Richard Stephens (judge)

Sir Richard Stephens (c.1630–1692) was an Irish barrister, politician and judge of the seventeenth century. He was a highly successful lawyer, but his political career was hampered by his unorthodox religious and political views. He became Serjeant-at-law (Ireland) to King Charles II, but was later dismissed from office, and was in political disgrace during the following reign. After the Glorious Revolution he was appointed to the Irish High Court bench, but he died a few years later.

He was born in Wexford, son of Richard Stephens senior. He entered Lincoln's Inn in 1658 and the King's Inn in 1663. He became one of the most successful practitioners at the Irish Bar, and was Recorder of Waterford and Clonmel. In 1665 he was elected to the Irish House of Commons as member for Ardee.

In the autumn of 1678 the great wave of anti-Catholic hysteria known as the Popish Plot, sparked by the invention by the informer Titus Oates of a wholly fictitious Jesuit-led conspiracy to murder the King, broke out in England, and the Plot gained some credence in Ireland also. At that time several Irish judges and Law Officers, who were aware of the King's own leaning towards the Roman Catholic religion, more or less openly indulged their own attachment to that faith, even though office holders were in theory disqualified for practising that religion. The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormonde, himself a staunch Anglican, pursued a policy of unofficial religious toleration towards Roman Catholics. By 1679 however public opinion demanded the appointment to office of men of extreme Protestant views: and Stephens was a client of Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury, who had used the Popish Plot to become effective Leader of the Opposition. Ormonde, despite his own strong personal antipathy to Stephens, accordingly recommended him to the King as a man who was worth promoting: he met the King at Portsmouth and was given a knighthood.

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