Henry Purdon

Henry Purdon (c. 1687–1737) was an Irish barrister, politician and Law Officer of the early eighteenth century.

He was the only son of Adam Purdon and his wife Mary Clayton, daughter of Randall Clayton of Mallow, County Cork,[3] and grandson of Sir Nicholas Purdon (died 1678), who was MP for Baltimore in the time of Charles II, and his wife Alice or Eilis Stephens.

[4] In 1725 the House of Commons resolved that Joseph Nagle, a prominent but controversial Cork solicitor of known Jacobite sympathies, should be committed to prison for breach of Parliamentary privilege, on account of his authorship of a pamphlet entitled The Case of Joseph Nagle,[5] which Purdon claimed was a malicious libel on him in his official capacity, and therefore an attack on the dignity of the House of Commons itself.

[10] Our only glimpse of Purdon's personal character, his move to commit the solicitor Joseph Nagle to prison for an alleged libel, suggests that he was a somewhat arrogant and vindictive individual.

On the other hand, as the wording of the resolution shows, his fellow MPs clearly regarded Nagle's conduct as an attack on the House of Commons as a whole, and thus deserving of punishment.