O’FLANAGAN, J. Roderick. The Lives of the Lord Chancellors and Keepers of the Great Seal of Ireland. From the earliest times to the reign of Queen Victoria.

Two volumes. London: Longmans, 1870. Demy octavo. First edition. pp. (1) xxix, 555, (2) xxii, 621. Modern quarter green morocco on marbled boards. Spine divided into six panels by five gilt raised bands, title and author in gilt on purple morocco labels in the second and fourth, the remainder with a gilt harp at centre. Top edges gilt. A fine set in a very attractive binding. Rare.
OCLC 32989904.
James Roderick O’Flanagan (1814-1900), lawyer and writer, was born at Fermoy, County Cork, son of Captain John Fitch O’Flanagan of the Dunshaughlin Yeomanry, a Catholic gentleman farmer, protégé of Lord Fingall, and barracks master of Fermoy (1808-48). O’Flanagan believed that his father’s ancestors had been rulers in south Fermanagh with a burial place at Devenish; they fought in the Irish brigade at Fontenoy. His mother’s family claimed descent from Edmund Spenser and kinship with Edmund Burke. At the age of eighteen O’Flanagan decided to study medicine, but after briefly attending Trinity Medical School he turned to law. He studied at the King’s Inns, Dublin, and at Gray’s Inn and the Inner Temple, London. He was called to the Irish bar in the Easter term of 1838, and joined the Munster circuit.
The office of Lord High Chancellor of Ireland (commonly known as Lord Chancellor of Ireland) was the highest judicial office in Ireland until the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922. From 1721 to 1801, it was also the highest political office of the Irish Parliament: the Chancellor was Speaker of the Irish House of Lords. The Lord Chancellor was also Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of Ireland. In all three respects, the office mirrored the Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain.

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