Mr. Editor,--I am encouraged by the eminent names which illustrate the
first Number of your new experiment--a most happy thought--to inquire
whether they, or any other correspondent, can inform me who was the
William de Skypwith, the patent of whose appointment as Chief Justice of
the King's Bench in Ireland, dated February 15. 1370, 44 Edward III., is
to be found in the _New Fædera_ vol. iii. p.877.? In the entry on the
Issue Roll of that year, p. 458., of the payment of "his expences and
equipment" in going there, he is called "Sir William Skipwyth, Knight,
and the King's Justice in Ireland." {24}
There was a Sir William Skipwyth, who was appointed a Judge of the
Common Pleas in 33 Edward III., and Chief Baron of the Exchequer in 36
Edward III.; and, were it not that Collins, in his _Baronetage_,
followed by Burke, says that he remained Chief Baron till 40 Edward
III., _in which year he died_, I should have had no doubt that the Irish
Chief Justice was the same with the English Chief Baron.
The same authority adds that Sir William Skipwyth who was made a Justice
of the King's Bench [it should have been of the Common Pleas] in 50
Edward III., and who resigned his office in 11 Richard II., was the
eldest son of the Chief Baron. But that authority does not make the
slightest allusion to the appointment of the Chief Justice of Ireland.
A suspicion that this last Justice of the Common Pleas is not only the
same person as the Chief Justice of Ireland, but also as the Chief Baron
of the Exchequer, has arisen in my mind for the following among other
reasons.
1. Collins and Burke are wrong in saying that he remained Chief Baron
till 40 Edward III. His successor in that office was appointed on
October 29. 1365, 39 Edward III.
2. They are further wrong, I imagine, in saying that he continued Chief
Baron till his death: for Joshua Barnes, in his _History of Edward
III._, p. 667., says that Skipwyth and Sir Henry Green, the Chief
Justice of the King's Bench, were in 1365 arrested and imprisoned on
account of many enormities which the King understood they had committed
against law and justice; and this relation is corroborated by the fact
that Green's successor as Chief Justice was appointed on the same day as
Skipwyth's successor as Chief Baron.
3. No proof whatever is given of the Chief Baron's death in 40 Edward
III.
I will not trouble you with other grounds of identification which occur
to me: but as an answer to my question might "make these odds all even,"
I sent the "Query" to the "Lost and Found Office" you have established,
in the hope that some stray "Note," as yet unappropriated, may assist in
solving the difficulty.