Peter Tilliol

Sir Peter Tilliol, also called Peter de Tilliol (1299-1348) was a Cumberland landowner, politician and judge; he was High Sheriff of Cumberland, and served briefly as Lord Chief Justice of Ireland.

It was destroyed in its present form during the English Civil War[1] In 1322 Tilliol saw military service on the Scottish border under the command of Andrew Harclay, 1st Earl of Carlisle;[2] this might well have been politically ruinous since Carlisle's decision to make a peace treaty with the Scots on his own initiative, without royal sanction, led to his downfall and execution for treason in 1323.

He sat regularly as a Commissioner for oyer and terminer, and in 1341 he was given a special commission by Parliament to punish rebels and suppress trespass in Cumberland.

[3] His judicial experience may explain the decision to send him to Ireland as Lord Chief Justice, where two rival office holders Thomas Louth and Elias de Asshebournham spent most of the 1330s disputing their right to the position.

Tilliol may have been a compromise candidate; he went to Ireland in the spring of 1331 but returned to England almost at once.