Roger Hawkenshaw

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Roger Hawkenshaw (also Hakenshawe) was an Irish judge and Privy Councillor who died in 1434 (some sources say 1435). Born in Ireland, he was likely the son or, more probably, the grandson of an earlier Roger Hawkenshaw, a senior Crown official who served as Escheator of Ireland in the 1370s and died in 1375.

His public career begins in 1409, when Richard Petir appointed him as an attorney to manage Irish affairs while Petir was abroad. That year he, with Henry Stanyhurst, was granted the lands of the minor Robert Bernevall while they remained in royal hands. In 1415 he served as a temporary judge on a five-man panel for an action of novel disseisin against Alice Brown of Brownstown, County Kildare.

In 1416 he was made second justice of the Court of King's Bench (Ireland) with a salary of £20 a year. He also acted as Deputy to the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, Thomas Cranley, who was elderly and infirm (Cranley died in 1417). Roger later acted as Deputy to Cranley’s successor, Sir Laurence Merbury. Soon after becoming Deputy, he and Richard Ashwell were ordered to prepare and enrol all Chancery writs, and to administer justice in parts of the kingdom for people who could not travel to the Court of Chancery.

In 1418 he was granted permission to found a new chapel near Dublin, called St. John’s Chapel; it is not clear if it was ever built. The same year he was granted property in Ardee, formerly owned by Richard Burgess. In 1420 the Crown appointed Roger and Richard Sydgrave to inquire into complaints about troops and purveyors seizing food and other property in County Meath.

He was reappointed to the King's Bench in 1422 at the start of Henry VI’s reign, with the same £20 salary plus a small daily wage. In 1425 the Council ordered the arrears of his salary paid, and in 1427 he again complained that his fees were in arrears; the Treasury found arrears of £127 and ordered payment. In 1427 he was also made one of the justices and Keepers of the Peace for County Meath, and he was an ex-officio member of the Privy Council of Ireland. He attended a major Privy Council meeting in December 1428 about whether the Lord Treasurer could act through a Deputy while absent in England. He is thought to have died in 1434.