Luke (c.1200–1255), archbishop of Dublin, first appears in 1226 as a royal clerk, controller of the wardrobe and custodian of the see of Durham during a vacancy. During the 1220s he was clerk and confessor to Hubert de Burgh, justiciar and virtual ruler of England, which may explain his rise to prominence. Sometime before 22 December 1226 he was appointed dean of St Martin le Grand, London; in February 1228 he was granted licence to hold several benefices.
Although he was clearly the royal choice to succeed Henry of London (qv) as archbishop of Dublin, his election did not pass without incident. At issue in the election was whether the canons of Holy Trinity had the right to participate in the election of an archbishop, especially after the canons of St Patrick had sent a delegate to elect Luke in the presence of the king on 13 December 1228. The canons of Holy Trinity challenged this election at Rome, and Luke was sent by the king to Rome with a royal request for his election. The pope upheld the rights of the canons of Holy Trinity to be involved in the election, and a new licence to elect was issued (July 1229). Luke was duly elected by both chapters and confirmed by the pope by 11 October 1229, when the temporalities of his see were returned to him. He returned to England from Rome, where he had secured another confirmation of the union of the sees of Dublin and Glendalough, by April 1230 and took up residence in Dublin by December of that year.
As archbishop, Luke proved to be very much the king's man, often acting on royal commissions, as when he was ordered to measure the extent of the king's five cantreds in Connacht (1231) and to assess the extent of the lands of the earldom of Pembroke in Leinster (1232). In 1232, and again in 1233 he travelled to England to support Hubert de Burgh. In October 1233 he was a witness to the sureties for the payment of a 3,000-mark fine by Richard de Burgh (qv). He returned to England in June 1234 to intercede for the brothers of Richard Marshal (qv), earl of Pembroke, and was given custody of Marshal's castle of ‘Dumas’ as part of Gilbert Marshal's sureties, which led to some tension between the archbishop and the new earl of Pembroke. Although he held no formal place in the administration of the Irish lordship he worked closely with the justiciar, Maurice FitzGerald (qv), and was ordered to audit the justiciar's expenses on more than one occasion.
He seems to have been one of the king's main sources of information about Ireland, and in November 1236 recommended that the king fortify more castles in Connacht to ensure the peace in that province. In ecclesiastical matters he worked to enforce the use by Irish bishoprics of election licences from the English king, but was willing to join with the archbishops of Cashel and Tuam in 1243 to resist the imposition of claims made by the archbishop of Armagh, Albert Suerbeer (qv). His activities within the administration diminished after FitzGerald's period as justiciar ended. In 1250 he was ordered to preach the king's crusade in Ireland, and in 1252 he was ordered to assess the debts he owed to the king.
By this time his eyesight appears to have been failing, limiting his ability to perform his duties. In July 1253 the king granted benefices on the assumption that the see of Dublin would become vacant by Luke's retiring or resigning. Luke did neither, but died in December 1255 and was buried in the tomb of Archbishop John Comyn (qv) in Holy Trinity, Dublin.