POWER, Nicholas Mahon (1787-1873), of 8 Duke Street, Westminster, London of Faithlegg House, co. Waterford

Power was the second son of Nicholas Power, a prominent landowner in counties Tipperary and Waterford; his mother was the daughter of a prominent local banker in the firm of Hayden and Rivers. Having inherited an estate at Ballinakill, Co. Waterford, he married the heiress of a wealthy Dublin woollen merchant and purchased the ‘beautiful and picturesque’ Faithlegg House in 1819.1Freeman’s Journal, 15 Aug. 1841. In 1883, the estate consisted of 4,699 acres in Co. Waterford and 1,668 in Co. Wexford: J. Bateman, The Great Landowners of Great Britain and Ireland (1971), 367.

Power was active in local politics and in 1820 chaired a meeting of Waterford Catholics to consider petitioning the legislature for Emancipation. He was present, along with his older brother Patrick (MP County Waterford 1835), on the platform with Henry Villiers Stuart for his election victory in 1826, having played a role in brokering the foregoing electoral pact.2Freeman’s Journal, 19 Apr. 1820, 7 July 1826. See the ‘Faithlegg House agreement’, cited in HP Commons 1820-32: Villiers Stuart, Henry. As a ‘Catholic gentleman of great influence’ he supported Lord George Beresford, who then enjoyed the backing of Richard Lalor Sheil, against O’Connell’s preferred candidate at the County Waterford election of February 1830.3The Times, 26 Feb., 1 Mar. 1830. He did, however, support O’Connell for the seat the following year, when he also attended the County Waterford Reform meeting. In 1832, he presided at an anti-tithe meeting in Faithlegg parish and proposed Sir Richard Keane for the county seat at the general election.4Daniel O’Connell to Purcell O’Gorman, 25 July 1830, W.J. Fitzpatrick, The Correspondence of Daniel O’Connell. The Liberator, i (1888), 210; Freeman’s Journal, 9 Apr. 1831, 23 Aug., 26 Dec. 1832. Having himself been spoken of as a parliamentary candidate for O’Connell’s Anti-Tory alliance, he nominated William Villiers Stuart in 1835, following the death of his brother Patrick, the sitting member.5Freeman’s Journal, 26 Dec. 1832; The Times, 2 Dec. 1834; Hull Packet, 2 Oct. 1835. In 1838, he met Daniel O’Connell on his arrival in Waterford and attended the dinner in his honour. In 1845 Power, who was reputed to be ‘the richest commoner in Ireland’, underlined his local prominence by lending the Corporation of Waterford £40,000.6Freeman’s Journal, 17 Nov 1838; The Times, 19 Nov. 1838; Freeman’s Journal, quoting Waterford Chronicle, 22 Aug. 1845; J.C. Walton, ‘Blake, John Aloysius (1826-1887)’, Oxford DNB, ?, ?.

Although Power was ‘not a Conciliation-hall Repealer’ (i.e. one endorsed by the O’Connellites), he was prevailed upon by local repealers to stand against the sitting Liberal member, William Villiers Stuart, at the 1847 general election for County Waterford. When Villiers Stuart unexpectedly withdrew, Power was returned unopposed.7Liverpool Mercury, 17 Aug. 1847, and see HP Commons, 1832-68: County Waterford. Shortly afterwards, he attended the Council of National Distress and National Safety in Dublin to consider the emergency created by the Irish famine. It had been anticipated that Power would largely support the Whig ministry, but, in December 1847, he opposed the government’s prevention of crime and outrage bill. In April 1848, however, he joined other Irish MPs and peers in condemning the recent seditious proceedings by supporters of ‘Young Ireland’ and voted for the government’s bill to facilitate the removal of aliens from Ireland.8The Times, 6 Nov. 1847; Freeman’s Journal, 3, 8 Nov. 1847; Daily News, 10 Apr. 1848. Nevertheless, Power was a consistent opponent of the crown and government security bill, which became the Treason Felony Act of 1848.9G.L. Bernstein, ‘British Liberal Politics and Irish Liberalism after O’Connell’, in S.J. Brown & D.W. Miller (eds.), Piety and Power in Ireland 1760-1960 (2000), 50; J.H. Whyte, The Independent Irish Party 1850-9 (1958), 178-9; Freeman’s Journal, 4, 12 May 1848.

