Peter Metge

Peter Metge (c. 1740 – 1809) was an Irish politician and judge of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He was a colourful character, who was noted for his fondness for dueling, and his somewhat unorthodox private life.

He was born at Athlumney, County Meath, the second son of Peter Metge and his wife Anne Lyons, who died in 1792. His grandfather Peter de la Metgee was a French Huguenot who fled to Ireland to avoid religious persecution after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1688. John Metge, who served as MP for Ratoath, and after the Act of Union 1800 as MP for Dundalk, was the judge's younger brother.

He was a graduate of the University of Dublin, where he took his degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1763. He married Sophia Crofton, daughter of Sir Marcus Lowther Crofton of Mote, County Roscommon, first of the Crofton Baronets, and his wife Catherine Crofton, and they had two children, a son Peter who died at 17, and a daughter who died young.

Sophia died in 1777: some years afterwards, Peter began a long relationship with a woman named Eleanor Archdeacon, of whom little is known, but whom he sometimes referred to as his wife, and by whom he had at least six children. Whether or not he and Eleanor went through any form of marriage is uncertain.

After his retirement from the Bench he lived mainly in Bath.

He entered the Middle Temple in 1762 and was called to the Irish Bar in 1769. He sat in the Irish House of Commons as member for Ardee in 1776 and subsequently for Ratoath in 1783 (where he was succeeded as MP by his brother John). He became Third Serjeant in 1782 and was briefly Admiralty Judge; he also served as Portreeve (i.e. Warden) of Navan. He was made a Bencher of the King's Inns in 1783. At the end of 1783 he became a Baron of the Court of Exchequer (Ireland). He retired in 1801 and died in 1809. He left his estate to his children by Eleanor Archdeacon, who was by then deceased, and whom he apparently regarded as his second wife, although there is no conclusive evidence that they were legally married.

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