Richard Rede
Irish politician and judge
Richard Rede (died after 1416) was a leading Irish statesman and judge of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. He held office as Chief Baron of the Irish Exchequer, Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, Deputy Lord Chancellor of Ireland and Deputy Treasurer of Ireland.
He was born in County Meath. Rede (also spelt Reid) had been a common Irish name, especially in Ulster, since the thirteenth century. Little seems to be known about his parents. His wife was Elizabeth Netterville, daughter and heiress of Richard Netterville of Dowth. One branch of the Netterville family would later become one of the most prominent landowning families in Meath, and acquired the title Viscount Netterville.
Rede is best remembered for being kidnapped and held for ransom by the Fleming family, Barons of Slane. They extracted a large sum of money from him, and despite his outraged protests, escaped punishment.
The Netterville inheritance
Elizabeth Netterville, whose father died when she was very young, was made a royal ward.
“Richard Rede” enters the record as irish politician and judge. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Richard, Rede and Irish can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q17017374. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1416.
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This entry incorporates text from “Richard Rede” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.