Thomas Marlay (c.1680–1756) was an Irish politician and
judge, who ended his career as Lord Chief Justice of Ireland. He is remembered chiefly for beginning the rebuilding of
Celbridge Abbey, and as the grandfather of the statesman
Henry Grattan
Henry Grattan (3 July 1746 – 4 June 1820) was an Irish politician and lawyer who campaigned for legislative freedom for the Irish Parliament in the late 18th century from Britain. He was a Member of the Irish Parliament (MP) from 1775 to 18 ...
.
Background
He was born at Creevagh Beg, near
Ballymahon
Ballymahon () on the River Inny is a town in the southern part of County Longford, Ireland. It is located at the junction of the N55 National secondary road and the R392 regional road.
History
Ballymahon derives its name from the Irish lang ...
,
County Longford. His mother Elizabeth Morgan was the daughter of Robert Morgan of Cottlestown,
County Sligo
County Sligo ( , gle, Contae Shligigh) is a county in Ireland. It is located in the Border Region and is part of the province
A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or state. The term derives from the an ...
, and his wife Bridget Blayney of
Castleblayney
Castleblayney (; ) is a town in County Monaghan, Ireland. The town had a population of 3,607 as of the 2016 census. Castleblayney is near the border with County Armagh in Northern Ireland, and lies on the N2 road from Dublin to Derry and Let ...
,
County Monaghan
County Monaghan ( ; ga, Contae Mhuineacháin) is a county in Ireland. It is in the province of Ulster and is part of Border strategic planning area of the Northern and Western Region. It is named after the town of Monaghan. Monaghan County C ...
. His father Anthony Marlay was a recent arrival in Ireland from
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where Thomas's grandfather Sir
John Marlay (1590-1673) had been a leading local politician, who served as both Mayor of Newcastle and its MP; he is chiefly remembered for his spirited defence of the town against the invading Scots army during the
English Civil War
The English Civil War (1642–1651) was a series of civil wars and political machinations between Parliamentarians (" Roundheads") and Royalists led by Charles I ("Cavaliers"), mainly over the manner of England's governance and issues of re ...
. From their beginnings as small tradesmen, the Marlays had risen to become among the wealthiest
coal
Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen.
Coal is formed when ...
exporters in Newcastle.
George Marlay,
Bishop of Dromore
The Bishop of Dromore is an episcopal title which takes its name after the original monastery of Dromore in County Down, Northern Ireland. In the Roman Catholic Church the title still continues as a separate bishopric, but in the Church of Irel ...
1745-1763, was Thomas's younger brother, and gave his name to
Marlay House, which was built by his son-in-law, David La Touche. David was an MP, a member of the
Privy Council of Ireland, and first Governor of the
Bank of Ireland. He married George's daughter, Elizabeth, in 1761.
Early career
Thomas was educated at the
University of Dublin. Unlike many
barristers of his time, he was a considerable scholar and was awarded the degrees of Bachelor of Arts and Doctor of Laws. He was admitted to the
Middle Temple
The Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, commonly known simply as Middle Temple, is one of the four Inns of Court exclusively entitled to call their members to the English Bar as barristers, the others being the Inner Temple, Gray's Inn ...
, and was
called to the Bar. He rapidly built up a large practice at the
Irish Bar
The Bar of Ireland ( ga, Barra na hÉireann) is the professional association of barristers for Ireland, with over 2,000 members. It is based in the Law Library, with premises in Dublin and Cork. It is governed by the General Council of the Ba ...
, although Elrington Ball states that he was not very highly regarded as a lawyer. An anonymous
pamphlet from 1730, which took a somewhat jaundiced view of the Irish Bar in general, described him as "a
sage
Sage or SAGE may refer to:
Plants
* ''Salvia officinalis'', common sage, a small evergreen subshrub used as a culinary herb
** Lamiaceae, a family of flowering plants commonly known as the mint or deadnettle or sage family
** ''Salvia'', a large ...
refined": whether this tribute to his intellect was ironic or not is unclear.
