PIGOT, David Richard (1796-1873), of Merrion Square East, Dublin

Pigot was born in Kilworth, co. Cork, the only son from the second marriage of a notable Catholic physician who ‘preferred seclusion and an honourable competency to the more active and emolumentary life of a city’.1Metropolitan Magazine (1842) xxxiv. 114-5. His father’s first wife, Mary Nagle, died in 1788. They had one son, John, also a physician, who died in 1828: J. Bissett, ‘Pigot of Kilworth, co. Cork’ [www.rootsweb.com]; Caledonian Mercury, 25 June 1807. Having followed his father and an older step-brother by studying medicine for three years in Edinburgh, he graduated without distinction from Dublin University and subsequently engaged in artistic and literary pursuits.2Metropolitan Magazine, xxxiv, 115. He contributed to Thomas Crofton Croker’s The Fairy Tales and Traditions of the South of Ireland (1825) and was a noted violinist. He was also one of the founders of the National Gallery of Ireland: Ibid., 118-9; J. Wills & F. Wills, The Irish Nation: Its History and Its Biography, iv (1871), 674; G. Clinton and S. Sturgeon, ‘Pigot, David Richard’, Dictionary of Irish Biography, viii. 118-9. Having turned to law, he studied under Sir Nicolas Conynham, subsequently chief justice of England and worked in the office of a conveyancer from 1819 before he was called to the Irish bar in 1826. He joined the Munster circuit where, having studied his profession ‘with unflagging earnestness and zeal’, he matured rapidly as an accomplished yet unpretentious advocate, his skill in special pleading acquiring him an extensive practice with unexampled rapidity.3J.T. Gilbert, rev. Nathan Wells, ‘Pigot, David Richard’, Oxford DNB, xliv. 283-4; F. Boase, Modern English Biography (1897), ii. 1531; J. Hutchinson, A Catalogue of Notable Middle Templars, with Biographical Notices (1902), 193; Freeman’s Journal, 18 Aug. 1857. The idea that he was first called to the English Bar, ‘though not with the intention of practicing at it’ is unfounded: Irish Monthly Magazine (1833) ii. 72; Metropolitan Magazine xxxiv. 119, 121.

A supporter of reform, Pigott quickly came to the attention of Pierce Mahony, a leading Dublin solicitor, and Daniel O’Connell, who selected him as his junior counsel, and for whom he was thought to have penned several pseudonymous letters on the reform question. In 1832, he became legal adviser to the registration committee of the National Political Union, producing an influential guide to electoral registration.4Irish Monthly Magazine, ii. 74; Wills, Irish Nation, iv. 9, 12; P.V. Fitzgerald to D. O’ Connell, 28 Aug. 1832, O’Connell Correspondence, ed. M.R. O’Connell, iv. 440-1; Freeman’s Journal, 23 Aug. 1832. ‘A Synoptical Guide for Registry’ appeared in Freeman’s Journal, 8 Sept. 1832, and was subsequently published as a pamphlet: Belfast News-letter, 9 Oct. 1832; O’ Connell to Fitzgerald, 5 Jan. 1835, O’Connell Correspondence, v. 247-8. The following year, having participated in the public opposition to the Irish coercion bill, he was selected by Louis Perrin to serve on the parliamentary commission on Irish municipal corporations.5Metropolitan Magazine, xxxiv, 122, 123; Freeman’s Journal, 8 Aug. 1833; A. Macintyre, The Liberator. Daniel O’Connell and the Irish Party 1830-1847 (1965), 81, 231.

