Eaton Stannard

Eaton Stannard (1685-1755) was a leading politician and lawyer in eighteenth-century Ireland. He was a popular Recorder of Dublin, an unpopular Serjeant-at-law (Ireland), and an experienced parliamentarian who represented Midleton in the Irish House of Commons for many years. He is mainly remembered now as a close friend of Jonathan Swift, whose last known letter was written to him.

He was born in County Cork, son of George Stannard of Ballyhealy, who was a descendant of Captain Robert Stannard of Kilmallock (died 1655). Robert married Martha Travers, daughter of Sir Robert Travers, Judge of the Admiralty and MP for Clonakilty. The Stannards and Travers families were part of a wide-reaching network of interrelated landowning families: Eaton himself married one of his Travers cousins, Elizabeth, a great-granddaughter of Sir Robert Travers.

He entered the University of Dublin in 1702, and the Middle Temple in 1710. He was called to the Bar in 1714, and became King's Counsel and a Bencher of the King's Inns in 1726. The following year he entered Parliament, where he represented Midleton until his death. He was an energetic and conscientious MP, though he was apparently not much of an orator; one historian has called him a "long-winded bore". On the other hand, he was a fine barrister, and gave a particularly effective performance in the celebrated Annesley abduction case of 1745, which inspired the novel Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson.

He was elected Recorder of Cork in 1728, but declined the appointment, for reasons which are not clear. He accepted the Recordership of Dublin in 1733 and held that office until 1750. Though he acted as a judge of assize in 1741, he never became a High Court judge; some attributed his failure to the enmity of Hugh Boulter, the influential Archbishop of Armagh, who had a habit of meddling in judicial appointments.

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