Kinsale

Economic and social profile

Situated on a steep hill at the estuary of the Bandon river, Kinsale was a small ancient port and market town. Local merchants imported timber, coal, iron and salt and exported agricultural produce and, although having little industry, the port, ‘the most important fishing station in Ireland’, attracted boats from all parts of the United Kingdom and France.1F. O’Sullivan, The History of Kinsale (1916), 166. The annual value of the fishery in 1837 was estimated to be £30,000, and in 1850 there were 790 registered vessels employing 4,132 men and boys: S. Lewis, A Topographical Dictionary of Ireland, i (1837) 232; A. Marmion, The Ancient and Modern History of the Maritime Ports of Ireland (3rd edn., 1858) 518-9. The working population consisted chiefly of fishermen and pilots, though significant numbers were also employed in the local brewery and flour mills.2H.J. Hanham (ed), Dod’s Electoral Facts, 1832-1853 (1971), 166; J. Gorton, A Comprehensive Topographical Dictionary of Great Britain and Ireland, ii (1833), 475. The town had once been the main Irish depot for the royal navy and suffered greatly from the subsequent removal of the royal dock-yard and storehouse to Cork at the conclusion of the French Wars. The consequent stagnation of commerce and withdrawal of public expenditure meant that by 1835 the port had ‘long been in a very impoverished and deteriorated state’.3D. Dickson, Old World Colony. Cork and South Munster 1630-1830 (2005), 120; PP 1835 (573) xx. 169 [225-6]; Gorton, Topographical Dictionary, 475. The 1860s were, however, a time of material improvement which saw the provision of piped water, gas supplies and street lighting to the town. Attempts to develop lace-making and tourist industries were only partially successful, but the laying of a telegraphic line from Cork (1862) and the opening of the Cork and Kinsale Junction Railway (1863), which connected the town to the Cork and Bandon Railway, increased the town’s potential for development.4M. Mulcahy, Ceann Saile. A Short History of Kinsale (1966), 48, 50-1; Freeman’s Journal, 14 Feb. 1852, 31 Mar. 1859, 19 May 1863.

Electoral history

Before 1832 the representation had depended largely on the local proprietor, Edward Southwell, 21^st baron de Clifford, whose family had controlled the corporation since the late seventeenth century. Like other Cork boroughs, the primary function of the corporation at Kinsale was to return a member of parliament, usually the nominee of de Clifford.5I. d’Alton, Protestant Society and Politics in Cork 1812-1844 (1980), 101. There had been only one contest (in 1812) since the Act of Union. The corporation’s monopoly on offices had long attracted hostility from local shopkeepers, artisans and employers, who complained that the body ruled ‘with a rod of iron’ and profited from irksome tolls and charges.6Ibid., 106-8; PP 1835 [23] [24] [25] [27] [28] xxvii. 1, 51, 79, 199, xxviii. 1 [73-84]; M. Mulcahy, Calendar of Kinsale Documents, vol. 5 (1996); M. Murphy, ‘Municipal reform and the repeal movement in Cork, 1833-1844’, Journal of the Cork Archaeological & Historical Society, 81: 233 & 234 (1976), 1-18 [3]; P. Holohan, ‘Kinsale Borough and Cork County Elections 1832: Politics and Broadsheets’, JCHAS, vol. 109 (2004), 157-198 [159-60]. The Irish Reform Act broke the corporation’s monopoly over the representation and coincided with the death of the heirless de Clifford, thus allowing the emergence of ‘genuinely popular’ local politics.7E. Johnston-Liik, History of the Irish Parliament 1692-1800 (2002), ii. 209-11; vi. 307; K.T. Hoppen, Elections, Politics, and Society in Ireland 1832-1885 (1984), 310; Parliamentary Gazetteer of Ireland, iii (1846), 579; d’Alton, Protestant Society and Politics. De Clifford was succeeded by Sophia Coussmaker as 22nd baroness in 1833: Daily News, 17 Apr. 1849.

The electoral boundary was drawn closely to the limits of the town, with the liberties being excluded. This, along with the residential qualification imposed by the Reform Act, helped to localise the borough electorate, making its more straightforward to control. This stimulated the growth of party management at a local level and eroded the rural Whig interest in urban politics, to the advantage of the town’s Conservatives.8PP 1831-32 (519) xliii. 1 [85-7]; Holohan, ‘Kinsale Borough’, 164; d’Alton, Protestant Society and Politics, 164. The expanded electorate of 206 was, nevertheless, one of several ‘miniscule bands of voters’ that emerged after reform. Local Liberals viewed the Act as imperfect but still hailed it ‘as the dawn of Liberty’, while the remaining freeman bloc kept Conservative hopes alive. As late as the 1860s the Protestants of Kinsale (who rarely voted other than Conservative) still made up 45% of the electorate (while forming only 18% of the population).9Hoppen, Elections, Politics, and Society, 2, 5, 37, 314-5; Mulcahy, Calendar of Kinsale Documents; d’Alton, Protestant Society and Politics, 74. After 1832, therefore, economic improvement and urban reform, rather than national issues such as repeal, determined the town’s often indistinct and fluid political alliances. Electoral influence in the borough was unusually diffuse and evenly balanced. By the 1860s, half the voters belonged to personal factions, while many of the rest were said either to ‘go with the crowd’ or might ‘be induced to go any way’.10K.T. Hoppen, ‘National Politics and Local Realities in Mid-Nineteenth Century Ireland’, in A. Cosgrove and D. McCartney (eds.), Studies in Irish History (1979), 190-227 [206-7]; Holohan, ‘Kinsale Borough’, 168; Hoppen, Elections, Politics, and Society, 451-2, 65.

