Alan Brodrick, 1st Viscount Midleton

Alan Brodrick, 1st Viscount Midleton, PC (Ire) (c. 1656 – 29 August 1728) was a leading Irish lawyer and Whig politician who sat in the Parliament of Ireland between 1692 and 1715 and in the British House of Commons from 1717 to 1728.

[1] As a prominent Whig supporter of the outcome of the Glorious Revolution, he was not always in agreement with court policies in Ireland, which he considered too lenient on the Jacobites.

The dismissal of the First Serjeant, John Osborne, at the same time as Brodrick was due to his even stronger opposition to Court policy.

He became Chief Justice of Ireland 1710–1711[4] and was replaced as Speaker on 19 May 1710, but again held the office in the next Parliament 25 November 1713 – 1 August 1714, where he also represented County Cork.

The imprisonment of the judges proved to be a disastrous mistake: the British Parliament retaliated with a statute, the Dependency of Ireland on Great Britain Act 1719, the notorious "Sixth of George I", which not only removed the right of appeal to the Irish House of Lords but asserted the right of the British Parliament to pass laws concerning Ireland.

[6] Midleton feuded with his successor as Speaker, William Conolly, as they were rivals to be the leading figure in Irish politics.

He was returned unopposed as Member of Parliament for Midhurst by the patronage of Charles Seymour, 6th Duke of Somerset at a by-election on 27 February 1717.

He was returned unopposed at Midhurst at the 1722 general election, became a leading ministerial supporter in the House of Commons, and was invited to private dinners with Sir Robert Walpole.

Although the patent was dropped, Midleton was so upset by the situation that he resigned as Lord Chancellor in 1725, and went into opposition in the Irish Parliament.

He left behind him a legacy of bitterness and ill-will for which he was not really responsible − the Irish peers chose to blame him for the loss of their powers under the Sixth of George I, rather than their own misjudgment in imprisoning the Barons of the Exchequer.

In his memoirs, he famously expressed a great sense of disappointment at having lost to another of his lifelong rivals, Adam Montgomery of Cambridge.