Chronicle of the law officers of Ireland/Preface
PREFACE.
The design of this Volume is to supply such information in this neglected portion of Irish History as will enable the profession, and the historical and antiquarian student, to ascertain with correctness the names of the Great Law Officers of Ireland, and the times in which they flourished. Whilst reference in Ecclesiastical History and in the Peerage, has been rendered easy and familiar by the numerous memoirs and statistical works which illustrate those departments it is, to say the least, singular, that no list of the Irish Judges has been published, and it certainly cannot be accounted for, on the ground that the power and influence exercised by them, and attached to their stations, were less felt and acknowledged by the various classes of society, or that the individuals who filled those offices and successively presided in the Irish Courts of Law, played no less important part in the general history of the country; although an attempt is made in the present work to remedy the deficiency, and give correct lists of the Judges and Law Officers of the superior Courts, it is impossible in the limits of one volume to supply all the various information the subject would admit of.
The lists of appointments down to the accession of George the Third, have been selected from the repertory of Patentee Officers collected and arranged by Mr. Lodge, and first printed in the Liber Hiberniæ, but as no part of that work was ever published, they have remained almost unnoticed. The appointments from 1760 have been collected from the best and most authentic sources. These abstracts of patents contain the name of the individual appointed to the office; the succession, that is, in whose place or on what occasion the person was appointed; the date of the Sovereign's Letter or Privy Seal for the appointment; the date of the patent; the term for which the office was granted; the fee or salary annexed to the office, and some of the early patents contain entries of payments for offices previously filled by the individual; the year of the Sovereign's reign, and the roll or authority quoted for the appointment. The term of office was sometimes during life, sometimes during good behaviour, but oftener during the Sovereign's pleasure; in all cases the death of the Sovereign determined the commission. In the year 1782 this was altered by an act of the Irish parliament, which secured the independence of the Judges, and declared their commissions shall continue during good behaviour, and notwithstanding the demise of the crown. Mr. Lodge only notices those appointments of which some roll or record existed; hence it was impossible to form a perfect series, from the destruction of many records; for instance, in the time of Cantoc, chancellor, all the records of Chancery down to the reign of Edward I., were destroyed by fire.
Numerous chasms and omissions will be observed in the succession of appointments; as far as the twenty-sixth year of Henry the Eighth, the series is frequently interrupted and broken; from that date the lists are carried down with tolerable regularity to the year 1644, from that to 1655 there is a chasm very obviously to be accounted for. Cromwell's rolls commence in 1655, from which time or from the Restoration the lists will be found regular.
Many of the patents are continuations, renewals, or amendments of former grants. The number of Judges in each Court was very uncertain. Edward II. being informed that there were more justices appointed than there ought to be in the King's Bench in Ireland, issued writs to discharge and remove all but three of the most sufficient of them, yet until the reign of Elizabeth two would appear to have been the usual number in the King's Bench and Exchequer.
The separation of the Common Pleas and Exchequer would appear not to have taken place at so early a period in Ireland as in England. In Prynn's Collections writs are mentioned which were; issued to the sheriffs of the different counties concerning the jurisdiction and settling of the Court of Common Pleas in the sixth of Edward the Third, according to the great Charter and the Court of Common Fleas in England. In the reign of Elizabeth a third Judge was added in each court, and with very few exceptions continued by her successors. A fourth was appointed in 1784.
The Chronological Table gives the promotions, deaths and resignations from the time of Queen Elizabeth, with the dates of those changes; (a similar Table of the Law Officers of England was published some years since;) also lists of those in office on the accession of each Sovereign; the dates of the promotions are those in the patents. In some few instances where the patent was not finished, or where from some other cause the exact date of the patent could not be ascertained, that of the Royal Letter or Privy Seal is substituted.
In the Chronological Table and Index the computation has been adopted from the first year of the reigning King or Queen, and not from the first of January in each year; thus the reign of Queen Elizabeth began November 17, 1558, consequently every promotion or death which might have taken place before November 17, 1559, will be found under the first year, 1558; the same rule has been observed throughout.
A list of those who had patents of precedence, together with Tables of Offices created at different periods, of the salaries in 1690 and at the present time, are subjoined.
In the Outline of the Legal History will be found a sketch of the state of the law and its administrators at different periods. The author, Mr. Duhigg, was for many years librarian to the King's Inns; it does not extend beyond the year 1806, and the correctness of the individual characters he has traced will be admitted by those really acquainted with the history of the country.
As a work of this nature will be chiefly useful for reference, the Indexes have been formed to facilitate that object; and it is hoped that in general, and in the most important parts, the work will be found correct.
- Lincoln's Inn,
March 23d, 1839.