William Domville

Who was William Domville?

William Domville was a leading Irish politician and barrister of the Restoration era. Due to the great trust which the Crown had in him, he remained Attorney General for Ireland throughout the reign of Charles II; and it was during his term of office that the Attorney General emerged as pre-eminent legal adviser to the Crown.

While Domville was undoubtedly a loyal subject of the Crown, in his treatise, "A Disquisition Touching that Great Question Whether an Act of Parliament made in England shall bind the People and Kingdom of Ireland", he argued for the right of the Irish Parliament to act entirely free from interference by the English Parliament. Although it was not published in his lifetime, his son-in-law William Molyneux drew on it for his own highly controversial treatise, and it is thought to have had considerable influence on later political writers.