MAHONY, Pierce Maunsell (1792-1853), of Gunsborough, Listowel, co. Kerry; 7 Victoria Square, Kingstown, co. Dublin and 4 Trafalgar Square, London

Mahony was of ancient Irish lineage and grew up on his father’s estate near Listowel, co. Kerry, which he inherited in 1819.2Burke’s Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry (1886) ii. 1212-3. While undergoing legal training in Dublin from 1809, he was affiliated as a solicitor to Charles Maunsell3He became an attorney of the Irish court of exchequer in 1814: E. Keane, P.B. Phair & T.U. Sadleir (eds.), King’s Inns admission papers (1982), 324, and see Freeman’s Journal, 22 May, 10 Oct. 1821. and in 1824 became solicitor to the newly-founded Provisional Bank of Ireland. In partnership with his brother David, he built up a lucrative practice representing the Alliance and four other major insurance companies.4Freeman’s Journal, 12 Jan. 1830; F. Boase, Modern English Biography, ii (1897), 695; B. Hourican, ‘Mahony, Pierce’, Dictionary of Irish Biography (2009), vi. 300.

Though a Protestant, Mahony was appointed by Daniel O’Connell as parliamentary agent for the Catholic Association in 1828 during the critical period leading up to the concession of emancipation.5O. MacDonagh, The Hereditary Bondsman. Daniel O’Connell 1775-1829 (1988), 259, 268. O’Connell thought it important to have an agent ‘who knows all the members as well as all the ways of the house’: Daniel O’Connell to unknown, 27 Sept. 1828, O’Connell Correspondence, ed. M.R. O’Connell, iii. 413-4. For evidence of his activities in this period, see HP Commons, 1820-32. That year he promoted, alongside the duke of Leinster, the Protestant Declaration in favour of Catholic emancipation and, ‘with indefatigable industry’, organised the great Protestant meeting at the Rotunda, Dublin, Jan. 1829, at which a pro-emancipation petition was adopted.6Dod’s Parliamentary Companion (1838), 139-40; W.T. Fagan, The Life and Times of Daniel O’Connell, i (1847), 622-3; MacDonagh, Hereditary Bondsman, 263; Morning Chronicle, 23 Jan. 1829. For Mahony’s circulars concerning Catholic relief, see Morning Chronicle, 31 Dec. 1828, 11 June 1829. He was also secretary of the Wellington testimonial committee which proposed a statue acknowledging the prime minister’s role in passing the Act: The Times, 7 May 1829; Cassell’s Illustrated History of England, iii, (1863) 144-5; Fagan, Life and Times of Daniel O’Connell, i. 686-7. ‘Though no agitator, – quite the reverse’, stated The Times, Mahony had been ‘a most valuable and energetic advocate of emancipation’ and was present when O’Connell argued his case for admission to the House, 18 May 1829.7Fagan, Life and Times of Daniel O’Connell, i. 644-6; Illustrated History of England, iii. 143. Mahony’s relationship with O’Connell suffered, however, when he acted as conducting agent to Lord George Beresford at the 1829 election for county Waterford, and attempted to solicit O’Connell’s assistance as counsel.8This role was assumed by Richard Sheil: The Times, 11 July 1829; Morning Chronicle, 19 Feb. 1853; Fagan, Life and Times of Daniel O’Connell, i. 687-94; Illustrated History of England, iii. 144; David Mahony to O’Connell, 12 June 1829, O’Connell to David Mahony, 14 June 1829, O’Connell Correspondence, iv. 75-8, and see The Times, 23 Dec. 1829.

