John Fitzadam

John Fitzadam (died c.1419) was an Irish judge of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century. He is notable for his very long tenure as Chief Justice of the Irish Common Pleas; he held the office for twenty-three years, in the reigns of three English kings. Some years after his death, he was accused of judicial misconduct, in that he had unduly favoured one party in a lawsuit, but it is impossible now to determine the truth of the matter. who served as Chief Escheator in 1218, justice itinerant in 1223 and Royal Forester at Glencree (the only Irish royal forest) in 1219, was Irish born, and it is possible that either Thomas or his brother Richard was John's ancestor. He appears to have held an official position in Ireland, and he sat on a commission concerning Dublin Castle in 1384. In 1390, despite his lack of formal legal qualifications, he sat as an extra judge to hear a case of novel disseisin, which suggests that even at this early stage of his career his legal ability was already recognised. He then decided to study law and obtained the requisite official permission to go to England for that purpose in 1391 (Ireland did not then have its own law school), as did his future colleagues William Tynbegh and John Bermyngham. He practised as an attorney in Westminster Hall and is said to have enjoyed considerable success in his career there. He was a friend of another successful Irish lawyer in England, William Skrene, who was later briefly Chief Baron of the Irish Exchequer, but spent most of his career in England. At an unknown date, Fitzadam returned to Ireland to practice at the Irish Bar. He was appointed Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in 1396 and held office until 1419. The grant was conditional on payment of a rose every year.

Judge There are a number of records of him performing his judicial duties: these are mainly concerned with the issue of pardons or other acts of clemency, particularly in actions for recovery of debt. At the time it was a common legal device for a successful creditor to get a sentence of outlawry passed on the debtor. In 1409 Fitzadam pardoned Thomas Wells, the vicar of Rathregan, in connection with a lawsuit for debt brought by Richard Dillon. In 1414 he persuaded the Crown "out of pity" to reverse the sentence of outlawry imposed on John Philpot of Drogheda for failure to appear in court to answer a claim for debt, as Philpot had now appeared and submitted to the jurisdiction of the court; and in yet another case where Robert Cantwell was outlawed on the suit of William Preston. In 1407 he sat on a strong bench to inquire, at the request of the abbot of St. Mary's Abbey, Dublin, into the boundaries of Kilternan and Simmonstown (the township of Kilternan being part of the abbey's lands). In 1412 he and Richard Sydgrave, Baron of the Court of Exchequer (Ireland), sat as judges in a case of novel disseisin brought by Thomas Clone against William Dervoys and his wife Blanche. In 1415 he sat on a high powered commission at Ballygarth, County Meath, headed by the Lord Treasurer of Ireland, to inquire into all cases of trespass in Dublin and three adjoining counties.

Complaint by the Prior of Mullingar

On an unknown date "in the reign of Henry IV" (1399-1413), Many years later, in 1427, the prior of Mullingar petitioned the Privy Council, claiming that there was a manifest error in the judgment, by which he had suffered grievous injury. The Council ordered Richard Ashwell, the Master of the Rolls in Ireland, to make a full inquiry into the matter, and to bring his report before the next session of the Irish parliament, so that the injustice, if any, might be corrected.