Robert Johnson (1745–1833)

He was spared a prison sentence but forced to resign from the Bench, and retired into private life, where he continued his feud with the Dublin administration.

[1] His motives for writing the Juverna letters are unclear, although he had made a similar anonymous attack on a senior Irish judge, Christopher Robinson, in 1779.

He was also Barracks Master for Dublin, an office requiring no professional qualifications, which made him something of an object of ridicule, as it was widely considered demeaning for a barrister to hold it.

Johnson served briefly in the last session of the pre-Union Irish Parliament as member for Philipstown, and was made a judge of the Common Pleas in 1801, shortly after the Union took effect.

[1] He was not highly regarded as a lawyer ("deficient in knowledge" was the general view), and his promotion, which was very badly received by the legal profession, was universally seen as his reward for supporting the Act of Union.

He was a member of the popular drinking club, The Monks of the Screw (or Order of Saint Patrick), which had been founded about 1780 by John Philpot Curran.

[1] In 1803 the radical English journalist William Cobbett published a series of letters in his weekly newspaper The Political Register, written by an author calling himself "Juverna".

[2] Further inquiries proved Johnson to be the author: he may have fallen under suspicion because many years earlier he had published a similar attack on a long-serving High Court judge, Christopher Robinson, under another pseudonym, "Causidicus".

His appointment to the Bench had been greeted with general condemnation by the legal profession, and his notorious servility to the rich and powerful drew on him the contempt of his colleagues.

[6] He pleaded for leniency (presumably he finally confessed to having written the letters), but the authorities took a severe view of the matter, and a warrant was issued for his arrest to stand trial in England for seditious libel.