In society, Mahony was ‘a prime favourite for his social qualifications’ and regarded as the epitome of the ‘wealthy and fashionable attorney of the day’.9Gent. Mag. (1853), i. 450. When the duke of Wellington asked his profession, Mahony is said to have replied ‘my estates are in Kerry; but I employ my leisure hours, when in town, with the profession of an attorney’: Lady Morgan’s Memoirs: Autobiography, Diaries and Correspondence, i (1863), 98. In April 1830 he was appointed accountant general of the Irish court of chancery and described as ‘the Mentor to Lord Gower’, the chief secretary for Ireland. He was also active at Westminster having, as O’Connell put it in 1828, ‘carried more difficult acts of parliament than any other Irish or English solicitor’.10O’Connell to unknown, 27 Sept. 1828, O’Connell Correspondence, iii. 413-4. Though O’Connell would not have relished the (abortive) bill that Mahony prepared to dissolve the Hibernian Bank in March 1828: The Times, 14 Aug. 1838; PP 1837-38 (626) vii. 1 [87]; G.L. Barrow, The Emergence of the Irish Banking System 1820-1845 (1975), 73-4. In 1830 he prepared an important analysis of the allegiances of the Irish MPs for the Whigs, and offered a bill to parliament based on evidence he had given to a select committee on the Irish poor, allowing trustees to loan money on landed securities in Ireland.11NAI, HO 100/235, f. 100; Freeman’s Journal, 6 Apr., 26 May 1830; Morning Chronicle, 15 May 1830. In 1823 Mahony had given evidence on social conditions at Killarney to the select committee on the employment of the poor in Ireland: PP 1823 (561) vi. 331 [21-9]. He soon became known as ‘Mr. Bill Mahony’, because of the number of bills that he had introduced to parliament, and Sir Robert Peel was said to have given him the nickname of ‘Prospero’.12Freeman’s Journal, 8 July 1841; Notes and Queries, 2nd series, viii (1859), 511. Peel reportedly remarked in 1828 ‘that the only way of settling the Catholic Question effectually, would be for the Catholics to get Mr. Pierce Mahony to put it into one of his private bills and smuggle it through Parliament’: D.O. Maddyn, Chiefs of Parties, Past and Present, with original anecdotes, ii (1859), 140. In 1834, he drew upon eleven years’ experience of soliciting private bills to advise a select committee on the deficiencies of the standing orders that governed their preparation.13PP 1834 (540) xi. 333 (93-101); Freeman’s Journal, 27 Nov. 1832.

Known for his shrewdness, Mahony quickly became, as Stanley put it in 1831, ‘a prominent if recent recruit to Whiggery’.14R.B. McDowell, Public opinion and government policy in Ireland, 1801-1846 (1952), 139. Upon arrival in Ireland Edward Stanley found Mahony ‘a pushing impudent fellow but with great cleverness’, being ‘always at the Castle and the Irish office and meddling with everything’. He confessed that he had ‘tried to keep him at a distance and having broken these habits should not be sorry now to buy him’: Ibid., 141, quoting Stanley to Anglesey, 7 Dec. 1831. Mahony was convinced that repeal would lead to ‘separation from England’ and was ‘the chief objection on the part of English capitalists to investment in Ireland’.15PP 1831-32 (508) xxi. 245 [260]; PP 1831-32 (663), xxii. 181 [171]. In April 1829, the Irish viceroy, Anglesey, encouraged him to dissuade O’Connell from pursuing the policy and in October 1830 he penned the Leinster declaration against repeal.16M. Anglesey, One-Leg. The Life and Letters of Henry William Paget, First Marquess of Anglesey, K.G., 1768-1854 (1961), 243; ‘Mahony, Pierce’, Dictionary of Irish Biography; Freeman’s Journal, 1 Nov. 1830, and see M. McElroy, ‘The local Protestant landed elite and O’Connellism, 1826-35’, in Irish History: A Research Yearbook, i (2002), 65-74 [69]. The declaration was credited with having halted the first repeal agitation and brought down upon its author ‘a long-continued storm of popular indignation’.17Boase, Modern English Biography, ii, 695; Morning Chronicle, 18 Aug. 1837. Mahony became further estranged from O’Connell, who now regarded him as ‘a species of schemer’ who was ‘capable of any political dexterity’, over his statements to the select committees on Irish tithes in March and April 1832.18O’Connell to Michael Staunton, 24 Nov. 1830, O’Connell to Richard Newton Bennett, O’Connell Correspondence, iv. 229-31, 247-8. Mahony was strongly suspected of purloining a copy of the committee’s report and leaking it to the Dublin Evening Mail: P. Ford & G. Ford (eds.), Luke Graves Hansard. His Diary, 1814-1841. A Case Study in the Reform of Patronage (1962), 87-88. There he argued that the increase in savings bank deposits amongst the lower classes indicated that the anti-tithe combination was inspired not by financial hardship, but by simple hostility to the established church. Furthermore, while Mahony wanted to reform tithe and cess payments, he insisted that popular dissatisfaction with it had been ‘taken advantage of by others’ in order to subvert the government, thus lending support to the Whig government’s coercive policies.19Freeman’s Journal, 26, 29 Nov. 1832; Dod’s Parliamentary Companion (1838), 139-40; PP 1831-32 (508) xxi. 245 [270, 272-3]; PP 1831-32 (663), xxii. 181; G. Dwyer, A view of evidence on the subject of Tithes in Ireland, given before the Committees of Lords and Commons in 1832 (1833), 69-73.

