Audley Mervyn

Sir Audley Mervyn of Trillick (1603?–1675) was a lawyer and politician in seventeenth-century Ireland. He was MP for County Tyrone and Speaker of the Irish House of Commons 1661–1666. He was the second son of Sir Henry Mervyn of Petersfield, Hampshire, who married his cousin Lady Christian Tuchet, daughter of George Tuchet, 1st Earl of Castlehaven and his wife Lucy Mervyn, only daughter of Sir James Mervyn of Fonthill Gifford and his first wife Amy Clarke. Early career He attended Christ Church, Oxford. He moved to Ireland, at the suggestion of his Castlehaven relatives, who had large estates in that country, and himself became a substantial Irish landowner, principally in County Tyrone. By 1640 he had become a captain in the army raised for Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford and in the same year was elected MP for County Tyrone. In 1641 he led the attack on Strafford in the Irish House of Commons, presenting articles of impeachment against Sir Richard Bolton, Lord Chancellor of Ireland; John Bramhall, Bishop of Derry; Sir Gerard Lowther, Chief Justice of the Irish Common Pleas; and Sir George Radcliffe, member of the Privy Council of Ireland. These were all friends and ministers of the Earl of Strafford, then under impeachment by the House of Commons of England. The impeachment failed but Stafford was attainted and executed in May 1641. Mervyn played an active part in the proceedings, carrying the Irish Parliament's Remonstrance against Strafford, which denounced his government of Ireland as a tyranny without precedent, to the English House of Commons.