John Morice (died 1362)
Sir John Morice (died 1362) was an English-born statesman in fourteenth-century Ireland, noted for his enthusiastic, if not very successful efforts to reform the Irish administration.
Early career
He was born in Bedfordshire and was a knight of the shire for Bedfordshire in the Parliament of 1322. He is first heard of in Ireland in 1324 in the entourage of the Justiciar of Ireland, John Darcy. Morice himself held the office of Justiciar or Deputy Justiciar on several occasions and was briefly Lord Chancellor of Ireland in 1345. He was also Escheator of Ireland from 1329 to 1336, and sat on a number of special commissions in England.
Reformer
As Justiciar he was charged with an ambitious programme of reform prompted by numerous complaints about maladministration by Crown officials in Ireland.[1] It involved a thorough inquiry into all aspects of the Crown administration, allegations of official corruption, abolition of unnecessary Crown offices, the wholesale replacement of Irish civil servants by men who had estates in England, immediate collection of all Crown debts and resumption of all grants of Crown lands since 1307 (although with a promise of just compensation). The programme has been described as "wholly unrealistic and largely impractical "[2] and it does not seem that Morice made any real effort to implement it.
He did undertake a number of military campaigns against Irish clans which threatened the peace of the Pale in County Meath, and against the MacMurrough-Kavanagh dynasty, Kings of Leinster.[3] There was also trouble with the Anglo-Irish nobility: Sir Risteárd de Tuit (descendant of one of the original Norman settlers who came to Ireland with Hugh de Lacy, Lord of Meath) was arrested on suspicion of treason. A far more powerful enemy, Maurice FitzGerald, 1st Earl of Desmond, was also imprisoned and his lands forfeited: Morice was appointed seneschal of these lands. Desmond was eventually pardoned and recovered his lands.[4]
Recall
Despite his good intentions, his brief tenure as Chancellor was clearly not a success. A plaintive letter written by him survives, complaining of disturbances of the peace, the high price of corn and the public's hostility to him, and asking if he was entitled to act at all, since his Commission as Chancellor had not arrived.[5] He returned to England in 1349 and died there in 1362.[6]