As neither the Catholic clergy nor the local landowner were able to establish an exclusive authority over voters, electoral corruption was inevitable. Kinsale became ‘notoriously venal’, being described in 1849 as ‘the Sudbury of Ireland’ due to its ‘electoral impurities’.11K.T. Hoppen, ‘Roads to democracy: electioneering and corruption in nineteenth-century England and Ireland’, History, 81 (1996), 553-71 [561-2]; idem., Elections, Politics, and Society, 290; Daily News, 13 Sept. 1849. Like other Irish boroughs, the vagaries of the Irish Reform Act meant that ‘large numbers of indigent men’ were able to register as voters, some of them living in ‘two-roomed cabins with mud floors and mud walls’. A significant proportion of Kinsale’s 180 ‘respectable’ voters also lived in houses valued in the bottom third of the town’s residences.12Hoppen, Elections, Politics, and Society, 10-1. In a small borough, where ‘a wavering balance of the constituency’ were prepared to sell their votes to the highest bidder, the outcome of parliamentary elections was always uncertain and ‘judicious pecuniary management’ was regarded as ‘an important element of success’.13Daily News, 3 Mar. 1848; Morning Chronicle, 6 May 1852; Hanham, Dod’s Electoral Facts, 166. It was reported in 1851 that ‘a certain proportion of the electors of Kinsale look upon their vote as a marketable article to be sold to the highest bidder’, and that for them ‘an election offers the same chance of legitimate spoil as the appearance of an Indiaman in distress would to the wreckers on the coast of Cornwall’: Morning Chronicle, 3 Nov. 1851.

By August 1832 it had become clear that the standing reform member, John Russell, did not intend to offer, thus making Daniel O’Connell confident that a repealer would be returned. It was, however, James Ludlow Stawell, of Kilbrittain Castle, a wealthy local landowner and renowned reformer, who first addressed the electors. Making no mention of repeal, he promised to rescue the borough from ‘the incubus of the Corporation’ and seek the abolition of church rates and tithes.14Mulcahy, Kinsale Documents, 76; Morning Chronicle, 27 Aug. 1832; Daniel O’Connell to R. Barrett, 29 Oct. 1832: O’Connell Correspondence, ed. M.R. O’Connell, iv. 461-2. An address was also issued by an unnamed repeal candidate; Freeman’s Journal, 30 Aug. 1832. In the months prior to the election the ‘tithe war’ was at its height, and Stawell was arrested at Innoshannon for participating in anti-tithe meetings at Bandon and Ballygroman. He was to have been defended by O’Connell, but died on 30 October and his place at the head of the anti-corporate alliance was taken by his brother, Colonel Sampson Stawell.15Freeman’s Journal, 18 Oct., 1, 17, 20 Nov. 1832; Holohan, ‘Kinsale Borough’, 157-8. No members of the Stawell family had ever been made freemen of the borough: Ibid., 160. Meanwhile, the Conservatives brought forward John Cuthbert of Garrettstown, a local barrister and a cousin of Stawell, whose father had come into ‘a large fortune’.16Cuthbert’s father was a Cork merchant who had recently inherited Garrettstown House, near Kinsale. He was regarded by the ministry as ‘inclined to be liberal’ and was proposed by the leading local Whig, John Isaac Heard: Holohan, ‘Kinsale Borough’, 162; Derby MS 920 Der (14) 125/4, Barrington to Smith Stanley, 16 Nov. 1832; Mulcahy, Kinsale Documents, 64, 76. A moderate, who had been sympathetic to both emancipation and reform, Cuthbert made no firm pledges but secured the support of the corporation. In spite of the register being decidedly in his favour, and having the support of the ‘redoubtable’ Father Justin Foley McNamara, the O’Connellite parish priest, Stawell headed the poll by only a narrow margin, in a peaceful election which was largely free of any sectarian spirit.17Dod’s Parliamentary Companion (1833), 162; Freeman’s Journal, 30 Aug. 1832; Holohan, ‘Kinsale Borough’, 162-4; M. Murphy, ‘Repeal, popular politics, and the catholic clergy of Cork, 1840-50’, Journal of the Cork Archaeological & Historical Society, 82 (1977), 39-48 [45]. The registration session was administered by Joseph Stock according to ‘a rational and liberal interpretation of the reform act’ and favoured the Liberals by a margin of 25 votes: Freeman’s Journal, 17 Oct. 1832, and see Holohan, ‘Kinsale Borough’, 165-6.

