Robert FitzRery

[1] Significantly, Robert and Joan renewed their suit in August 1449, when Richard, Duke of York, the newly arrived Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, who a few years later claimed the English throne, was at Drogheda to conduct sensitive political negotiations with the Gaelic clans of Ulster.

[1] The first record of his professional life is in 1447, when James Butler, 4th Earl of Ormonde, probably the most powerful Anglo-Irish magnate of his time, appointed him his attorney in all his lawsuits.

[11] He was appointed Attorney-General for Ireland in 1450,[12] and almost immediately obtained a supplement to his annual salary in the amount of 100 shillings a year charged on the Crown rents of Chapelizod and Leixlip.

There was perhaps less justification in FitzRery's case since the Attorney-General, unlike the Serjeant, was not obliged to attend meetings of Parliament and the Privy Council of Ireland at his own expense.

Though no patent seems to survive for his appointment to the Bench, a statute of the Irish Parliament of 1471-72 describes him as a justice of the Court of Common Pleas (Ireland).