Edward Willes (1702-1768)

Edward Willes (1702 – June 1768) was an English-born judge in eighteenth-century Ireland, who became Chief Baron of the Irish Exchequer.

He was the son of Edward Willes senior, and was born on the Willes family estate at Newbold Comyn, near Leamington. He married Mary Denny of Norfolk and had three children. Sir John Willes, the long-serving Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, was his second cousin and encouraged him in his choice of a legal career. Sir John Willes was the father of that Sir Edward Willes who was Solicitor-General and judge of the Court of King's Bench.

He was called to the Bar in 1727, became a serjeant-at-law in 1740 and King's Serjeant in 1747; subsequently he became Attorney-General for the Duchy of Lancaster and Recorder of Coventry. In 1757 he was sent to Ireland as Chief Baron of the Exchequer, no doubt partly through his cousin Sir John's influence.

He acquired a reputation as an exceptionally hard-working and conscientious judge, who damaged his health by overwork. He was also an acute and intelligent observer of Irish life, recording his impressions of social and economic conditions and of the Irish legal system in a series of unpublished maunscripts, and also in his letters to Francis Greville, 1st Earl of Warwick, which have been published. He was particularly concerned by the perennial difficulty of finding enough judges to go on assize, and was unhappy at the usual remedy of appointing Serjeants-at-law and Law Officers as temporary judges; in his view temporary judges lacked independence and did not have the authority to challenge powerful local interests.

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