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Hugh Canoun

Hugh Canoun, or Hugh Canon (died December 1317/January 1318) was an English-born judge in early fourteenth-century Ireland. He was a justice of the Court of Common Pleas (Ireland) and served as Deputy Justiciar of Ireland. As a judge he was praised for his good and faithful service to the English Crown, and as a lawyer he was known as "a man very knowledgeable about all the King's business". On the other hand, his loyalty to the Crown during the Scottish Invasion of Ireland in 1315-18 was said to be extremely doubtful, although he was saved from disgrace by his influential connections. He was murdered by Andrew de Bermingham of Athenry in 1317/18, during the last months of the Bruce Invasion, In any case, the Dublin eyre ended the following year after objections from the litigants that the judges were applying English law, rather than local customary law. In 1310 and again in 1311 he was hearing the assizes in County Carlow.

Murder

Grace's manuscript Annales Hiberniae and several other sources agree that Canoun was assassinated in late 1317 or early 1318 by Andrew de Bermingham, a younger son of Rickard de Bermingham, Lord of Athenry, as a result of a long-standing feud, of which few details survive. The murder took place between Naas and Castlemartin in County Kildare. The news reached the authorities in Dublin "at the Feast of the Epiphany" (6 January 1318), so the killing probably occurred at the end of the previous year. De Bermingham himself was murdered a few years later, in the course of an unrelated feud with the O'Nolans family. Curiously, no action seems to have been taken against him for Canoun's murder, despite the victim's eminence.

Family

Hugh's wife was called Albreda. It is likely that they had sons, as in his petition for possession of Rathcoffey he specified that the lands should descend by entail male, i.e. to his male heirs, but nothing seems to be known of them.

He has been described as a figure of very considerable importance in early fourteenth-century Ireland.

Sources

  • Ball, F. Elrington The Judges in Ireland 1221-1921 London John Murray 1926
  • Grace, James Annales Hiberniae Edited by Richard Butler; published by the Irish Archaeological Society Dublin 1842
  • Hand, Geoffrey English Law in Ireland 1290-1324 Cambridge University Press 1967
  • Hart, A.R. A History of the King's Serjeants-at-law in Ireland Four Courts Press Dublin 2000
  • James Mac Geoghegan, Abbé (Abbé Mac-Geoghegan) History of Ireland, Ancient and Modern Paris 1738. Translated from the French by Patrick O'Kelly. Published by O'Flanagan Dublin 1831.
  • National Archives Petition of Hugh Canoun (or Canon) Ref. SC/8/331/15696B
  • Otway-Ruthven, A.J. A History of Medieval Ireland Barnes and Noble reissue New York 1993
  • Patent Rolls Edward II

Footnotes