Jeffrey Gilbert (judge)

Sir Jeffrey Gilbert (1674–1726) was an English barrister, judge and author who held office as Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer in both Ireland and England.

While he was serving as a judge in Ireland, a routine judgment he delivered unexpectedly led to a major political crisis, as a result of which he was briefly imprisoned.

He was an outstanding scholar, his interests including theology and mathematics as well as law: shortly before his death, he became a Fellow of the Royal Society.

It appears that no Irish-born judge had either the legal ability or the inclination to take on this extremely onerous appointment, which would involve clearing a large backlog of cases in the Court of Exchequer (Ireland), and the reform of legal procedures which were described by one of the contemporary Barons of the Exchequer as amounting to "confusion and disorder almost beyond remedy".

His early years in Ireland were happy: he received an honorary degree from the University of Dublin and was hailed in ballads as the "darling of the nation".

Gilbert's contentment with his life in Ireland was destroyed when the case of Sherlock v Annesley, first heard on the equity side of the Irish Court of Exchequer in 1709, was referred back to it.

In pursuit of this aim, they re-opened the sensitive issue of whether the Irish House of Lords or the British was the final court of appeal in Ireland.

[2]After a long delay, his cousin Hester Sherlock's appeal was heard by the Irish House of Lords who reversed the Exchequer and made a decree in her favour.

He was venomously attacked by the influential Archbishop of Dublin, William King, and subjected to a campaign of petty persecution (he complained that while on assize at Longford he found it impossible to secure proper lodgings and had to sleep in the local barracks).

On the other hand, it is generally agreed that the quality of the writing itself is remarkable: Francis Elrington Ball called Gilbert the most eminent author who ever sat on the Irish Bench.

His Treatise on Tenures was influential in America as well as England; the US Supreme Court in 1815 called it "an excellent work",[8] and the future US President John Adams said he had learned much from it.