O’HARA, Charles (1746-1822), of Nymphsfield and Annaghmore, co. Sligo

O’Hara, the leading proprietor in county Sligo, had been repeatedly pressed to make way for his son Charles King O’Hara by the county’s other leading families, but fearing a challenge to his electoral supremacy he refused. He was again returned unopposed at the 1820 general election, almost 44 years after he had first entered the Irish Parliament.1 NLI, O’Hara mss 338, C. to C.K. O’Hara, 6 June 1818. He had acted with the Whig opposition, except on Catholic relief, from 1807, but, for all his observation to his son in 1818 that ‘the duties of a Member ... is a very important trust’, he is not known to have voted or spoken in debate after May 1816.2 Ibid. He died in September 1822, having struggled all his life to overcome the problems posed by his heavily encumbered estates. Charles King O’Hara declined for financial reasons to come forward at the ensuing by-election.3 Ibid. 20316, Verschoyle to C.K. O’Hara, 20 Sept. 1822. He in turn devised the estates to his nephew Charles William Cooper (1817-98), who sat for the county as a Conservative in the 1859 Parliament and took the name of O’Hara in 1860.