Maurice Eustace

Sir Maurice Eustace (c. 1590 – 22 June 1665) was an Irish landowner, politician, barrister and judge of the seventeenth century who spent the last years of his career as Lord Chancellor of Ireland. This was an office for which he felt himself to be entirely unfit, and in which he was universally agreed to be a failure.

Family background Eustace was born in about 1590, at Castlemartin, County Kildare, eldest of the three sons of John FitzWilliam Eustace, Constable of Naas (died 1623). Little is known of his mother, whose name is thought to be Catherine d'Arcy. Of his sisters, one, whose name is variously given as Elizabeth or Elinor, married Edmund Keating and had two sons, Oliver and John Keating, Chief Justice of the Irish Common Pleas, while another, Alice, married Robert Cusack of Rathgar Castle, but was apparently not the mother of his son Adam Cusack.

The Eustaces of Castlemartin were a branch of the prominent "Old English" FitzEustace family who held the title Viscount Baltinglass, but unlike their Baltinglass cousins, the Castlemartin branch of the Eustace family played no part in the Desmond Rebellions of the 1580s, most of them being noted for their loyalty to the English Crown. Maurice in time was to recover much of the property forfeited by his Baltinglass cousins, which remained in the family into the eighteenth century. In matters of religion the family was deeply divided in sympathy; the judge's granduncle, also named Maurice Eustace, was denounced to the authorities as a Jesuit in 1581, tried for high treason, found guilty and executed. The judge himself, though a Protestant, was exceptionally tolerant in matters of religion, to the point of lobbying for increased civil rights for Catholics.

A later Sir Maurice Eustace, 1st Baronet, first and last of the Eustace baronets of Castle Martin, belonged to the same branch of the family, being a grandson of one of the Chancellor's uncles: he should not be confused with a third Sir Maurice Eustace who was the Lord Chancellor's nephew, nor with the Lord Chancellor's natural son, who was yet another Maurice.

Early career Eustace attended Trinity College Dublin, and after graduating he became a fellow of the college, and its lecturer in Hebrew. In his will, he left a legacy to maintain a Hebrew lecture at Trinity.

However, he had set his heart on a legal career, and after two years he resigned from the fellowship and entered Lincoln's Inn. He was also determined on a career in politics, and he had made a number of useful political contacts through his father, who knew the Lord Deputy of Ireland, Oliver St John, 1st Viscount Grandison, and other senior officials.

He spent some time in England after he was called to the Bar, but he was back in Dublin by 1630. He quickly built up an extremely lucrative legal practice; it was said he could "earn forty gold pieces in a morning". From quite early in his career he aimed at the office of Prime Serjeant.

He entered the Irish House of Commons in 1634 as the member for Athy. Unlike some of the "Old English", he was a whole-hearted supporter of the powerful and formidable Lord Deputy of Ireland, Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford, who in return praised Eustace as a man of integrity and ability, and knighted him.

Their friendship led to a rift between Eustace and Adam Loftus, 1st Viscount Loftus, the Lord Chancellor, who had befriended him and frequently employed his legal services, but who became an implacable opponent of Strafford. Eustace became Prime Serjeant, then the senior Crown legal adviser, a position he had lobbied for over several years. As Serjeant he acted as an extra justice of assize in 1637, at the request of Wentworth, who wished to curb the ambition of the rising barrister Jerome Alexander, who had hoped to gain preferment by acting as an assize judge, but whom Wentworth detested.

The Speaker also received a generous salary, which appears to have amounted to a single payment of £3000. In the 1660s and 1670s, Dame Dorothy Ryves, widow and executrix of Sir William Ryves, who had been acting Speaker of the Irish House of Lords during the later sessions of the same Parliament, petitioned the Crown repeatedly for payment of the same amount, complaining that her husband had not received his salary of £3000, whereas Eustace had.

Unlike many of Strafford's political allies, he did not suffer politically as a result of Strafford's impeachment and execution in 1641. Although the "Old English" gentry had come to detest Strafford as much as the "New English" settlers did, Eustace was one of their own, and, though he had quarrelled with Lord Loftus, was generally liked and respected. He remained Speaker of the Commons until 1647; at its final meeting the House voiced its thanks for "the many good services performed by Sir Maurice Eustace their Speaker", and spoke ominously of the "inveterate hatred and malice of the detestable rebels" against him. In 1643, being known as a man who had some sympathy for the plight of Irish Roman Catholics, most of whom he thought would lay down their weapons if promised a pardon, he was sent to negotiate with the Irish Confederacy at Kilkenny. He was Escheator of Leinster (which was still a substantive office, not the sinecure it later became) in 1644. He obtained the reversion to the office of Master of the Rolls in Ireland, and acquired land at Athy and Cong (he was dispossessed of his lands at Cong after the Restoration, much to the amusement of his political opponents). In 1647, however, the Marquis of Ormonde surrendered Dublin to the Parliamentary forces. Eustace was arrested soon afterwards and sent to Chester Castle where he remained for seven years. His confinement cannot have been very strict, as he formed an extra-marital relationship with a lady (whose name is not known) which produced two children. He and his children's mother, who is said to have been a person of a good family, were still on friendly terms in the 1660s.

