Falkiner — Parliament of Ireland under Tudor Sovereigns. 53f'l 



time— presided over the Court of Common Pleas ; and one Speaker, 

 Rochfort, became Lord Chief Baron. ^ To Stanihurst and Catelyn, 

 who had earned, respectively, the favour of such powerful Viceroys 

 as Sydney and Strafford, the Speakership would doubtless have 

 proved no more than an episode in their legal careers, had they lived 

 beyond middle age. Eut both of these Speakers died prematurely. 

 There is no need to dwell on the causes which interfered with the 

 further promotion of Sir Eichard Nagle. The case of Sir Audley 

 Mervyn is a solitary example of the neglect of government to utilise 

 an opportunity of rewarding a Speaker. There appears to have been 

 abundant ground for this omission, if Mervyn was justly suspected 

 of a plot to overturn the Government. But whether he was not 

 promoted because he plotted against the Government, or whether, as 

 is not impossible, he plotted against Government because he was not 

 promoted, it is impossible now to determine. 



Speaker Stanihurst is the first Speaker of whose official utter- 

 ances any trace remains. As already mentioned, Campion ha& 

 epitomised his speech at the prorogation of the last Parliament over 

 whose deliberations he presided. Richard Stanihurst mentions three 

 of his father's speeches as existing in his time ; but I cannot find that 

 these are anywhere extant. They may have perished among the 

 lost manuscripts of Stanihurst's distinguished grandson, Archbishop 

 James Ussher. Speaker "Walsh's observations at the dissolution of 

 Perrott's Parliament are very fully summarised in the Irish State 

 Papers Calendar, and the remarkable speech of Sir John Davies 

 before Lord Deputy Chichester, which is of course a classic among 

 such utterances, has been more than once published.^ The speeches 

 of the later occupants of the Chair of the House of Commons are 

 noted in the Journals of that House. 



The Succession of the Speakers of the Ieish House of Commons 



FEOM 1541 TO THE AcT OF UnION, WITH BIOGRAPHICAL jS'oTICES 



OF THE Tudor Speakers. 



1541 Sir Thomas Cusake, Chancellor of the Exchequer. 

 1557 James Stanihurst, Recorder of Dublin. 

 1560 James Stanihurst, again elected. 

 *1569 James Stanihurst, 

 1585 Sir Nicholas Walsh, Chief Justice of Munster. 



• Eochfort was also named one of the three Commissioners of the Great 

 Seal in 1690. 2 Calendar of State Papers {Ireland), 1586-88, p. 55. 



