Thomas Dowdall (judge)
Thomas Dowdall was an Irish barrister and judge who held the office of Master of the Rolls in Ireland.
He was born in County Louth, son of Sir Robert Dowdall, who was for many years Chief Justice of the Irish Common Pleas, and his wife Anne Wogan. The Dowdall family came to Ireland from Dovedale in Derbyshire in the thirteenth century. Sir Thomas Dowdall, who married c.1450 Elizabeth Holywood, daughter of Sir Robert Holywood of Artane, and mother through her previous husband James Nugent of Richard, 2nd Baron Delvin was probably a close relative of the judge. Elizabeth Hollywood's third husband was Peter Trevers, Dowdall's predecessor as Master of the Rolls, an example of how small the world of the Anglo-Irish ruling class was in that era.
He was studying law at Lincoln's Inn in 1459. He returned to Ireland and was made Serjeant-at-law in 1462: he was confirmed in office by Parliament in December 1469. In 1471 he was described as a "counter" and later that year he was appointed Master of the Rolls. He was summoned to England on official business in 1479.
Like the great majority of the Anglo-Irish gentry, and all the High Court judges, he made the mistake of supporting the claims of the pretender Lambert Simnel in 1487 to be the rightful King of England. Simnel's cause was crushed at the Battle of Stoke Field. The victorious King Henry VII was prepared to be magnanimous to the defeated rebels and Dowdall and his judicial colleagues received a royal pardon. He probably died in 1492.
James Dowdall, Lord Chief Justice of Ireland 1583–84, was a descendant of Thomas.