On his release, he returned to Dublin. He was re-arrested, and briefly imprisoned, on suspicion of corresponding with Charles II, but was quickly released and allowed to resume practice at the Bar. His loyalty to the Stuart dynasty was never in serious doubt, and it is likely that he was kept under some degree of surveillance. At the same time, he enjoyed the goodwill of Henry Cromwell, who spoke of him as an eminent lawyer "to whom I am beholden and owe a kindness". Precisely what service Eustace had performed for Cromwell is unclear. Accordingly, he was appointed Lord Chancellor of Ireland and a Lord Justice of Ireland, exercising the powers of the Lord Lieutenant in his absence, jointly with Charles Coote, 1st Earl of Mountrath and Roger Boyle, 1st Earl of Orrery. He accepted a peerage but later changed his mind, presumably because he had no legitimate son to inherit it.

Ironically the only serious objection to his appointment came from Eustace himself.

Lord Justice of Ireland As Lord Justice, Eustace was embroiled in the bitter disputes (which led to the passing of the Act of Settlement 1662) between the mainly Roman Catholic Royalists who had been dispossessed in the Cromwellian Settlement of 1652, and the Parliamentarian newcomers who had bought their estates. Eustace by birth was a member of the dispossessed class and identified himself entirely with its interests; and though he was himself a Protestant he believed firmly in equal rights for Roman Catholics. This put him at odds with his fellow Lords Justices, Mountrath (until his death at the end of 1661) and Orrery: they were firm supporters of the Cromwellians, whom Eustace regarded as criminals, and in his view, they were both implacably hostile to the Catholics. He suffered a personal defeat when he failed, despite strenuous efforts, to prevent his old enemy Sir Robert Meredyth from being reappointed Chancellor of the Exchequer, though he came very close to success.

Eustace did obtain some concessions for the Royalists in the Act of Settlement, but the struggle exhausted him and he was thankful when Ormonde's arrival in Dublin in 1662 allowed him to resign as Lord Justice. Always a shrewd man of business, Eustace was careful to get a private Act of the Irish Parliament passed to confirm his right to his estates, except Cong, which the Court of Claims returned to its original Catholic owners, much to the amusement of his enemies, who gleefully pointed to his constant lectures on the rights of Catholic landowners.

Lord Chancellor of Ireland Eustace's prediction that he would be a failure as Lord Chancellor was by general agreement amply fulfilled: political struggles, physical illness, frequent bouts of depression and family troubles almost incapacitated him in the last years of his life. He refused to let Eustace permit Catholic barristers to plead in his Court or to be appointed to Commissions for the Peace, and gave him the sensible advice that he should not worry about what he could not change. He owned lands in several counties and did much to improve the town of Baltinglass. He regained the family's Palmerstown estate, and bought lands at Chapelizod, which later became part of Phoenix Park. His last will divided the property between his nephews, a decision which led to ill-feeling and much further litigation Her half-sister Penelope married firstly Robert Echlin (1674-1706) MP, eldest son of Sir Henry Echlin, and secondly Edward Stratford, while her half-sister Anne (died 1713) married the Irish MP Benjamin Chetwood, by whom she had several children.

Title

Elrington Ball states that Eustace was offered a peerage shortly after the Restoration. With that habit of dithering which was so marked a feature of his character in his last years, he at first accepted the title Baron Portlester (commemorating a renowned fifteenth-century member of the Eustace family), and then changed his mind, on the ground that there was little point in creating a title which would not pass to either his natural son or his nephews. in the summer, he was "as brisk as a bee". He gave the couple his estate at Calverstown, County Kildare as a wedding gift; it later passed by inheritance to the Borrowes family. Shortly afterwards however he had a stroke and died. No trace of Damask survives today, but it is known to have been one of the largest houses in Dublin, and both the house and the gardens were much admired by Jonathan Swift. Eustace's death led to a dispute in which his heirs had to fight off a determined effort by one "Captain Anglesey", of whom little else is known, to take possession of Damask by force.