Richard Osbaldeston (Attorney General)

Sir Richard Osbaldeston (c.1585 – 1640) was an English barrister who became Attorney General for Ireland. He was the great-grandfather of Richard Osbaldeston, Bishop of London.

Background and early career

He was born in Lancashire, probably at Sefton. His father Edward Osbaldeston (died 1639), belonged to an ancient Lancashire family, the Osbaldestons of Osbaldeston. Edward's father was the youngest son of a large family, but Edward himself made an advantageous marriage to Margaret Molyneux, of the family which later took the title Earl of Sefton.^[1] They were also related to the Earl of Derby, and profited from this connection. By the 1620s the family were rich enough to buy the Manor of Hunmanby in Yorkshire, where they remained until the family died out in the 1830s.

Richard entered Gray's Inn and was called to the Bar. Few details of his practice survive but it is likely he practiced mainly in York, where he was living at the time of his first marriage in 1612.^[2]

Attorney General

In 1636 he was knighted and sent to Ireland as Attorney General:^[3] he had a link with the Irish bench through his cousin Geoffrey Osbaldeston, Chief Justice of Connacht, who had a long if notably undistinguished record of service to the Crown.^[4] Richard is said to have been a close associate of the Lord Deputy of Ireland, Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford, a fellow Yorkshireman, who may have known him in earlier days. Wentworth did frequently consult him on legal points,^[5] but given Wentworth's overwhelming personality and his absolute control of Irish government, it is unlikely that any legal adviser had much influence over him.

Quo warranto campaign

It was Wentworth who in 1638 instructed Osbaldeston to bring proceedings for quo warranto (i.e. a claim that a person or body is asserting a jurisdiction it does not possess) against those corporations in Munster which challenged the jurisdiction of the Court of Admiralty; this was apparently at the request of Dr Alan Cooke, the Irish Admiralty judge.^[6] In 1639 the quo warranto campaign was extended into an attack on all local landowners who claimed the right to hold local Admiralty courts. The campaign was not entirely successful: the Court of Exchequer (Ireland) ruled that that Richard Talbot of Malahide Castle (ancestor of Baron Talbot de Malahide) had the right to hold an admiralty court for the port of Malahide. ^[7]The campaign seems to have petered out after Osbaldeston's death.^[8]

Death

Probably Osbaldeston's most lasting memorial was the house he built adjacent to King's Inn.^[9] He died in Dublin in June 1640 and was buried in the Church of St. John the Evangelist, Dublin. Dr Cooke, the Admiralty judge, wrote to London with the terse message that "the old Attorney (General) is dead" and asking for a replacement to be sent quickly, to continue the quo warranto campaign.^[10] Osbaldeston was replaced by Sir Thomas Tempest, but Strafford's impeachment, followed by the outbreak of the Irish Rebellion of 1641 soon made the conduct of government business impossible.

Family

He married firstly Eleanor Westropp, of Yorkshire, who died in 1638, and secondly Mary Nettleton of Thornhill who outlived him. By his first marriage he had at least five children, but only William and Frances reached adult life. William was the grandfather of Richard Osbaldeston, Bishop of London.^[11]

References