Edward Pennefather
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Edward Pennefather PC, KC (22 October 1774 – 6 September 1847) was an Irish barrister, Law Officer and judge of the Victorian era, who held office as Lord Chief Justice of Ireland.
Pennefather was born in County Tipperary, the second son of William Pennefather of Knockeevan, member of the Irish House of Commons for Cashel, and his wife Ellen Moore, daughter of Edward Moore, Archdeacon of Emly and Ellen Dobson. He went to school in Clonmel and graduated from Trinity College Dublin.[1] He was called to the Irish Bar in 1795. He lived at Rathsallagh House, near Dunlavin, County Wicklow.[1]
His brother Richard Pennefather (1773–1859) had a longer and more successful career as a judge: appointed a Baron of the Court of Exchequer in 1821, he served for nearly 40 years and was held in universal regard;[2] with the general support of the profession he remained on the Bench until shortly before his death at eighty-six, by which time he was blind. Edward and Richard, "the two Pennefathers", were leading practitioners in the Court of Chancery (Ireland).[1]
Edward was generally regarded as more gifted, a master of the law of equity and also a skilled libel lawyer. In 1816 he was one of the lead counsel in the celebrated libel case of Bruce v. Grady, which arose from the publication of a scurrilous poem called "The Nosegay", written by a barrister Thomas Grady about his former friend, the notably eccentric banker George Evans Brady of Hermitage House, Castleconnell. The quarrel is said to have arisen from a dispute over money which Bruce had loaned to Grady. The plaintiff claimed £20000; the jury awarded £500.[3]
Law officer and judge
He was made a King's Counsel by 1816. He was very briefly Attorney-General for Ireland in 1830, and was made Third Serjeant-at-law (Ireland) in the same year. He became Second Serjeant and First Serjeant in the two following years.[1] He was Solicitor-General for Ireland in the First Peel ministry in 1835 and again in the Second Peel ministry in 1841. In the latter year, he was appointed Lord Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench for Ireland and held the position until he resigned on health grounds in 1846.
