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JOHN O’HAGAN

Sir,—The book on the lawyer and jurist John O’Hagan, by Thomas J. Morrissey SJ (reviewed in HI 31.3, May/June 2023, Bookworm), informatively foregrounds a number of matters, including O’Hagan’s connections with Thomas Davis and other nationalists and with the Catholic University. The limited compass of the book means that it cannot mention all the interesting legal cases that O’Hagan dealt with. One that took place in private is particularly important given its outcome and because its very privacy led to the circulation of various inaccurate accounts.

In the 1870s O’Hagan was the legal adviser to George Butler, the Roman Catholic bishop of Limerick. It was into Butler’s hands that the Ardagh hoard, including the well-known chalice, fell following its discovery in 1868. Although it was slow to react, the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) and its allies in the Treasury set out to persuade Butler to yield the hoard to the RIA as the de facto national museum. This should have been required as soon as the discovery was made, according to the treasure trove regulations introduced in Ireland in 1861 and for which the RIA had responsibility.

The threat of legal action against the bishop to recover the hoard led only to delays and prevarication on his part. Following discussions in May 1877 between the parties, Butler being represented by O’Hagan, an agreement was reached but not immediately finalised. The hoard was eventually given up to the RIA by means of cleverly argued persuasion which also allowed Butler to save face. O’Hagan convinced Butler that the chalice was treasure trove (as indeed it was) and a form of words agreed. This was to the effect that Butler could maintain his (mistaken) belief that his right to all the other objects in the hoard (a plain copper-alloy cup and four silver brooches) remained indisputable, as they were not treasure trove, and that the matter of the chalice could be contested. But, wishing to bring the matter to a conclusion and ‘to meet the Crown fairly’, if paid £100 by the Treasury, he offered to give up his claims to all the antiquities.

For that sum, a Treasury official was pleased to note, the matter could be closed: valuable antiquities could be acquired and the hoard could be made ‘a cheap present to the Irish nation’. Thus the Ardagh hoard and chalice came fully under the authority of the RIA and passed to the Science and Art Museum (now the National Museum of Ireland) in 1890 as part of the national heritage.

O’Hagan’s role in persuading Butler to agree, a process that took until 1878 to conclude and implement, is traceable through various documents among the Treasury Papers in the UK National Archives. This material is another example of how valuable light is thrown on events in Irish history by documents to be found in unlikely-looking places.—Yours etc.,

PHILIP McEVANSONEYA
Trinity College, Dublin