Hugh de Cressy

Hugh Cressy, or de Cressy (c. 1570–1643) was an English-born judge in seventeenth-century Ireland. He is best remembered as the father of Serenus de Cressy (born Hugh Paulinus de Cressy), the noted Benedictine scholar and royal chaplain. In his last years, the judge was threatened with impeachment, on the grounds of his supposed leniency towards Irish Catholics.

He came from an old Nottinghamshire family which settled in Yorkshire. He was probably born in Wakefield, and later lived in Thorpe Salvin, where his son was born.

He entered Furnivall's Inn in 1590, proceeded to Lincoln's Inn, and was called to the Bar in 1598. As a judge in his early years he was very active in suppressing recusancy, although he was later accused of excessive leniency to Catholics. This was an attempt to provide a legal basis for the policy of widespread confiscation of land held by Roman Catholic landowners, especially in Connacht. The judges ruled by five votes to two in the Crown's favour; Cressy was one of the two who dissented (Sir Samuel Mayart was the other). This may have damaged his previously friendly relations with the formidable Strafford, who had instigated the case as a prelude to widespread seizure of land in Connacht, and resented any questioning of his policies, even by a High Court judge.

Last years

After the downfall and execution for treason of Strafford in 1641, Cressy, though by then he was an old man, continued with his judicial duties, attending the Irish House of Lords to give legal advice, and going regularly as the judge of assize to County Wexford.

Family

He married, before 1605, Margery D'Oylie, daughter of Thomas D'Oylie of Hambleden, Buckinghamshire (died 1603), a highly respected physician and Spanish scholar, and his wife Anne Perrot, daughter of Simon Perrot of North Leigh, Oxfordshire, Proctor of Oxford University. The marriage had some political significance, as Margery's uncle Sir Robert D'Oylie of Greenlands, Buckinghamshire, had married Elizabeth Bacon, a half-sister of Francis Bacon, and Bacon and Thomas D'Oylie were good friends.

Their son Hugh Paulinus de Cressy, known to history as Serenus de Cressy (c.1605-1674), the name he was given at his conversion, was ordained a minister of the Church of England, then converted to the Roman Catholic faith, and became a Benedictine monk, a noted Church historian, and chaplain to Queen Catherine of Braganza.