Cashel, a small city ‘of one principal street’, possessed ‘no considerable manufacture’ and a ‘great number of poor persons in a state of distress’, who were ‘very inadequately supplied with water’. The representation continued to be ‘exclusively’ controlled by Richard Pennefather, Member, 1818-19, the patron and treasurer of its self-elected corporation of 18 aldermen (one of whom was annually elected mayor), two bailiffs and a theoretically unlimited number of honorary freemen, whose admission was in practice carefully controlled. (There was no ‘acknowledged’ right to the freedom by birth, marriage or servitude.) Noting how Pennefather, who usually sold the seat to a government nominee, had managed to ‘confirm and perpetuate’ his ‘power and influence’, the municipal corporations commissioners listed on the ‘board of aldermen’ his brother John, two sons William and Matthew, three sons-in-law (one of whom was the mayor), three cousins, five nephews, a grandson and a cousin of his wife. ‘For many years’, they concluded, ‘the citizens and freemen seem to have been entirely excluded from all power and interference in the management of corporate affairs’.
At the 1820 and 1826 general elections Pennefather returned Ebenezer John Collett, a retired merchant who allegedly paid £500 per election, and for whom Pennefather had vacated the seat in 1819.
It consisted of Catholics and Protestants, who proposed to unite their efforts to reconcile the parties, and to co-operate with all their might to obtain emancipation. When I entered, I found from eighty to a hundred persons sitting at a long table ... The eloquence of the speakers was not very remarkable, and the same commonplaces were served up over and over again in different words.
F. O’Ferrall, Catholic Emancipation, 219.
Collett was absent from the divisions on the Wellington ministry’s concession of emancipation, for which petitions reached the Lords, 24 Feb., 12 Mar. and the Commons, 3, 11 Mar. 1829.
At the 1830 general election Collett retired and Pennefather returned his son and heir Matthew.
I believe you may reckon upon Cashel, but the severe illness of the proprietor will still cause a few days delay. The son is ready to vacate ... and I fear the market price of £1,500 may be asked. If they object to Sheil, I will make [George Stevens] Byng give up Milborne Port and take Cashel instead.
A few days earlier, however, he had expressed surprise at not having ‘heard from Pennefather’ in a letter to Smith Stanley, the Irish secretary, who had informed him, 7 Feb., ‘We hear that Pennefather will not part with Cashel’. Anglesey still hoped there was ‘a chance’, albeit ‘a feeble one’, 22 Feb., but in the event nothing came of it.
afforded another proof of the necessity of reform ... in what was misnamed the election of a Member ... but what would be properly called the nomination of a Member. Alderman William Pennefather of Cork, to whom was committed the difficult task of proposing the Member, did not know his name and did actually propose another person, until set right by the mayor, and [William] Upton, the bailiff ... also ... announced to the readers of the Clonmel Herald ... that Mr. Lloyd of Roscommon would be the new Member ... The electors of Penryn and East Retford ... were disgraced or disfranchised for doing by retail that which ... for the last century ... has been done in Cashel by wholesale ... Join your fellow citizens in the good work of liberating Cashel from that blighting monopoly which partial legislation has inflicted on it [and at the] next election ... the householders ... will be able to return a Member of their own choice.
Tipperary Free Press, 20 July 1831.
A petition for the English reform bill was presented to the Lords, 4 Oct. 1831, and one for making the Irish bill co-extensive with that for England reached the Commons, 10 Apr. 1832.
The boundary commissioners noted that owing to the ‘deficiency of qualifying houses in the city’ they had adopted ‘the whole’ of the existing limits over which the corporation had jurisdiction, comprising some 3,900 acres, and a small portion of the town that lay beyond ‘at the northern extremity’. Even so, they estimated that only 220 would qualify as £10 householders (including seven resident freemen) by the Irish Reform Act, a number ‘far closer to the proposed minimum than we consider desirable’, but which there was ‘no reason to anticipate’ would increase, ‘for there is no prospect of improvement in Cashel, but on the contrary, every symptom of poverty and decay’. In the event the registered electorate was 277 (including five resident freemen).
in the freemen
Estimated voters: 26 by 1830
Population: 5974 (1821); 6971 (1831)