When Mahony subsequently came forward as a candidate for Limerick city at the 1832 general election his rejection of repeal in favour of ‘conditional’ Unionism caused O’Connell to issue a ‘broadside’ calling upon the electors to reject a man he considered ‘worse than a Conservative or an Angleseyite’.20Freeman’s Journal, 11 Aug., 23, 26 Nov. 1832, 17 July 1837; Belfast News-letter, 30 Oct. 1832; Morning Chronicle, 3 Nov. 1832; A. Macintyre, The Liberator. Daniel O’Connell and the Irish Party 1830-1847 (1965), 123; Morning Chronicle, 6 Dec. 1832; O’Connell to Richard Barrett, 29 Oct. 1832, O’Connell Correspondence, iv. 461-3. He called upon electors to ‘get rid of that greatest of jobbers … who, if he was really as great a man as he supposed himself to be, Napoleon would be only a chicken to him’: Freeman’s Journal, 23 Nov. 1832. Mahony reportedly set aside £7,000 for the election and offered ‘to place £1500 in the hands of the Roman Catholic bishop for charitable purposes’. He withdrew, however, shortly before O’Connell arrived in the city to oppose him.21Freeman’s Journal, 5 Dec. 1832; The Times, 8 Dec. 1832; Fagan, Life and Times of Daniel O’Connell, i. 694. The two immediately re-established cordial relations and O’Connell subsequently endorsed Mahony’s unsuccessful attempt to become solicitor to the Irish ecclesiastical commissioners.22‘Mahony, Pierce’, Dictionary of Irish Biography; O’Connell to Mary O’Connell, 17, 18 Dec. 1832, O’Connell to Mahony, 21 Sept. 1833, O’Connell Correspondence, vi. 475-6, vii. 74-5; Freeman’s Journal, 20 Dec. 1832.

Though he lacked a seat in parliament, Mahony remained an active reformer. He regarded the want of general provision for the Irish poor as ‘the primary cause’ of the country’s disorganised state, and advocated a well-regulated system of emigration and the institution of public works as a means of employment.23The Times, 21 Dec. 1848; PP 1831-32 (508) xxi. 245 [269]; Dod’s Parliamentary Companion (1838), 139-40. In 1835, he gave evidence to the select committee on public works in Ireland and, in 1838, subscribed £400 to a fever hospital at Gunsborough, co. Kerry: PP 1835 (573) xx. 169 [101-18]; Morning Chronicle, 13 Dec. 1838. By the time of the 1837 general election, Mahony was widely-known as ‘a solicitor of great eminence and vast wealth’ and O’Connell encouraged him to seek the duke of Devonshire’s nomination at Youghal.24Manchester Times, 30 Sept. 1837; O’Connell to Mahony, 6 Sept. 1836, O’Connell Correspondence, v. 394-6. Prior to this, however, he was accused of acting as a confidential government agent, and of trying to induce Lord Portarlington to sell a nomination to a third party in return for a marquisate.25See Morning Chronicle, 12, 15, 18, 21, 31 July 1837; The Times, 11 July 1837. Nevertheless, he was returned for the borough of Kinsale, being associated with the town through his wife’s family.26The Kenifecks were wealthy Catholic woollen drapers who owned land nearby: A. McCan, ‘The Rise and Fall of the Kenifecks of Ballindeasig House’ [www.kenifeck.com]. Having made no pledges, Mahony entered parliament as ‘an independent and acknowledged member of Lord Melbourne’s party’.27Dod MS, iii. 755; Mahony to O’Connell, 30 July 1837, O’Connell Correspondence, vi, 79.

