Sir John Meade, 1st Baronet

Sir John Meade, 1st Baronet (1642–1707) was an Irish barrister, judge and politician. He was the first of the Meade Baronets of Balintubber, and an ancestor of the Earl of Clanwilliam. He was unusual in his era for his lack of ambition to become a judge of the High Court, despite being widely regarded as a lawyer of "excellent parts". In matters of religion he seems to have been, by the standards of his time, a man of very tolerant views: although he was himself a Protestant, he damaged his career by marrying Elizabeth Butler, who was a Roman Catholic, as his third wife.

He was born in Cork City, son of Colonel William Meade and Elizabeth Travers; he was a grandson of Sir John Meade senior, of Balintubber, and through his paternal grandmother, Catherine Sarsfield, a great-grandson of the notoriously corrupt judge Dominick Sarsfield, 1st Viscount Sarsfield. His mother Elizabeth Travers was the daughter of Sir Robert Travers (died 1647), Judge Advocate of Ireland and member of the Irish House of Commons for Clonakilty, who was killed at the Battle of Knocknanuss, and his second wife Elizabeth Boyle, daughter of Richard Boyle, Archbishop of Tuam. Meade was thus a close family connection of the "Great Earl of Cork", Richard Boyle. His younger sister Eleanor became the fourth wife of Godwin Swift, uncle and guardian of Jonathan Swift, and another sister, Joanna, is recorded as the grandmother of the writer Laetitia Pilkington. By his third marriage he also became a member of the great Butler dynasty, although this proved to be something of a mixed blessing, as he married into one of the Roman Catholic branches of the family.

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