Sir Gerald Aylmer (ca. 1490–1560) was an Irish judge in the time of Henry VIII, who played a key part in enforcing the Dissolution of the Monasteries. His numerous descendants included the Barons Aylmer.
Early life
He was the younger son of Bartholomew Aylmer of Lyons, Ardclough, County Kildare, and his wife Margaret Cheevers, daughter of Walter Cheevers and Catherine Welles. He married Alison, daughter of Gerald Fitzgerald of Alloone (a cousin of the Knight of Kerry) and his wife Isabel Delafield, daughter and co-heiress of Thomas Delafield of Culduffe, County Dublin. His sister Anne married Sir Thomas Luttrell, Chief Justice of the Irish Common Pleas.
In early life he was loyal to Gerald FitzGerald, 9th Earl of Kildare when he served as sheriff of Limerick in the earlier 1520s. As a partisan of Kildare, (their faction were the so-called Geraldines) he was made second justice of the Court of Common Pleas (Ireland) on 19 December 1528. He was confirmed in that role on 23 August 1532, then presented a critique of the Geraldine administration at the English court in 1533, along with his colleague John Alan, the Master of the Rolls in Ireland. Just before the rebellion of Silken Thomas, the new Earl of Kildare, Aylmer was appointed Chief Baron of the Irish Exchequer on 25 June 1534. When Sir Bartholomew Dillon died unexpectedly after only one year on the bench, Aylmer was named Lord Chief Justice of Ireland on 12 August 1535.
Military career
Aylmer became a principal agent of Thomas Cromwell in Ireland and worked closely with John Alan, the Master of the Rolls in Ireland, in bringing about the defeat of Silken Thomas. He assisted various English Lord Deputies in Ireland in expeditions against the O'Connors (1537) and the Kavanaghs (1538) and was employed in military campaigns against the Geraldines and the O'Neills. He was knighted in the field after the Battle of Belahoe, near Carrickmacross, County Monaghan, in 1539 (a crushing defeat for the O'Neills and their allies), and given a grant of the lands of Dollardstown, near Athy, County Kildare.
Suppression of the Monasteries
Aylmer and John Alan travelled to England in 1536 to receive the bill for the suppression of the Irish monasteries, bringing the legislation to the Reformation Parliament of 1536–7. The resulting Act involved in the first instance the suppression of the monastery of St Wolstan's, near Celbridge, Co Kildare, and assured Aylmer and his fellow chief justice and brother-in-law Thomas Luttrell an annual rent of £4 during the life of Sir Richard Weston, the last prior: in 1538 St. Wolstan's itself was granted to John Alan and his heirs. The Alans remained there for several generations.
Aylmer joined with Alan and others in the comprehensive commission to dissolve other Irish monastic houses, gaining profitable estates in County Meath as a result. He conducted an inquisition at Limerick of ecclesiastical shrines in 1541, and he obtained the Franciscan friary at Drogheda by patent of 16 February 1543 for the price of £54 17s. 3d. Despite his loyalty to Henry VIII is not clear whether he was committed to the Protestant faith: it was not unusual then for members of the Anglo-Irish gentry class to which he belonged to conform to the reformed faith outwardly while remaining secretly loyal to the Roman Catholic church. Later generations of the Aylmer family, including the Barons Aylmer, were mainly Catholic.
Opposition to Lord Grey
Aylmer opposed the policy of the new Lord Deputy of Ireland, Leonard Grey after Silken Thomas's rebellion was quashed in 1536, and campaigned with John Alen to undermine Grey's administration. Aylmer attended Sir Anthony St Leger on his journey to London in 1538, joining the commission of inquiry to bring charges against Grey.
Four Monarchs
Aylmer was knighted in 1539 and survived the downfall of both Grey and Cromwell in 1540 to serve under Henry's successors as King and Queens of England, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I, being reappointed Chief Justice on 24 March 1547 and on 16 November 1553. In 1541 he was among the Irish lawyers who petitioned for a lease of Blackfriars Monastery in Dublin to establish the predecessor of the King's Inns there.