Though categorised as a ‘Conditional Repealer’, Stawell behaved in parliament as ‘a classic Irish Whig’, opposing O’Connell’s repeal motion in April 1834.18Morning Chronicle, 28 Dec. 1832. It had been widely believed that his military duties would distract him from the interests of his constituency, but he benefitted from popular resentment against the de Clifford interest and the corporation it controlled.19d’Alton, Protestant Society and Politics, 195. The political landscape of Kinsale changed, however, in 1834, when de Clifford’s Cork estate, including much of the town, was sold to John Isaac Heard, a long-serving sovereign of the corporation. Thereafter, the corporation, around which the Conservative interest coalesced, was free from aristocratic control and ‘became both the centre of Protestant electoral organization and the instrument for the return of Conservative members’. Yet the sudden ending of de Clifford’s hegemony also ‘left a political vacuum’ that was not immediately filled, and it was not until the 1850s that the new proprietor was able to exert a total, albeit relatively brief, domination over the borough.20For conflicting views on the timing and degree of Heard’s control over the borough, see d’Alton, Protestant Society and Politics, 108-9, 164 and Hoppen, Elections, Politics, and Society, 310.

In December 1834 O’Connell assured the Anti-Tory Association that Kinsale was safe from the Conservatives, the only question being whether the electors would forgive Stawell’s ‘timid reformism’. In the event, however, Stawell gave up Kinsale, sensing that the Conservatives’ prospects were being revived through their registration efforts amongst a growing electorate.21The Times, 2 Dec. 1834; Freeman’s Journal, 9 Jan. 1835. There were 340 registered electors by February 1833: Belfast News-letter, 1 Feb. 1833. The construction of a bridge across the river Bandon, which might have improved the town’s commerce, was by then the dominant political issue. It was to influence the formation of political groupings for a number of years, pitting business interests against those of small shopkeepers, tradesmen and landowners.22d’Alton, Protestant Society and Politics, 172; Holohan, ‘Kinsale Borough’, 165. The bridge was expected to facilitate trade with the rich hinterland of coastal Cork as far west as Baltimore: Lewis, Topographical Dictionary, 232. Notwithstanding this, the candidates at the 1835 general election also alluded to wider national issues. The seat was contested for the Liberals by Thomas Dixon JP, of Abilene, county Dublin, who secured the anti-repeal support of Father McNamara. Dixon’s selection had not been referred to O’Connell and the candidate would later assert that, eschewing party, he had stood merely for ‘the general amelioration of the country’.23Holohan, ‘Kinsale Borough’, 189; Freeman’s Journal, 17 Sept. 1847. Nevertheless, he did attract some grass-roots support, being proposed by a local tradesman and seconded by a shopkeeper. His Conservative opponent, Colonel Henry Thomas, declared himself ‘friendly to the principles’ of Peel’s ministry and shrewdly expressed a personal interest in the projected bridge.24Parliamentary Test Book (1835), 156; Holohan, ‘Kinsale Borough’, 189. Thomas donated one quarter of the £4,000 raised for the bridge by the townspeople, though a further £9,000 was still required from government: Lewis, Topographical Dictionary, 232. The contest was not marked by the overt sectarianism that characterised the elections in neighbouring Youghal and Bandon, although a black list of Conservative voters was posted in the town.25K.T. Hoppen, ‘Grammars of Electoral Violence in Nineteenth Century England and Ireland’, EHR, vol. 109 (1994), 597-620 [613], and see Cork Constitution, 1, 20 Jan. 1835. Thomas won the poll by the narrowest of margins. A petition was lodged by Dixon, 5 Mar. 1835, on grounds of bribery and fraudulent voting, but it was discharged two weeks later after the complainant failed to enter into recognizances.26CJ, xc. 48, 133-4, 138, 139. Dixon also complained that Edward Heard, the town’s sovereign and returning officer, refused his request to appoint a legal assessor for the election, and then petitioned against the dismissal of his petition, claiming that he had been misinformed as to procedure: Freeman’s Journal, 20, 23 Mar. 1835.

