Edmund Thomas Bewley

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Sir Edmund Thomas Bewley (1837–1908) was an Irish lawyer and genealogist. He was born in Dublin on 11 January 1837, the son of Edward Bewley and Mary Mulock. He studied at Trinity College Dublin, winning a classical scholarship in 1857 and earning top medals in experimental science in 1859. He completed his BA in 1860 and MA in 1863, and also earned degrees at the Queen’s University of Ireland in 1861. He was called to the Irish Bar in 1862, practiced law, and became a Queen’s Counsel in 1882. From 1884 to 1890 he was the Regius Professor of Feudal and English Law at Trinity College Dublin, and in 1890 he became a judge of the supreme court of judicature of Ireland and a judicial commissioner of the Irish Land Commission. Owing to declining health, he retired in 1898, and was knighted at that time.

Bewley married Anna Sophie Stewart Colles in 1866, and they had two sons and one daughter. His brother-in-law was Edward Gibson, 1st Baron Ashbourne. In his spare time he pursued genealogy, writing for genealogical journals and privately printing his major studies. He published three family histories: The Bewleys of Cumberland (1902), The Family of Mulock (1905), and The Family of Poe (1906), in which he argued that Edgar Allan Poe descended from a Powell family in County Cavan. He also co-authored A Treatise on the Chancery (Ireland) Act, 1867 (1868). Bewley was elected Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries (F.S.A.) on 10 January 1908 and died in Dublin on 27 June 1908.