In that role, he chaired a lengthy and controversial debate between Protestant and Catholic clergyman, winning admiration from both sides.
This campaign to reform legal education was widely supported, and helped by Waterford City MP Thomas Wyse.
[2] However, this law school entered troubled times and collapsed in 1845, leading to Kennedy shortly after ending his legal career and becoming a land agent on the 13,500-tenant Bath estates in County Monaghan, where he "sternly refused to adopt any of the cruel remedies applied in other quarters" during the Great Famine, and allowed tenants to run great arrears.
[6][2] Kennedy was also a member of the Dublin Social and Statistical Inquiry Society, visiting Belgium to inspect responses to poverty in that country and then, in 1855 with W. K. Sullivan, publishing a booklet on industrial training.
[2] Kennedy died in 1885 at his home, Charleville, The Shrubbery, Weston-super-Mare, Somerset and was buried at Cossington village church.