In 1837 the Conservatives, having again performed well at the registry, were confident of another victory and boasted that if Thomas ‘should be ejected, an election committee would settle the matter’.27Freeman’s Journal, 7 Apr. 1837; The Times, 1 July 1837. In January a deputation had expressed its full confidence in Thomas’s representation: Freeman’s Journal, 3 Jan. 1837; The Times, 17 Jan. 1837. O’Connell, who had put the Liberal failure in 1835 down to the ‘worthlessness’ of the candidate, encouraged Peirce Mahony to stand as a reformer. A wealthy solicitor and landowner, Mahony was renowned as a political fixer and had substantial interests in Irish banking and railways. Having campaigned for Catholic emancipation, he had broken with O’Connell over repeal.28Freeman’s Journal, 4 Feb. 1835; HP Commons, 1832-68: ‘O’Mahony, Peirce’. O’Connell had been incensed by ‘the ridiculous exhibition’ made by Dixon at that election: Ibid., 1 May 1835. The rift had, however, been healed and O’Connell did all he could to obtain the backing of the local Catholic clergy and the ‘Heard interest’, assuring Mahony that the government were ‘bound to strain every nerve for you’.29Morning Chronicle, 18 Aug. 1837; O’Connell to Mahony, 12 Apr., 14 July 1837, O’Connell Correspondence, vi. 31, 64. However, an attempt was made to divide the Liberal interest by James Dwyer, a Dublin barrister and reformer. Like Mahony, Dwyer was opposed to repeal and went to some expense to advertise his claim as the ministerialist candidate.30Dwyer had been secretary of the Hibernian bank (1824-7) and was a director of the Agricultural Bank (Mahony was its solicitor). He later became a QC (1846). In 1832, Dwyer had offered O’Connell financial support in return for abandoning repeal: The Times, 10 July 1837; PP 1837 (531) xiv. 1 [332-69]; Freeman’s Journal, 18 Feb. 1832; O’Connell to James Dwyer, 17 May 1832, O’Connell to P.V. Fitzgerald, 29 Aug. 1832, O’Connell Correspondence, iv. 417-8, 441-2. An advocate of municipal and church reform and ‘a comprehensive system of poor laws and emigration’, he presented himself as a compromise candidate.31Morning Chronicle, 31 July 1837; The Times, 4 July 1837. Dwyer had also stood as surety in Dixon’s petition in 1835: CJ, xc, 133-4. After arriving in Kinsale, Mahony quickly found himself enmeshed in ‘the very sink of corruption’.32O’Connell reminded Mahony that ‘as gross as’ the Conservatives’ bribery appeared, ‘We must not be bribers’. Nevertheless, Mahony replied that ‘the price of neutrality’ for an elector then stood at £130: O’Connell to Mahony, 22 July 1837, Mahony to O’Connell, 30 July 1837, O’Connell Correspondence, vi. 73, 79. O’Connell publicly rebuked Dwyer for attempting to split the anti-Tory vote in a speech to the General Association on 11 July, but feared that any attempt to expose Dwyer as a Conservative stooge ‘would only make him worse’. Nevertheless, Dwyer’s attempt to reopen the political rift between O’Connell and Mahony failed, and he withdrew from the contest.33O’Connell to Mahony, 2 Aug. 1837, O’Connell Correspondence, vi. 80; Examiner, 16 July 1837; The Times, 17 July 1837; Morning Chronicle, 31 July 1837. In spite of the fact that Hon. John Craven Westenra, the Liberal MP for King’s County, was nominated and polled eight votes, Mahony secured the support of the Heard interest and was returned by a narrow margin.34Mulcahy, Calendar of Kinsale Documents, 69; The Times, 24 July 1837; Morning Chronicle, 9, 11 Aug. 1837; Caledonian Mercury, 14 Aug. 1837.

Liberal suspicions that the Conservatives’ strategy would consist first of ‘spirited and expensive contests; secondly, well prepared and protracted proceedings on petition’ proved correct when, on 1 December, Thomas petitioned the election result on grounds of bribery and clerical intimidation.35Morning Chronicle, 11 July, 25 Aug. 1837; The Times, 2 Dec. 1837. The inquiry was deferred until 11 April 1838 when, amidst Liberal accusations of political bias, the committee decided that, in spite of the Reform Act having denied the vote to freemen admitted after 30 March 1831, the votes of ‘grace especial freemen’ admitted subsequent to the Act were legitimate, with the result that Mahony was unseated and Thomas returned in his place.36The Times, 31 Mar. 1838, 12 Apr. 1838; Freeman’s Journal, 14 Apr. 1838; Morning Chronicle, 5 Apr. 1838; CJ, xciii, 88-90, 165, 403, 404, 449, 459, 465, 474; PP 1837-38 (332) xii. 91; T. Falconer & E.H. Fitzherbert, Cases of controverted elections determined in committees of the house of commons, in the second parliament of the reign of Queen Victoria (1839), 333-56; Mulcahy, Calendar of Kinsale Documents, 78-114.

Despite of the abolition of the corporation in 1840, the likelihood of a repeal challenge at the 1841 general election faded after O’Connell made ill-judged comments about electoral corruption in the borough.37His agent told O’Connell, ‘Perhaps its truth rendered the inculpation more unpardonable but it has produced a sensation that will, I fear, secure the representation of the enemy.’: P.V. Fitzgerald to O’Connell, 12 May 1841, O’Connell Correspondence, vii. 57-9. Notwithstanding the local Liberals’ concerns about the political persuasion of the returning officer appointed after the municipal reforms, the exceptional efforts made by their county registration committee reaped dividends.38Morning Chronicle, 12 June 1841; Freeman’s Journal, 12 June 1841; Caledonian Mercury, 17 July 1841. On 3 April, the registry stood at 52 Liberals, 30 Conservatives: Morning Chronicle, 5 Apr. 1841. They brought forward William Henry Watson, an English barrister and veteran of the Napoleonic Wars, who, upon arriving in Kinsale from London, immediately conferred with O’Connell before canvassing the constituency. It was anticipated that Watson, who enjoyed the support of the Heard interest and was said to have a ‘long purse’, would win the seat ‘without a blow’ after Thomas, being at odds with his own party, quickly ‘fled the field’.39Freeman’s Journal, 12, 25 June, 3, 7, 9 July 1841; The Times, 10, 14 July 1841. At the eleventh hour, however, the Conservatives brought forward Matthias Wolverley Attwood, a London banker who had sat for Greenwich, 1837-41, and recently lost the City of London contest to Lord John Russell. Attwood was not privy to his nomination and it was widely rumoured that Kinsale was one of several small boroughs where ‘a great but unscrupulous English capitalist’ was attempting to create trouble by furnishing large sums of money to the Conservative side.40Daily News, 3 Mar. 1848. Other boroughs included Harwich and Lyme Regis, the object of the unnamed millionaire’s attempt to procure votes in the House of Commons being his elevation to the peerage. Nevertheless, Watson won a contest again dominated by local issues with a relatively comfortable margin. A petition, lodged by two electors, 6 Sept. 1841, citing bribery, clerical intimidation, fraudulent voting and Watson’s lack of qualification was abandoned, 20 May 1842.41Freeman’s Journal, 9 July 1841; The Times, 10, 12, 14, 15 July 1841, 24 Feb., 27 May 1842; Birmingham Daily Post, 19 Sept. 1865; CJ, xcvi, 534-7; xcvii, 38, 293.

