Henry de Motlowe

Henry de Motlowe (died 1361) was an English-born judge who briefly held office as Lord Chief Justice of Ireland.

His surname suggests that there was also a family link with the village of Mobberley, five miles from Alderley, which was called Motburlege in the Domesday Book.

He was already a senior official of the English Crown by 1346, when he appears on a commission in London to investigate the forgery of the Royal seal.

[1] In 1357 he was made a judge of the Court of Common Pleas, and in the same year, he sat on another royal commission, to investigate an alleged affray between Simon Warde, a servant of John Gynwell, Bishop of Lincoln and certain members of the Order of Hospitallers, on whom Warde had been attempting to serve a summons to appear in a lawsuit.

Ironically the future Prior of the Hospitallers, Richard de Wirkeley, who together with the then Prior, John Paveley, allegedly instigated the affray, had also been Lord Chief Justice of Ireland: the commission included yet another Irish Chief Justice, William de Notton.