William Domville

He was born in Dublin to an ancient Cheshire family. His father Gilbert (1583–1637), son of William Domville of Lyme and Mary Mere, had moved to Ireland where he became Clerk of the Crown and Hanaper, and, after an unsuccessful attempt to get a seat in 1613, sat in the Irish House of Commons as member for Donegal Borough in the Irish Parliament of 1634. William's mother was Margaret Jones ( died 1615), daughter of Thomas Jones, Archbishop of Dublin, and his wife Margaret Purdon. William has three sisters, one of whom, Margaret, was the mother of Anthony Dopping, Bishop of Meath. He was educated at St Albans School, Hertfordshire and Merton College, Oxford. He entered Lincoln's Inn, and became a Bencher of the Inn in 1657. He was called to the Bar in 1640, and built up a highly successful practice at the English Bar.[1]

During the English Civil War, Domville's loyalty to the Crown was never seriously questioned. His decision to practice law in England under the regime of Oliver Cromwell was not an unusual one even for a committed Royalist, and was not held against him later, since so many other Royalists had also made their peace with the new regime when the King's cause seemed to be lost. He lived then at Friern Barnet in Middlesex. At the Restoration of Charles II he returned to Ireland, and was knighted and made Attorney General, apparently on the recommendation of Daniel O'Neill, an Irish Groom of the Chamber to Charles II who had considerable influence in the first four years of the reign. He entered the King's Inns in 1661. He received a substantial grant of lands at Templeogue, on the outskirts of Dublin city, which remained in the family for centuries. The value of the lands was greatly enhanced by the fact that the River Dodder flows through them, thus giving the Domvilles partial control of the supply of Dublin's drinking water, of which the Dodder was long the principal source. Strictly speaking they had no right to control the supply of water; this power was vested in Dublin Corporation. Domville also had a town house in Bride Street, and was granted the estate of Loughlinstown forfeited by the Goodman family.

The River Dodder, which runs through what were then the Domville family's lands.

He was elected to Parliament as member for Dublin City, and was the Crown's choice as Speaker. He faced opposition from the able and ambitious Prime Serjeant, Sir Audley Mervyn, who, apparently by spreading the story that Domville was sympathetic to Roman Catholics, gained the support of the majority of MPs (in fact Domville was a strong Protestant, although personallay tolerant enough in matters of religion). The King, who was anxious to avoid a confrontation with Parliament so early in his reign, stated that the choice should be that of the members, and Mervyn was duly elected Speaker.[2]

He was the author of an unpublished treatise written about 1660, entitled: A Disquisition Touching That Great Question Whether an Act of Parliament Made in England shall bind the People and Kingdom of Ireland without their Allowance and Acceptance of such Act. Despite his loyalty to the Crown, the views he expressed there on the separate authority of the Irish Parliament might well have been called subversive by some, at a time when the Civil War was still a fairly recent memory, and new political ideas tended to be regarded with great suspicion.

The existence of Domville's treatise does not seem to have been widely known in his own lifetime, although he did present a copy of it to the Duke of Ormond shortly after completing it. His son-in-law William Molyneux drew on it for his own highly controversial work The Case of Ireland's being bound by Acts of Parliament in England, Stated (1698). Both men argued that while the King of England was also King of Ireland, the Parliament of Ireland was wholly independent of the English Parliament. These views, although they were considered radical, perhaps even seditious, at the time, (Molyneux's work was burned pulicly) became widely accepted in the eighteenth century, and are said to have influenced Jonathan Swift.[7]

Domville in 1637 married Bridget Lake, daughter of Sir Thomas Lake, Secretary of State to James I, and his wife Mary Ryder. Lady Lake, an eccentric and malicious woman whose false accusations had already landed her in the Tower of London, made trouble between William and his wife by insisting that he was already married. As with most of her sensatonal claims, usually directed at family members, this had no basis in fact. William and Bridget had four sons and three daughters. Their sons included Sir William Domville junior, member of Parliament for Antrim, and like his grandfather Clerk of the Crown and Hanaper, and Sir Thomas Domvile, the first of the Domvile baronets.[8] The best known of their children was their daughter Lucy, a famous beauty who married the natural philosopher William Molyneux. Tragically Lucy went blind and died young leaving one surviving child, the astronomer Samuel Molyneux.

William Molyneux, Domville's son-in-law, by Godfrey Kneller