Clement Fitzleones
Clement Fitzleones (died c. 1509) was an Irish lawyer and judge. He held the offices of Serjeant-at-law (Ireland) 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, but there was a prominent merchant family of that name in Dublin in the late fifteenth century; its most notable member was Patrick Fitzleones, Lord Mayor of Dublin 1477-1478, 1482-1483 and 1494-1495. Patrick was clearly a man of wealth and social standing, who married his daughter Margaret to John Barnewall, 3rd Baron Trimlestown, Lord Chancellor of Ireland. If Clement belonged to this family he was presumably the Clement Fitzleones who was elected one of the Constables of Dublin in 1493.[1]
In 1493 he was Deputy to the Lord Chief Baron. According to Elrington Ball the practice of appointing Deputies 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 apparently mentally deficient and incapable of speech.[2]
In 1502 Fitzleones was Attorney General and in 1506 he was promoted to what was then the senior office of King's Serjeant.[3] 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.[4]