John Cornwalsh

[1] His tenure was notable for the fact that he succeeded his father as Chief Baron,[1] and for his long struggle to retain the office in defiance of a rival claimant, Michael Gryffin.

He was appointed Chief Baron soon after his father's death, and certainly before October 1442, when he attended a meeting of the Privy Council of Ireland in that capacity.

[5] His appointment was probably on the advice of the powerful Anglo-Irish magnate James Butler, 4th Earl of Ormond, who had been a close associate of the elder Cornwalsh.

[6] This conflict reflected the wider political divisions of the time (his father had engaged in a similar struggle for the office of Chief Baron with Richard Sydgrave in the 1420s),[1] but Elrington Ball suggests that there were also valid objections to Cornwalsh's appointment as a judge.

In addition, Cornwalsh was a turbulent and unpopular individual: in the 1450s he quarrelled with the Duke of York, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and with his Privy Council, and was accused of inciting the citizens of Dublin to rebellion.

During York's final Irish Parliament in 1460, Cornwalsh was one of his few opponents, and an Act of Resumption, declaring his estates liable to forfeiture, was passed.