Limerick and Kilmallock.

The city of Limerick had been the dominant settlement of south-west Ireland since the middle ages. Its position, straddling the River Shannon between counties Limerick and Clare, and the strength of its walls and castle, gave it strategic, as well as commercial, importance. Granted its charter as a city by James I, thereafter it was governed by a mayor, two sheriffs and 12 aldermen, usually drawn from a small group of Old English families which had come to dominate its trade.1 J. Ferrar, The History of Limerick (Limerick, 1787), 279-80, 297-318. Yet the early seventeenth century was not a time of prosperity for the city. One visitor described it as having impressive buildings ‘like the colleges at Oxford, so magnificent that at my first entrance it did amaze me’, but behind the facades were ‘poison and stinking houses’; and another criticised the idleness of the citizens and the ‘sluttishness and poverty’ of the city in general.2 Stowe 180, f. 38v; CSP Ire. 1603-6, pp. 469-70; E. O'Flaherty, Limerick (Irish Historic Towns Atlas no. 21, Dublin, 2010), 4-6. In the 1610s and 1620s there was a series of disastrous fires, which, with an increased military burden during Charles I’s wars, and a decline in trade, did little to help the city’s economy.3 CSP Ire. 1615-25, p. 91; 1625-32, p. 170. Kilmallock, 16 miles south of Limerick, was a small walled market town with long associations with the Fitzgerald earls of Desmond. Granted a charter by Edward VI which was renewed after the Desmond attainder in 1584, the corporation consisted of a ‘sovereign’ and burgesses, and it was this group which governed the town in the early seventeenth century.4 Ferrar, Limerick, 441. While Limerick had a population of around 3,500, Kilmallock had no more than 1,500 inhabitants in 1641.5 M. MacCarthy-Morrogh, The Munster Plantation (Oxford, 1986), 259.

In the elections for the Irish Parliaments before 1641, Limerick continued to assert its independence, while Kilmallock had increasingly come under outside influences. Limerick returned its own Old English aldermen, Sir Geoffrey Galway and Sir Dominic White in 1634, and Dr Dominic White and Peter Creagh in 1640.6 H.F. Kearney, Strafford in Ireland (Cambridge, 1989), 241; CJI i. 219; McGrath, Biographical Dict. In 1634 Kilmallock returned two local Old English landowners, John Fox and Simon Haley - the latter a tenant of the 1st earl of Cork.7 Kearney, Strafford in Ireland, 241; NLI, MS 2639, unfol. By 1640 the town seems to have lost any pretence of independence, returning the son of the lord president of Munster, William St Leger junior, alongside the Waterford landowner, John Power, who may also have had links with the earl of Cork.8 MacCarthy-Morrogh, Munster Plantation, 265; CJI i. 219; McGrath, Biographical Dict. The experiences of Limerick and Kilmallock during the Irish wars were similar, as both were defensible and therefore of military importance. Limerick was initially held against the rebels by a New English garrison, but the citizens were of a different mind, opening their gates to Viscount Muskerry, and helping him to take the castle. Despite their actions, the city was not united in its support for the Confederate Association, and in 1646 the mayor and his party were ousted by the clergy and some of the citizens for accepting the marquess of Ormond’s controversial peace deal. During the Cromwellian invasion, Limerick suffered a prolonged siege by Henry Ireton*, capitulating in October 1651.9 M. Lenihan, Limerick, its History and Antiquities (Dublin, 1866), 150-3, 165, 171, 181; Ferrar, Limerick, 280; CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 459. Kilmallock also saw military action. In 1642 it was seized by Viscount Muskerry, and as a result was besieged by the English troops under Lord Inchiquin in May 1643. The Confederates still held Kilmallock in 1645, when the 2nd earl of Castlehaven used it to house his stores and magazine during his attack on Cork and Youghal.10 Ferrar, Limerick, 442-4. In March 1651, at the start of the siege of Limerick, Kilmallock was garrisoned by the English, and once again used as a supply base.11 Lenihan, Limerick, 171; Ludlow, Mems. i. 261.

