Robert Wikeford

[4] O'Flanagan[1] records that in 1375 the royal judges in Aquitaine, Sir Guy de Bryan and Edmund Mortimer, 3rd Earl of March, in a lawsuit brought by Ivo Beausteau against Wikeford, gave judgement against him without hearing him in his own defence and imposed financial penalties of great severity on him.

He was also sued by another Royal clerk called Thomas, who obtained a judgement against him for £10 (a large sum in the fourteenth century) shortly before his translation to Dublin.

[1] To Wikeford's embarrassment, Thomas was permitted to issue a writ to distrain any lands held by the Archbishop in Ireland in satisfaction of the judgment.

[3] In 1375, on the death of Thomas Minot, Wickford was elected Archbishop of Dublin by the Dean and Chapter of St Patrick's Cathedral,[6] as was then the normal practice, and a year later he was made Lord Chancellor of Ireland.

[8] He presided over the session of Parliament which was held at Naas in 1382/3, whose members urged him to remain in Ireland, where they would have the benefit of his wisdom and experience.

Unlike his grandfather Edward III, Richard did not especially value Wikeford's services to the Crown, and censured him severely for exceeding his powers.

[8] O'Flanagan praises him as a wise and learned judge and a man of great ability,[1] and Willis gives a similarly favourable verdict.

[11] As Archbishop he showed the harsher side of his character by expelling all beggars from his diocese in 1376, despite protests that many of them, so far from being "idle vagabonds", had worked hard on the restoration of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, in the time of Wikeford's predecessor Thomas Minot.