Waleran de Wellesley (died c. 1276) was a judge, statesman and landowner in thirteenth century Ireland. He was a member of the Privy Council of Ireland. He was the ancestor of the Duke of Wellington, and was the first of the de Wellesley family to settle in Ireland. [1]
The de Wellesley family came from Somerset, and took their name from the town of Wells in that county, with which they had a close association [1] (the earliest surviving family record is a charter dated about 1180, now held in Wells Cathedral). [1] The family held the office of standard-bearer to the King, and a Wellesley accompanied Henry II of England to Ireland during the Norman Invasion in the late twelfth century, but evidently did not settle in that country. [1]
Waleran was born in Somerset. He is first heard of in 1219–20, when he was engaged in a lawsuit against his mother about her dower lands at Wells. [2] He came to Ireland on "the King's business" in 1226. [1] Between 1242 and 1269, with some intervals, he was an itinerant justice, and became first itinerant justice in 1255; [3] He also served for a short time as a justice "in banc" of the Bench. This may be an early reference to the Court of Common Pleas (Ireland), which is known to have existed in his last years, and was often called "the Bench" in the early period of its existence. In 1257 the English Crown ordered the payment to him of 20 marks for his expenses incurred in the King's service. [4] By 1260 he was a member of the Privy Council of Ireland, in which capacity he, with the Lord Treasurer of Ireland and other councillors, witnessed an important charter that year. [5]
He acquired property in Dublin, and considerable wealth: he granted lands to a priory in County Wexford in 1261. [3] He died about 1276, when he must have been at least seventy, a good age for the time. [3]
His son, also named Waleran, was in England in 1284, serving the Lord Chancellor of England. [3] He had an estate at Bryanstown, County Meath. In 1297, on the death without issue of the Justiciar of Ireland, William de Vesci, Wellesley, as tenant, was granted a part of his lands in County Kildare, which had been de Vesci's share of the enormous inheritance of his great-grandfather William Marshall, 1st Earl of Pembroke. [6] He was High Sheriff of Kildare in 1303. He was killed in a skirmish with a Gaelic clan the same year. [3] His father also had a natural son, John Delahyde. [3] William de Wellesley, probably the son of the second Sir Waleran, was appointed Constable of Kildare Castle for life in 1310. [7] He married after 1317 Elizabeth, widow of Walter l'Enfant the younger, Lord of Carnalway, Naas, the Chief Judge of the Justiciar's Court. [7]
The de Wellesleys acquired lands in County Meath and County Kildare, and the titles Baron of Norragh, Earl of Mornington, and ultimately Duke of Wellington. [1]
A third Sir Waleran Wellesley, probably the grandson of the second, was living in 1338, when he received custody of certain lands from the Crown. [8] William Wellesley was granted Carbury Castle, County Kildare and the lands and lordship of Carbury in 1382. [9]
Ruins of Carbury Castle
The Barony of Norragh in County Kildare was an Irish feudal barony: that is, the holder had the right to call himself Baron, but did not hold a peerage and had no right to sit in the Irish House of Lords.
Great Connell Priory is a former house of Augustinian canons dedicated to Saint Mary and Saint David, situated on the eastern side of the River Liffey, in the Barony of Connell just to the south-east of the town of Newbridge, County Kildare, Republic of Ireland.
John FitzThomas was an Anglo-Norman in the Peerage of Ireland, as 4th Lord of Offaly from 1287 and subsequently as 1st Earl of Kildare from 1316.
The High Sheriff of Kildare was the British Crown's judicial representative in County Kildare, Ireland from the 16th century until 1922, when the office was abolished in the new Free State and replaced by the office of Kildare County Sheriff. The High Sheriff had judicial, electoral, ceremonial and administrative functions and executed High Court Writs. In 1908, an Order in Council made the Lord Lieutenant the Sovereign's prime representative in a county and reduced the High Sheriff's precedence. However, the sheriff retained his responsibilities for the preservation of law and order in the county. The usual procedure for appointing the sheriff from 1660 onwards was that three persons were nominated at the beginning of each year from the county and the Lord Lieutenant then appointed his choice as High Sheriff for the remainder of the year. Often the other nominees were appointed as under-sheriffs. Sometimes a sheriff did not serve his full term due to death or another event, and another sheriff was then appointed for the remainder of the year. The dates given in this article are the dates of appointment.
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Walter Wellesley (c.1470–1539) was a sixteenth-century Irish cleric and judge. He was Prior of Great Connell Priory, Bishop of Kildare 1529-39, and Master of the Rolls in Ireland 1531-2.
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Thomas Cusacke, Cusack or de Cusack was an Irish barrister and judge, who held the offices of Attorney General for Ireland and Lord Chief Justice of Ireland. He should not be confused with his much younger cousin Sir Thomas Cusack, Lord Chancellor of Ireland, who was a child of about six when the elder Thomas died.
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Walter de Cusack was an Anglo-Irish judge, magnate and military commander of the fourteenth century.
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