He was elected to the
Irish House of Commons
The Irish House of Commons was the lower house of the Parliament of Ireland that existed from 1297 until 1800. The upper house was the House of Lords. The membership of the House of Commons was directly elected, but on a highly restrictive fran ...
as member for
Limavady in 1715, and as member for
Lanesborough, 1727-31. He was appointed
Solicitor-General for Ireland
The Solicitor-General for Ireland was the holder of an Irish and then (from the Act of Union 1800) United Kingdom government office. The holder was a deputy to the Attorney-General for Ireland, and advised the Crown on Irish legal matters. On ra ...
in 1720 and
Attorney-General for Ireland
The Attorney-General for Ireland was an Irish and then (from the Act of Union 1800) United Kingdom government office-holder. He was senior in rank to the Solicitor-General for Ireland: both advised the Crown on Irish legal matters. With the ...
in 1727. He was elevated to the Bench as
Lord Chief Baron in 1730 and became
Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench in Ireland
The Court of King's Bench (or Court of Queen's Bench during the reign of a Queen) was one of the senior courts of common law in Ireland. It was a mirror of the Court of King's Bench in England. The Lord Chief Justice was the most senior judge ...
in 1741.
Judge
His most memorable trial as Lord Chief Justice was the so-called Annesley
perjury
Perjury (also known as foreswearing) is the intentional act of swearing a false oath or falsifying an affirmation to tell the truth, whether spoken or in writing, concerning matters material to an official proceeding."Perjury The act or an inst ...
case, ''Annesley v. Lord Anglesey'', in 1745. This was one of several trials arising from the celebrated legal battle between
James Annesley
James Annesley (1715 – 5 January 1760) was an Irishman with a claim to the title Earl of Anglesey, one of the wealthiest estates in Ireland. The dispute between Annesley and his uncle Richard Annesley was infamous in its time, but his story i ...
and his uncle
Richard Annesley, 6th Earl of Anglesey as to which of them was the rightful holder of the Anglesey title and estates; the case is said to have inspired the novel ''
Kidnapped'' by
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson (born Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson; 13 November 1850 – 3 December 1894) was a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer. He is best known for works such as ''Treasure Island'', ''Strange Case of Dr Jekyll a ...
. The trial was notable for lasting twenty-two hours without a single break and Marlay, who would normally have expected to have 2 or 3 colleagues to support him, conducted much of it singlehanded, as his colleague
Arthur Blennerhassett collapsed from exhaustion. The verdict went in favour of James, but he died before his uncle, without having regained possession of his estates.
A workload as heavy as Marlay's was bound to affect his health, and from 1749 onwards he was too unwell to go on
assize
The courts of assize, or assizes (), were periodic courts held around England and Wales until 1972, when together with the quarter sessions they were abolished by the Courts Act 1971 and replaced by a single permanent Crown Court. The assizes e ...
. An additional hazard was infectious
fever
Fever, also referred to as pyrexia, is defined as having a temperature above the normal range due to an increase in the body's temperature set point. There is not a single agreed-upon upper limit for normal temperature with sources using val ...
, which was particularly virulent in the
Famine
A famine is a widespread scarcity of food, caused by several factors including war, natural disasters, crop failure, population imbalance, widespread poverty, an economic catastrophe or government policies. This phenomenon is usually accompani ...
years 1740-1741, when two judges died of it. He retired on health grounds in 1751. He died in
Drogheda in 1756, while on a visit to his colleague
Henry Singleton. He was a popular figure and his death seems to have been genuinely mourned: a Dublin paper published verses praising his gentleness, perfect manners and scholarship (the last being rather unusual among Irish judges of the time).
Politics- the Lucas affair (1749)
In politics he was a staunch conservative, as demonstrated by his stern and contemptuous attitude to the radical doctor, politician and pamphleteer Dr.
Charles Lucas
Sir Charles Lucas, 1613 to 28 August 1648, was a professional soldier from Essex, who served as a Royalist cavalry leader during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. Taken prisoner at the end of the First English Civil War in March 1646, he was rel ...
