Robert Johnson (1745–1833)
Robert Johnson (1745–1833) was an Irish barrister, politician and judge. He sat in the Irish House of Commons and was a judge of the Court of Common Pleas (Ireland).
In 1803 he published a number of venomous attacks on various members of the Irish Government in the form of a series of letters written under the pseudonym "Juverna". After some delay he was identified as the author of the letters. He was prosecuted after further delay and convicted of seditious libel. He was spared a prison sentence but forced to resign from the Bench, and retired into private life.
His motives for writing the Juverna letters are unclear, although he had made a similar anonymous attack on a senior Irish judge, Christopher Robinson, many years earlier.
Biography
He was born in Dublin, eldest son of Thomas Johnson, an apothecary. He married Susan Evans of Dublin in 1778. He entered Middle Temple in 1774 and was called to the Bar in 1776. He took silk in 1791, and was appointed counsel to the Revenue Board. He held office as Recorder of Hillsborough and also served as MP for Hillsborough. He supported the Act of Union 1800. He served briefly in the last session of the pre-Union Irish Parliament as member for Philipstown, and was made a judge of the Common Pleas in 1801, shortly after the Union took effect.
He had a town house in Dublin city centre and a house at Milltown in south County Dublin; he also had a country estate at the Derries, near Ballybrittas, County Laois. He was a member of the popular drinking club, The Monks of the Screw (or Order of Saint Patrick), which had been founded in about 1780 by John Philpot Curran.
The Juverna affair
In 1803 the radical journalist William Cobbett published a series of letters in his weekly newspaper Political Register, written by an anonymous author calling himself "Juverna". The name Juverna (or "Iverna") is a variant of "Hibernia", and was used by Irish nationalists as a poetic symbol for Ireland. These pamphlets attacked the Irish executive with great venom. They were extremely well-informed about the Irish judiciary, suggesting that the author was himself a judge. Suspicion fell at first on Johnson's colleague on the Court of Common Pleas, Luke Fox, who was noted for his violent outbursts of bad temper in Court. However in a personal interview with William Downes, 1st Baron Downes, the Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, Fox was able to convince Downes of his innocence.
Further inquiries revealed Johnson to be the author; he may have fallen under suspicion because many years earlier he had published a similar attack on a long-serving High Court judge, Christopher Robinson, under another pseudonym. Johnson had few admirers: Daniel O'Connell spoke for many when he described him as "dishonest". He pleaded for leniency, but the authorities took a severe view of the matter, and a warrant was issued for his arrest to stand trial in England for seditious libel. Johnson did everything possible to evade prosecution, petitioning each of his judicial colleagues in vain to cancel the warrant. Finally Downes, losing patience, had him arrested. and sent to London for trial. Downes, who was a very stern man, told Johnson that his attempt to evade justice was as serious a matter as the libel itself. After some further delay he was convicted of seditious libel in the autumn of 1805, but was spared a prison sentence. He was forced to resign from the Bench the following year. The rest of his long life was spent in obscurity.
Sources
- Ball, F. Elrington The Judges in Ireland 1221-1921 London John Murray 1926
- Cole, G.D.H. The Life of William Cobbett Routledge reprint 2011
- Hart, A.R. History of the King's Serjeant at law in Ireland Dublin Four Courts Press 200
- Nash, Michael L. The Removal of Judges under the Act of Settlement 1701 Glion Institute of Higher Education 2007