Edward Smith (judge)

Sir Edward Smith or Smythe (1602–1682) was an English-born politician and judge who held the offices of Chief Justice of the Irish Common Pleas and judge of the Irish Court of Claims.

He was the second son of Edward Smythe, a barrister at Middle Temple, and his wife Katherine. The family's earlier history is uncertain, although it has been suggested that they were related to the Smythe Baronets of Eshe Hall, Durham, and also to Sir Thomas Smith (1513-1577), who was Secretary of State to Elizabeth I. Young Edward's sister Arabella, "a lady of great beauty and charm", married, against her brother's wishes, a "wild young Oxford student" called Charles Howard, who later unexpectedly became the 3rd Earl of Nottingham. The historian Michael Quane says that Edward was a nephew of Erasmus Smith, a landowner and philanthropist in both England and Ireland (the Erasmus Smith Trust, which Erasmus founded for the education of Irish children, survives to this day).

Edward entered the Middle Temple in 1627, was called to the bar in 1635 and became a Bencher of his Temple in 1655. He married, about 1648, Constance Lucy, daughter of Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote Park and his wife Alice Spencer (died 1648). Constance was the sister of the politician Richard Lucy (as well as ten other siblings), and the widow of Sir William Spencer, 2nd Baronet of the Spencer Baronets. She and Edward had two sons.

The inscription on his tomb suggests that he was a member of the House of Commons at the outbreak of the English Civil War (although the first actual record of his election to the Commons is as MP for Yarmouth in 1661) and that he took Parliament's side in the conflict, though with some reservations. It states that he supported Parliament so long as it held out against the King and the Church of England: "that is, as long as there was room for wise politics". This implies that Smith opposed the execution of Charles I, which is borne out by the fact that after the Restoration his past career was not held against him. He received a knighthood from Charles II in 1662, took his seat in the Commons as member for Yarmouth, and was sent to Ireland as a judge. He gained the goodwill, which was then crucial to the career of any Irish judge, of James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormonde, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, who found him to be honest, good-natured and hard-working.

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