Robert FitzRery

Robert Fitzrery (died after 1472 ) was an Irish Law Officer, landowner and judge of the fifteenth century.

He was born at Swords, County Dublin.[1] The FitzRerys were a long-established family of Welsh origin who came to Ireland before the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland and settled at Cloghran in Swords, where they remained substantial landowners until the seventeenth century. Their claim to be descended from the Welsh ruler Gruffudd ap Cynan, King of Gwynedd (1055-1137), is not implausible since Gruffudd was born in Swords to an Irish mother, had numerous non-marital children, and retained close links with Dublin in later life.[2]

Robert was married to Joan White (or Whyte), and they jointly owned several properties, including one in Drogheda, which they leased to John Field and his wife Margaret Woodman in 1451,[3] and another in Dundalk which they leased to William Allyr in the same year.[4] Robert was the sole lessor of property, probably in County Louth, to Robert Dowdall, the Chief Justice of the Irish Common Pleas, in 1446. [5] Simon FitzRery, with whom he joined in a lease from the Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin of the profits of the prebend of Lusk in 1472, was probably a close relative of Robert.[6]

The first record of his professional life is in 1447, when James Butler, 4th Earl of Ormonde, probably the most powerful Anglo-Irish magnate of his time, appointed him his attorney in all his lawsuits. The choice of FitzRery for such an onerous employment suggests that he was highly regarded as a lawyer.[7]

He was appointed Attorney-General for Ireland in 1450, and almost immediately obtained a supplement to his annual salary in the amount of 100 shillings a year. [8]Both he and the King's Serjeant, Thomas Snetterby, complained that the fixed salary for a law officer (£9 a year) was grossly inadequate given their onerous workload, as had Snetterby's predecessor, Edward Somerton, and all three men received the increase requested.[9]

He held office as Attorney General until 1463. Though no patent seems to survive for his appointment to the Bench, a statute of the Parliament of Ireland of 1471-72 describes him as a justice of the Court of Common Pleas (Ireland).[10] However a lease of 1472 describes him as a narrator (which usually meant a barrister), suggesting that his tenure on the Bench had been a short one. His date of death is not recorded.