Patrick Burnell

Patrick Burnell (died 1491) was an Irish judge and Crown official of the fifteenth century.

He was a member of the prominent Burnell family, who had been Lords of the Manor of Balgriffin in County Dublin for several generations and who produced several distinguished judges; in Patrick's own generation his cousin John Burnell was Chief Baron of the Irish Exchequer.

He is first heard of in 1467 as a clerk in the Exchequer of Ireland; in 1477 he was described as giving evidence to the English Chancery. In 1478 he was appointed a Baron of the Court of Exchequer (Ireland), following the death of Nicholas Sutton, whose widow, Anne Cusacke, Burnell later married. He was made Chief Chamberlain of Ireland in 1484, and owned several properties in Dublin, including houses at Fishamble Street.

Like almost all of the Irish judges of the time he was a client of Gerald FitzGerald, 8th Earl of Kildare, who was for many years the dominant force in Irish political life. With all of his judicial colleagues he meekly agreed, at Kildare's insistence, to support the claim of the pretender Lambert Simnel to be the rightful King of England in 1487: Kildare had Simnel crowned in Dublin and he invaded England with an Irish army.

When Simnel's cause was crushed at the Battle of Stoke Field, the victorious King Henry VII showed remarkable clemency to the rebels, and Burnell shared in the general royal pardon issued in 1488. He died in 1491.

References

• F. Elrington Ball The Judges in Ireland 1221-1921 London John Murray 1926