Anthony Hart

The Right Honourable Sir Anthony Hart
Lord Chancellor of Ireland
In office 1827–1830
Monarch	George IV
Prime Minister	F. J. Robinson, 1st Viscount Goderich
Preceded by	Lord Manners
Succeeded by	Baron Plunket
Personal details
Born	1754
Died	6 December 1831
Nationality	British

Sir Anthony Hart (c. 1754 - 1831) was a British lawyer, and Lord Chancellor of Ireland from 1827-30.

He was born about 1754 in the island of Saint Kitts, West Indies. He is said to have been educated at Tunbridge School, and to have been for a short time a unitarian preacher at Norwich. He was admitted a student of the Middle Temple in 1776, and was called to the bar in 1781.

He confined himself exclusively to equity work, and after practising twenty-six years behind the bar was in 1807 appointed a king's counsel, and in the same year was elected a bencher of his inn. In 1816, he was made solicitor-general to Queen Charlotte. Having been appointed vice-chancellor of England in the place of Sir John Leach, he was appointed a privy Counsellor and knighted in 1827. He took his seat in the vice-chancellor's court in the following month.

Following the resignation of Lord Liverpool's ministry in March 1827 Lord Manners resigned as Irish Chancellor. His natural successor would have been Lord Plunket but George IV disapproved of Plunket's support for Catholic Emancipation. Instead, Manners remained in post whilst a successor was found. Eventually, in October 1827, to the surprise of the Irish Bar, Lord Goderich offered Hart the post of Lord Chancellor of Ireland.

On accepting this office, Hart expressly stipulated ‘that he was to have no politics, general, local, or religious; and that of Papists and Orangemen he was to know nothing.’ He was sworn in at Dublin on 5 November 1827, and took his seat in the court of chancery on the following day, when he immediately became involved in a serious misunderstanding with the Irish master of the rolls in reference to the right of the latter to appoint a secretary.

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