John Wyse


John Wyse was an Irish judge who held office as Chief Baron of the Irish Exchequer.
He was born in Waterford. He was a member of the long-established Wyse family of St John's Manor, which settled in the city around 1169, at the time of the Norman conquest of Ireland. He was the son of Maurice Wyse, who served twice Mayor of Waterford, from whom he inherited substantial estates sometime after 1495. He married a daughter of Henry Sherlock, and was the father of Sir William Wyse, a prominent Irish statesman in the reign of Henry VIII. Probably his best known descendant was Sir Thomas Wyse, the politician, diplomat and nephew by marriage of Napoleon.
In 1482 he received a special licence to leave Ireland in order to study law at the Inns of Court in London- Ireland had no law school at the time, and it was considered desirable that Irish lawyers who hoped to achieve judicial office should receive legal training in this way. He was Chief Baron from 1492 to 1494, and was by statute appointed special justice for the counties of Waterford and Kilkenny in 1493, and again in 1499.
Our most personal glimpse of him is in 1495, when he was sent on a diplomatic mission to Munster to negotiate with Maurice FitzGerald, 9th Earl of Desmond, but was taken unawares by the invasion of the pretender Perkin Warbeck, who with Desmond's support besieged Waterford. Wyse was forced to flee; he subsequently put in a claim to the Treasury for the loss of two horses, and received compensation.