Stanyhurst, James (1522–73), lawyer, recorder of Dublin, and speaker of the Irish house of commons, was son of Nicholas Stanyhurst (d. 1554), mayor of Dublin (1543), city treasurer, and alderman; details of his mother are not known. The Stanyhursts were a prominent Co. Dublin family from Corduff, a village six miles north of Swords. Their prosperity increased in the 1540s when they were rewarded for their loyalty to the government by substantial grants of confiscated monastic property.
James Stanyhurst studied law and in 1547 was appointed collector and receiver of the great and petty customs for the cities of Dublin and Drogheda. At about this time he married Anne, daughter of Thomas Fitzsimon, recorder of the city of Dublin. When Fitzsimon became ill in the early 1550s Stanyhurst was temporarily appointed recorder in his place, and on the death of his father-in-law (1554) the office was confirmed on him for life. The recordership was one of only two major offices in Dublin city in which the holder was appointed for life, the other being the clerkship of the tholsel. The continuity entailed in the office enabled Stanyhurst to introduce much-needed reform into the civic administration. To improve the civic records he made efforts to have the statutes printed, and in 1555 he codified the legal procedures for the city court.
In the 1557 parliament Stanyhurst was one of two MPs elected for the city of Dublin. He was made speaker of the house of commons and, as the parliament had been called by Queen Mary to restore papal jurisdiction in the Irish church, he had a dual responsibility for ensuring that both parliament and the municipality accepted the changes with as little dissent as possible. In 1560 he was again speaker in the commons, this time charged with dismantling the measures passed in 1557 in favour of the new Elizabethan church settlement. The passage of two opposing sets of laws in such a short time needed prudent management on the part of the government, and evidence suggests that the choice of Stanyhurst as speaker was the result of careful consideration. On 17 February 1560, at the behest of the ecclesiastical commission, he took the oath of supremacy. The lord deputy, the earl of Sussex (qv), who governed during both parliaments, rewarded him before and after the 1560 parliament with several royal grants, among them the appointment to the office of seneschal of the four royal manors near Dublin. In the late 1560s Stanyhurst was granted the office of general escheator, and in 1569 he was again chosen as speaker in the parliament.
This easy accommodation with the political climate was not unusual among the Pale elite in the mid sixteenth century. Influenced by renaissance humanism, many saw the religious policy as only part of a general commitment to achieving the complete reformation of society. Stanyhurst believed that reform could be achieved through the spread of education, and he pressed for a law that would set up grammar schools in every diocese in Ireland. His views, which were recorded by the English scholar and martyr, Edmund Campion (qv), were expressed in a speech to parliament on 7 December 1570. Stanyhurst also believed that a university should be established in Ireland, a view shared by Sussex's successor, Henry Sidney (qv). Stanyhurst enjoyed a close friendship with Sidney, both having a common interest in scholarship and in the preservation of antiquities and state documents. Stanyhurst had an extensive library relating to Ireland's past and was particularly interested in Ireland's political and constitutional history. Reflecting this, he was heavily involved in Sidney's efforts to publish for the first time a selection of statutes passed by the Irish parliament going back to the medieval period.
In August 1570 Campion came to Dublin at Stanyhurst's invitation. Under pressure in England to conform to protestantism, Campion felt secure in the Stanyhurst household and was able to start his Two bokes of the histories of Ireland, using Stanyhurst's library and sources provided by Sidney. The papal bull excommunicating Elizabeth I changed the political atmosphere and Campion's visit came to an end on 17 March 1571 when Sidney sent him a secret warning that he was soon to be arrested. Stanyhurst arranged Campion's escape, sending him in the care of his sons, Richard Stanihurst (qv) and Walter, to the house of Sir Christopher Barnewall (qv) at Turvey, eleven miles north of Dublin. Sidney left Ireland soon after this episode, and Stanyhurst appears to have lost some of his government influence. In August 1571 he travelled to England carrying statute rolls, containing 170 acts of the Irish parliament, to be printed there. He remained for some time in England before he succeeded in persuading the largely uninterested authorities in London to finalise the publication of these statutes. His own private suits received no attention either and it was not until April 1573 that he finally received his grant of offices and lease extensions.
Stanyhurst's attitude to religion seems ambivalent. His acquiescence in the Elizabethan religious settlement was severely criticised by counter-reformation writers, who believed that he had used undue influence from the speaker's chair to facilitate the rapid and successful passing of the Elizabethan bills. In 1616 David Rothe (qv), bishop of Ossory, accused him of being sly and ambitious, and later in the seventeenth century it was claimed he had caused the reformation statutes to be passed on a recognised holiday and that loyalists had been summoned secretly to vote them through, although there are no details to confirm this. Richard Stanihurst said his father was always catholic; and Robert Persons, biographer of Edmund Campion, said that Stanyhurst had refused the office of chancellor on religious grounds. Campion, in a letter thanking Stanyhurst for ensuring his safety, referred to his pursuers as ‘the heretics of Dublin’, implying that Stanyhurst was in agreement with his own views on this matter; and although Stanyhurst had been obliged to speak for the government when the Palesmen led by Barnewall had opposed the parliamentary proceedings of 1569–71, it is clear that Barnewall remained one of his most trusted friends. Stanyhurst died 27 December 1573, and with his death went the family tradition of officeholding. He was succeeded in the office of escheator by the English-born protestant John Crofton (1540–1610).
James and Anne Stanyhurst had four children: Richard and Walter, both scholars who became recusant exiles on the Continent; Henry, who stayed in Ireland and inherited the family estate at Corduff; and Margaret, who married the Dublin merchant Arland Usher (d. 1598). Their son, James Ussher (qv), was also a scholar and became protestant primate of Ireland.