In February 1838, he prepared the Cork sessions bill, which proposed to provide the county with a greater number of general sessions, and the church property (Ireland) bill, which aimed to amend the conditions of tenure of more than half a million acres of land. Neither was successful.28PP 1837-38 (26) i. 535; PP 1837-38 (291) i. 539; PP 1837-38 (41) i. 345; Hansard, 14 Feb. 1838, vol. 40, cc. 1109-13, 1113-4. He was vilified by repealers for voting against the ballot, being accused of going ‘into parliament to serve himself [and] rise in the world’.29Freeman’s Journal, 21 Feb. 1838. He was also mocked for seeking justice for Ireland ‘with scented handkerchief and an accent where the mingled patois of a Limerick brogue is wrapped up in the cockneyism of Whitechapel’: Bristol Mercury, 17 Nov. 1838. After he was unseated on petition, however, the Freeman’s Journal lamented the loss of a dignified and fluent spokesman for Irish causes who had shown ‘a laudable taste for parliamentary life’ and, dearly loving ‘the “pride, pomp, and circumstance” of the house’, was ‘always at his post’.30Freeman’s Journal, 14 Apr. 1838; 21 Feb. 1853. The committee’s decision therefore appeared to have deprived the Irish Whig-Liberals of ‘the ablest of their advocates’.31Mahony to O’Connell, 30 July 1837, O’Connell Correspondence, vi. 79; Morning Chronicle, 18 Aug. 1837; The Times, 12 Apr. 1838; Freeman’s Journal, 21 Feb. 1853. Though he was spoken of as a candidate for Drogheda, Tralee, and County Kerry during 1838-9, he is not known to have contested another election.32Freeman’s Journal, 21 Apr., 30 Nov. 1838, 28 Oct. 1839.

As a largely ‘self-taught man’ Mahony developed ‘a robust and powerful understanding’ of Irish questions and demonstrated a practical knowledge that was described as ‘rare and profound’. At his death in 1853 he was said to have anticipated many of the principal legal and social reforms of his time and was for many years an influential witness at a range of parliamentary inquiries33Freeman’s Journal, 21 Feb. 1853. In 1827, representing the Dublin and Hibernian Gas-light Company, he gave evidence on the management of the Dublin Paving Board and, having been appointed a Tralee Canal commissioner in 1839, he spoke to the committee on private bills about the implementation of the 1828 Town Commissioners Act in 1846. Before the committee on Irish tolls and customs in 1834, he criticised practices that had done ‘more than any other habit to render an “Irish fair” almost a synonymous phrase for “a general riot.”’: PP 1826-27 (329) xi. 417 [110]; Freeman’s Journal, 12 Feb. 1839; PP 1846 (556) xii. 1 [143-50]; PP 1834 (603) xvii. 229 [39-56]., providing very valuable evidence to the committee on joint stock banks in June 1837.34PP 1837 (531) xiv. 1 [332-69]; P. Ollerenshaw, Banking in Nineteenth-century Ireland: The Belfast Banks, 1825-1914 (1987), 44-5, 215. In 1826, as solicitor to the Provincial Bank of Ireland, he had briefed the select the committee on promissory notes on the influence of the Scottish banking system on Irish banks: PP 1826 (402) iii. 257 [249-61, 280]. For his role in the shareholder disputes which rocked the Irish Agricultural and Commercial Bank, see Barrow, Emergence of Irish Banking, 111, 147, 153-4. In 1832, he appeared on behalf of the Law Society of Dublin before the committee on the Irish registry of deeds bill and, before Lord Langdale’s commission in June 1847, he addressed the ‘evils of the registry system, as it had long existed in Ireland … with great clearness and force’, proving himself the ‘complete master of the subject’.35PP 1831-32 (592) xvii. 751 [96-100]; Law Times, 11 (1848), 503; Freeman’s Journal, 14 July 1847. Langdale found his evidence to be ‘a mine of information which presented the matter in new and striking lights’: Freeman’s Journal, 21 Feb. 1835. In 1837-8, he had O’Connell introduce two bills to better regulate the Irish legal profession and, in April 1846, decried the state of Irish legal training before a select committee.36PP 1837 (454) i. 29; PP 1837-38 (256) i. 35; PP 1846 (686) x. 1 [248-57]; Irish Quarterly Review, i (1851), 92-3; C. Kenny, Tristram Kennedy and the Revival of Irish Legal Training, 1835-1885 (1996), 199-200.

