Thomas Bathe, 1st Baron Louth (died 1478) was an Irish peer, barrister and judge of the fifteenth century. Even by the standards of that turbulent age, he had a troubled and violent career. He was deprived of his estates and outlawed by Act of Parliament, but was later restored to favour. His claim to the title Baron Louth was eventually recognised by the English Crown, and he ended his career as Chief Baron of the Irish Exchequer. Early life He belonged to the leading Anglo-Irish Bathe family, who were prominent landowners in County Meath, and whose principal seat was at Athcarne, near Duleek. From the 1450s on he claimed the title "Lord and Baron of Louth" and the right to be summoned to Parliament as a peer: his right to the title and the summons was denied by the Irish Parliament in 1460, but restored in 1476. As a young man, he seems to have been quarrelsome and turbulent, and his reputation for violence was to cloud his later life. He was in London in 1439, probably studying law, when he was charged with "ill conversation and behaviour", and committed to Ludgate Prison, from which his brother obtained his release. Whether he had actually committed a criminal offence, or whether the authorities simply regarded him as a troublemaker, is unclear. Dr. Stackpole Far more serious charges (the most serious of which were demonstrably false) were levelled against Bathe in 1449, and these formed the main grounds for the indictment against him in the Irish Parliament of 1460. He was accused of a serious assault on Dr. John Stackpole, a priest attached to Bective Abbey. It seems that Stackpole had been installed as the parish priest of Kilberry, County Kildare, a living which Bathe claimed was his to dispose of under the traditional right of advowson. The dispute between the two men led Stackpole to ask the Bishop of Meath for Bathe's excommunication: it was alleged that in revenge Bathe kidnapped and imprisoned him. However the most serious charge, that Bathe had Stackpole's eyes and tongue removed, was clearly an invention, since the indictment revealed that Stackpole, allegedly "by a miracle", was in fact in full possession of his faculties of sight and speech. This incident did not harm Bathe's career in the short term: he was knighted and appointed Chief Escheator of Ireland in 1450, with power to appoint a