[1] Patrick's choice of a legal career no doubt owed something to his uncle's example; he is also said to have been greatly influenced, at least in the early years, by his brother-in-law Thomas Luttrell, later Chief Justice of the Irish Common Pleas.
No doubt emboldened by his success, he beat off a tentative proposal from a four-man commission on law reform to expand the role of the Attorney-General, which would possibly have involved abolishing the office of Serjeant.
[3] He sat in the Irish House of Commons as the member for County Dublin in the Parliament of 1536–7;[1] despite his heavy obligations to the Crown, he initially opposed the Protestant Reformation.
[3] Given the close ties of blood and marriage which existed between nearly all the Anglo-Irish families of the Pale, it was reasonable that Barnewall, with his considerable influence at the English Court, should be asked by his relatives and neighbours to go to England to plead for a pardon, and he agreed to do so.
He was accompanied by Sir Robert Dillon (died 1580), the Attorney General for Ireland, who, though technically Barnewall's superior, seems to have been very much the junior partner on the mission.
[4] This was another very delicate matter, since Henry VIII was not noted for tolerating opposition to his wishes, while the Cowley family were busily spreading the story that Barnewall had challenged the King's authority to dissolve any religious house.
[1] Unlike his uncle and his brother-in-law he failed to achieve elevation to the office of Lord Chancellor of Ireland or Chief Justice of any of the courts of common law; he had hoped to be Chief Baron of the Irish Exchequer, but was passed over in favour of Richard Delahide, despite the fact that Delahide, unlike Barnewall, was deeply implicated in the Silken Thomas rebellion.
He did sit as an extra judge of assizes in Munster,[1] but had to wait until 1550 to become Master of the Rolls, then a comparatively junior and largely administrative post, and he died only two years later.
[1] One of his last acts was to persuade the Privy Council to order that the Chancery rolls, for whose safekeeping he was responsible as Master, be stored in the Library of the former St. Patrick's Cathedral, (suppressed in 1547, but restored in 1555) as there was no other secure and suitable place to keep them.
[2] Hart agrees with this verdict and notes the crucial role Barnewall played in Government; probably no other Solicitor General in Irish history ever approached his influence.
[3] If his opposition to the suppression of the monasteries was self-interested, it nonetheless took considerable nerve; he also deserves credit for the courage he showed by his willingness to plead with Henry VIII for a general pardon for those gentry suspected of rebellion.