William Worth (Irish judge)

William Worth (c.1646-1721) was an Irish judge of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

He was born in Cork city, the eldest son of Edward Worth, who was then Dean of Cork and subsequently became Bishop of Killaloe 1661-1669, and his wife Susanna Pepper, daughter of Dennis Pepper of County Mayo. His brother John continued the family's clerical tradition by becoming Dean of Kildare, and subsequently Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin. The Worths were a Cheshire family who had settled in County Cork in the sixteenth century.

William went to the University of Dublin, where he matriculated in 1661. He entered the Middle Temple in 1665 and the King's Inn in 1667. He was called to the Bar in 1669 and became Recorder of Cork in 1678. He was appointed Attorney General of the County Palatine of Tipperary in 1681, and second Baron of the Court of Exchequer (Ireland) in the same year. His staunchly Protestant background was no doubt a recommendation for high office, at a time when the tolerant attitude towards Roman Catholicism which had existed in Ireland since the Restoration of Charles II had been destroyed in the anti-Catholic hysteria engendered by the Popish Plot.

As a strong Protestant, he was naturally believed to be a supporter of the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and after the arrival of the Roman Catholic King James II of England in Ireland in 1689 he was removed from office. Unlike some of his judicial colleagues (like Sir John Lyndon, who was detained when he tried to flee from Ireland) Worth was given leave to go to England. On his return to Ireland he sought reappointment as a Baron of the Exchequer, and is later said to have lobbied to be appointed as Lord Chancellor of Ireland, but to no avail. His failure to secure reappointment is perhaps surprising, since other Protestant High Court judges who had been removed from the Bench by James II, including Sir John Lyndon and Sir Standish Hartstonge, 1st Baronet, returned to their former positions. He spent some time managing the estates of James Butler, 2nd Duke of Ormonde.

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