Attorney-General for Ireland

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This article is about the pre-independence office. For the modern office, see Attorney General of Ireland.

Michael Morris, later Lord Killanin, Attorney-General for Ireland from 1866 to 1867
Philip Tisdall, Attorney-General for Ireland from 1760 to 1777, portrait by Angelica Kauffmann

The Attorney-General for Ireland was an Irish and then (from the Act of Union 1800) United Kingdom government office-holder. He was senior in rank to the Solicitor-General for Ireland: both advised the Crown on Irish legal matters. With the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922, the duties of the Attorney-General and Solicitor-General for Ireland were taken over by the Attorney General of Ireland. The office of Solicitor-General for Ireland was abolished for reasons of economy. This led to repeated complaints from the first Attorney General of Ireland, Hugh Kennedy, about the "immense volume of work" which he was now forced to deal with single-handedly.[1]

History of the Office

The first record of the office of Attorney General for Ireland, some 50 years after the equivalent office was established in England, is in 1313, when Richard Manning was appointed King's Attorney (the title Attorney General was not used until the 1530s),[2] at a salary of 5 marks a year. The Attorney General was initially junior to the serjeant-at-law, but since the titles of King's Serjeant and King's Attorney were often used interchangeably, it can be difficult to establish who held which office at any given time.[2] Early holders of the office, including Manning, were also permitted to take private clients.[2] Casey states that the records cast very little light on the duties of the Attorney-General in the early years, no doubt a reflection of his inferior status compared to the Serjeant-at-law.[2]

There are at least two references to a Deputy Attorney-General.[3] The first was in 1385, when Robert Hemynborough, or de Hemynborgh, was appointed Attorney-General "with power to appoint a Deputy".[4] Two centuries later, Edward Butler, who became Attorney-General in 1582, had already acted as Deputy from 1578 to 1580.[3] Apart from these two examples, there is no evidence that the Deputy Attorney-General was a permanent position, nor do we know why it was considered necessary to appoint Butler to this office (pressure of work may be the explanation).

It seems that early Attorneys-General might be licensed to appear in certain courts only. Both John de Leycestre (1357) and John Barry (1401) were given a patent to plead in the Court of Common Pleas (Ireland) and the Court of Exchequer (Ireland).[4] John White was described in 1427 as "King's Attorney in the King's Bench and the Exchequer".[5] The Serjeant-at-law, by contrast, was generally licensed to appear in all the Royal Courts, although John Haire in 1392 was described as "Serjeant-at-law of our Lord the King in the Common Pleas".[6]

Perhaps because the Attorney-General was in the earlier centuries junior to the Serjeant-at-law, some holders of the office may not have been as highly qualified. Thomas Archbold (or Galmole), appointed Attorney-General in 1478, was a goldsmith by profession, and, perhaps more suitably, was also Master of the Royal Mint in Ireland.

The Attorney-General and the Serjeant-at-law

In 1537 there was a short-lived attempt, following the report of a royal commission, to expand the role of the Attorney General, which would have involved the abolition of the office of King's Serjeant. The proposal was defeated largely through the firm opposition of the Serjeant-at-law, Patrick Barnewall, who argued that arguing cases for the Crown was and always had been the proper task of the Serjeant-at-law: "the King's Serjeant has always used to maintain the Pleas.... for this two hundred years and more". Why the more junior office was favoured over the much longer established office of Serjeant is not clear

From the early 1660s, due largely to the personal prestige of Sir William Domville (AG 1660-1686), the Attorney General became the chief legal adviser to the Crown. In certain periods, notably during the reign of Elizabeth I, who thought poorly of her Irish-born law officers, the English Crown adopted a policy of choosing only English lawyers for this office, and also the Solicitor-General.[2] Her successor King James I in 1620, on the appointment of Sir William Ryves, noted that the Attorney-General and Solicitor-General "have always been of the King's choice and special nomination",[4] and that they were the Crown servants in whom the King places, above his other learned counsel and officers of the Court: "his more special trust regarding the preservation of his revenue and possessions". It is interesting that the King here seems to place the Attorney and the Solicitor above the Serjeant-at-law in importance.[4]

The Attorney-General in politics

The Attorney-General, in later centuries at least,[2] was always a member of the Privy Council of Ireland (in earlier centuries there were times when only the Serjeant-at-law attended the Council, but Stephen Roche, Attorney General 1441-44, attended the Great Council of 1441).[2]

