He was deeply involved in the political controversies of his time, and was a leading opponent of the powerful Anglo-Irish magnate James Butler, 4th Earl of Ormond.
In 1426/7 he sat on a high-powered judicial commission to hear an indictment for felony against Edward Dantsey, Bishop of Meath, who was accused, falsely, of stealing a chalice.
He was appointed Lord Chief Justice of Ireland the following year, "at the King's pleasure" and served, with one short gap, in that office until his death in October 1446.
In 1434, shortly after his elevation to the King's Bench, he was appointed to a high-powered commission to inquire into all alleged acts of treason in Dublin and the Pale.
Fifteenth-century Ireland was deeply troubled by the long feud between the faction headed by James Butler, 4th Earl of Ormond, who was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland intermittently through this period, on the one hand, and that headed by Richard Talbot, Archbishop of Dublin and his brother John Talbot, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury on the other.
[10] Numerous accusations of wrongdoing were made by Ormond against Bernevall,[11] but no action was taken against him, either because he enjoyed the confidence of the Crown, or because the Ormond–Talbot feud was, at last, dying away.