Commons 1790-1820

The dominant interest was that of William, 4th Earl Fitzwilliam, the Whig grandee who owned about a sixth of the county and was landlord to a third, in 1795, and a half, in 1815, of the registered electorate. Despite this, as Morley Saunders put it in 1815: ‘For some years past it has been understood by the gentlemen of the county that your lordship’s wishes were confined to the return of one representative, and you were pleased to say, you would leave the return of the other to their choice’.

On 6 May 1798 the heads of the leading interests in this fast expanding port, Lord Ely and Richard Nevill, came to an agreement ‘that a cordial union shall exist between them in the borough of Wexford’ under which each would return a Member and choose alternately the mayor, burgesses and an equal number of freemen, ‘each party to act as trustees for the other’. On 30 Nov. 1800 they agreed to the alternate nomination to the one seat surviving under the terms of the Union. This was confirmed on 16 June 1806 between Nevill and Ely’s heir who had succeeded on 22 Mar.

Before the Union the two leading interests in this close borough, the Tottenham and Leigh families who were intermarried, returned a Member each. From 1801 there was only one Member, so they maintained their agreement by nominating in turn and by practically restricting the electorate to the burgesses of the corporation.PRO 30/9/13, pt. 2, list of Irish cities and boroughs; Report on Mun. Corp. [I], H.C. 1835, xxviii. app. x, pt. 1, p. 562. Francis Leigh of Rosegarland returned members of his family.

The leading resident proprietary interest was that of the 1st Marquess of Ely, but Lords Portsmouth (an absentee), Courtown and Mountnorris and the latter’s brother-in-law Sir Frederick Flood, Lord Spencer Chichester and, among the gentry, the Alcock, Carew, Colclough and Ram families possessed substantial interests.

William Handcock, who had represented the borough on his family interest since 1783, became sole proprietor at the Union, after buying out Sir Richard Bligh St. George, 2nd Bt., whose family had returned the other Member previously and had opposed the Union.PRO 30/9/13, pt. 2, Irish borough list. He requested sole patronage of Athlone from government in 1801, claiming that the corporation ‘belonged’ to him, and subsequently he referred to it as ‘exclusively mine’.Add. 35729, f. 71; Wellington mss, Handcock to Wellesley, 15 Mar.

The leading interests were those of George Rochfort, 2nd Earl of Belvidere, who was childless and who had been represented since 1798 by his kinsman Gustavus Hume Rochfort; and of George Frederick Nugent, 7th Earl of Westmeath, represented since 1783 by William Smyth.

A flourishing port, Waterford had a large, predominantly freeman electorate, the number of registered freeholders not exceeding 50. The governing body of 40 accordingly provided a focus for the contending interests of the local landowning families of Alcock, Bolton and Carew and of the commercial and banking house of Newport, which was said in 1795 to hold the corporation in thrall. They in turn had to contend with a small army of port officials and a well-do-do Catholic body representing four-fifths of the population, whose admission as freemen made them a force to be reckoned with.