Co. Kildare and Wicklow

Counties Kildare and Wicklow, to the east and south of Dublin, were very different in geographical and social character. Kildare was a fertile, low-lying county, watered by the upper reaches of the River Barrow, and had long been an integral part of the English Pale. The Fitzgerald family, seated at Maynooth, had dominated the county until the attainder of the 9th earl of Kildare following his rebellion of 1534; thereafter, the Old English gentry had extended their influence, with the Eustaces, Sherlocks and Berminghams becoming prominent.1 Description of Ireland, 1598 ed. E. Hogan (Dublin, 1878), 44-9. A number of New English families acquired lands in Kildare in the early seventeenth century, but in the elections for the Irish Parliaments of 1634 and 1640 their influence was limited to the boroughs of Kildare and Naas, while the county electors and the burgesses of Athy returned Catholic Old English MPs.2 H.F. Kearney, Strafford in Ireland (Cambridge, 1989), 229-30, 260. By contrast, County Wicklow was mountainous, with its agricultural land restricted to a coastal strip, and lay outside the Pale. The area remained under Gaelic Irish control in the early seventeenth century, with both county seats in the 1613 Parliament going to members of the O’Byrne clan.3 CJI i. 11. In the 1620s and 1630s there were greater efforts to introduce English settlers, guided first by Lord Deputy Falkland (Sir Henry Carey I†), who established the borough of Carysfort and planned a general plantation, and Lord Deputy Wentworth (Sir Thomas Wentworth†), who confiscated the O’Byrnes’ estates, acquiring 14,000 acres for himself.4 Kearney, Strafford in Ireland, 237-8; M. Perceval-Maxwell, Outbreak of the Irish Rebellion of 1641 (Dublin, 1994), 22. The O’Byrnes had hung on to two seats in 1634, but in 1640 every Wicklow MP was of New English stock, including such important families as the Usshers, Parsons and Loftuses – all of whom had acquired land in the county.5 CSP Ire. 1633-47, pp. 66-7; CJI i. 221.

The experience of the two counties during the Irish rebellion and wars of the 1640s and early 1650s also differed. Wicklow was one of the first southern counties to rebel, in early November 1641 under the leadership of Colonel Luke Byrne, and the mountains became a useful base for operations against Dublin throughout the 1640s. Violence struck Kildare in late November and December 1641, but it was only with the defection of the lords of the Pale in the new year of 1642 that the county was lost to the Dublin government. In a symbolic act of defiance, the castle at Maynooth, newly restored by the Protestant George Fitzgerald, 16th earl of Kildare, was burnt down by the Catholic forces.6 Perceval-Maxwell, Outbreak, 256. Thereafter Maynooth became an important stronghold for the Confederate forces besieging Dublin from 1646, and the area around it was hotly disputed by the parliamentarians under Colonel Michael Jones in 1647-8.7 CSP Ire. 1633-47, pp. 738-40. With the arrival of Oliver Cromwell* in 1649, Kildare quickly fell to the English forces, but the ‘fastnesses’ of Wicklow proved more difficult to control. In 1652, for example, Edmund Ludlowe II* was given the task of clearing the rebels and establishing garrisons across the county, but ‘the Irish, who had sentinels placed upon every hill, gave notice of our march to their friends: so that upon our approach, they still fled to their bogs and woods’.8 Ludlow, Mems. i. 302, 499, 528. While Ludlowe was thus engaged, Colonel Grace and his Irish troops, ‘fell into Kildare, burnt the town, preyed the country thereabouts, and put some of the inhabitants to the sword’.9 Ludlow, Mems. i. 518. Most of the Confederate commanders had been forced to surrender by 1653, but County Wicklow remained a refuge for tory rebels throughout the 1650s. Lack of security contributed to the economic disparity between the two counties, and this was reflected in the assessment rates set in 1654-5: £660 was expected from Kildare each month, while Wicklow’s levy was reduced to a token £18 – the lowest for any Irish county.10 An Assessment for Ire. (Dublin, 1654, 1655). This disparity no doubt influenced the fate of the two counties in the Cromwellian settlement: the safe and prosperous county of Kildare was reserved for the use of the commonwealth, and leased to individuals; while inhospitable and poor Wicklow was assigned, after much wrangling, to the pre-1649 officers, whose demands were deemed less pressing than those of Cromwell’s army.11 CSP Ire. 1647-60, pp. 796, 825. When the Irish and Old English were evicted, and the army settled elsewhere, it was the established, ‘Old Protestant’, settlers, who became the local beneficiaries of Cromwellian rule.12 Irish Census, 1659, 395-409; Clarke, Prelude to Restoration, 202-6.

