Robert Dyke

Robert Dyke (died 1449) was an English-born cleric and judge who held high office in fifteenth-century Ireland. He was appointed to the offices of Archdeacon of Dublin, Chancellor of the Exchequer of Ireland and Master of the Rolls in Ireland.[1]

Career

Little is known of his life before 1419, when he first appears as an official at the English Court.[2] In 1422 he was appointed the Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer (or Chancellor of the Green Wax, as the office was often described) and clerk of the Court of Common Pleas (Ireland) with power to appoint a deputy to each office.[3] He became vicar of Bridgnorth in Shropshire the same year. The actual date on which he arrived in Ireland to take up his official duties is unclear; he was acting as Chancellor of the Exchequer of Ireland though deputies in 1430.[4] He was probably in Ireland in 1431 when he became Archdeacon of Dublin, and he was made parson of Trim, County Meath in 1434. He became Master of the Rolls in 1436, with a salary of 5 shillings a day,[5] and he acted as Deputy to the Lord Chancellor of Ireland in 1447.[6] By 1442 he had been appointed a member of the Privy Council of Ireland.[7] In 1441 he was granted the manor of Ballymagarvey, Balrath, County Meath, for a term of seven years.[8]

Political Controversy

Irish politics from the 1420s to the 1440s was dominated by the Butler–Talbot feud, led by James Butler, 4th Earl of Ormond on the one side and John Talbot, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury and his formidable brother Richard, Archbishop of Dublin, on the other. It was almost impossible for any senior Irish Crown official of the era to avoid being drawn into the feud: everyone was forced to take sides. Dyke was a Butler partisan, and is said to have particularly offended Archbishop Talbot: among a long list of charges made against Talbot in 1442 was one that he had assaulted Dyke. Since Talbot, despite his clerical office, was notoriously hot-tempered, the charge may well be true.[9]

Dyke died in 1449.[10]

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References
  1. Ball, F. Elrington The Judges in Ireland 1221-1921 John Murray London 1926 Vol.1 p.177
  2. Ball p.177
  3. Patent Roll 8 Henry VI
  4. The deputies were Hugh Conyngham and Henry Stanyhurst- Patent Roll 8 Henry VI
  5. Patent Roll 14 Henry VI
  6. Ball p.177
  7. Patent Roll 20 Henry VI
  8. Patent Roll 20 Henry VI
  9. Graves, James ed. A Roll of the Proceedings in the King's Council in Ireland for a portion of the Year 1392-3 Cambridge University Press 2012 p.xliii
  10. Ball p.177
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