Alan Cooke

Alan Cooke (died after 1647) was a distinguished civilian lawyer and politician of the seventeenth century. Born in England, he spent many years in Ireland as the surrogate judge of the Irish Court of Admiralty. He also sat in the Irish House of Commons in two Parliaments, and for a time he was a figure of some political importance.

Little is known of his life before 1628. He was always referred to as Dr. Cooke, which suggests that he had a doctorate in civil law. He also had the nickname "Alan Pouke", whose meaning is lost.

The Crown's high opinion of Cooke seems to have been justified: he was both an able judge and a very conscientious one, who continued to perform his functions even amidst the political turmoil of the 1640s.

He clashed with the municipal corporations over their insistence that they had jurisdiction in Admiralty cases (this had been a source of conflict since the Irish Court of Admiralty was first set up in the 1570s). He was apparently the moving force behind a series of quo warranto cases against them, requiring them to justify their supposed power to hear Admiralty cases, which were brought in the late 1630s by Richard Osbaldeston, the Attorney General for Ireland. Osbaldeston's death in 1640 brought the campaign to curb the corporations' powers to an end. It was Cooke who wrote to the English Government informing them in unemotional terms of the Attorney General's death, and asking for him to be replaced at once, partly to continue the quo warranto campaign. In the political turmoil which engulfed Ireland in the following year the office of Attorney General simply lapsed, and the quo warranto campaign lapsed with it. Originally issued to the English judges only, in 1638 the instructions were explicitly extended to their Irish colleagues as well. Cooke represented Cavan Borough in the Parliaments of 1634-5 and 1639–49.

After the downfall and execution for treason of Strafford in 1640–41, Cooke was for a short time a political figure of some importance. He was one of the leaders of the moderate Protestant party, who pursued a policy of compromise and sought to find common ground with their Roman Catholic colleagues. The outbreak of the Irish Rebellion of 1641 ruined the hopes of the moderate party.

Cooke retired from public life in 1647, and was replaced as Admiralty judge for Leinster by William Hilton. His date of death is not recorded.