An amiable personality with a well-rounded intellect, Pigot was one of a group of Liberal barristers named (by O’Connell) as a candidate for high legal office in September 1834, who described him as a young man ‘of great, very great legal knowledge’. He took silk the following year and, being regarded as politically moderate, was appointed as law adviser at Dublin Castle by the Whig administration in April 1835. In 1836 he helped O’Connell to establish the General Association and, after being returned unopposed as an ‘O’Connellite Liberal’ in the place of Nicholas Ball for Clonmel in February 1839, was appointed solicitor-general for Ireland.6O’Connell to Lord Duncannon, 2 Sept. 1834, O’ Connell to D.R. Pigot, 2 July 1836, O’Connell Correspondence, v. 170-3, vi. 384-5; O. MacDonagh, The Emancipist. Daniel O’Connell 1830-1847 (1989), 177-8. The appointment proved controversial as opponents alleged that Pigot had been a founder of the Precursor Society, launched by O’Connell in August 1838. In fact, Pigot was aware that the Whig ministry was fully committed to maintain their opposition to repeal and quickly advised O’Connell that the legal status of the society was questionable.7Freeman’s Journal, 20 Feb. 1839, 5 Dec. 1844; PP 1839 (486) xi. 1, xii. 1 [570, 907, 1237, 1361]. Pigot believed that the society’s rules breached the Convention Act of 1793 and was therefore in danger of suppression: D.R. Pigot to D. O’ Connell, Sept. 1838, 27 Sept. 1838, O’ Connell to Pigot, 30 Sept. 1838, O’Connell Correspondence, vi, 180-1, 181-3, 183-7; MacDonagh, Emancipist, 177-8. Instead, he made an abortive attempt to enlist the co-operation of the Irish under secretary, Thomas Drummond, in establishing ‘a comprehensive reform association’ to unite liberals of all shades behind the Whig government, thus placing O’Connell ‘in a respectable strait jacket’. Although his actions caused some repealers to denounce him as a place-hunter, he managed to retain the confidence of both O’Connell and the Whig ministry.8R.B. McDowell, Public Opinion and Government Policy in Ireland, 1801-1846 (1952), 173-4; Metropolitan Magazine, xxxiv, 123-4.

Pigot first spoke in the Commons in March 1836 to defend the government’s efforts to suppress agrarian crime in Ireland, making ‘a most favourable impression’ as a debater. His voice was described as ‘remarkably expressive’ and displayed ‘a sort of musical voluptuousness in his rich and finely harmonized tones’, but while he was both ‘fluent and forcible in his language’ his oratory was regarded by some as ‘better suited to the bars of the courts than to the floor of Saint Stephen’s’.9Hansard, 7 Mar. 1839, vol. 46, cc. 93-8; Metropolitan Magazine, xxxiv. 127; Wills, Irish Nation, iv. 116; Irish Monthly Magazine, ii. 74; Freeman’s Journal, 18 Aug. 1857. As solicitor-general, he prepared several successful reforms to the administration of justice in Ireland, assisting the Irish chief secretary, Lord Morpeth, with bills to regulate court houses, prisons and imprisonment for debt, the constabulary and the Dublin police, and the appointment of sheriffs.10Hansard, 5 Feb. 1840, vol. 51, cc. 1271-2; PP 1840 (469) i. 811; PP 1840 (447) ii. 193; PP 1840 (453) iii. 405; PP 1840 (481) ii. 199; PP 1839 (550) ii. 613; PP 1839 (395) i. 357; PP 1839 (435) iv. 457; PP 1840 (456) ii. 551. He also prepared measures to prevent assaults, sheep stealing, and the administration of unlawful oaths, and to control the importation of arms. In August 1840 he introduced a bill to reform the Irish court of chancery.11PP 1839 (422) i. 19; PP 1839 (451) i. 23; PP 1839 (423) v. 297; PP 1839 (452) v. 301; PP 1839 (403) iv. 287; PP 1840 (392) i. 47; PP 1840 (515) iii. 813. That year he also initiated reforms concerning tithe arrears and corporate property, along with bills to abolish grand jury cess and promote the drainage of waste land. He nevertheless opposed James Tennent’s Irish ejectment bill on the ground that it would disturb existing tenures and ‘lay the foundation for a greater variance between the laws of the two countries’, instead of assimilating them.12PP 1839 (94) v. 483; PP 1839 (532) ii. 1; PP 1840 (230) ii. 621; PP 1840 (576) iii. 813; Hansard, 5 Feb. 1840, vol. 51, cc. 1272. He also brought forward a bill for measuring the population of Ireland and sat on the select committee inquiries into the office of the coroner for Middlesex and the Scottish supreme court.13PP 1840 (452) iii. 307; PP 1840 (549); PP 1840 (332) xiv. 1; Caledonian Mercury, 28 Mar. 1840. Having spoken on the Hansard v. Stockdale privilege motion in February 1840, he participated in the subsequent inquiry into the publication of printed papers.14Hansard, 22 Jan. 1840, vol. 51, cc. 465-71; PP 1839 (321) xiii. 167; PP 1839 (546) xiii. 179; PP 1840 (130) xv. 235.

