Simon Fitz-Richard

Sir Simon Fitz-Richard (died c.1348 ) was an Irish barrister and judge. He became Chief Justice of the Irish Common Pleas, and fought a long and successful campaign against the efforts of his enemies to remove him from office.

Career

He was probably a native of County Louth, where he later owned land,and he also became a landowner in County Kildare. He benefited from the patronage of Maurice FitzGerald, 4th Earl of Kildare. He was appointed Deputy Escheator of Louth about 1315, and was given custody of the temporalities of the Archdiocese of Armagh in 1321. He appears as a Crown prosecutor in the 1320s and in 1326 he became the King's Serjeant. In 1331 he became an ordinary justice of the Court of Common Pleas (Ireland) and in 1335 he was appointed Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. He held lands in Louth and Ulster and at Maynooth in County Kildare and was granted Gormanston, County Meath as a reward for his losses in the King's service. On the death of John de Bermingham, 1st Earl of Louth in 1329, FitzRichard was granted wardship of the Earl's two daughters and co-heiresses, Catherine and Maud. He had a royal licence to export corn. He acquired great wealth, and by 1336 was rich enough to make a merchant a loan of £1000: they later went into partnership.

During the 1330s complaints were made to the English Crown about the poor quality of the Irish administration, and in particular about the failings of the Irish-born judges. In 1337 Thomas Charlton, Bishop of Hereford, was appointed Lord Chancellor of Ireland, with specific instructions to replace those Irish judges who were considered to be unfit for office with English replacements. Robert de Scardeburgh, Fitz-Richard's predecessor in the Common Pleas, was nominated to take his place but did not come over to Ireland. Fitz-Richard went to England where he pleaded his case before the King: he was reappointed as Chief Justice and given various tokens of royal favour.

Later life

He resigned from the Chief Justiceship in 1341; this was probably in connection with the charges of maladministration which had been made against him and other Irish judges, including Elias de Asshebournham. The following year he was accused of felony in England and arrested for trespass in Ireland, but nothing seems to have come of these charges, possibly due to the influence of the Earl of Kildare, to whom he remained close. He went to England in 1348 on official business (while there he stood bail for Kildare, who had recently been arrested and imprisoned due to suspicions about his loyalty to the English Crown) and was knighted in the same year, but is thought to have died shortly afterwards. He married a daughter of Thomas FitzOvery.