Like the rest of county Cork, Kinsale suffered from the effects of the Great Famine and the number of ‘effective’ electors had fallen to only 213 by the time of the 1847 general election.42C. Kinealy, This Great Calamity. The Irish Famine 1845-52 (1994), 214; Hoppen, Elections, Politics, and Society, 7; Hanham, Dod’s Electoral Facts, 166. Though the number of registered electors was recorded as 343: Freeman’s Journal, 18 June 1847. Watson stood again in spite of not having visited the constituency (on the advice of his backers) since his election in 1841 and faced a potential Liberal challenge from Thomas Dixon, who had contested the seat in 1835.43Daily News, 15 July 1847; PP 1847-48 (138), xiii. 12, 145 (evidence of John Isaac Heard). Now a prominent member of the Irish Council, Dixon was an outspoken critic of the Irish Church and was believed to be a federalist. In the event, however, he chose to contest Sligo and Watson was challenged instead by Richard Samuel Guinness, an extensive land agent and banker, and a member of a wealthy Dublin brewing family. Guinness was a Conservative, though he claimed to be ‘unfettered by party pledges’.44Freeman’s Journal, 18 June, 22, 24, 29 July 1847; Examiner, 24 July 1847; The Times, 23 July 1847. Guinness was a grand-nephew of the brewery’s founder: C. Clark, ‘Guinness, Richard Samuel’, Oxford DNB, xxiv, 210. The ‘whole force of the Repealers was expected to support Watson and it was anticipated that his antagonist would have to ‘bleed much’ if he was to succeed. With both candidates perambulating the town ‘waving bank deposit slips to prove their financial bona fides’, Guinness was quick to remind electors of his extensive business connections and the ‘great number of situations’ that might be created by his return. With the voters watching their economic interests, he reportedly lodged £4,000 in a Kinsale bank on the eve of the election, announcing ‘that it was not his intention to take it back with him’. Such ‘parochial pressures’ secured substantial support for the Conservatives, who also benefitted from the organisational abilities of Dr. Edward Jago, a local proprietor and the party agent.45Daily News, 28 July 1847, 3 Mar. 1848; Hoppen, Elections, Politics, and Society, 77, 82; PP 1847-48 (138), xiii. 12, 145 (evidence of John Isaac Heard); Hoppen, Elections, Politics, and Society, 38, 307. Watson was once again supported by Heard, but had to defend his opposition to Lord George Bentinck’s proposal for state loans to Irish railways, arguing that it been necessary for the survival of Russell’s ministry which, he trusted, might yet prevent ‘actual starvation and death’ in Ireland. Guinness, on the other hand, turned his attention to the practical improvement of the town and the promotion of its interests in parliament.46Freeman’s Journal, 6 Aug. 1847; B. Walker, ‘Politicians, Elections and Catastrophe: The General Election of 1847’, Irish Political Studies, 22:1 (2007), 1-34 [21]. Given the perceived failure of the Whigs to deal effectively with the famine, Watson’s confidence in the ministry seemed misplaced and Guinness headed the poll.47Daily News, 12 Aug. 1847. Nevertheless, the Liberals held out the hope that, after the vote of Guinness’s proposer had been disqualified, the return would also be deemed valid. His subsequent tribute to the ‘the honest, the independent, the unbribed constituency of Kinsale’, however, proved precipitate. Watson lodged a petition for bribery and corruption, 2 Dec. 1847, a committee was appointed, 16 Feb. 1848, and the election was declared void, 28 Feb. 1848.48Freeman’s Journal, 13 Sept. 1847; CJ, ciii, 34-6, 110, 111, 219, 270, 278, 280, 285; Freeman’s Journal, 8 Dec. 1847, 19 Feb. 1848, Belfast News-letter, 22, 25 Feb. 1848; Morning Chronicle, 29 Feb. 1848; Caledonian Mercury, 2 Mar. 1848; The Times, 17, 18, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 Feb. 1848; PP 1847-48 (138), xiii. 12, 145; D. Power, H. Rodwell and E. Dew, Reports of the House of Commons in the trial of controverted elections during the fifteenth parliament of the United Kingdom, i (1853), 18-24.

