Thomas Fitzadam

Sir Thomas Fitzadam (died after 1223) was a leading Irish administrator and judge during the reigns of King John and his son Henry III of England. He held a wide variety of official positions, including military commander, Constable of Dublin Castle, Chief Escheator of Ireland and Chief Forester of the Royal Forest of Glencree. He was one of the first three judges to be appointed an itinerant justice in Ireland.

Life He is first heard of in 1210. He and his brother Richard were Irish by birth, and it is possible that one or the other was the ancestor of John Fitzadam (died c.1419), the long-serving Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, who came from an old Dublin family.

He was in attendance on King John on his expedition to Ireland in 1210, and was a commander in the army which drove the rebellious nobles Walter de Lacy, Lord of Meath and his father-in-law William de Braose, north into Ulster. He regularly visited England to advise the King on Irish matters, and received a knighthood. In 1213 he was made Constable of Dublin Castle, and later became Constable of Trim Castle (1215) and Athlone Castle (1223). which had been granted to him in about 1212/3 by the previous Justiciar John de Grey, Bishop of Norwich. In 1220 he received other lands in County Dublin at Chapelizod, and at Rathsallagh, Castleknock, to hold at the King's pleasure at a rent of 100 shillings a year. These lands had previously been held by Thomas's judicial colleague Richard de la Feld, who died in 1220.

In 1218 he was appointed Chief Escheator for Ireland. this dispute was presumably the subject of the subsequent litigation. In the same year Sir Richard Duket, a long-serving English-born Exchequer official who also had experience as an itinerant justice and as a diplomat, was appointed second justice, which suggests that Thomas had recently died or retired.