An 18ct gold presentation snuff box, Henry Flavelle, Dublin, 1825, retailed by William Law

Presented in August 1829 by Peirce Mahony to his friend, George William Frederick Villiers, 4th Earl of Clarendon (1800-1870);

By descent in the collection of the Earls of Clarendon.

The 4^th Earl of Clarendon received this box when he was 29 years old, at which point he was working as a Commissioner of Customs and was yet to embark on the brilliant diplomatic career that would see him serve as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and multiple times as Foreign Secretary. The Peirce Mahony who gifted him the box is in all likelihood the solicitor and politician who was born in 1792 and died in 1853.¹ Mahony, whose Christian name is usually spelled Peirce but is sometimes written as Pierce, would have been aged 36 when he presented this box in 1829. This was a busy time for Mahony, who in the previous year had taken up the role of parliamentary agent for Daniel O’Connell (1775–1847), the spearhead figure of the Repeal movement and campaigner for greater civil rights and liberties for Roman Catholics. In the year this box was gifted, Mahony worked with O’Connell on the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829, which abolished the long-standing British policies that had banned Catholics from senior roles in the civil service and judiciary. Later in his career in 1837, Mahony would be elected as a pro-Repeal MP for Kinsale, though only held the position for less than a year. A bust of Peirce Mahony in ivory is held in the Art Gallery of Ontario, object number AGOID.107124.

¹ See ‘Mahony, Pierce’, Dictionary of Irish Biography, October 2009. Available at: <https://www.dib.ie/biography/mahony-pierce-a5395> [accessed 11^th May 2025]