Edmund de Clay

Edmund de Clay, or del Clay (died after 1389) was an English-born lawyer and judge who served as Lord Chief Justice of Ireland and Chief Justice of the Irish Common Pleas.

He was born in Nottinghamshire, and later became a landowner there. He is known to have been most reluctant to take up this office, probably because it would involve him in heavy expenses, and he did so only after King Richard II issued a warrant commanding de Clay, along with two other leading advocates, John Hill and Sir John Cary, to be admitted to that rank by a specified day. He and John Giffard, later to be his successor as Chief Justice, were appointed Justices in eyre (itinerant justices) for Carlow, Kildare and Wexford in the same year. The Crown authorised an extra payment of £14 to him for the cost of sitting on the commission of oyer and terminer. He had been transferred to the more senior office of Lord Chief Justice of Ireland earlier that year. He returned to England before 1389, when he was living on his estates in Nottinghamshire; later he is recorded as sitting on a commission of oyer and terminer. His date of death is not recorded.