Charles Calthorpe

Prior to his appointment to the Irish High Court in 1606, he had been Attorney General for Ireland for more than 20 years, despite frequent criticisms of his professional incompetence.

In 1584 he was appointed Attorney General for Ireland, and soon became a staunch political ally of the Lord Deputy, Sir John Perrot.

From the outset of his career in Ireland Calthorpe was subject to intense criticism from his political opponents, who accused him of partisanship, inefficient management of business, insufficient legal learning and undue deference to his Irish colleagues.

The final downfall of Calthorpe's patron, Lord Deputy Perrot, who was convicted of treason in 1592 and died in the Tower of London while awaiting execution, had major repercussions in Ireland.

His close ally Nicholas White, the Master of the Rolls in Ireland, was arrested on the same charge, and like Perrot, he died in the Tower.

He was accused of corruption by two dubious characters: Henry Bird, a former royal clerk, and an eccentric ex-priest called Denis O'Roghan.

Fitzwilliam was now ordered by the English Crown to resume his own inquiry, and Calthorpe faced two serious charges: of wrongly pressing for Bird's conviction, and of acting corruptly in the examination of O'Roghan.

[4] Molyneux, though of English parentage, had been born and raised in Calais and lived for some years in Bruges, where he married a Belgian wife.

He was offered the position of Chief Justice of Munster, but refused it: the work of that office was extremely onerous, and clearly, it did not appeal to him, especially as both he and his wife were in poor health.

[1] Finally the decision to appoint Sir John Davies as Attorney General made it necessary either to find another job for Calthorpe or to forcibly retire him, and in 1606 he, at last, reached the Bench as a puisne judge of the Court of Common Pleas (Ireland).

Casey also praises him for his constructive and business-like management of the Attorney General's office,[7] although Chichester's criticisms, and the complaints by the Privy Council about his inefficiency in 1597, suggest that he neglected his duties in his later years.