Henry Burnell

Henry Burnell (c.1540–1614) was an Irish judge and politician; he was briefly Recorder of Dublin and served as a justice of the Court of King's Bench. Though he was willing to accept Crown office, he spent much of his career in opposition to the Government. He was one of the leaders of the protest against the taxation policies of the Lord Deputy of Ireland, Sir Henry Sidney, in the late 1570s, and as a member of the Irish House of Commons in the 1580s he successfully opposed Sidney's successor, Sir John Perrot. In the early 1600s he was one of the leaders of the protest against strict enforcement of the Penal Laws. His professional reputation was gravely damaged in his last years when he was convicted and fined for having altered a deed concerning the Earl of Kildare's will. He was the grandfather of the playwright Henry Burnell.

He was born in Castleknock, County Dublin, son of John Burnell. The Burnells were a long-established Dublin family, which originally settled at Balgriffin; they were descended from Robert Burnell, Baron of the Court of Exchequer (Ireland) between about 1388 and 1413. An earlier John Burnell was briefly Chief Baron of the Irish Exchequer in the 1490s. The family were staunchly Roman Catholic and their loyalty to the Crown was sometimes questioned as a result. Henry's father had managed to retain the family estates after his cousin, another John Burnell, had been executed for his part in the rebellion of Silken Thomas; the elder Henry was still alive, although described as "very old", in 1577. Henry was at Lincoln's Inn 1561-2 and was one of the Irish students who compiled a book detailing the maladministration of the Pale. He retturned to Ireland to practice law about 1564.

In 1573 he was appointed Recorder of Dublin but resigned little over a year later. His motives are unclear but since he emerged soon after as legal adviser to the Earl of Kildare it is likely that he found private practice more lucrative. Even Sir Henry Sidney, a stern critic of Burnell, admitted that there was no doubt of his great success at the Bar, which had made him a rich man.

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