It was, however, in the railway industry that Mahony played his most influential and controversial role. His roles as solicitor to the Dublin and Kingstown Railroad (from 1832) and shareholders’ representative for the Dublin-Drogheda Railway brought him financial success as well as accusations of jobbery and ‘un-Irish’ behaviour.37O’Connell to Edward Dwyer, 15 Mar. 1834, O’Connell Correspondence, v. 111-4; Adams’s Parliamentary Handbook (1838), 153; Freeman’s Journal, 18 Feb. 1832, 30 Oct. 1852; Belfast News-letter, 29 Jan. 1836; Freeman’s Journal, 26 Sept. 1838, 2 Mar. 1839. His name was also linked to plans to construct railways from London to Paris and (satirically) from Exeter to Jerusalem: Freeman’s Journal, 11 Sept. 1833; Derby Mercury, 23 Dec. 1835. Having enlisted O’Connell’s help in lobbying the government for a line from Dublin to Valentia, county Kerry in 1835, it was anonymously alleged that he had also arranged for O’Connell to carry the Dublin-Drogheda bill through the Commons in return for a payment of £5,000, and had bribed the railway commissioners in order to secure £100,000 for himself.38Mahony to O’Connell, 22 Oct. 1835, O’Connell Correspondence, v. 338-40; O. MacDonagh, The Emancipist. Daniel O’Connell 1830-1847 (1989), 146; Freeman’s Journal, 4, 5 Sept. 1838. Though the allegations were never substantiated, Mahony was to be dubbed ‘Omnibus Railroad Mahony’ at the Kinsale election in 1837: Examiner, 10 Sept. 1837. Nevertheless, he lobbied hard for the general development of Irish railways, prevailing upon the Irish viceroy, Lord Morpeth, to support a line through the provinces of Leinster and Munster.39Freeman’s Journal, 12 July 1836. However the plan, embodied in the Irish railway commissioners’ second report (1838), to centralise the control of several railway schemes under a body of capitalists represented by Mahony was bitterly opposed by critics who argued against creating a private monopoly under a man described as ‘the ubiquitous drudge of railway speculators’.40PP 1837-38 (C.145) xxxv. 449 (271-5); The Times, 16 Dec. 1839; Freeman’s Journal, 14 Dec. 1838, 28 Jan., 28 Feb. 1839; The Civil Engineer and Architect’s Journal, 1 (1837-8), 299; Dublin Review, v (1838), 506-8; R.D.C. Black, Economic Thought and the Irish Question 1817-1870 (1960), 192-4. In July 1845, as fears grew over the extent of speculation in railway stock, Mahony was consulted by the president of the board of trade, and the following year he gave evidence to a House of Lords select committee on the establishment of a uniform system of railway management.41The Times, 21 July, 13 Dec. 1845; PP 1846 (489) (489-II) xiii. 217, 411 [53-62]; W.A. Thomas, The Stock Exchanges of Ireland (1986), 105.

Throughout the 1840s Mahony remained ‘an active and efficient supporter of the Whig party in Ireland’. Renowned for his hospitality, Mahony’s home was dubbed ‘the Holland House of the Irish Whigs’ and he was credited with nurturing the political ambitions of ‘more than one transmitted offshoot of the English Whig aristocracy’.42The Times, 21 Feb. 1853; McDowell, Public Opinion and Government Policy, 139. Of whom it was said that having ‘gathered around his generous board, and discussed the hopes and fears of their party while they discussed the flavour of his wines’, the feasts ‘afterwards appeared to drop wholly from their memories’: Freeman’s Journal, 21 Feb. 1853. At the ministry meeting in Dublin in 1839 Mahony expressed his determination to sustain the Melbourne administration ‘by every possible means within his power’.43Freeman’s Journal, 3 Apr. 1839; The Times, 5, 13 Apr. 1839; Belfast News-letter, 16 Apr. 1839. In December 1840 he obtained O’Connell’s cooperation in organising a general meeting to discuss Stanley’s registration bill at the Theatre Royal, Dublin.44MacDonagh, Emancipist, 190; Freeman’s Journal, 16 Jan. 1841. He was, however, again mired in controversy when, after failing to vote for the Liberal candidates at the 1841 Dublin county election, he called upon the marquess of Kildare to stand as a candidate for the city; Kildare’s subsequent refusal was held to have jeopardised Liberal chances of victory.45The Times, 25 June, 23 July 1841, 1 Jan. 1842; Freeman’s Journal, 23 June, 19, 21 July 1841. This, and his declaration (this time on behalf of the gentry of Kerry) in support of the Union, further estranged Mahony from the Irish radicals.46Freeman’s Journal, 14 Aug., 16 Oct. 1843. Nevertheless, he represented O’Connell at the state prosecution of 1844,47The Times, 16, 28 Oct., 10, 17, 30 Nov. 1843, 1, 16 Jan., 16, 24, 26, 27 Apr. 1844; Freeman’s Journal, 11 May 1844; Leeds Mercury, 14 Sept. 1844; Quarterly Review, 75 (1845), 249. and rendered him one last political service that October by drawing up a declaration in favour of federalism, a cause that Mahony had himself gravitated towards.48The Times, 15 Nov. 1843; ‘Mahony, Pierce’, Dictionary of Irish Biography; McDowell, Public opinion and government policy, 244; R. Sloan, William Smith O’Brien and the Young Ireland Rebellion of 1848 (2000), 119-20; Littel’s Living Age, iii (1844), 181; MacDonagh, Emancipist, 254-7. Later, in his capacity as a trustee, Mahony’s careful and tactful handling of O’Connell’s affairs after his death enabled his heirs to retain the family estate at Derrynane.49M.R. O’Connell, ‘Daniel O’Connell: Income, Expenditure and Despair’, Irish Historical Studies, 17 (1970), 200-220 [220]; MacDonagh, Emancipist, 313-4.