When a new writ was issued neither Watson nor Guinness, who was then experiencing severe financial difficulties, came forward. Instead, Benjamin Hawes, under-secretary for the colonies (1846-51), was selected by the Liberals, having been turned out at Lambeth in 1847.49Ged Martin, ‘Hawes, Sir Benjamin’, Oxford DNB, xxv, 877-8. Lord Robert Pelham Clinton, a son of the 4^th duke of Newcastle, stood in the Conservative interest, and John Macnamara Cantwell, a popular solicitor who had defended the men indicted for conspiracy alongside O’Connell in 1843, came forward as a repealer.50Daily News, 4, 8 Mar 1848; Freeman’s Journal, 3 Mar. 1848; Examiner, 18 Mar. 1848; A special report of the proceedings in the case of the Queen against Daniel O’Connell, Esq., M.P. (1844). Hawes, a veteran radical and free-trader, declared himself ‘an ardent friend of liberal policy, and of just and paternal government in Ireland’. He arrived in Kinsale on 6 February and quickly secured the support of the Catholic clergy, the Heard interest, and, so it was claimed, the ‘quiet industrious men who had expressed reluctance to vote unless their votes were indispensible’. Clinton was introduced to the electors by Guinness but the show of hands favoured Hawes. In the subsequent poll Clinton lost by only three votes, despite losing many of Guinness’s former voters to Hawes. In spite of Clinton’s promise to spend £10,000 in ‘seeking satisfaction’ from a committee, no petition was forthcoming.51Preston Guardian, 12 Mar. 1848; Leeds Mercury, 11 Mar. 1848; Hull Packet, 17 Mar. 1848; Morning Chronicle, 16 Mar. 1848. Guinness and Thomas Norton were also nominated but did not go to the poll. Early reports of serious rioting in the town proved false and proceedings ‘terminated with more than the ordinary quiet which succeeds an election in Ireland’: Freeman’s Journal, 13 Mar. 1848; The Times, 16 Mar. 1848, quoting Cork Examiner. Although an irregularity occurred in Hawes’s swearing in as an MP, the select committee which investigated the matter concluded that a new writ was not justified, and he duly took his place in the House.52The Times, 15, 16 Mar., 22 Apr. 1848; PP 1847-48 (256) xvi. 49.

The controversy surrounding Russell’s ecclesiastical titles bill of 1851 inevitably weakened the position of Irish ministerial MPs who, like Hawes, represented largely Catholic constituencies. Although faced with repudiation by Catholic voters, he refused to stand down and was appointed deputy secretary for war in October 1851.53Freeman’s Journal, 2, 9 May 1851; O’Shea, Prince of Swindlers, 167. A subsequent offer of a place on the board of customs was conditional on Hawes retaining his seat, and, being reluctant to tie himself to the fortunes of the Whig ministry, he opted instead to retain his permanent post at the War Office and retire from parliament.54Freeman’s Journal, 10 Jan. 1852. He was subsequently appointed permanent under-secretary for war and knighted: The Times, 21 May 1862. When a new writ was issued, 5 Feb. 1852, the Freeman’s Journal rejoiced that Hawes had vacated a seat ‘which he so long and so unworthily occupied’, and trusted that ‘an honest and independent Irishman’ would prevent the constituency from further misrepresentation by ‘wandering English candidates’.55Freeman’s Journal, 5, 6 Feb., 29 Apr. 1852; Manchester Times, 4 Feb. 1852.

In spite of the recent Irish Franchise Act, the registered electorate of Kinsale (139 in 1851) was one of the smallest in Ireland, and local influence came to have an ever greater role in turning the balance of elections.56Hanham, Dod’s Electoral Facts, 166; Morning Chronicle, 6 Feb. 1852; Freeman’s Journal, 31 Oct. 1851. John Isaac Heard, the town’s main proprietor since 1834, came forward as an independent candidate (being referred to variously as a moderate ‘Reformer’ and ‘Conservative’, a ‘Liberal and Free-trader’, and a Whig of the ‘old’ or ‘Melbourne school’). Although there was speculation that the Protectionists and the Catholic Defence Association would also start candidates, it was generally felt that a contest at that time would have been ‘a mere waste of ammunition’. A challenge of sorts was mounted at the by-election by Hamilton Geale of Darragh, county Cork, a barrister and Whig proprietor who announced his attachment to ‘a moderate fixed duty’ and ‘civil and religious liberty’.57Morning Chronicle, 3 Nov. 1851. Geale was the brother-in-law of Earl Fortescue, who had served as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, 1839-41. John Hatchell and David Keane, a Cork barrister, were also briefly spoken of as Liberal candidates: Freeman’s Journal, 31 Oct. 1851; Morning Chronicle, 8 Nov. 1851; Nation, 27 July 1852. Heard was, however, returned unopposed ‘without a pledge’, much to the relief of local Liberals who had feared that given ‘the frightful extent of corruption’ in the borough a Conservative challenge might have succeeded.58The Times, 9 Feb. 1852; Freeman’s Journal, 14 Feb., 29 Apr. 1852; Morning Chronicle, 6, 7, 14, 16 Feb. 1852; Nation, 14 Feb. 1852; Adams’s Parliamentary Handbook (3rd edn., 1854), 191. A question did, however, arise over whether the election ought to have been postponed, the writ not having been properly executed: Daily News, 18 Feb. 1852. With a large proportion of electors personally pledged to him, Heard was widely regarded as the ‘joint candidate of both parties’. Nevertheless, his future election prospects depended upon his adequately representating local interests. At the 1852 general election he was regarded as an ‘anti-Ministerialist’, and the fact that he was an Irishman was sufficient to recommend him to much of the electorate.59J.H. Whyte, The Independent Irish Party, 1850-9 (1958), 82; Morning Chronicle, 12 July 1852; Daily News, 9 Feb. 1852. Although Sir Ralph Howard was mooted as a Liberal candidate, his only challenger was Geale, who quickly withdrew, leaving Heard to be re-elected without opposition.60Daily News, 3, 5 May 1852; Examiner, 10 July 1852; Freeman’s Journal, 12 July 1852. Geale was author of Notes of a Two year’s Residence in Italy (1848) and other works.

