Sir Anthony Hart (c. 1754 – 1831) was a British lawyer, who served as Lord Chancellor of Ireland from 1827 to 1830.
He was born into a slave-owning family[1] about 1754 in the island of Saint Kitts, West Indies, fourth son of William Hart and Sarah Johnson.
[3] 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 Sir William MacMahon, the Master of the Rolls in Ireland, in reference to the right of the latter to appoint a secretary.
Hart sat as lord chancellor for the last time on 22 December 1830, and was addressed in a farewell speech by the veteran lawyer William Saurin, the former Attorney General for Ireland, on behalf of the Irish bar.