John Patrick Prendergast

John Patrick Prendergast (7 March 1808 – 6 February 1893) was an Irish land agent and historian.

Life Born on 7 March 1808, at 37 Dawson Street, Dublin, he was eldest son of Francis Prendergast (1768–1846), registrar of the court of chancery of Ireland, by Esther ( Patrick; 1774–1846), eldest daughter of John Patrick, of 27 Palace Row, Dublin. Educated in England at Reading grammar school under Richard Valpy, he graduated at Trinity College Dublin, in 1825, and was called to the Irish Bar in 1830.

In 1836 Prendergast succeeded his father and grandfather in the agency of Lord Clifden's estates, which he administered for many years. His experiences made him an advocate of tenant right and a supporter of the early land reformers in Ireland. (1868, Dublin, 2 pts.). In 1881 he prefixed a notice of the life of Charles Haliday to the latter's Scandinavian Kingdom of Dublin, and in 1887 he published Ireland from the Restoration to the Revolution.

Prendergast was also an authority on Irish pedigrees and archæology, contributing, among other papers, to the old Kilkenny Archæological Society's Journal, The Plantation of Idrone by Sir Peter Carew. In articles published anonymously in the Dublin press (1884–90) he covered local knowledge of the old houses of Dublin. In politics he was a liberal, contributed to the old Nation newspaper, and replied there in 1872–4 to James Anthony Froude's lectures in America on Irish history. He authored numerous pamphlets. He opposed Home Rule, and from 1878 he was an opponent of Charles Stewart Parnell.

Legacy Prendergast's manuscript collections were bequeathed to the King's Inn, Dublin.

Family Prendergast married, on 1 September 1838, Caroline, second daughter of the radical political pamphleteer and freethinker George Ensor of Ardress House, County Armagh, and left one son, Francis, who settled in California and became a naturalised American.