Thomas Bathe

Sir Thomas Bathe, 1st Baron Louth (died 1478) was an Irish peer, lawyer and judge of the fifteenth century. Even by the standards of that turbulent age, he had a troubled and violent career. He was deprived of his property and outlawed by Act of Parliament, but was later restored to favour: his claim to the title Baron Louth was eventually recognised by the English Crown, and he ended his career as Chief Baron of the Exchequer.

He belonged to the leading Anglo-Irish Bathe family, who were prominent landowners in County Meath, and whose principal seat was at Athcarne, near Duleek. From the 1450s on he claimed the title "Lord and Baron of Louth" and the right to be summoned to Parliament as a : his right both to the title and the summons was denied by the Irish Parliament in 1460, but implicitly confirmed in 1476.

As a young man he seems to have been quarrelsome and violent, and this reputation was to darken his later life. He was in London in 1439, probably to study law, when he was charged with "ill conversation and behaviour", and committed to Ludgate Prison, from which his brother obtained his release.

Far more serious charges (some of which however were certainly false) were levelled against Bathe in 1449, and these were the main basis for the indictment against him in the Parliament of 1460. He was accused of a serious assault on Dr. John Stackpole, a cleric attached to the Abbey of Navan. It seems that Stackpole had been installed as the parish priest of Kilberry, a living which Bathe claimed was his to dispose of. The dispute between the two men led Stackpole to ask the Bishop of Meath for Bathe's excommunication: in revenge Bathe kidnapped and imprisoned him. However the most serious charge, that Bathe had Stackpole's eyes and tongue removed, was clearly an invention, since the indictment revealed that Stackpole, allegedly "by a miracle", was in fact in full possession of his faculties of sight and speech. This incident did not harm Bathe's career in the short term: he was knighted and appointed Chief Escheator of Ireland.

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