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:
‘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…
