Prendergast, an obscure Irish nabob, apparently came from county Galway; according to the Returns he had a property there and in Kildare, but he probably lived at a succession of London addresses.
No evidence of parliamentary activity has been traced for the 1820 session, but he voted against censuring ministers’ conduct towards Queen Caroline, 6 Feb. 1821. He divided for Catholic claims, 28 Feb. 1821, 1 Mar., 21 Apr., 10 May 1825. He voted against Maberly’s resolution on the state of the revenue, 6 Mar., repeal of the additional malt duty, 3 Apr., other reductions in expenditure, 11, 12 Apr., 18 June, and Hume’s motion for economy and retrenchment, 27 June 1821. He was granted ten days’ leave on account of illness in his family, 15 May. He was entrusted with the Galway addresses to the king on his visit to Ireland in August 1821, when he was involved in the royal meeting at the Curragh as secretary of the Turf Club, and to Wellesley as the new lord lieutenant in January 1822.
Evidently still considering himself close to Wellesley, though the other county Galway Member Richard Martin ridiculed his pretensions in this respect, he induced the lord lieutenant to intervene with Charles Williams Wynn*, president of the India board, in relation to his long-standing claim for compensation from the East India Company that year. Williams Wynn, who found himself unable to countermand the hostile decision of the court of directors, commented in reply that Prendergast ‘rather looks to a parliamentary interference to put the question in a way of legal decision and from the powerful support which he appears already to have secured, this will probably be the course most advisable for his interest’.
Avoiding the power struggle that took place in Galway at the general election of 1826, Prendergast was brought in as a ministerialist paying guest for Gatton by Sir Mark Wood†. Assuming that the Lymington Member Guy Lenox Prendergast (who was not, it seems, a relation) was the ‘M. Prendergast’ listed in the majority against Catholic claims, 6 Mar. 1827, it was presumably he who paired in its favour that day. Writing from Brooks’s, of which he was not apparently a member, he informed Wellesley of William Huskisson’s* ambitions to succeed Lord Goderich as prime minister.
With the death of the patron, the seat at Gatton was no longer available at the general election that summer, when Prendergast was returned unopposed for Westbury, which the proprietor Sir Manasseh Masseh Lopes* had earmarked for government supporters. Listed by ministers among their ‘friends’, he divided in their minority on the civil list, 15 Nov. 1830. However, he turned coat to vote for the second reading of the Grey ministry’s reform bill, 22 Mar., and against Gascoyne’s wrecking amendment, 19 Apr. 1831. Deprived of his seat at Westbury by Masseh Lopes’s heir Sir Ralph Franco*, at the ensuing general election he was sent from London by the Reform Committee to contest Weymouth as a reformer; however, finding the ground occupied, he withdrew on the second day of the poll.
Having in the period 1826-30 made numerous applications to government to advance his claim against the East India Company, he was relieved when Charles Grant*, the president of the board, agreed to take up his case in 1831.
In a few words I take the liberty to submit to your lordship that Mr. Grant, by a system of inexplicable delay, is as effectually undermining my constitution and destroying my life, as if he administered limited doses of prussic acid or any other deleterious medicine to me, and so I have repeatedly intimated to him particularly within the last month ... I can assert sincerely and truly that I have not slept two hours in any 24 these six months past - I mean in my bed. That your lordship may never experience such nights or feelings as mine is my fervent prayer. It cannot last long.
Writing to James Brougham from his sickbed, 4 Dec., when he confided that his wife and friends had at last succeeded in raising some credit, he added:
This is the first letter I have attempted to write for weeks past save one I inflicted on your incomparable brother one night when I was in such a state of mind that I was a fitter subject for St. Luke’s [Hospital for Lunatics] than any other place.
Brougham mss, Prendergast to Brougham, 15 Oct., 9 Nov. 1831, 3 Mar., 18 Nov., to J. Brougham, 23, 31, 7, 14 Sept., 4 Dec. 1833.
In January 1834 it was reported to Wellington that the government, in consequence of a pledge extracted from Grey by Wellesley on his resuming the Irish lord lieutenancy, were insisting that the directors honour his claim and had even issued a writ of mandamus to this end.
However, Prendergast died, with his financial affairs still unsettled, sometime that spring, probably at his then residence at 2 Grove End Road, St. John’s Wood. He was certainly dead by 29 Apr. 1834, when, on Lord Ellenborough raising the matter in the Lords, Brougham indicated that any settlement would now be too late. Ellenborough, who had secured the return of papers on the subject, 21 Feb., 10 Mar., returned to the attack against ministers on the affairs of Oude, 5 May, when Brougham, who stated that Prendergast had come to Wellesley’s attention (over another large loan) while in Bengal and was in fact a member of opposition in the early 1820s, spoke at length in his defence.
Prendergast was the commission agent of the Dosses, acting for them by power of attorney, and ... he richly deserved all that he ever entitled himself to; for in the course of my professional practice (it was in that way I first became acquainted with Mr. Prendergast ...) I never ... met with an individual who devoted himself so entirely to his duties as an agent. I verily believe that the notion of his being interested, as a principal, arose entirely from his devoting himself so heartily, body and soul, to the duties of the agency he had undertaken.
On 12 Aug. 1834 Grant was approached by the legal representatives of Prendergast’s widow and children, who urged that he ensure the payment of compensation, since ‘the adoption of any other course would be ruin to Mrs. Prendergast and her family, who, already left in a state of destitution, are utterly unable to attempt to recommence such an undertaking’; two months later the board replied that no further action would be taken.