Once Limerick had been taken by Ireton, the city came under military rule and the corporation was dismantled. The mayoralty was vacant for four years after 1651, with power resting solely in the hands of the successive governors: Sir Hardress Waller* and (from the summer of 1652) Colonel Henry Ingoldsby*.12 Lenihan, Limerick, 181, 188. A new charter was at last granted in 1656, and 12 aldermen chosen, but their choice of Ingoldsby as mayor indicates that the corporation was still not independent of the military authorities.13 Lenihan, Limerick, 191. In the later 1650s, the mayors were all English soldiers, although their assistant sheriffs included men such as John Comyn, whose family had held office in the city before 1641.14 Ferrar, Limerick, 281. There were very few of these Old English families left in the city, which had been cleared of most of its Catholic inhabitants in 1652 in preparation for an English plantation.15 Ire. under the Commonwealth, i. 250-1. Further orders expelling Catholics from the city, issued in 1656 and 1659, and alarming reports about the ruinous condition of the buildings, suggest that this attempted transfusion of population was not a success.16 Ire. under the Commonwealth, ii. 620, 647, 666, 716. Religious affairs were dominated by the Independent minister, Claudius Gilbert, who was a close associate of the Wallers; and efforts by the Quakers to establish churches in the city in 1656-7 were vigorously opposed by Ingoldsby.17 Cal. Baxter Corresp. i. 351; Henry Cromwell Corresp. 123-7, 240-2. Little is known of the situation in Kilmallock at this time, although the wholesale eviction of Catholics in the mid-1650s must have further weakened the independence of the burgesses, who no doubt also succumbed to the influence of Waller and Ingoldsby. Like Limerick, Kilmallock remained a military town, with 40 soldiers being recommended for its garrison in 1659.18 Henry Cromwell Corresp. 207; CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 687.

The elections for the protectorate Parliaments reflect the dominance of the Waller interest. Under the terms of the Instrument of Government, from 1654 Limerick and Kilmallock were joined into one constituency, returning one MP. The elections were to take place at Limerick, under the supervision of its governor, Henry Ingoldsby.19 CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 800. There was a slight glitch in 1654, as the writ was sent not to the governor but to the sheriff of the city of Limerick, causing the sheriff of the county, Thomas Southwell, to step in ‘lest therefore the public affair should be retarded’. The MP chosen, William Purefoy II, was captain of Clare Castle and a colleague of Ingoldsby. The contest was held ‘by a free and public vote of persons qualified for such election then and there present’, and the indenture was signed by 13 Englishmen, including Sir Hardress Waller’s son, Walter.20 C219/44, unfol. Walter Waller was elected as Purefoy’s replacement in 1656. When the younger Waller died shortly before the 1659 Parliament, his place was taken by George Ingoldsby, the brother of Henry, who had acquired property in Limerick City by marriage earlier in the decade. The collapse of the protectorate undermined the Waller interest in the area, and command of Limerick passed to an Anabaptist officer, Lieutenant-colonel Nelson. When the Old Protestant officers staged their coup against the republican command in Dublin in December 1659, there was a simultaneous revolt in Limerick, with Ingoldsby’s friends, led by the mayor, William Yarwell (or Hartwell), seizing the castle and evicting the garrison.21 HMC Portland, i. 688; CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 710. The locals did not follow Sir Hardress Waller’s counter-coup a few months later, and, like the Ingoldsbys, accepted the restored monarchy with alacrity.

The 1650s had destroyed the corporate structures of Limerick and Kilmallock, but had not succeeded in putting anything permanent in its place. With the fall of Waller, and the confirmation of other local landowners (notably the Boyles) in County Limerick, there was a return to the relative stability of the pre-1641 period, but with a few changes. In the 1661 elections for the Irish Parliament, Kilmallock continued to be dominated by outsiders: the former Cromwellian (and ally of Broghill), John Bridges*, was elected for the first seat, to be replaced on his death by another Boyle relative, Morrogh Boyle; the other MP was Bridges’s son, Brooke Bridges.22 CJI i. 592. At Limerick, the corporation once more controlled the elections. In 1661, Standish Hartstongue, the city’s English recorder, was elected alongside the Old English landowner, Gerald Fitzgerald.23 CJI i. 592. Fitzgerald’s election did not, however, indicate a return to Old English dominance in the city. The list of mayors and sheriffs shows that the New English remained in charge of the corporation, with the former MP for the borough in 1659, George Ingoldsby, being elected as mayor in 1672.24 Ferrar, Limerick, 281-2. It was only in 1687 that the Old English would re-emerge in Limerick; and their resurrection, along with that of the rest of Catholic Ireland, would come to an end when the city was taken after another bloody siege in 1690.