During the protectorate, counties Kildare and Wicklow were combined to form a single constituency, returning two MPs. It was stipulated that the election would take place at Dublin, at the same time as those for the City and County of Dublin, and this gave the corporation, the army and the government an opportunity to influence the result.13 CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 800. Yet the first election, held on 2 August 1654, did not go according to plan. Sir Paul Davies* gave his nephew, John Percivalle, a detailed account of events when the electors gathered at St Patrick’s Cathedral on 2 August to cast their votes.14 HMC Egmont, i. 553. The front-runners were Major Anthony Morgan, an officer of moderate politics who was on good terms with the settler community, and William Meredith, the son of the Irish official and Kildare landowner, Sir Robert Meredith. Both should be considered candidates of the Old Protestant interest. This alliance was opposed by ‘Colonel [Richard] Lawrence and others’, who supported four rival candidates: Oliver St John* and Richard Salwey* from England, and Edmund Ludlowe II and Adjutant-general William Allen from the army in Ireland. The ‘opposition’ was itself divided along religious and political lines. St John and Salwey, supported by the Dublin aldermen led by two religious Independents, Daniel Hutchinson* and Richard Tighe*, mustered ‘some few votes (about 30)’; but the army radicals, Ludlowe and Allen, ‘found all negatives’.15 HMC Egmont, i. 553. Morgan and Meredith were eventually returned with 58 votes, in what was almost certainly a victory of a distinct Old Protestant party over its rivals. The election indenture, which survives intact, reinforces this conclusion: the list of 13 named electors was headed by a trio of prominent Old Protestant landowners, Sir Robert Meredith, Sir John Hoey and Sir Theophilus Jones*, and most of the other signatories were local landowners.16 C219/44, unfol.; P. Little, ‘Irish Representation in the Protectorate Parliaments’, PH xxiii. 341-2.

The hold of the Old Protestant landed interest was strengthened in the 1656 elections by the sympathetic presence of the acting governor of Ireland, Henry Cromwell*, in Dublin Castle. Morgan was again returned, this time alongside Sir Hardress Waller, who, as an Old Protestant, an Independent and a senior army officer, may have been a candidate designed to please all interests. When Waller was also returned for counties Kerry, Limerick and Clare, he was replaced by Sir Paul Davies, a County Kildare landowner with close links with Henry Cromwell. In 1659 another member of a long-established local family, Dr Dudley Loftus, was returned with Henry Markham, an associate of Henry Cromwell and Lord Broghill (Roger Boyle*) who had recently acquired lands in County Kildare. There was no repeat of the 1654 dispute in the later elections. With the government and the Old Protestants increasingly in alliance, the Kildare and Wicklow elections proceeded smoothly.

The fall of the protectorate and the instability that followed the army coup of October 1659 did little to weaken Old Protestant influence over the two counties. The General Convention held in Dublin in the spring of 1660 saw Old Protestants returned for all the Kildare seats, with Sir Paul Davies and his relative, Sir John Hoey, representing the county. Of the four Members returned for Wicklow seats, at least three had local connections which pre-dated the 1641 rebellion.17 Clarke, Prelude to Restoration, 202-6. After the Restoration, the Old Protestants’ dominance was confirmed. In the elections for the 1661 Irish Parliament, Robert Fitzgerald was returned for County Kildare and William Weldon for the borough of Athy, but they were the only Old Englishmen among 11 MPs returned in the general election and subsequent by-elections for the county. Similarly, the new borough of Baltinglass in County Wicklow returned one Peter Beaghan as a burgess, but the other nine MPs for the county were Old Protestants or Englishmen. In both counties, the recurrence of the names Davies, Hoey, Wentworth, Radcliffe, Wingfield, Brabazon and Temple, confirms that the shift in political power – from Old English and Gaelic Irish to Old Protestant – had become permanent by the 1660s.18 CJI i. 591.