In March 1840, Pigot successfully guided the amended bill to reform the Irish municipal corporations through the House, which received royal assent, 10 Aug. 1840.15PP 1840 (97) i. 641; Hansard, 3 Mar. 1840, vol. 52, cc. 875, 877. Having been strongly critical of the two short-lived Irish registration bills brought in by William Smith O’Brien and Thomas Wyse in March 1839, Pigot was in the forefront of the opposition to Lord Stanley’s proposals, arguing during the debate on the bill’s second reading, 25 Mar. 1840, that the introduction of annual registration would, by affording every facility to the objector, effectively disenfranchise large numbers of Irish electors.16O’ Connell to Pigot, 5 Apr. 1839, O’Connell Correspondence, vi, 228-9; A. Hawkins, The Forgotten Prime Minister. The 14th Earl of Derby, i (2007), 219; Hansard, 25 Mar. 1840, vol. 53, cc. 61-70. In May 1840, he brought in his own abortive bill which, unlike Stanley’s, addressed uncertainties over the qualification value instead of establishing a new system of registration.17PP 1840 (345) ii. 509; Hansard, 26 May 1840, vol. 54, cc. 639-47; 28 May 1840, vol. 54, cc. 688-90, 700-1; 19 June 1840, vol. 54, cc. 1342-6; 26 June 1840, vol. 55, cc. 133-6. Pigot was appointed attorney-general for Ireland in August 1840 and a second unsuccessful registration bill, which aimed to apply the poor rate valuation as a test of the elective franchise, was introduced under his aegis in February 1841.18Freeman’s Journal, 22 Aug. 1840; PP 1841 session 1 (18) iii. 323; Hansard, 23 Feb. 1841, vol. 56, cc. 904-14. That year he also assisted with further measures on tithe arrears, insolvent debtors, banking co-partnerships, and grand jury presentments.19PP 1841 session 1 (27) iii. 507; PP 1841 session 1 (355) iii. 501; PP 1841 session 1 (222) ii. 517; PP 1841 session 1 (323) ii. 521; PP 1841 session 1 (196) i. 17; PP 1841 session 1 (162) ii. 477. Measures were also forthcoming on the Lagan navigation, and the maintenance of Irish public railways, and he sat on the select committee on expired and expiring laws.20PP 1841 session 1 (135) ii. 531, PP 1841 session 2 (6) i. 85; PP 1841 session 1 (408) iii. 177; PP 1841 session 1 (286) ix. 515; PP 1843 (338) xi. 191; PP 1844 (168) xiv. 351.

He was returned unopposed for Clonmel in 1841, when he admitted that the relative balance of the parties in parliament had caused measures such as the Municipal Corporations Act to fall ‘far short of what was required’. Under the Whigs, Pigot had been widely regarded as ‘fairly “booked” for the bench’, but, with the fall of the Melbourne ministry he retired as attorney-general and returned to the Munster circuit, where ‘as an equity lawyer he had few equals and no superior’.21The Times, 8 Apr. 1841; Metropolitan Magazine, xxxiv, 113, 125; Freeman’s Journal, 7 July 1841, 18 Aug. 1857; Belfast News-letter, 23 Dec. 1873. Although he is said to have ‘hardly ever attended parliament when in opposition’, as a private member he brought in a number of bills with Henry Labouchere, beginning in 1842 with a measure to improve the provision of lighting in Irish towns. In 1846 came bills to finance the Shannon navigation and regulate Irish prisons, lunatic asylums, and fisheries.22Gilbert, rev. Wells, ‘Pigot, David Richard’; PP 1842 (502) ii. 509; PP 1846 (493) iv. 71; PP 1846 (497) iii. 169; PP 1846 (499) ii. 497; PP 1846 (581) ii. 495; PP 1846 (498) ii. 191. Having been prominent in the opposition to the ‘draconian’ Irish arms bill of 1843, of which he had offered a detailed and closely reasoned critique, he introduced a measure, much to the consternation of O’Connell, to amend these regulations in August 1846, but it was quietly dropped after its second reading.23Hansard, 15 June 1843, vol. 69, cc. 1593-1603; Macintyre, Liberator, 273; PP 1846 (578) i. 11; O’Connell to Pigot, 10, 13 Aug. 1846, O’Connell Correspondence, viii. 81, 83. That year he also prepared bills to amend the law relating to adverse claims and the taxation of costs on compensations for land.24PP 1846 (503) i. 7; PP 1846 (502) ii. 413.

