John Tirel
John Tirel, or Tyrell was a prominent judge and statesman in fourteenth-century Ireland who held office as Serjeant-at-law and Chief Justice of the Irish Common Pleas.
He was the son of Warin Tirel. The Tirels or Tyrells were a junior branch of the leading Anglo-Irish family of Tyrell. The senior branch of the family, which died out in 1370, held the Irish feudal barony of Castleknock. He is said to have been a substantial landowner, though the precise location of his estates is unknown.
He is known to have been in England, presumably studying law, in 1354; he then returned to Ireland, where he held office as King's Serjeant from 1372 to 1376. The position of Serjeant was an onerous one, and on occasion involved him in some physical danger, since at this time English rule in Ireland was insecure, and long journeys were hazardous. He was a political figure of considerable importance, who was summoned to sit in the Irish House of Commons in the Parliaments of 1375 and 1380, and to several meetings of the Great Council.
He was appointed a judge of the Court of King's Bench in 1376 and Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas in 1386. He was exempted from certain of the feudal duties of a landowner in 1378. Like many Irish judges of the period he was reluctant, on safety grounds, to go on assize: in 1380 Walter Cotterell, the King's Serjeant, was deputised to act on his place as judge of assize for Munster, Kilkenny and Wexford, "on account of the dangers of the roads". He died in 1395.
