John Brettan or Breton (died after 1382) was an Irish judge and Crown official.[1] His petitions to the Irish Privy Council, of which he wrote five between 1376 and 1382, and which have survived (there were others, now lost); cast a valuable light on the disturbed condition of English-ruled Ireland in the late fourteenth century, and especially the situation in Carlow, his home town, which was the effective seat of English government in the latter half of the fourteenth century.[1]