely by modern standards, Worth after Dorothy's death remarried her stepson's widow, Lucy Downing, who was a daughter of the eminent politician and financier Sir George Downing, 1st Baronet and his wife Frances Howard.[5] His estates eventually passed to his granddaughter Hester, who married James Worth Tynte, youngest son of Dorothy's second husband William Worth by a previous marriage.