Name Peter Trevers | ||
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Peter Trevers, or Travers (died 1468) was an Irish barrister and judge of the fifteenth century.
Contents
He belonged to a family which had settled in County Meath in the thirteenth century; John de Tryvers, judge of the Court of Common Pleas (Ireland) c.1283-5, was a member of the same family. He may also have been a relative of Peter Treveris, a well-known London printer of the 1520s. The family is thought to have been Cornish in origin: the most usual spelling of their name is Treffry.
Career
Peter is first heard of in London, studying law at the Inns of Court, in 1456. Ireland had no law school then, and thus young Irishmen who wished to become lawyers and, in due course, judges, in their home country were obliged to seek permission from the authorities to study law in London. He was appointed King's Serjeant in 1460. He was a man of considerable wealth, who owned the impressive Baldongan Castle in Skerries, County Dublin, and a nearby estate at Courtlough.
Baldongan Castle.
During the Wars of the Roses, the dynastic struggle between the rival York and Lancaster branches of the English royal family, Trevers, like most of the Anglo-Irish gentry, supported the Yorkist cause. In 1460 he accompanied Richard, Duke of York to England when York unsuccessfully claimed the English Crown. In 1461, following the Yorkist triumph, Trevers was appointed Master of the Rolls in Ireland by Richard's son, King Edward IV (in fact the office was granted first to Patrick Cogley, but Cogley quickly exchanged it for Clerk of the Crown). In 1465 Trevers was entrusted with raising men for the defence of Dublin. He died in 1468.
Family
He married Elizabeth Holywood, or Holywode, daughter and co-heiress of Sir Robert Holywood of Artane Castle. Elizabeth had been twice widowed; her first husband was the 3rd Baron Delvin, by whom she had four sons, and her second husband was Sir Thomas Dowdall, by whom she had one daughter. She and Peter had three children: