Gerald Aylmer (judge)

He was confirmed in that role on 23 August 1532, then presented a critique of the Geraldine administration at the English court in 1533, along with his colleague John Alan, the Master of the Rolls in Ireland.

Aylmer joined with Alan and others in the comprehensive commission to dissolve other Irish monastic houses, gaining profitable estates in County Meath as a result.

[1] Aylmer attended Sir Anthony St Leger on his journey to London in 1538, joining the commission of inquiry to bring charges against Grey.

Aylmer was knighted in 1539 and survived the downfall of both Grey and Cromwell in 1540 to serve under Henry's successors as King and Queens of England, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I, being reappointed Chief Justice on 24 March 1547 and on 16 November 1553.

He was eventually dropped from the Privy Council of Ireland in 1556 when the new viceroy, Thomas Radclyffe, 3rd Earl of Sussex, replaced the appointees of his predecessor St Leger.

Aylmer, due to age and infirmity, now came infrequently to the Irish Council and Elizabeth wrote in 1559 that she wished to promote another Old English lawyer, John Plunket, to the office of Chief Justice in his place.

His kinsman and namesake Sir Gerald Aylmer of County Kildare was a leader of the opposition to the cess (the bitterly unpopular tax for the upkeep of military garrisons) among the Pale grandees of the 1580s.