Charles Kendal Bushe

Charles Kendal Bushe (1767 – 10 July 1843), was an Irish lawyer and judge. Known as "silver-tongued Bushe" because of his eloquence, he was Solicitor-General for Ireland from 1805 to 1822 and Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench for Ireland from 1822 to 1841.

Background and education

Bushe was born at Kilmurry House, near Thomastown, County Kilkenny, the only son of the Reverend Thomas Bushe and his wife Katherine Doyle. Kilmurry House had been built by the Bushe family in the 1690s; his father was forced to sell it to pay his debts, but Charles was able to repurchase it in 1814. He went to the celebrated Quaker academy, Shackleton's School in Ballitore, County Kildare, then graduated from the University of Dublin and was called to the Bar in 1790.

Legal and judicial career

Bushe was a member of the Irish Parliament for Callan from 1796 to 1799, and for Donegal Borough from 1799 to 1800. He was vehemently opposed to the Act of Union 1800, referring emotionally to Britain's subjection of Ireland as "six hundred years of uniform oppression and injustice", a phrase which quickly became a proverb.^[1] Cynics later noted that this did not prevent him accepting high office from the British Crown after the Union. He was appointed Solicitor-General for Ireland in 1805 and held the office for 17 years until in 1822 he was appointed Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench for Ireland (although only after William Saurin, the equally long-serving Attorney-General, had refused the position). He retired in 1841.

As an advocate "silver-tongued Bushe" was legendary for his eloquence, and as a politician was admired by English contemporaries like Sir Robert Peel and Lord Brougham; as a judge, according to Elrington Ball, he did not live up to expectations.^[2] As a statesman he was often accused of double-dealing: having opposed the Act of Union, he had few scruples about accepting office under the new regime; and while himself supporting Catholic Emancipation, he prosecuted members of the Catholic Association for sedition, merely for advocating what was essentially the same cause.

In Dublin, he was a member of Daly's Club.^[3]

Family

Bushe married Anne (Nancy) Crampton and they had five children; his daughter Charlotte married John Plunket, 3rd Baron Plunket and was the mother of William Plunket, 4th Baron Plunket, Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin, and David Plunket, 1st Baron Rathmore.

Dunbar Plunket Barton, a leading Irish High Court judge of the early 1900s, was descended from Bushe.

Seymour Bushe, a leading barrister whose career in Ireland was effectively destroyed by his role as co-respondent in a much publicised adultery case, Brooke v Brooke in 1886, and thereafter largely confined his legal practice to England, was the judge's great-grandson.^[4]

References

1. Geoghegan, Patrick M. Liberator-the life and death of Daniel O'Connell Gill and Macmillan Dublin 2010 p.176
2. Ball, F. Elrington The Judges in Ireland 1221–1921 John Murray, London, 1926
3. T. H. S. Escott, Club Makers and Club Members (1913), pp. 329–333
4. Maurice Healy The Old Munster Circuit Michael Joseph Ltd. 1939