Dillon, Garret (Gerard, Gerald)

Dillon, Garret (Gerard, Gerald) (fl. 1685–93), lawyer and signatory of the articles of Limerick, was a native of Roscommon. He was probably admitted to Gray's Inn in 1669, and was called to the bar in 1674. He built up a substantial practice on the Connacht circuit until he became recorder of Dublin and a king's counsel in 1685. Although Lord Lieutenant Clarendon (qv) expressed dismay at the elevation of Irish catholics to important judicial and political posts, he deemed Dillon to be ‘a very honest gentleman and it is not fit for me to omit the best men’ (Rabbitte, ‘Galway Corporation MSS’, 70). He was appointed prime sergeant in February 1687, replacing the protestant John Osborne (qv). William King (qv) suggested that a Gerard Dillon, ‘a furious papist’ (Simms, Jacobite Ireland, 57), had failed to be appointed as a burgess in Dublin because he had purchased an estate under the act of settlement and was likely to oppose the repeal of the act (ibid., 74–5).

Dillon sat in the 1689 parliament as MP for Mullingar. When James II (qv) set up a commission for raising £20,000 on personal estates and from the benefits of trade and traffic, he appointed Dillon as one of the commissioners for Dublin. In the war he served as a colonel in James's army. After the preliminary negotiations had taken place (2 October 1691) between General Ginkel (qv) and the Irish Jacobite delegation, Dillon attended a full conference the next day in the company of Patrick Sarsfield (qv), John Wauchope (d. 1693), Col. Nugent of Dardistowne, the Archbishops Dominic Maguire (qv) of Armagh and John Brenan (qv) of Cashel, Sir Toby Butler (qv), and Col. John Browne (qv) of Westport, and later served as one of the commissioners who drew up and signed the articles of Limerick on Saturday 3 October. After the treaty he devolved several estates in Mayo and Roscommon, of which he was seized in fee, to his son Theobald and elected to go to France with King James. According to Nicholas Plunkett's (qv) ‘Light to the blind’ he was one of a small number of estated men, which included Sarsfield, who opted to leave Ireland in support of the Jacobite cause. He was attainted, forfeiting over 4,700 acres in counties Mayo, Roscommon, and Westmeath. In 1693 he was appointed an ensign in James II's regiment of Irish guards. He married as his second wife Mary, daughter of George Hamilton, 4th earl of Strabane; nothing is known of his first marriage. His death date is not recorded.