John Alan

John Alen, Archbishop of Dublin, who was murdered in the Silken Thomas rebellion of 1534, was a close relative, probably a first cousin, of the Lord Chancellor.

The latter office at that time was largely administrative rather than judicial in nature: to be a qualified lawyer, like Alen himself, was a desirable but not essential requirement, and at least two sixteenth-century masters lacked any legal qualifications.

[3] In 1539 Alen was appointed to head the Commission for the Dissolution of the Monasteries in Ireland, with instructions to receive voluntary resignations of monks and nuns and surrender of monastic houses, and provide for the payment of pensions to those who willingly left the religious life.

Alen strongly defended himself, saying he was the "cleanest-handed Chancellor in the memory of man";[3] but the charges were upheld and he was removed from office and imprisoned briefly.

[4] In 1548 Alen regained the Lord Chancellorship; but on St. Leger's return to power in 1550 he felt it best to retire, despite assurances of the King's continued goodwill.

Her letter to the Council is a tribute to the high regard in which he was held by the Crown: it praises him for his "trusty functions" under Henry VIII and Edward, and his "long experience and travail in public affairs".

Given the distance between Kinsale and his home in County Kildare, and the appalling condition of the Irish roads at the time, we may infer that he was an absentee MP.

In his last will he left much of his property to his widow for her life, and after her death to his nephew John (died 1616), who was almost certainly the son of his brother William of Kiloughter, now Celbridge.

Although it was Patrick Barnewall, a future Master of the Rolls, who first wrote to Thomas Cromwell in 1538 urging that the former religious house at Blackfriars (near present-day Henrietta Street in Dublin city centre) should become a "House of Chancery",[7] the lease for 21 years granted by Henry VIII in 1541 has Alan at the head of the list of lessees; and in 1542 he joined in the petition to the King urging the grant of the property to the lessees in perpetuity.

[7] O'Flanagan[4] praises Alen as an honest and honourable man, notes the high opinion of him held by three successive English monarchs and remarks that he was capable of magnanimous behaviour even to bitter political opponents like St Leger.