Robert Marshall

Robert Marshall (c.1695–1774) was an Irish judge. He is remembered chiefly as co-executor and legatee of Esther Vanhomrigh, the beloved "Vanessa" of Jonathan Swift, although he was not a close friend of hers; indeed it is possible that they never met.

Personal life He was born in Clonmel, County Tipperary, son of John Marshall, styled as a "gentleman" and his wife Catherine.

Legal and political career He was appointed Third Serjeant in 1738 and Second Serjeant in 1741. He became a judge of the Court of Common Pleas (Ireland) in 1754 and retired in 1766. Vanessa, who was seriously ill with tuberculosis and died a few months later, revoked the will she had made in Swift's favour and made a new will, dividing her estate between Marshall and George Berkeley, later to be a celebrated philosopher and Bishop of Cloyne, and appointing them as her joint executors. In the event much of the estate was dissipated in a lawsuit. There is a tradition that Marshall and Berkeley disobeyed a provision in the will that they publish all of Swift's correspondence with Vanessa, but in fact, no such provision seems to have existed. Marshall did preserve copies of the correspondence. Swift, though he had no quarrel with Berkeley, and indeed respected him, regarded Marshall (whom he called a "scoundrel"), as his enemy. Admittedly Swift had a notoriously poor opinion of lawyers in general.