Clement Fitzleones


Clement Fitzleones was an Irish lawyer and judge. He held the offices of Serjeant-at-law and Attorney-General for Ireland and was briefly Deputy to the Chief Baron of the Irish Exchequer.
Neither Ball nor Hart give any details of his family background, but there was a prominent merchant family of that name which is recorded in Dublin since the thirteenth century. In 1281 Geoffrey Fitzleones and his wife Johanna granted the rents from their lands at Ballyardolf to the Convent of the Holy Trinity Probably the most notable member of this family was Patrick FitzLeones, who was Lord Mayor of Dublin in 1477-1478, 1482-1483 and 1494-1495. Patrick was clearly a man of considerable wealth and social standing, who married into the powerful Eustace family, and subsequently married his daughter Margaret to John Barnewall, 3rd Baron Trimlestown, Lord Chancellor of Ireland. If Clement was one of the Dublin family, he was probably the same Clement Fitzleones who was elected one of the Constables of Dublin in 1493.
In 1493 he was Deputy to the Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer. According to Elrington Ball the practice of appointing Deputies to this office had begun ten years earlier with the appointment of Oliver FitzEustace, a natural son of Rowland FitzEustace, 1st Baron Portlester as Chief Baron. Oliver, who owed his appointment solely to his father's great influence, was not only lacking in legal training, but was apparently mentally deficient and incapable of speech.
In 1502 Fitzleones was made Attorney General and in 1506 he was promoted to what was then the more senior office of King's Serjeant. In 1509 Patrick Finglas was appointed Serjeant; while two serjeants occasionally acted at the same time, as a rule there was only one, which suggests that Fitzleoenes had recently died.