Thomas Snetterby

Thomas Snetterby (died after 1455) was an Irish barrister, King's Serjeant and Crown official of the fifteenth century.

He seems to have been a native of Dublin city and lived near present day Kevin Street in the city centre.[1] Little else is known of him until 1447 when he was appointed Serjeant-at-law (Ireland), "so long as he was of good behaviour".[2]He was granted the same fee- £9 per annum- as his predecessor Edward Somerton.[3]

The office of Serjeant was an onerous one- he was not only the senior legal adviser to the English Crown (at that time outranking the Attorney General) but effectively in modern terms a Government minister- and Somerton is known to have complained that the salary was grossly inadequate.[4] Presumably Snetterby made the same complaint: by 1450 he was receiving the same additional payment of 100 shillings per annum as Somerton had. A similar arrangement was made for Robert FitzRery, the Attorney General for Ireland (in office 1450–63). In 1455 Snetterby was described as "serjeant at laws of our sovereign lord the king in his whole kingdom of Ireland". He died or resigned some time between 1455 and 1460.[5]

The orchard adjoining his house just south of Kevin Street long outlasted the house itself, and was still know in the seventeenth century as "Thomas Snetterby's orchard".[6]

Sources
  • Hart, A. R. A History of the King's Serjeant at law in Ireland Four Courts Press Dublin 2000
  • Patent Rolls 25 Henry VI
  • Warburton, John, Whitelaw James, Walsh, Robert History of the City of Dublin London 1818

Notes
  1. Warburton et. al. Vol.1 p.100
  2. Patent Rolls 25 Henry VI
  3. Hart p.21
  4. Hart p.21
  5. Hart p,21
  6. Warburton p.100
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