Power supported the Irish franchise bill in May 1850, but was absent for the vote of confidence in ministers over the Don Pacifico affair that June. Thereafter, he was a moderate supporter of cautious Liberal reforms until, in February 1851, he was affronted by Russell’s ecclesiastical titles bill. He duly voted with the ‘Irish Brigade’, those Irish Liberals who actively opposed the ministry’s ‘no popery’ policy, to defeat the agricultural distress bill, which precipitated Russell’s resignation.10Freeman’s Journal, 17 Feb. 1851; Whyte, Independent Irish Party, 22, 89, 109. Although Power consistently opposed the titles bill, he did give the revived Russell ministry more general support, voting with them to equalise the county and borough franchises, and supporting the budget that April. He also backed the Liberal government in opposing Lord Naas’s motion of censure against Lord Clarendon’s administration of Ireland in February 1852.11Freeman’s Journal, 10 Apr. 1851, 21 Feb. 1852; Belfast News-letter, 23 Feb. 1852; Whyte, The Independent Irish Party, 34.

Power headed the poll for County Waterford at the 1852 general election. Though one parliamentary guide labelled him as a ‘Liberal of the Irish (Roman Catholic) party’, his support for the Independent Irish party was uncertain.12E. Morton (ed.), Adam’s Parliamentary Handbook (3rd edn., 1854), 271. Although he had shown some support for tenant-right in October 1847, and had chaired a mass meeting to establish a tenant league at Kilmacthomas, he neither attended the tenant right conference of September 1852 (citing a family illness), nor expressed public support for its aims.13Daily News, 25 Oct. 1847; Freeman’s Journal, 26 Oct. 1847, 3 Sept. 1852, 5 Oct. 1853; Belfast News-letter, 29 Oct. 1847. Nevertheless, he had voted with tenant-right MPs against the Conservatives’ Irish tenants compensation bill that July and, in October, attended the conference of the Friends of Religious Freedom and Equality, where he pledged himself to the policy of independent Irish representation at Westminster.14Freeman’s Journal, 19 Oct. 1852; Whyte, Independent Irish Party, 88-9, 180-1. He voted with the Irish independents on Villiers’s unsuccessful resolution for the extension of free trade in November 1852 and against Disraeli’s budget, which led to the fall of the Derby ministry in December 1852.15Belfast News-letter, 20 Dec. 1852. In 1853 he voted against the Aberdeen ministry over a proposed inquiry into Irish contributions to imperial finances and opposed Gladstone’s budget and the government’s plan to extend the income tax to Ireland.16Freeman’s Journal, 5 Oct. 1853. Power’s allegiance to the independent cause waned, however, and he attended the Commons less regularly. He was absent from the divisions on the government’s Irish land legislation and voted in only 39 of 218 divisions in 1853.17Placing him in 505th place in terms of members’ votes: Daily News, 21 Sept. 1853. In 1856 he voted in 36 of 198 divisions: J.P. Gassiot & J.A. Roebuck, Third letter to J.A. Roebuck: with a full analysis of the divisions in the House of Commons during the last session of parliament (1857), 31. In May 1855, he voted in favour of the Irish tenant improvements compensation bill, and backed the Palmerston ministry in the confidence vote over the surrender of Kars in April 1856. He was returned unopposed for County Waterford at the 1857 general election. He did not vote on Russell’s motion which defeated Derby’s reform bill on 31 March 1859 and mysteriously withdrew at short notice from the contest for County Waterford at the 1859 general election by when he was understood by the Liberal press ‘to be [a Whig] and something more’.18Daily News, 13 May 1859.

Power retired into private life and was legally separated from his wife in 1860. He remained a generous benefactor to the Catholic Church, building churches at Faithless and Crook and the Lady Lane Convent Orphanage. He later donated £2,000 to the Sisters of Charity in Waterford for the construction of a chapel and school, and made donations of £500 to the Christian Brothers and the Little Sisters of the Poor.19Burke’s Irish Family Records (1976), 964; Morning Chronicle, 17 Feb. 1840; Freeman’s Journal, 13 Mar. 1871. He died at his home on 4 February 1873. Power’s eldest son Patrick Joseph (1826-1913) had married the daughter of the 9^th earl of Westmeath in 1859, and his daughter, Adelaide, married John Aloysius Blake (MP Waterford City 1857-69 and Waterford County 1880-84) in 1874.20Freeman’s Journal, 6 Feb. 1873.