As law adviser to Dublin Corporation, Pigot was part of the ‘formidable array of legal knowledge and oratorical power’ marshalled in defence of O’Connell at his state trial in 1844.25Morning Chronicle, 25 Dec. 1843; Freeman’s Journal, 11 Nov. 1846; Macintyre, Liberator, 272. During the debate on the Maynooth bill the following year, he rejected assertions that Ultramontane doctrines were taught at the college, and was subsequently appointed as one of its visitors.26Hansard, 2 May 1845, vol. 80, cc. 136-7; Freeman’s Journal, 13 Sept. 1845. In the early months of 1846 O’Connell relied upon him to galvanise the support of repeal MPs for ‘the anti-corn law ministry’ and act as his intermediary in negotiations with Lord John Russell prior to the Whigs’ return to office. Pigot also assisted subsequently with the distribution of government patronage to O’Connell’s followers.27MacDowell, Public Opinion and Government Policy, 252; O’Connell to Pigot, 8, 12 July, 4 Aug. 1846, O’Connell Correspondence, viii. 62-4, 66-7, 78-9; Macintyre, Liberator, 160-1; MacDonagh, Emancipist, 278, 293-4, 297. He remained committed to Irish reform, sacrificing a large amount of his legal business to oppose the Irish coercion bill.28Freeman’s Journal, 9 Mar. 1846; Hansard, 6 Mar. 1846, vol. 84, cc. 684-716. The post was one of the high judicial offices which, ‘of right’ belonged to the Irish attorney-general: Freeman’s Journal, 24 Feb. 1873. As a reward for his services to the Whigs, he became the second Catholic to be appointed as Irish baron of exchequer in September 1846, when he retired from the Commons.

As a judge Pigot earned a high reputation for ‘probity, for clearness of judgement … [and] for lucidity of statement’, and administered justice ‘with inflexible firmness and even severity where public interests required it’. He was viewed by Nationalists as ‘beyond the influence of [Dublin] Castle’ and therefore enjoyed the ‘utmost confidence’ of all classes. Though valued for his diligence, it was said that his ‘high conscientiousness’ and ‘earnest desire to do justice to every suitor’ often led him to investigate the details of a case ‘with unwearied assiduity’, so protracting the trials at which he presided ‘to what some considered an unreasonable length’.29Belfast News-letter, 22, 23 Dec. 1873; The Nation, 27 Dec. 1873; Freeman’s Journal, 23 Dec. 1873. Even as a junior barrister, Pigot was noted for his ‘extensive and minute research’ and ‘complained of as being too slow and cautious in declaring’ his opinions: Irish Monthly Magazine, ii. 73, and see Metropolitan Magazine, xxxiv, 126-7.

Pigot was particularly concerned with the education question. He joined the senate of the Queen’s College in Ireland in 1850, sat on the commission of inquiry into the management of Maynooth College in 1853-4, and was appointed a commissioner of Irish national education in March 1861.30Belfast News-letter, 6 Jan. 1851; Morning Chronicle, 19, 21 Sept. 1853; PP 1855 [1896] [1896-I], xxii, 1, 355; Freeman’s Journal, 19 Dec. 1860, 23 Mar. 1861. He remained on the bench into old age, being staunchly defended in the Liberal press against charges of declining capacity.31Freeman’s Journal, 6 Mar. 1871. Pigot supported the right of women to elect town commissioners: G. O’Brien, The Reminiscences of the Right Hon. Lord O’Brien (of Kilfenora) (1916), 180-1. He died after a protracted illness at his residence in Dublin in 1873 and was buried in the ancient churchyard at Kilgullane, near Kilworth, co. Cork. Three of his four sons were barristers, including John Edward (1822-71), the literary nationalist and Young Irelander, and Edward Francis (1858-1929), a noted Jesuit astronomer and seismologist.32Glasgow Herald, 27 Dec. 1873; E. Keane, P.B. Phair & T.U. Sadleir (eds.), King’s Inns admission papers (1982), 402; G. Clinton and S. Sturgeon, ‘Pigot, John Edward’, Dictionary of Irish Biography, viii. 119-20; D.J.K. O’Connell, ‘Father Edward Francis Pigot’, Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, xli (1952), 189-96. He was succeeded by his second son, David (18??-??), chairman of the west riding of co. Cork and master of the exchequer and king’s bench divisions. In 1856, his daughter Marie married Dr. Robert Spencer Lyons (1826-86), MP for Dublin 1880-5.33G. Clinton and S. Sturgeon, ‘Pigot, David Richard’; The Times, 21 Dec. 1886, 16 Dec. 1904; Belfast News-letter, 8 Dec. 1848; M. Stenton, Who’s Who of British MPs, i. 247.