Thomas de Snyterby

He was a native of the village of Snitterby in Lincolnshire and took his surname from his birthplace.^[1] His family name was occasionally spelt de Sueterby. By the early 1280s, he was a Crown servant in good standing, and he attended to the King while he was in Gascony. He was sent to Ireland in 1285 (and nominated attorneys to act in his absence) but made regular visits back to England. He became a prebendary, and later a canon, of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin.^[1] In 1293 he was nominated to act as attorney for the Archbishop of Dublin, John de Sandford, who was absent in England.^[2] He had a house and garden in central Dublin, near the Abbey of Saint Thomas the Martyr, in the Dublin Liberties. His relations with the Abbey were bad, and resulted in litigation over a case of assault by one of his servants, the background to which was the judge's attempts to make use of Abbey's sluices to supplement his own inadequate water supply.

In 1305 the Crown granted him lands at "Torragh", which appears to have been Turra, County Carlow.^[3]

He was a justice of the Court of Common Pleas (Ireland) from 1295 to 1307 He served on the Court under the acting Chief Justice, the Dean of St Patrick's, Thomas de Chaddesworth, and then under Sir Richard de Exeter.^[1] He had administrative and military duties as well as judicial: for example, he was entrusted with paying for troops and horses for the war against Scotland, and with the defences of Dublin against raids from hostile clans in County Wicklow.^[4]

In 1299 he was one of three judges who heard an action for novel disseisin, the others being Simon de Ludgate and John of Reryth. The parties were Richard son of Robert and Master William de la Ryvere, special envoy to the Gaelic clans. Judgement was given for the plaintiff.^[5]

In 1306 he was involved in a highly embarrassing lawsuit between his servant Alan and the Abbey of Saint Thomas the Martyr, in the Dublin Liberties. Alan accused the Abbot, Richard Sweetman, of assault and false imprisonment.^[6] The Abbot in his counterclaim alleged that Alan had attacked and knocked unconscious the Abbey's miller, who had found him, on his master's instructions, opening the Abbey's sluices to supplement the inadequate water supply of Snyterby's own watermill, having done this "diverse times by night". Not surprisingly, Sweetman and Snyterby eventually decided to settle their differences out of court.^[6]