Maurice Eustace (Lord Chancellor)

Sir Maurice Eustace (c. 1590 – 22 June 1665) was an Irish landowner, politician, barrister and judge of the seventeenth century who spent the last years of his career as Lord Chancellor of Ireland.

[1] In matters of religion the family was deeply divided in sympathy; the judge's granduncle, also named Maurice Eustace, was denounced to the authorities as a Jesuit in 1581, tried for high treason, found guilty and executed.

Unlike some of the "Old English", he was a whole-hearted supporter of the powerful and formidable Lord Deputy of Ireland, Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford, who in return praised Eustace as a man of integrity and ability, and knighted him.

[2] So long as Dublin remained under Royalist control, Eustace prospered, despite his frequent complaints about the invasion of his property, the despoiling of his woods and the theft of his cattle.

The feud no doubt explains the bitter animosity between Eustace and Sir Robert Meredyth, the Chancellor of the Exchequer of Ireland, which reached its height after the Restoration.

He was re-arrested, and briefly imprisoned, on suspicion of corresponding with Charles II, but was quickly released and allowed to resume practice at the Bar.

[7] At the Restoration, Eustace's unquestioned loyalty to the Crown, combined with his legal and political experience, made him on the face of it a man who was ideally suited to high office; in addition, he was personally close to the Duke of Ormonde, who would do anything to help a friend.

Eustace by birth was a member of the dispossessed class and identified himself entirely with its interests; and though he was himself a Protestant he believed firmly in equal rights for Roman Catholics.

This put him at odds with his fellow Lords Justices, Mountrath (until his death at the end of 1661) and Orrery: they were firm supporters of the Cromwellians, whom Eustace regarded as criminals, and in his view, they were both implacably hostile to the Catholics.

[11] He suffered a personal defeat when he failed, despite strenuous efforts, to prevent his old enemy Sir Robert Meredyth from being reappointed Chancellor of the Exchequer, though he came very close to success.

Eustace did obtain some concessions for the Royalists in the Act of Settlement, but the struggle exhausted him and he was thankful when Ormonde's arrival in Dublin in 1662 allowed him to resign as Lord Justice.

[12] Eustace's prediction that he would be a failure as Lord Chancellor was by general agreement amply fulfilled: political struggles, physical illness, frequent bouts of depression and family troubles almost incapacitated him in the last years of his life.

[13] He refused to let Eustace permit Catholic barristers to plead in his Court or to be appointed to Commissions for the Peace, and gave him the sensible advice that he should not worry about what he could not change.

[9] He did not defend Eustace's conduct as a judge, but pointed to his long record of loyalty to the English Crown and suggested that dismissal would be a poor reward for it.

His death did not resolve the problem of finding a suitable replacement, and for the last time it was decided to appoint a senior cleric, Michael Boyle, Archbishop of Armagh, as Lord Chancellor.

[9] Ironically Boyle, a non-lawyer, was generally considered to be a better chancellor than Eustace, as his conscientious devotion to duty made up for his lack of legal training.

Eustace had always been an acute man of business, and despite his professional troubles he continued to prosper financially, recovering most of the Eustace estates forfeited by the Baltinglass branch of the family (some of which he returned to dispossessed Catholic cousins), and amassing a fortune which was reckoned to be between sixty and eighty thousand pounds (making him a multi-millionaire by modern standards).

[15] His last will divided the property between his nephews, a decision which led to ill-feeling and much further litigation[14] (which was probably connected with a determined effort by one Captain Anglesey to seize possession of Eustace's townhouse).

[9] He was buried in a private ceremony the morning after his death at Castlemartin and the Government commemorated his services to the Crown with an official memorial in St. Patrick's Cathedral three weeks later, with a wax effigy taking the place of his corpse.

Eustace's death led to a dispute in which his heirs had to fight off a determined effort by one "Captain Anglesey", of whom little else is known, to take possession of Damask by force.