John Hely

Either Sir John or his eldest son George Hely of Foulkscourt House, began laying out the village of Johnstown in County Kilkenny.

In 1701, although he felt well enough to travel on the spring assizes, he fell ill at Ennis and died "after two days sickness" at the house of Mr David England, who was later paid £3 by the Crown for caring for him.

Burke suggests that Hely, like many judges of the time, found that the strain of going on assize (in particular enduring the ordeal of the notoriously bad Irish roads) was too much for his constitution to bear.

[7] About 1698 the Irish-born writer and publisher John Dunton, on a visit to Dublin, gave a sketch of the Irish judiciary and praised most of them, including Hely, as "men of such reputation that no one complains of them".

On the other hand, Ball cynically notes that the general reaction to the news of his sudden death was not so much grief as widespread interest in who would be appointed to fill his place.