Peter Metge

Peter Metge (c. 1740–1809) was an Irish politician and judge of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He was a colourful character, who was noted for his fondness for duelling, and for his unorthodox private life. Biography He was born in Athlumney, County Meath, the second son of Peter Metge and his wife Anne Lyon, who died in 1792. Anne was reputedly a relative of the Bowes-Lyon family. His grandfather, Peter de la Metgée (1665-1735), was a French Huguenot who fled to Ireland to avoid religious persecution after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. John Metge (died after 1823), who served as MP for Ratoath, and after the Act of Union 1800 as MP for Dundalk (though it is doubtful if he ever took his seat at Westminster), was the judge's younger brother. He was a graduate of Trinity College Dublin, where he took his degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1763.