Robert Johnson

Robert Johnson (c.1657-1730) was an English-born politician and judge in early eighteenth-century Ireland. He sat in the Irish House of Commons and was appointed a Baron of the Exchequer. In the early 1700s, he was one of an inner circle of trusted advisors to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.

He was born in England, the eldest son of Robert Johnson senior and grandson of Edward Johnson, Bencher of the Inner Temple. The Johnsons were related to the leading Minister Henry Bennet, 1st Earl of Arlington: the relationship was close enough for Arlington to further the Johnson family's interests. His father, who was also a barrister, came to Ireland after the Restoration of Charles II as secretary to Sir Edward Smith, the Chief Justice of the Irish Common Pleas and had a successful career, despite his chronic ill-health. He sat briefly in the Irish House of Commons as member for Lisburn in the session of 1665-6 and was a justice of the Court of Common Pleas 1670–86.

Career

Robert, the son, was admitted to the Inner Temple, when still at school, at his grandfather's request. He was educated at Trinity College Dublin and matriculated in 1671. Such views, which were common among the Irish political class under Queen Anne of England, were not acceptable after the change of dynasty in 1714, especially after his great patron Ormonde, now revealed as a Jacobite, fled to France in 1715. Even though Johnson had always denounced Jacobitism, and had openly welcomed the accession of the House of Hanover, he was dismissed from the Bench, as were nearly all of Queen Anne's Irish judges, although his dismissal was postponed into the New Year.

In 1721 there was some prospect of a return to the Bench, as his lifelong friend (and future son-in-law) Sir Richard Levinge, 1st Baronet, was now Chief Justice of the Irish Common Pleas. Levinge, who was himself a Tory, though a very moderate one, had a low opinion of his fellow judges and of most of their possible replacements, and urged Johnson's reappointment. They had one son, yet another Robert, who predeceased his father, and at least two daughters, Mary (died 1757) and Frances. Mary married as his second wife her father's close friend Sir Richard Levinge, who was more than forty years her senior.