It was a great wrench to resign the Speakership of the House of Commons, a post of high honour for which he was admirably fitted. He left an assembly over which he presided with a dignity and impartial tact which confirmed the esteem and regard in which he was held by its members, and justified their choice. At the call of duty he parted from his friends and severed many ties of affection, to take up a task which, however congenial it might be professionally, carried him into a country where he was a stranger with a surrounding of men who were to him a new experience—men possessed of great talents and a charm peculiarly their own, but which did not appeal to his serious and rather matter-of-fact nature. On the bench his success was immediate and triumphant. Sheil, who was called to the Bar in 1811, and must have known many of the counsel who practised before Lord Redesdale, said of him that he introduced a reformation in Irish practice “by substituting great learning, unwearied diligence, and a spirit of scientific discussion, for the flippant apophthegms and irritable self-sufficiency of Lord Clare,” and Story pronounced him to be “one of the ablest judges that ever sat in equity.” The Irish Bar speedily recognized in him a scientific lawyer of the first quality, but the witty barristers, bubbling over with fun and rollicking spirits, were socially quite out of touch with him. He did not understand them, nor they him. O’Flanagan, in his “Lives of the Lords Chancellors of Ireland,” tells several amusing stories of the way in which the lawyers—none too respectfully, considering the dignity of his office—cracked jokes in his solemn presence. “I never saw Lord Redesdale more puzzled,” says Sir Jonah Barrington, “than at one of Plunket’s _bons mots_. A cause was argued in Chancery, wherein the plaintiff prayed that the defendant should be restrained from suing him on certain bills of exchange, as they were nothing but kites. ‘Kites!’ exclaimed Lord Redesdale, ‘Kites, Mr. Plunket? Kites could never amount to the value of these securities. I don’t understand the statement at all, Mr. Plunket.’ ‘It is not to be expected that you should, my lord,’ answered Plunket. ‘In England and Ireland kites are quite different things. In England the wind raises the kite, but in Ireland the kite raises the wind.’ ‘I do not feel any better informed yet, Mr. Plunket,’ said the matter-of-fact Chancellor. ‘Well, my lord, I’ll explain the thing without mentioning those birds of prey’—and thereon he explained that in Ireland bills and notes which are not what is termed good security are commonly called kites, because they are used to raise money, which is termed ‘raising the wind.’”