William Darcy (died 1540)

Sir William Darcy (c.1460–1540) was a leading Anglo-Irish statesman of the Pale in the early sixteenth century; for many years he held the office of Vice-Treasurer of Ireland.

[4] The King's Inns, Ireland's first law school, was not founded until a year after Darcy's death, but a rudimentary form of professional instruction for barristers was provided by senior Irish judges.

Darcy lodged at the house of the King's Serjeant, John Estrete, with whom he studied those English legal texts which were considered to be essential for the education of those students (by no means all of them) who intended to practice law.

During the holidays the students visited the Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, Philip Bermingham, to study dancing and the harp: these were not simply recreations, but were considered to be an essential part of a young lawyer's education.

[4] Darcy then proceeded to Lincoln's Inn, where he was enrolled in 1485; he was fined for unspecified misconduct in the Trinity term of that year and returned to Ireland soon after.

Darcy assisted the Earl in two of his more notable ventures: the first was the failed attempt to put the pretender Lambert Simnel on the English throne.

This, combined with the creeping Gaelicisation even of those parts of Ireland which were under English rule, meant that the Crown effectively controlled only the Pale, and might soon lose even that.

[5] Darcy's treatise had a great influence on later writers such as the eminent judge Patrick Finglas, but it did nothing to restore him to official favour in the short term or to damage Kildare's career, and later historians have criticised it as "crude and sketchy".

By the early 1520s however Kildare was in disfavour with the Crown, whereas Darcy had earned the respect of Surrey, the Lord Deputy of Ireland, although he caused the Government some embarrassment by seriously overstating the profits from the Irish revenues.

[1] Two widowed ladies of the Darcy family married into the Fitzgerald clan, and Kildare's brother Richard later married Darcy's granddaughter Maud, although the marriage can hardly have gratified her grandfather, as the couple were generally believed to have murdered Maud's first husband, and Richard's involvement in the rebellion of his nephew Silken Thomas ultimately cost him his life.

Sir William was given the wardship of James Marward, titular Baron Skryne, (grandson of his first wife Margaret and her first husband), and married him to his granddaughter Maud,[7] a decision he must have later regretted when Maud, according to popular belief, had her husband murdered in 1534 by Richard FitzGerald, whom she later married[7] (Richard was the half-brother of Darcy's old enemy, the 9th Earl of Kildare).