Francis Elrington Ball, Irish author and legal historian best known as F. Elrington Ball, is born in Portmarnock, County Dublin on July 18, 1863. He is best known for his work The Judges in Ireland 1221–1921 (1926).

A younger son of John Thomas Ball, the Lord Chancellor of Ireland from 1875 to 1880, and his wife Catherine Elrington, Ball is unsuccessful in seeking election as a Unionist to Parliament at the United Kingdom general election, 1900 in South Dublin. His father had represented University of Dublin in Parliament from 1868 to 1875.

Ball is, however, best known for his scholarship, particularly for his work on Jonathan Swift, the local history of Dublin and on the history of the judiciary in Ireland from 1221 to 1921. The destruction of the Four Courts in 1922, during the Irish Civil War, and of the public records and legal archives it contained (especially those of the Irish Public Records Office) make his prior research into the history of the Irish judiciary up to 1921 particularly valuable to later scholars. The review published in the Irish Law Times & Solicitors’ Journal described it as “a truly marvellous condensation of judicial history involving the exhaustive study of a long period, the earlier part of which was hitherto obscure.” The same review characterised Ball as “a writer of great care and accuracy, whose work is always characterised by minute and diligent research.”

Ball also serves as a governor of the Blue Coat School, Oxmantown, Dublin. Francis Elrington Ball dies in 1928.