Thomas de Snyterby

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Thomas de Snyterby (died 1316) was an English-born Crown official, cleric and judge in Ireland, in the reign of King Edward I of England.[1]

Church of St Nicholas, Snitterby; Thomas was born in Snitterby and took his surname from it

Early career[]

He was a native of the village of Snitterby in Lincolnshire, and took his surname from his birthplace.[1] The name was occasionally spelt de Sueterby. By the 1280s he was a Crown servant in good standing, and he attended the King in Gascony in 1286. He was sent to Ireland in 1285, but made regular visits back to England. He became a prebendary, and later a canon, of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin.[1] In 1293 he was nominated to act as attorney for the Archbishop of Dublin, John de Sandford, who was absent in England.[2] He had a house and garden in central Dublin, near the Abbey of Saint Thomas the Martyr, in the Dublin Liberties. His relations with the Abbey were bad, and ended in litigation over a case of assault, the background to which was the judge's attempts to make use of the Abbey's water supply to supplement his own inadequate supply.

Judge[]

He was a justice of the Court of Common Pleas (Ireland) from 1295 to 1307 He served under the acting Chief Justice and Dean of St Patrick's, Thomas de Chaddesworth, and then under Sir Richard de Exeter.[1] He had administrative and military duties as well as judicial duties: for example he was entrusted with paying for troops and horses for the war against Scotland, and with the defences of Dublin against raids from hostile clans in County Wicklow.[3]

Conflict with Abbey of Saint Thomas[]

In 1306 he was involved in a highly embarrassing lawsuit between his servant Alan and the Abbey of Saint Thomas the Martyr, in the Dublin Liberties. Alan accused the Abbot, Richard Sweetman, of assault and false imprisonment.[4] The Abbot in his counterclaim alleged that Alan had attacked and knocked unconscious the Abbey's miller, who had found him, on his master's instructions, opening the Abbey's sluices to supplement the inadequate water supply of Snyterby's own watermill, having done the same "diverse times by night". Not surprisingly, Sweetman and Snyterby eventually decided to settle their differences out of court.[4]

Case of Netterville v Le Petyt[]

In 1306 and 1307 he sat with Chief Justice Sir Richard de Exeter on a commission to hear and determine a serious charge of assault in County Meath brought against John le Petyt, whose name appears regularly in the Court records of the time as a notorious malefactor in Meath, together with Philip Burnell and others, by the four Netterville brothers, who were the sons of Sir Nicholas de Netterville, ancestor of the Viscounts Netterville, and a colleague of Thomas and Sir Richard in the Common Pleas. As far as we can determine the Court treated it as a civil matter rather than a criminal one, and the defendants were ordered to pay heavy damages. [4]

Last years[]

In the early 1300s he was Constable of Castle Kevin, Annamoe, County Wicklow, a defensive fort designed to repel the O'Toole clan of County Wicklow, who raided Dublin city on a regular basis, and who burnt Castle Kevin itself twice during Thomas's tenure as Constable.[5]

Thomas stepped down as a judge in 1307, though he was still sitting in the Easter term of that year, when judgment was given in the case of Netterville v le Petyt. [4] He retired to Lincolnshire, where he died in 1316.[1] Nicholas de Snyterby, who sat in two of the Irish Royal Courts at intervals between 1337 and about 1355, was a close relative of Thomas.[6]

References[]

  1. ^ a b c d e Ball, F. Elrington The Judges in Ireland 1221-1921 London John Murray 1926 pp.57-8
  2. ^ Calendar of Patent Rolls 1293
  3. ^ Close Roll 25 Edward I
  4. ^ a b c d Calendar of Justiciary Rolls 1305-7 p.256
  5. ^ Close Roll 35 Edward I
  6. ^ Ball p.75
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