Dundalk, the ‘oldest borough in Ireland’, had little of the ‘spectacle of poverty’ that ‘all through the county of Louth stares one in the face’. A ‘respectable looking town’, its increasing prosperity was attributed to its role as ‘a mart for agricultural produce and a shipping port for cattle’, and to the patronage of the Jocelyns of Dundalk House, earls of Roden.
At the 1820 general election the Jocelyn family agent John Metge was seated as a stopgap prior to the return of George Hartopp of Doe Bank, Warwickshire, whose election coincided with the succession of Robert Jocelyn, Member for Louth and a prominent Orangeman, as 3rd earl. Following the unexpected death in 1824 of Hartopp, who supported the Liverpool ministry and Catholic relief, the Evangelical Sir Robert Harry Inglis of Milton Bryant, Bedfordshire, who allegedly ‘never saw Dundalk’, was returned unopposed. The candidature of Alexander Mundell of London, who was proposed at the nomination by Anthony Marmion of Dundalk to ‘loud cheers from the independents’, was dismissed by the returning officer, as were Marmion’s claims to be admitted as a duly qualified freeman.
At the 1826 general election the Catholic press urged the inhabitants to ‘unhorse’ Roden and relieve themselves of ‘the disgrace’ of being represented by ‘Sir Somebody Inglis’, a ‘nabob’ who ‘cares no more for the people of Dundalk than he does for the Indians of Rangoon’. On the day of nomination Marmion, claiming to be supported by thousands of qualified voters, challenged the corporation’s right to return Members and proposed one Joseph Read, but he was put out of the guildhall by the chief constable of police on the ground that he was not a freeman. Some confusion then ensued, for although Charles Barclay, a London brewer and Quaker, was proposed and returned by the bailiff George Forster, it was later asserted by Marmion that some of the six burgesses present had already nominated and elected a Mr. Burke. His petition to that effect, alleging that Barclay had been seated illegally, was presented to the Commons, 4 Dec. 1826, but lapsed, 8 Feb. 1827. A similar one complaining of the ‘incompetency of the returning officer at the last election’ was read but disallowed, 7 May 1827. Others from the inhabitants for a restoration of their rights and franchises and to ‘prevent undue elections by indefinite bodies’ reached the Lords, 22 Mar., and the Commons, 30 Mar. 1827. Barclay, who the Catholic press had predicted would support their claims, voted against relief in 1827 and 1828 but in favour of emancipation in 1829.
At the 1830 general election Barclay retired. Thomas Flanagan of Sligo, a disreputable pro-Catholic agitator, offered, but at the nomination he and ‘the rightful voters’ were allegedly ‘restrained by an armed force of police’ led by Roden’s stewards and officers, and John Hobart Cradock, son of the 1st Baron Howden, was returned in absentia by the bailiff and eight burgesses. Flanagan’s petition against the illegal conduct of the corporation and its ‘unqualified’ burgesses was presented, 16 Nov., but discharged, 2 Dec. 1830.
At the ensuing general election the Tory managers were told that Roden had offered to ‘bring in a friend’. Horace Twiss, late Member for Newport, Isle of Wight, was spoken of but accommodated elsewhere, while locally it was rumoured that McClintock, who had vacated Louth, would probably be returned. In the event, however, Roden returned the Scottish Evangelical proselytizer James Edward Gordon, founder of the Protestant Reformation Society (of which Roden was vice-president), in order, as the Catholic press asserted, ‘to pour the last drop of bitterness into the cup of insult’.
The boundary commissioners enlarged the borough to include all £10 houses which could ‘in any way claim to be considered a part of the town’, and predicted that about 600 voters would qualify as occupiers.
in the freemen
Estimated voters: 32 in 1831
Population: 9256 (1821); 10750 (1831)