At the 1857 general election, it was anticipated that Heard might have to fight for his seat. There was popular opposition in the town to a bill for recovering the levy made on property by Protestant ministers (Kinsale being one of eight Irish towns so affected), and a ‘careful reconnaissance’ was said to have been made by an opponent possessed of ‘all the qualifications for a stiff contest’. In the event, however, only Geale came forward and, again failing to gain any ground, withdrew, enabling Heard to be returned unopposed once more.61Morning Chronicle, 3 Feb. 1857; The Times, 18 June 1857; Freeman’s Journal, 11, 26 Mar. 1857; Belfast News-letter, 17, 31 Mar. 1857; Nation, 21 Mar. 1857.

By 1858 it was anticipated that, with a mere 156 registered electors, Kinsale would be disenfranchised by any future reform act.62Belfast News-letter, 1 Feb. 1858; The Times, 1 Feb. 1858. The Irish reform bill of 1866 proposed to unite Kinsale with Bandon to form a district borough on the Scottish model: PP 1866 (142) v. 103. Nevertheless, the borough was one of four ‘strongholds’ that the Derbyites were determined to wrest from the Liberals.63Belfast News-letter, 8 Apr. 1859. The others being Newry, Dungarvan and County Clare. A sum of £300 was paid to local party agents by Lord Naas, the Irish chief secretary, from the national Conservative fund: The Times, 27 Apr. 1859; K.T. Hoppen, ‘Tories, Catholics, and the General Election of 1859’, HJ, 13:1 (1970), 48-67 [66]. Indeed, during the 1859 general election, Kinsale seemed ‘to possess some magnetic power over parliamentary aspirants’ as seven candidates canvassed the constituency. Captain Swynfen Thomas Carnegie, a former MP for Stafford (1841-7) came forward in the Conservative interest, a seat in parliament having been a condition of his accepting the position of fourth naval lord of the admiralty, and it was widely rumoured that Heard had agreed to stand aside in his favour.64Freeman’s Journal, 22 Apr. 1859; Leeds Mercury, 14 Apr. 1859; Caledonian Mercury, 15 Apr. 1859; Aberdeen Journal, 20 Apr. 1859; Hansard, 12 Apr. 1859, vol. 153, cc. 1632-9. Major John George Boothby, a brother-in-law of Lord Fermoy, offered as an avowed opponent of Lord Derby’s government.65Boothby (1824-1876) was a descendent of the poet and writer Sir Brooke Boothby of Ashbourne Hall, Derbyshire and brother of Charles Boothby, once of the privy council office and private secretary to Lords Lansdowne and Granville. He later became a Major-General in the Royal Artillery. Captain Frederic Brine, who had previously canvassed Aylesbury for the Conservatives, and was better known for his role as a military surveyor, announced his candidature and George Wildridge, an Irish merchant resident in London, also addressed the electors.66A Crimean War veteran and Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, Brine had recently surveyed the Atlantic telegraph cable off the Irish coast and went on to survey Tokyo Bay, forming volunteer forces at Shanghai, Hong Kong and Yokohama in 1861-3: J. Hayes, ‘A Short History of Military Volunteers in Hong Kong’, Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 11 (1971), 151-71; NA, WO 78/1014/20. Though a Protestant, Wildridge was pledged to protect Catholic interests by supporting denominational education.67The ubiquitous Hamilton Geale and Thomas Jameson (see 1863 election) were also spoken of as candidates. The Liberal electors, however, approached Sir John Arnott, then mayor of Cork, who optimistically espoused ‘the dawn of a new phase in Irish politics’, promising ‘unity of purpose and material advancement’.68Belfast News-letter, 14 Apr. 1859; The Times, 15, 16, 25 Apr. 1859; Aberdeen Journal, 20 Apr. 1859; Daily News, 15 Apr. 1859. Arnott, a Scottish-born industrialist and philanthropist, owned companies across the United Kingdom and was the largest employer of labour in Ireland. His commercial influence (he was said to have had a list of all the drapers in Kinsale who owed him favours) and his reputation ‘as a charity-dispensing machine’ secured Arnott some degree of cross-party support. When he and Brine, who had promised lavish public expenditure on the town’s military fortifications, canvassed the town (the other candidates having retired) Arnott secured 69 pledges and Brine just 11.69Hoppen, Elections, Politics, and Society, 59; idem., ‘Roads to Democracy’, 563; ‘National Politics’, 206; M.L. Legg, ‘Arnott, Sir John’, Oxford DNB, ii. 515-6; Daily News, 19 Apr. 1859; The Times, 3 May 1859. At the nomination it was announced that Arnott had dispersed a large sum to subsidise local crochet workers and, with the show of hands clearly in his favour, he headed the poll, securing more than twice the number of votes of his opponent.70Belfast News-letter, 5, 7 May 1859; Hoppen, ‘National Politics’, 206.

