Edward Pennefather

Edward Pennefather PC, KC (22 October 1774 – 6 September 1847) was an Irish judge of the Victorian era.

Pennefather was born in Tipperary, the second son of William Pennefather of Knockeevan, member of the Irish House of Commons for Cashel and his wife Ellen Moore, daughter of Edward Moore, Archdeacon of Emly. He went to school in Clonmel and graduated from the University of Dublin. He was called to the Irish Bar in 1795 and was made a King's Counsel by 1816. He was very briefly Attorney-General for Ireland in 1830. He was Solicitor-General for Ireland in 1835 and again in 1841. In the latter year he was appointed Lord Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench for Ireland and held the position until he resigned on health grounds in 1846.

In 1806 he married Susannah Darby, eldest daughter of John Darby of Leap Castle, County Offaly, and his wife Anne Vaughan, and sister of John Nelson Darby, one of the most influential of the early Plymouth Brethren. They had ten children, including Edward, the eldest son and heir; Richard, auditor of Ceylon; Ellen, who married James Thomas O'Brien, Bishop of Ossory, Ferns and Leighlin, and Dorothea, (Dora) (1825-1859), who married in 1850, as his second wife, James Stopford, 4th Earl of Courtown, and had three sons. Two of Dora's sons, General Sir Frederick Stopford, commander at the Landing at Suvla Bay, and Admiral Walter Stopford, became famous.