Maziere Brady

Who was Maziere Brady?

Sir Maziere Brady, 1st Baronet PC was an Irish judge, notable for his exceptionally long tenure as Lord Chancellor of Ireland.

Brady was born in Dublin, the second son of Francis Brady of Booterstown and his wife Charlotte Hodgson of Castledawson. He was the brother of Sir Nicholas Brady, Lord Mayor of Dublin, and uncle of the ecclesiastical historian William Maziere Brady. Educated at the University of Dublin, he was called to the Bar in 1819 and became King's Counsel in 1835.

In politics he was a Liberal and supported Catholic Emancipation. He was appointed Solicitor-General for Ireland in 1837 and Attorney-General for Ireland the following year. In 1840 he was appointed Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer in Ireland. In 1846 he was appointed Lord Chancellor of Ireland and served in that office, with short intervals for 20 years. He retired in 1866 and was made a baronet, of Hazelbrook in the County of Dublin, in 1869. His appointment ended the practice which grew up after the Act of Union of appointing only English lawyers as Chancellor. He sat on the Government Commission on Trinity College Dublin in 1851.

According to Elrington Ball, Brady's Lord Chancellorship was notable for length but nothing else; by general agreement he was an excellent Chief Baron, but the more onerous and largely political office of Chancellor was beyond his capacity; unlike some judges whose training was in the common law, he never mastered the separate code of equity. Delaney takes a somewhat more favourable view of Brady as a judge, arguing that while his judgements do not show any depth of learning they do show an ability to identify the central issue of any case and the applicable legal principle. An anonymous pamphlet from 1850, highly critical of the Irish judges generally, described Brady as unable to keep order in his Court, and easily intimidated by counsel.