Reynolds, John (1794–1868), politician, was the son of Henry Reynolds and his wife Margaret, daughter of Henry Balkeney, a physician in Nenagh, Co. Tipperary. Reynolds's obituary in the Freeman's Journal noted that the family had held substantial property in Co. Leitrim, which was lost in the Cromwellian era. He began his career as a wholesale draper in Dublin, and made enough money to become a shareholder in the Hibernian Bank, established in Dublin (1825) by a group of catholic merchants. However, he attacked the Hibernian's board in the Freeman's Journal (26 July 1834) for its failure to make loans against government stock or goods. One month later he was appointed secretary of the newly established National Bank, founded by Daniel O'Connell (qv) with the aim of decentralising banking beyond Dublin and crushing the monopoly of protestant banks. Reynolds was an old associate of O'Connell and in January 1831 had been briefly arrested with him and four others on elaborate charges – subsequently dropped – of conspiring to evade the proclamation act. As secretary of the National, his job was to bring in clients and to this end he made countrywide visits; from August to October 1834 he was in Waterford, Carrick-on-Suir, Enniscorthy, Ballinasloe, Limerick, and Tralee. At each stop he emphasised that a bank headed by O'Connell was worthy of support and that the capital was secured from London. The first branch opened in Carrick-on-Suir in January 1835; after a year's operation the bank had expanded to twenty-seven branches, which it was Reynolds's job to inspect. The regional managers complained to O'Connell of his aggressiveness. In 1841 he resigned to become managing director of the Land Investment Company of Ireland, and the following year established the Dublin Banking Co., which was intended to rival the National and was stated to have branches in Dublin, Banagher, Gort, and Loughrea. However, it seems never to have operated, and a case in the rolls court in July 1844 revealed it as a fraudulent floatation. It was finally wound up as a company in 1856.
Reynolds harboured political designs and in August 1844 set his sights on Dublin corporation, offering himself as a candidate for St Andrew's ward. He was not returned, but the following year he succeeded in being elected for Merchant's Quay ward, where he immediately caused uproar by claiming that the corporation had no right to impose a borough rate to pay off debts, as many wealthy citizens were evading tax. As the corporation was controlled by repealers this went down badly with his friends and with the liberal press. A letter from O'Connell, published in The Nation (13 September 1845), referred to the ‘unfounded attack’, and this effectively silenced Reynolds. Two years later, in August 1847 he was elected repeal MP for Dublin city, gaining the seat owing to a split in the conservative camp. In 1850 he became the second catholic lord mayor of Dublin since Terence MacDermott (qv) in 1689, the first having been O'Connell in 1841. The following year he joined, in the house of commons, with George Henry Moore (qv), William Keogh (qv), and John Sadleir (qv) in trying to carve out a role for the Irish party. The widespread opposition to the ecclesiastical titles bill gave focus to the group, which initiated a policy from March 1851 of voting against the government on every possible issue and lengthening sessions by vociferous debate. This earned them the title of ‘the Irish brigade’ from friends and ‘the pope's brass band’ from opponents. On 29 April 1851 they cemented their partnership with the catholic hierarchy by convening a meeting at the Dublin Rotunda, inaugurating the Catholic Defence Association, which had as its prime purpose the redress of catholic grievances by parliamentary action. In his speech at this meeting Reynolds, mindful of his many protestant constituents, recalled protestant support of emancipation. He was the most vocal of the Irish party in the commons; W. J. Fitzpatrick (qv) called him an ‘oratorical bruiser . . . an excellent speaker, bristling with points, a master of detail’ (Fitzpatrick, 106), but a later reader of his speeches found them ‘long, rambling and full of solecisms . . . [he] was in fact the stage Irishman’ (Whyte, 25). The Catholic Defence Association had an uneasy and short-lived alliance with the Tenant League which ended before the general election of July 1852; the league leaders distrusted Reynolds and his associates. Charles Gavan Duffy (qv) in The league of north and south (1886) disparages them as jobbing politicians. Reynolds lost his seat in the election and had to retire from politics, though he sought reelection unsuccessfully in 1857. He died at Rutland Square, Dublin, on 21 August 1868 and was buried three days later in Glasnevin cemetery, where the public erected a monument to his memory. He was predeceased by his wife (name and date of marriage unknown), but was survived by at least two sons and a daughter.