Audley Mervyn

Who is Audley Mervyn?

Sir Audley Mervyn of Trillick was a lawyer and politician in Ireland. M.P. for County Tyrone and Speaker of the Irish House of Commons 1661-1666.

He attended Christ Church, Oxford. By 1640 he had become a captain in the army raised for Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford and in the same year was elected M.P. for Tyrone. In 1641 he led the attack on Strafford in the Irish House of Commons, presenting articles of impeachment against Sir Richard Bolton, Lord Chancellor of Ireland; John Bramhall, Bishop of Derry; Sir Gerard Lowther, Chief Justice of the Irish Common Pleas; and Sir George Radcliffe, member of the Privy Council of Ireland. These were friends and ministers of the Earl of Strafford, then under impeachment by the Commons of England.

Between 1641 and 1661 he served in the Army, rising to the rank of Colonel. At one point he was arrested and returned to England but was shortly thereafter allowed to go back to Ulster. In 1660 he was appointed as one of twelve commissioners sent from Tyrone to Charles II, was knighted, and was appointed to the post of prime serjeant-at-law, the senior law post in Ireland. James Butler, 2nd Duke of Ormonde, however distrusted him and preferred to take advice only from the Attorney General for Ireland, Sir William Domville, so that in a few years Mervyn's role as legal adviser effectively lapsed.