Charles Kendal Bushe

Charles Kendal Bushe (1767 – 10 July 1843) was an Irish lawyer and judge. Known as "silver-tongued Bushe" because of his eloquence, he was Solicitor-General for Ireland from 1805 to 1822 and Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench for Ireland from 1822 to 1841.

Background and education Bushe was born at Kilmurry House, near Thomastown, County Kilkenny, the only son of the Reverend Thomas Bushe, rector of Mitchelstown, and his wife Katherine Doyle, daughter of Charles Doyle of Bramblestown, near Gowran. where his eloquence had made him a star of the College Historical Society, and was called to the Bar in 1790. Although he had refused an offer of a place on the Bench as a bribe for supporting the Union, cynics noted that his staunch opposition to the Union did not prevent him accepting high office under the British Crown afterwards. He was appointed Solicitor-General for Ireland in 1805 and held the office for 17 years until in 1822 he was appointed Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench for Ireland (although only after William Saurin, the equally long-serving Attorney-General, had refused the position). He retired in 1841. As a judge, according to Elrington Ball, he did not live up to expectations,

Family In 1793, Bushe married Anne (Nancy) Crampton (died 1857), daughter of John Crampton of Dublin and Anne Verner, and sister of Sir Philip Crampton, 1st Baronet, President of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland. They had ten children: John Thomas (1794–1870) married Lady Louisa Hare, daughter of William Hare, 1st Earl of Listowel, and his first wife, Mary Wrixon, only daughter of Henry Wrixon. Elizabeth, died unmarried Charlotte (1797–1848), married John Plunket, 3rd Baron Plunket and was the mother of William Plunket, 4th Baron Plunket, Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin, and David Plunket, 1st Baron Rathmore. Rev. Charles (1800–1866), Church of Ireland clergyman who became rector of Castlehaven, County Cork, was by his second wife Emmeline Coghill the father of another eminent barrister, Seymour Coghill Bushe. Thomas Francis (1801–1865), married Alicia Jane Phillips Anna Maria (1802–1848), married in 1819 as his second wife of Sir Josiah Coghill Coghill, 3rd Baronet: her stepdaughter Emmeline married Anna Maria's brother Charles as his second wife. Arthur (1803–1876), married firstly in 1827 Mary Anne Christian, married secondly in 1853 Marion Martin Katherine (1805–1879), married Michael Charles Fox, son of his judicial colleague Luke Fox and Anne Annesley, a niece of Charles Loftus, 1st Marquess of Ely Maria Belissa (1809–1908), married Rev. John Harris, rector of Shercock, Co. Cavan Henrietta Sarah (1812–1887), married in 1834 Robert Fergusson Franks, mother of eminent physician Sir Kendal Matthew St. John Franks and solicitor Sir John Hamilton Franks

Descendants Dunbar Plunket Barton, a leading Irish High Court judge of the early 1900s, was descended from Bushe.

Joscelyn Plunket Bushe-Fox was the grandson of his daughter Katherine.

Seymour Coghill Bushe (1853–1922) was a leading barrister whose career in Ireland was largely destroyed by his role as co-respondent in a much publicised criminal conversation case, followed by divorce, Brooke v Brooke (1886), and thereafter largely confined his legal practice to England. He was the judge's grandson, his parents being the Reverend Charles Bushe and his second wife Emmeline Coghill, daughter of Sir Josiah Coghill Coghill, 3rd Baronet of the Coghill Baronets and his first wife Sophia Dodson. He married Lady Kathleen Maude, daughter of Cornwallis Maude, 1st Earl de Montalt and Clementina Fleeming, and the defendant in Brooke v. Brooke, after her divorce from her first husband, Gerald Brooke. She died in 1939.

Bushe was the great-grandfather of the writing duo Somerville and Ross, who were second cousins.