Chief Justice of Munster

Due to the chronic disturbances in Elizabethan Munster, going on circuit could be a hazardous experience: there was a serious riot during the assizes at Tralee in 1579 in which several Court officials were killed.

In 1620, Luke Gernon, the second justice of the court, recorded that "when the President goeth forth, he is attended in military form, when he rideth, by a troop of horse (cavalry), when he walketh by a company of foot (infantry) with pikes and muskets".

By 1620, according to Luke Gernon, the second justice of Munster, the Court had established a permanent seat in Limerick, where it held its sessions in King John's Castle.

On the other hand, it was understood that the office holder could expect to be promoted in due course to one of the courts of common law or even become its chief justice, as James Dowdall, Sir Nicholas Walsh and Lord Sarsfield did.

An exception to the general rule against holding two judicial offices at once seems to have been made for Gerald Comerford, who was appointed both Chief Justice of Munster and a Baron of the Court of Exchequer (Ireland) shortly before his death in 1604.

There was apparently no objection to the chief justice holding a purely local judicial office at the same time, or sitting in Parliament: Henry Gosnold, through much of his long career, was also the admiralty judge for Munster.