Henry Bathurst (judge)

Henry Bathurst (1623–1676) was an English-born judge in seventeenth-century Ireland, and a member of a prominent Royalist family.

At an uncertain date, he was sent to Ireland as Attorney General to the Lord President of Munster, though in the disturbed political conditions of the time it is unclear to what extent he was able to carry out his duties.

A book entitled A Compendious View of some Extraordinary Sufferings of the People called Quakers... in the Kingdom of Ireland, by Abraham Fuller and Thomas Holms (first published in 1671, in Henry's lifetime), accused Henry, in his capacity as Chief Magistrate of Kinsale, of exceptional severity towards the Quaker community of County Cork.

Mrs Cooke was imprisoned in Kinsale on Henry's orders for calling on the local Protestant clergy and congregation to repent of their sins.

Arguably this isolated case does not justify Fuller and Holms' description of Henry as a "persecutor" of Quakers, since there seems to be no evidence of a widespread campaign against them in the town of Kinsale in Bathurst's lifetime.