Robert Dyke
Robert Dyke or Dyche (died 1449) was an English-born cleric and judge who held high office in fifteenth-century Ireland. He was appointed to the offices of Archdeacon of Dublin, Chancellor of the Exchequer of Ireland, Lord High Treasurer of Ireland, and Master of the Rolls in Ireland. Career. Little is known of his life before 1419, when he first appears as an official at the English Court. He was then probably a Crown servant of some seniority, given the later references to his many years of service to the Crown. In 1422 he was appointed the  Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer (or Chancellor of the Green Wax, as the office was often described then) and clerk of the Court of Common Pleas (Ireland) with power to appoint a deputy to each office. He was in Holy orders and became vicar of Bridgnorth in Shropshire in 1422. The actual date on which he arrived in Ireland to take up his official duties is unclear; he was acting as Chancellor of the Exchequer of Ireland though deputies in 1430. He was probably in Ireland in 1431 when he became Archdeacon of Dublin, and he was made parson of  Trim, County Meath in 1434. He became Master of the Rolls in 1436, with a salary of 5 shillings a day, and he acted as Deputy to the Lord Chancellor of Ireland in 1447. By 1442 he had been appointed a member of the Privy Council of Ireland. He served as Lord Treasurer in 1444-6, at the suggestion of Edward Somerton, the King's Serjeant, who praised his good qualities. In 1441 he was granted the manor of Ballymagarvey, Balrath, County Meath, for a term of seven years. He was a witness to the Charter of Athboy in 1446 , whereby King Henry VI of England confirmed the liberties and exemptions of Dublin Corporation. Political Controversy. Irish politics from the late 1410s to the 1440s was dominated by the Butler–Talbot feud, led by James Butler, 4th Earl of Ormond on the one side and John Talbot, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury and his formidable brother Richard, Archbishop of Dublin, on the other. It was almost impossible for any Irish Crown official to avoid being drawn into the feud: all of them were forced to take sides. Dyke was a Butler partisan, and is said to have particularly offended Archbishop Talbot : among a long list of charges made against Talbot in 1442 was that he had assaulted Dyke and Hugh Banent, Dyke's successor as Lord Treasurer. Since Talbot, despite his high clerical office, was notoriously hot-tempered, the charge may well be true. Dyke died in 1449. He was praised as "a man of honest life and conversation" who had served the King for many years, and filled several important Crown offices with honour.