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William Domville


William Domville (1609-1689) was a leading Irish politician and barrister of the Restoration era. Due to the great trust which the English Crown had in him, he served as Attorney General for Ireland throughout the reign of Charles II; and it was during his term of office that the Attorney General emerged as pre-eminent legal adviser to the Crown.

While Domville was undoubtedly a loyal subject of the English Crown, in his treatise, "A Disquisition Touching that Great Question Whether an Act of Parliament made in England shall bind the People and Kingdom of Ireland", he argued for the right of the Irish Parliament to act entirely free from interference by the English Parliament. Although the work was not published in his lifetime, his son-in-law William Molyneux drew on it for his own highly controversial treatise, and it is thought to have had considerable influence on later political writers.

He was born in Dublin to an ancient Cheshire family. His father Gilbert (1565-1624) had moved to Ireland where he became Clerk of the Crown, and sat in the Irish House of Commons as member for Kildare County in the Irish Parliament of 1613-1615. William's mother was Margaret Jones, daughter of Thomas Jones, Archbishop of Dublin, and his wife Margaret Purdon. He was educated at St Albans School, Hertfordshire. He entered Lincoln's Inn, and became a Bencher of the Inn in 1657. He was called to the Bar in 1640, and built up a highly successful practice at the English Bar.


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