Robert Dowdall

Sir Robert Dowdall (died 1482) was an Irish judge who held the office of Chief Justice of the Irish Common Pleas for more than forty years.

Career

He was the son of Luke Dowdall of County Louth. The Dowdalls were a Derbyshire family who originated at Dovedale, and came to Ireland in the thirteenth century.[1] Later members of the family included George Dowdall, Archbishop of Armagh, James Dowdall, the Catholic martyr, and James Dowdall, Lord Chief Justice of Ireland.

He was appointed King's Serjeant in 1435 and Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas (Ireland) in 1438; he held that office until his death in 1482. He was Deputy Treasurer of Ireland in 1461 and was knighted the same year.

He married Anne Wogan of Rathcoffey, County Kildare, in 1454. He resided mainly at Clontarf near Dublin.[2] He was a companion of the Brotherhood of Saint George, a short-lived military order founded by King Edward IV in 1474 for the defence of the Pale.

Attempted murder

Dowdall is mainly remembered by historians for the serious assault on him in 1462 by Sir James Keating, Prior of the Knights Hospitallers. Dowdall, who was making a pilgrimage to a holy well near Kilmainham, County Dublin, was atttacked by Keating with a sword and was put in fear of his life. [3] Dowdall prosecuted Keating before the Irish Parliament, which found Keating guilty of assault. He was fined £100, and ordered to pay Dowdall 100 marks as compensation, but was apparently able on technical grounds to evade making either payment.[4]

The motive for the attack is unknown: Elrington Ball, comparing it to the murder of James Cornwalsh, Chief Baron of the Irish Exchequer, twenty years earlier, argued that crimes of violence were indigenous to medieval Ireland.[5] However, equally savage crimes took place in contemporary England, such as the murder in 1455 of the respected lawyer Nicholas Radford by Thomas Courtenay, 6th Earl of Devon,[6] and it is arguable that such incidents demonstrate a general breakdown of law and order in both kingdoms in the mid-fifteenth century, which greatly weakened the authority of the English Crown. Keating, despite his clerical rank, seems to have been a violent and turbulent individual, who was disgraced many years later for his part in the attempt to put the pretender Lambert Simnel on the throne of England.

Descendants

By his wife Anne Wogan, Robert had at least one son, Thomas Dowdall, Master of the Rolls in Ireland, through whom he was the ancestor of James Dowdall, Lord Chief Justice of Ireland.

References

  1. ↑ Otway-Ruthven, A.J. A History of Medieval Ireland Barnes and Noble 1993 p.116
  2. ↑ Ball F. Elrington The Judges in ireland 1221-1921 John Murray London 1926 Vol.i p.177
  3. ↑ Thomas D'Arcy McGee A Popular History of Ireland from the Earliest Times to Catholic Emancipation Montreal 1862 3 Volumes
  4. ↑ McGee History of Ireland
  5. ↑ Ball, p.100
  6. ↑ Ross, Charles Edward IV Methuen London 1974 p.390
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