Mahony himself held almost 6,000 acres in counties Kerry, Cork, Limerick and Wicklow. He was recognized as a pioneer of improving agriculture, being praised by the Devon Commission in 1845 for the condition of his Kerry estate, which proved, so the report stated, ‘what can be done at a moderate cost in an extensive district’.50J. Bateman, The Great Landowners of Great Britain (4th edn., 1883), 295; PP 1845 [C.605] [C.606] xix. 1, 57 [52]; T.C. Foster, Letters on the Condition of the People of Ireland (1846), 385-6. He gave evidence to the commission concerning the superiority of Scottish over Irish agricultural methods and the value of long-term tenures.51PP 1845 (C.616) xxi. 1 [19-24]; PP 1845 [C.657] xxi. 1 [760-70]. For a critique of Mahony’s views on the former question, see A. Somerville & K.D.N. Snell (ed.), Letters from Ireland during the famine of 1847 (1994), 157-9. Having been spoken of as a possible secretary to the commission, Mahony helped to draft the bills that embodied its recommendations, much to the alarm of the prime minister.52The Times, 11 Dec. 1843. Peel was informed that Mahony ‘had appeared drunk at the London Law Club boasting about his drafting of several Irish land bills on behalf of the government’: P. Gray, Famine, Land and Politics. British Government and Irish Society 1843-50 (1999), 89-90. During the famine Mahony became a member of the Mansion House and Reproductive Employment Committees and attended the great meeting on the agricultural crisis in Dublin, Jan. 1847.53Freeman’s Journal, 8 Nov. 1845, 22 Dec. 1846, 15 Jan. 1847; The Times, 16 Jan. 1847. He also drew up an influential report on the crisis in Kerry and in July 1848 assisted Lords Stanley and Glengall in their unsuccessful attempt to have the Commons’ amendments to the incumbered estates bill (a measure which Mahony had long supported) referred to a select committee.54Daily News, 13 Aug. 1847; Freeman’s Journal, 13 Oct. 1847, 3 Aug. 1848; Hansard, 31 July 1848, vol. 100, cc. 1019-41.

Having prepared an address of loyalty to the viceroy (which also enumerated many defects in Irish government) in April 1848, Mahony was appointed a taxing master of the Irish court of chancery that September and became clerk of crown queen’s bench in January 1849.55Freeman’s Journal, 7, 27 Apr. 1848; Belfast News-letter, 26 Sept. 1848; Annual Register (1848), 287; The Times, 19 Jan. 1849. Though he also signed the memorial calling for clemency for William Smith O’Brien: The Times, 16 Oct. 1848. When he died of ‘paralysis of the brain’ after a short illness on 18 February 1853, commentators were unable to ‘reconcile the relatively inferior position he occupied in public affairs with the distinguished qualities he unquestionably possessed’. Lauded as a man of ‘transcendent abilities’ who ‘possessed all the materials of greatness in an eminent degree’, his funeral in Dublin was attended by O’Connell’s sons out of their ‘respect, high esteem, and grateful regard for their father’s friend and their own’.56The Times, 21 Feb. 1853; Freeman’s Journal, 21, 25 Feb. 1853. Mahony was succeeded by his second son, David, his eldest son having been killed by a fall from his horse on 21 July 1850.57Pierce Kenifek Mahony (1817-50), accountant-general of the Irish court of exchequer (1839) and High Sheriff of Kerry (1843): Freeman’s Journal, 17 May 1839, 2 Feb. 1843; The Era, 28 July 1850; Annual Register (1850), 249. His grandson, Pierce Charles de Lacy O’Mahony (1850-1930) was Nationalist MP for North Meath, 1886-92, and his great-grandson Dermot sat as a Cumann na nGaedheal TD for County Wicklow, 1927-38.58A. O’Day, ‘O’Mahony, Pierce Charles de Lacy’, Oxford DNB [www.oxforddnb.com]. The family assumed its original family surname of O’Mahony in 1901.