William de Skipwith was a fourteenth-century English judge.
Background
He was the younger son of William de Skipwith and Margaret Fitzsimon. The Skipwiths were a North Yorkshire family, descended from Robert de Stuteville, lord of the manor of Skipwith in the reign of Henry III. The Fitzsimons were from Ormsby in Lincolnshire, where the de Skipwiths later settled.
Career
He held the office of Chief Baron of the Exchequer 1362-1365. He suffered temporary disgrace when he was removed from office for corruption, but was restored to favour, became Lord Chief Justice of Ireland 1370-1372, and later returned to the English bench. He appears to have been the only High Court judge to escape impeachment by the English Parliament of 1388.
He was probably educated at Grays Inn.
He became Sergeant-at-law in 1354 and was knighted and made a justice of the Court of Common Pleas in 1359. He became Chief Baron in 1362, and trier of petitions in Parliament.
In 1365 Skipwith and the Lord Chief Justice, Henry Green, were removed from office for having "acted contrary to law and justice", and having unlawfully obtained large sums of money. Green never held office again but Skipwith was only in temporary disgrace.
In 1370 he was appointed Lord Chief Justice of Ireland and received 40 marks for his expenses.
In 1373 he is recorded sitting on a commission of gaol delivery in Dublin. In 1376 he was restored to his old seat on the Court of Common Pleas in England, and remained in office until 1388. He regularly appeared in Parliament as a trier of petitions and sat on various judicial commissions.
When Richard II summoned the High Court judges in August 1387, to give their opinion on the lawfulness of the actions of the powerful commission of nobles known as the Lords Appellant, Skipwith pleaded illness as an excuse for non-attendance.
As a result, he avoided participating in a judgment against the Lords Appellant, condemning them for treason and authorising their arrest, which the judges later claimed they had been coerced into giving. His decision not to attend was a wise one, since when the judges were impeached by the in 1388, Skipwith escaped censure.
He was still living in 1392.