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3 unusual facts about Lord Chief Justice of Ireland


Henry Scott, 1st Earl of Deloraine

In 1693, he married Anne Duncombe (d. 1720), the daughter of William Duncombe of Batthesden, Lord Chief Justice of Ireland.

Thomas Fastolf

His brother Nicholas Fastolf (died 1330) became a serjeant-at-law and a Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, while his brother Lawrence was auditor of the audience court of Canterbury.

Woolley Hall

In the mid-fourteenth century, the nucleus of what became the Woolley estate belonged to Sir William de Notton, a man of local origin who achieved wealth and fame as a lawyer, and later Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, and derived his name from Notton, the village to the east of Woolley.


Robert de Ashton

In 1359 he was governor of 'Guynes' near Calais; in 1362 he was Lord Treasurer of England; in 1368 he had the custody of the castle of Sandgate near Calais with the lands and revenue thereto belonging; in 1369 he was admiral of the Narrow Seas; in 1372 he was Lord Chief Justice of Ireland and in 1373 again lord treasurer of England and King's Chamberlain.

Robert Tresilian

In the 1720s, Jonathan Swift, in his vehement attack on William Whitshed, Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, wrote that he had no parallel for judicial corruption except Tresillian and William Scroggs

Sir James Butler

Alice Butler (or Ellice) the first wife of Sir George Fleming of Stephenstown, second son of James Fleming, 7th Baron Slane: she was mother of James, who by his wife Ismay, daughter of the Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, Sir Bartholomew Dillon of Riverstown, was the father of Thomas Fleming, 10th Baron Slane.

William Huston Dodd

This led him on occasion into clashes with his colleagues: Peter O'Brien, the Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, once reminded him rather rudely and in open Court that he was the junior judge.

William Scroggs

Forty years after his death, Jonathan Swift in his celebrated attack on William Whitshed, Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, called him " as vile and profligate a villain as Scroggs".

William St Lawrence, 12th Baron Howth

His last will dated May 14 is evidence of a wide circle of gifted friends including Thomas Butler, 6th Earl of Ossory, John Keating, the future Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, and the leading physician Nicholas Henshaw.


see also

William Davys

Sir John Povey, the Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, died in 1679, and his successor Sir Robert Booth a year later.