(1713-1771). In 1749 Lucas, who was standing for election to the
Irish House of Commons
The Irish House of Commons was the lower house of the Parliament of Ireland that existed from 1297 until 1800. The upper house was the House of Lords. The membership of the House of Commons was directly elected, but on a highly restrictive fran ...
in Dublin city, had caused uproar by publishing a series of
pamphlets
A pamphlet is an unbound book (that is, without a hard cover or binding). Pamphlets may consist of a single sheet of paper that is printed on both sides and folded in half, in thirds, or in fourths, called a ''leaflet'' or it may consist of a ...
on
parliamentary reform, which were alleged to be
subversive
Subversion () refers to a process by which the values and principles of a system in place are contradicted or reversed in an attempt to transform the established social order and its structures of power, authority, hierarchy, and social norms. Sub ...
attacks on the
British Crown and the Dublin Government. A Dublin
grand jury was empanelled to consider the charges against Lucas: Marlay in ferocious language (he called Lucas "this infamous and impudent scribbler") urged the jury to present him for
seditious libel
Sedition and seditious libel were criminal offences under English common law, and are still criminal offences in Canada. Sedition is overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that is deemed by the legal authority to tend toward insurrection ...
, which they duly did. Lucas, warned to expect severe treatment, had already fled for his own safety to the
Isle of Man
)
, anthem = "O Land of Our Birth"
, image = Isle of Man by Sentinel-2.jpg
, image_map = Europe-Isle_of_Man.svg
, mapsize =
, map_alt = Location of the Isle of Man in Europe
, map_caption = Location of the Isle of Man (green)
in Europe ...
, and later moved to London. "The scribbler, the impostor, has fled from Justice", Marlay told the grand jury: "His works (but I hope not his influence)
remain".
Family
Marlay began the rebuilding of
Celbridge Abbey in
County Kildare, which is chiefly remembered as the home of
Esther Vanhomrigh
Esther Vanhomrigh or Van Homrigh (known by the pseudonym Vanessa; c. 1688 – 2 June 1723), an Irish woman of Dutch descent, was a longtime lover and correspondent of Jonathan Swift. Swift's letters to her were published after her death. Her ...
, the beloved ''Vanessa'' of
Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish satirist, author, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet, and Anglican cleric who became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dubl ...
. He purchased it from Esther's executors soon after her death in 1723. His son Richard completed the new house in the 1780s.
He married Anne de Laune (died 1769), daughter of Charles de Laune, in 1707, and had ten children, of whom several died young. Their surviving children included Colonel
Thomas Marlay;
Richard Marlay,
Bishop of Clonfert and later
Bishop of Waterford
The Bishop of Waterford was a medieval prelate, governing the Diocese of Waterford from its creation in the 11th century until it was absorbed into the new Roman Catholic Diocese of Waterford and Lismore in the 14th century. After the creation o ...
; Anthony, who inherited Celbridge Abbey; Mary,
[Not Alice as a few sources state. ] mother of the statesman
Henry Grattan
Henry Grattan (3 July 1746 – 4 June 1820) was an Irish politician and lawyer who campaigned for legislative freedom for the Irish Parliament in the late 18th century from Britain. He was a Member of the Irish Parliament (MP) from 1775 to 18 ...
; and Alice, who married
Richard Levinge (1724-1783) MP, youngest son of
Sir Richard Levinge, 1st Baronet
Sir Richard Levinge, 1st Baronet (2 May 1656 – 13 July 1724) was an Irish politician and judge, who played a leading part in Irish public life for more than 30 years.
Background
Levinge was born at Leek, Staffordshire, the second son of Ric ...
, of Calverstown, County Kildare.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Marlay, Thomas
Irish barristers
Solicitors-General for Ireland
Attorneys-General for Ireland
1756 deaths
Members of the Privy Council of Ireland
People from County Longford
Year of birth uncertain
Lords chief justice of Ireland
Chief Barons of the Irish Exchequer
Members of the Parliament of Ireland (pre-1801) for County Londonderry constituencies
Members of the Parliament of Ireland (pre-1801) for County Longford constituencies