Kenny was born in
Dublin, the only son of Edward Kenny, solicitor, of
Kilrush,
County Clare, and his wife, Catherine (née Murphy). Before he was called to the bar in 1868, he had graduated with a B.A. from
Trinity College Dublin and had worked as a clerk in the Census Office. He practised law on the
Munster Circuit and became a Q.C. in 1885 and a
Bencher of the
King’s Inns in 1890. He was mainly instrumental in establishing the Liberal Union of Ireland after the defeat of the
Home Rule Bill of 1886, and in organising the visit of
Lord Hartington and
George Goschen to Dublin in 1887. In 1891, Kenny was adopted as
Unionist candidate in the upcoming General Election. Kenny was returned to
Parliament for
Dublin St Stephen's Green in the
1892 general election as a Unionist over the Nationalist candidate,
George Noble Plunkett, aka Count Plunkett, whose son,
Joseph Mary Plunkett, was a leader in the 1916
Easter Rising. Count Plunkett would later be elected to office as a
Sinn Féin member, after the Rising. The
Liberal Unionists promoted land reform and peasant land ownership as a means of positively preserving the
Union, but were opposed strongly to local government. William Kenny corresponded with
Lord Hartington to that effect, calling
Chamberlain’s proposed county councils an "awful scheme of provincial councils", demanding centralised local government as the alternative. Kenny served as
Solicitor-General for Ireland from 1895 to 1898 in the
Unionist administration of
Lord Salisbury. In the House of Commons, he joined his cousin
Matthew Joseph Kenny, who had been elected as a Parnellite in 1882. In 1895, he sat on the Tourist Committee for Ireland. In 1898, Kenny was appointed a Judge of the
High Court; he resigned as
Solicitor-General and from his seat in the
House of Commons. He was appointed to the
Privy Council of Ireland in the
1902 Coronation Honours list published on 26 June 1902, and was sworn in by the
Lord Lieutenant of Ireland,
Earl Cadogan, at
Dublin Castle on 11 August 1902. Kenny remained on the bench until his death at his Dublin residence, Marlfield,
Cabinteely, on 4 February 1921, aged 75. His portrait by
Sarah Purser hangs in the
King's Inns.
Maurice Healy, in his memoir,
The Old Munster Circuit, described Kenny as stern and inflexible, somewhat lacking in empathy for those poorer than himself, but also a sound and learned lawyer with a strong sense of justice. He suggested that Kenny's political views made him a somewhat isolated figure, since, in the fraught political atmosphere of the 1890s and 1900s,
Catholic Unionists were regarded by their opponents with particular suspicion. ==Family==