In March 1861 Arnott quashed a rumour that he was about to abandon Kinsale for a vacancy at Cork but, having delivered neither a promised waterworks nor a transatlantic cable station to the town in May 1863, he shed what he had found to be an increasing financial burden by announcing his retirement. As the cause for this step had not been made public, it was assumed that Arnott had agreed to hand the seat to Sir George Colthurst, who began to canvass the moment the writ was issued. 71The Times, 11 Mar. 1861, 1 June 1863; Hoppen, ‘National Politics’, 207; Ibid., ‘Roads to Democracy’, 563; Freeman’s Journal, 6 June 1863. The presence of Arnott’s business manager at Colthurst’s side appeared to vindicate the notion that Kinsale was to be ‘handed over’ to him.72Belfast News-letter, 29 May 1863; Daily News, 29 May 1863. Arnott retorted that he had expressed an intention to resign the seat one year earlier but had been induced by several influential electors to retain the seat until a suitable successor could be found: The Times, 4 June 1863. Colthurst’s claim to the seat was based on his family’s ‘constant residence’ in County Cork, and he reserved to himself the right of deciding, irrespective of party, on all Irish issues while lending his general support to the Palmerston ministry.73Freeman’s Journal, 30 May, 4, 6 June 1863; The Times, 1 June 1863. He was, however, widely regarded as ‘a high Conservative’ who was seeking ‘a quiet seat without a contest’, and Irish Liberals were sceptical of his conversion from ‘hereditary Toryism to conditional Liberalism’.74Freeman’s Journal, 1 June 1863. However, the Irish attorney-general, Thomas O’Hagan, who had for some time expressed an interest in the borough, found the potential cost of contesting the seat prohibitive, and a challenge from the government law adviser, Edward Sullivan, also failed to materialise.75Standard, 25 Mar. 1862; Hoppen, ‘National Politics’, 206-7. Instead, Thomas Jameson, a Dublin-based solicitor, came forward to thwart what he regarded as an attempt by ‘the gentry of the town’ to foist Colthurst upon Kinsale. Jameson, a local landowner and alderman of Cork, advocated a charter for the Catholic University and enlarged measures of tenant-right.76Freeman’s Journal, 4 June 1863; Belfast News-letter, 1 June 1863. A third candidate, Victor Beare Fitzgibbon, a young Cork drapery proprietor, also entered the race and was adopted as the Liberal candidate after Jameson was accused of colluding with Arnott to divide the anti-Colthurst vote and withdrew.77Belfast News-letter, 2 June 1863; Freeman’s Journal, 4, 6 June 1863. After putting up £1,000 as a guarantee to his committee that he would not withdraw from the contest, Fitzgibbon was nominated, along with several other aspirants who did not go to the poll. With only 118 electors deemed ‘available’, the election was inevitably a parochial affair.78Freeman’s Journal, 4 June 1863; Belfast News-letter, 5 June 1863; Glasgow Herald, 5 June 1863; Leeds Mercury, 8 June 1863; Hoppen, Elections, Politics, and Society, 290. Fitzgibbon, a critic of Palmerston’s foreign policy, was described as the ‘ultramontane candidate’, having secured the backing of the parish priest who ‘controlled’ almost a quarter of the electors. Colthurst, the ‘more reactionary’ of the two candidates, drew support from Catholics, Dissenters, and Anglicans, and the election was therefore free from the ‘rabid sectarian feeling’ which had characterised the recent Longford by-election.79Hoppen, Elections, Politics, and Society, 233, 38; The Times, 9 June 1863. There had a party riot at Kinsale on 12 July 1859, but this had been largely caused by the Antrim militia, who were stationed in the town. See The Times, 15, 27 May 1859, 3 Feb. 1860. The show of hands having been in favour of Fitzgibbon, a poll was demanded which Colthurst won, with Fitzgibbon insisting that, in the absence of a positive denial, the ‘compact’ to hand the borough over to Colthurst had succeeded.80Freeman’s Journal, 9 June 1863; Belfast News-letter, 9 June 1863. Colthurst had been proposed by Achilles Daunt, the son-in-law of John Isaac Heard: Freeman’s Journal, 6 June 1863.

Colthurst subsequently lent his support to the Liberal ministry, and gained local popularity by completing the promised waterworks at his own expense in 1864.81O’Sullivan, History of Kinsale, 157. Arnott had made his resignation conditional upon his successor funding the project: Hoppen, National Politics’, 207. Nevertheless, at the 1865 general election a tight contest took place between Colthurst and Eugene Collins, a financier and director of the London and Birmingham Bank, who was a Catholic native of Kinsale. Collins was narrowly defeated in a comparatively quiet and orderly election and Colthurst’s success was denounced in the Irish Liberal press as a victory for Palmerstonian conservatism.82The Times, 9 June 1863; Belfast News-letter, 9 June 1865; Leeds Mercury, 4 Feb. 1865; Freeman’s Journal, 21 July 1865; Nation, 22 July 1865.

Until 1874, the borough largely conformed to the pattern established at its first post-reform election, and ‘devoted most of its political energies to local issues’. It was contested solely by nominal Liberals in 1868, when Colthurst defeated Robert James Brown, a London-based Gladstonian. In 1874, however, Eugene Collins was returned as a Home Ruler and was re-elected in 1880, each time easily beating Conservative challengers.83Holohan, ‘Kinsale Borough’, 168; Daily News, 28 Oct. 1868; Pall Mall Gazette, 24 Oct. 1868; Glasgow Herald, 13 Nov. 1868; Freeman’s Journal, 31 Jan. 1874; Western Mail, 24 Feb. 1874. In 1885, the borough was absorbed into the Cork South East constituency and became a safe seat for the Nationalist party.