Richard Jebb (barrister)

Richard Jebb (1766-1834) was an Irish judge of the nineteenth century, and a member of a highly gifted family of English origin, which produced a celebrated doctor, three distinguished clegymen and a noted classical scholar.

He was born in Drogheda, eldest son of John Jebb and his wife Alicia Forster. His father was an alderman of the town and had an estate at Leixlip in County Kildare; his grandfather, the elder Richard Jebb, had come to Ireland from Mansfield in Nottinghamshire.

Richard's younger brother was John Jebb, Bishop of Limerick. The two brothers seem to have been close, and John, who never married, lived with Richard as a young man. Their father suffered financial losses for a time, but Richard at the age of twenty-one inherited a substantial fortune from his father's cousin Sir Richard Jebb, 1st Baronet, a distinguished doctor who became physician to King George III. John Jebb, the religious reformer, was another cousin who belonged to the Irish branch of the family.

Richard was educated at a local school in Drogheda, then at the University of Dublin, from which he graduated in 1786. He entered Lincoln's Inn and was called to the Irish Bar in 1789, King's Counsel 1806. He was a moderate opponent of the Act of Union 1800, although in his pamphlet "Arguments for and against the Act of Union" he did endeavour to be fair to both sides of the debate. Like many former opponents of Union he was prepared to accept office under the new regime, although he refused to sit in the English House of Commons. He became Third Serjeant in 1816, Second Serjeant in 1818 and a justice of the Court of King's Bench (Ireland) in 1818. He died suddenly at his home in Rostrevor, County Down in 1834, a victim of the great cholera epidemic.

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