Christopher Robinson (Irish judge)

He is best remembered for giving the adventurer Francis Higgins the nickname "The Sham Squire", and for his impressive collection of legal textbooks, which forms the basis of the Library of the King's Inns.

He had two brothers, one of whom, Robert, became a doctor, and like his father was elected President of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland.

His most celebrated trial was that of the notorious confidence trickster Francis Higgins ("the Sham Squire") in 1767 for a serious assault on his mother-in-law, Mrs. Archer.

Higgins served a prison sentence for the assault, but this was only a brief check to his remarkable career, which saw him becoming an attorney, a justice of the peace and an informer for the Dublin Castle administration.

[5] He had strong and sometimes controversial political opinions: in particular he opposed full independence for the Parliament of Ireland, which was a cause dear to the hearts of Henry Grattan and his Irish Patriot Party.

These attacks seriously damaged his reputation, and as late as the 1860s a biography of "The Sham Squire" repeated many unflattering stories about Robinson, which appear to have originated in his lifetime.