Thomas Plunket (Chief Justice)

[1] He was born in County Meath, the only son of Sir Robert Plunket, who served briefly as Lord Chief Justice of Ireland in 1447, and his wife Genet Finglas.

Gerald FitzGerald, 8th Earl of Kildare, the dominant magnate in Ireland, declared for Simnel, who was crowned King Edward VI in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin.

Ball remarks that most of the Irish judiciary followed Kildare "like sheep";[3] but Plunket played an active role in rallying support for Simnel, and as a result, in his later years he was regarded by the English Crown with particular mistrust.

The general pardon did not extend to Plunket, or to Sir James Keating, Prior of the Order of St John of Jerusalem at Kilmainham, since these two men, for no very clear reason, were regarded as "the prime instigators" of the rebellion, rather than the Earl of Kildare.

[4] Sir Richard Edgcumbe, who was sent to Ireland in 1488 to accept the submission of the Irish nobles, refused, despite Kildare's pleas on their behalf, to take oaths of homage or fealty from Plunket or Keating, "who were specially noted among the other chief causes of the Rebellion".

Eventually, with great reluctance, Edgcumbe was persuaded to pardon Plunket, but he refused to show clemency to Keating, who was removed from office and died in poverty in about 1491.

In 1491 a second pretender to the English Crown, Perkin Warbeck, appeared in Ireland: he claimed to be Richard of Shrewsbury, younger son of King Edward IV of England.