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The Chief Baron of the Irish Exchequer was a senior judge who oversaw the Court of Exchequer (Ireland). It was a mirror of the equivalent court in England and one of the four courts which sat in the building still called The Four Courts. The title Chief Baron was first used in 1309 for Walter de Islip. In the early centuries it was partly a political office, and as late as 1442 the Lord Treasurer of Ireland thought it necessary to recommend that the Chief Baron should always be a properly trained lawyer (which Michael Gryffin, the Chief Baron at the time, was not)
The last and probably greatest Chief Baron, The Rt Hon. Christopher Palles, continued to hold the title after the Court was merged into a new High Court of Justice in Ireland in 1878, until his retirement in 1916, when the office lapsed.