From the fourteenth century on, the serjeant usually had a seat in the
Irish House of Commons. As a government officeholder, he was expected to manage parliamentary business in the Commons on the government's behalf. Because he was a government appointment he was liable to summary dismissal on a change of government, as happened most notably in 1714, on the accession of the
House of Hanover. In the early centuries he was invariably a member of the
Privy Council of Ireland; From about 1660 onwards they were expected to consult with the Attorney General and were discouraged from acting on their own initiative: in 1692 the prime serjeant,
John Osborne, was dismissed for repeatedly acting in opposition to Crown policy. From the 1560s on the serjeants acted as "messengers" to the
Irish House of Commons i.e. they were summoned to advise the House on points of law, just as the High Court judges advised the
Irish House of Lords. The role of messenger lapsed around 1740. Many sixteenth-century serjeants, including
Thomas Rochfort,
Thomas Luttrell,
Patrick Barnewall and
John Bathe, were solicitors-general at the same time, suggesting that the latter office was the most junior of the Law Officers and that the duties were not very onerous. At least one serjeant of the era,
Richard Finglas, combined the office of serjeant with the subordinate office of
Principal Solicitor for Ireland. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the serjeants often acted as extra judges of
assize, or in another minor judicial capacity. Although the practice had its critics, it survived intermittently into the nineteenth century:
Walter Berwick was chairman of the East Cork
Quarter Sessions from 1856 to 1859, while also serving as serjeant, and Sir
John Howley was both serjeant-at-law and chairman of the
County Tipperary Quarter Sessions for 30 years. Howley however was criticised for what was called his "legal pluralism". At least one serjeant, Sir
John Bere (1609–17), went as a judge of assize while sitting as an MP in the Parliament of 1613-15, which would be considered grossly improper nowadays, although Irish judges then were often encouraged by the Crown to sit in the Commons. Many, but not all, serjeants went on to become judges of one of the
courts of common law. The career of
Hewitt Poole Jellett followed a somewhat unusual path in that he was appointed serjeant after retiring from office as chairman of the Quarter Sessions for Queen's County (now
County Laois) and returning to practice at the Bar. Even more surprisingly, he remained a serjeant for life and was still in office when he was eighty-five. ==Abolition of the office of serjeant ==