A strong Attorney, like Philip Tisdall, William Saurin, or Francis Blackburne, could exercise great influence over the Dublin administration. Tisdall (AG 1760-1777), was for much of his tenure as Attorney General also the Government leader in the Irish House of Commons, and a crucial member of the administration. Saurin (AG 1807-1822) was regarded for many years as the effective head of the Dublin Government, until his career was ended by his opposition to Catholic Emancipation.[2] In 1841 Blackburne (AG 1830-1834, 1841-1842), on being challenged about a proposed appointment within his own office, said firmly that he "would not tolerate a refusal to ratify the appointment".[7]

The office of Attorney General was described as being "a great mixture of law and general political reasoning".[7]

Attorneys-General for Ireland, 1313–1922

14th century

15th century

16th century

incomplete[10]

17th century

18th century

19th century

20th century

Name Portrait Term of office Political party
James Campbell
MP for Dublin University 		James Campbell, Vanity Fair, 1909-08-25.jpg 4 December 1905 22 December 1905 Conservative
Richard Cherry
MP for Liverpool Exchange (1906–10) 		File:Richard Cherry.jpg 22 December 1905 2 December 1909 Liberal
Redmond Barry
MP for North Tyrone (1907–11) 		1911 Redmond Barry.jpg 2 December 1909 26 September 1911 Liberal
Charles O'Connor 26 September 1911 24 June 1912
Ignatius O'Brien 24 June 1912 10 April 1913
Thomas Molony 10 April 1913 20 June 1913
John Moriarty 20 June 1913 1 July 1914
Jonathan Pim 1 July 1914 8 June 1915
John Gordon
MP for South Londonderry 		8 June 1915 9 April 1916 Conservative
James Campbell
MP for Dublin University 		James Campbell, Vanity Fair, 1909-08-25.jpg 9 April 1916 8 January 1917 Conservative
James O'Connor 8 January 1917 7 April 1918
Arthur Samuels
MP for Dublin University 		8 January 1917 7 April 1918 Conservative
Denis Henry
MP for South Londonderry 		6 July 1919 5 August 1921 Conservative
Thomas Watters Brown
MP for North Down 		5 August 1921 16 November 1921 Conservative

The office was vacant from 16 November 1921[13] and succeeded by the Attorney General of the Irish Free State on 31 January 1922.

References

  • Haydn's Book of Dignities (for pre-1691 names and dates)
  1. ^ McCullagh, David. The Reluctant Taoiseach: A Biography of John A Costello Gill and MacMillan, Dublin, 2010 p. 48. Until 1929 the Attorney General had no full-time civil servants to assist him in giving legal advice, although there were a number of Parliamentary draughtsmen.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Casey, James The Irish Law Officers Round Hall Sweet and Maxwell 1996 p.7
  3. ^ a b Ball, F. Elrington The Judges in Ireland 1221-1921 London John Murray 1926 p.220
  4. ^ a b c d Smyth Chronicle of the Law Officers of Ireland Henry Butterworth London 1839
  5. ^ Close Roll 5 Henry VI
  6. ^ a b c Hart, A.R. The History of the King's Serjeants at law in Ireland. Four Courts Press, 2000. pp. 15, 20, 21.
  7. ^ a b Delaney, V. T. H. Christopher Palles. Allen Figgis and Co. Dublin, 1960. p. 60.
  8. ^ The National Archives Officers in Ireland anno primo R. Edward III, with their yearly fees
  9. ^ Some sources refer to him as King's Serjeant, but the roles of Serjeant and Attorney at the time were easily confused.
  10. ^ Smyth in his book Chronicle of the Irish Law Officers (London, 1839) noted that the destruction of many State records made it impossible to compile a full list of holders of the office.
  11. ^ William Courthope, ed. (1838). Debrett's complete peerage of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (22nd ed.). p. 652. Archived from the original on 27 April 2016. Retrieved 11 December 2009.
  12. ^ T. C. Tobias, ‘Atkinson, John, Baron Atkinson (1844–1932)’, rev. Sinéad Agnew, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Oct 2006 accessed 17 Feb 2017 Archived 25 September 2021 at the Wayback Machine
  13. ^ Butler & Butler. British Political Facts, 1900–1994. p. 9.

Further reading

External links

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