Nicholas Ball PC (Ire), QC (1791 – 19 January 1865) was an Irish barrister, judge and Liberal politician. He was the second son of John Ball, a silk mercer of Dublin, where he lived for many years at No 75, St Stephen's Green. He was the only son of his father's second marriage to Mabel Clare Bennett of Eyrecourt, County Galway. He had one half-brother John and four sisters, including the leading philanthropist Anna Maria Ball, Mother Frances Mary Teresa Ball, founder of the Irish House of the Sisters of Loreto, and Isabella Ball, mother of the prominent barrister and politician David Sherlock. As a young man he travelled widely in Europe and spent two years in Rome, where he was said to have met members of the Curia to discuss Catholic Emancipation. Ball was called to the bar in 1814 and