The Shrine of St. Patrick's Hand

Even the M’Henrys have a story to tell in the Harriet Wombwell auction lots, once we take time to read through the stories of the Savage family. For it seems that St. Patrick’s hand had somehow passed between the Savage family and the Carr family (Hence Carstown, or Carrstown, as referred to in the auction lots.). The Carrs acquired it not long after Downpatrick Cathedral had been plundered, and it entered the Savage family though a marriage between one of the Carrs and one of the Savages. When one of these Savages bowed to English pressure and became Protestant, he thought it better to dispose of such relics, which could arouse considerable suspicion, and hence unpleasant consequences. So, he gave it to the Parish Priest who then gave it to his housekeeper who just happened to be his niece. She however, knowing that the M’Henrys were maternally descended from the Carrs, passed it on to them. In 1842, Mr M’Henry turned up at the door of the Savage descendants with hand in hand, so to speak, and solemnly announced: ‘Here, your Honour, I surrender into your  hands St. Patrick's hand, which me and my forebearers have held in trust for the Savages of Portaferry for several generations.’ 

To which Col. Nugent, the Savage descendent in question, and clearly a practical man, replied: ' I won't be bothered with it; for, if I take it into my house, all the beggars in the country will be at my door.’

The family were however curious enough to follow the issue up and wrote to the Dean of St. Patrick’s. His somewhat snooty advice was to give M’Henry 2 pounds and have done, it being his considered view that the hand was not connected with Ireland but could be the hand of St. Fillan, the Patron Saint of Robert the Bruce, which had gone missing in Ireland due to the carelessness of Edward Bruce, his descendant, who had brought it over to Ireland in continuation of a tradition that wherever the Bruces marched, the hand of St Fillan went with them.

Before the Nugents had the chance to reconsider their options, the pragmatic local priest had already apprised himself of the implications, headed straight down to the M’Henrys and acquired the hand for a bargain price.

A Father O’Laverty described the object thus:

St Patrick's Hand

‘The Shrine is silver, and of antique workmanship ; it represents the hand and arm of an ecclesiastic of rank, covered with an embroidered sleeve, and wearing a jewelled glove. It stands one foot three inches high, but there is no inscription except I. H. S., so that it is difficult to estimate its probable age. The reliquary was opened in 1856 by Dr. Denvir. It contained a piece of wood of the yew-tree, about nine inches long, which was bored lengthwise with a hole sufficiently large to receive the wrist-bone of a human arm. The wood was smeared over at both ends with wax, obviously the remains of the seals which had authenticated the relic. The wood appears to have been intended as a receptacle for the bone, for the purpose of preserving it in its place, and preventing it from rubbing against the outer case. When it was examined by Dr. Denvir no portion of the bone remained. It had probably been dissolved by the water.’

From there, the relic made its way into the archives of Down and Connor, and eventually onto display.

In the 1881 auction lots, the M’Henry lands were noted as farms that they inhabited courtesy of an indenture from Patrick Savage to John Carr. By the time the final acts of this drama of the 'hand that no-one wanted' were being played out, the M’Henry family would have been paying their land rentals to the Wombwell family. We will have to assume that neither Harriett Wombwell, nor her mother, Maria West, were aware that their tenants had been harbouring for years gone by a relic of incalculable significance to the Irish Catholic tradition. Had they been more alert…