William Skrene
Irish judge
William Skrene (c. 1357/8–1419/20) was an Irish-born barrister and judge who spent most of his adult life in England, where he became King's Serjeant and a judge of assize. He also served briefly as Chief Baron of the Irish Exchequer in 1395-7. He acquired substantial lands in Essex.
Early life
He was probably born in 1357 or 1358. He came from a family originally from County Meath which derived its name from the village of Skryne, or Skreen. He was later described as being "of Dundalk", County Louth, and apparently grew up there. His father was Thomas Skrene, who was prominent in local affairs, and was probably a burgess of Dundalk. He had two sisters: Christina, whose descendants ultimately inherited her brother's estates, and Isabel, whose heirs unsuccessfully claimed the Skrene inheritance.
Early career
By his own account, he endeavoured for several years to study law in Dublin, but was prevented by the fact that Ireland, until the sixteenth century, had no formal law school, and students could not travel abroad without leave. In about 1378 he obtained the necessary permission to go to England to study law as an "apprentice" at Clifford's Inn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 27, 2023. The linked authority identifier is Q17479488. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1357, 1419, 1395 and 1358.
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This entry incorporates text from “William Skrene” 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.