Londonderry was the leading port of the north west of Ireland and had a substantial landlord in the London Society, which owned the western liberties where approximately 60 per cent of the population lived. On the eve of the Union there were two leading interests among the unusually large freeman electorate.
Coleraine was the property of the London Society, whose agent was John Claudius Beresford, and by 1799 his cousin Lord Waterford had ‘purchased’ the corporation, possibly by the admission of 35 select freemen in 1797, the last to be admitted before 1830.Sheffield mss, Foster to Sheffield, 8 Dec. 1799; Parl Rep. [I], H. C. 1831-2 (519), xliii.
Londonderry, a largely protestant county in which linen manufacture flourished, was under the electoral influence of the major tenants of four of the 12 City companies who had been the leading landlords since the Ulster plantation and had let their land in perpetuity. The preponderance lay with the Beresford clan, headed by the Marquess of Waterford and descended from the original manager of the plantation (one of them, John Claudius Beresford was even now agent to the London companies).
Limerick, the third city of Ireland, was a prosperous port with a predominantly Catholic population. Electoral control was disputed by two distinct parties. The more powerful at the Union was headed by John Prendergast Smyth (later created Viscount Gort) and was based on his control of the majority in the corporation, which could, when necessary, create honorary and non-resident freemen. Viscount Pery and his nephew the 1st Earl of Limerick headed the other party.
Limerick, a prosperous pastoral county, had a number of powerful landed proprietors including Lords Limerick, Clare, Adare, Massy, Clarina, Muskerry and Southwell, the absentee Courtenay and Egremont interests and, among the gentry families, Odell, Oliver, Monsell, Waller, O’Grady and Hunt. The county being predominantly Catholic, the increase of the registered electorate to over 10,000 by 1820 virtually precluded the election of an anti-Catholic.Dublin Corresp. 20 Mar. 1820. At the Union Lord Clare, the Irish lord chancellor, probably commanded the most influence.
Leitrim, a predominantly Catholic county, was not popular as a residential area among the gentry and few of the landlords with significant electoral interests in the county lived there. This was the case with the earls of Leitrim (Clements); their cousins the Clements of Ashfield Lodge, Cavan; the Dublin banking family of Latouche; the Wynnes of Sligo and the Coates of Jamestown, who, since they resided elsewhere in Ireland, were, in effect, absentees.Oldfield, Rep. Hist. vi. 238; Add. 40248, f.
The principal landowners in this predominantly Catholic county were Lords Digby, Rosse, Charleville, Drogheda and Glandore; and among the gentry, the Dalys, Bernards, Lloyds, Malones and O’Moores of Cloghan Castle. Digby was an English absentee who extracted no political capital from his Irish property, and of the remaining landowners the leading electoral interest belonged to the earls of Rosse who, by combining their interest with many smaller landowners, returned the Members at each successive election in this period.Wakefield, Account of Ireland, i.
By the late 18th century the earls of Ormonde and the Cuffe family (later ennobled as earls of Desart) had come to dominate the returns for this predominantly Catholic city, a major centre of woollen manufacture. Their interests were based upon their general standing in the county and their particular influence within the corporation which, through its capacity to create freemen, resident and non-resident, easily overcame the freeholders in effectively making the return.
The representation of this largely Catholic and relatively impoverished county was controlled throughout this period by two of its three largest landowners, the Earl of Ormonde (Butler) and the Earl of Bessborough (Ponsonby). As Lord Clifden, the other major landowner, remarked to the chief secretary in the winter of 1801: ‘I think there is no possibility of a contest in the county of Kilkenny at the next election, as I doubt anybody’s being able to raise an effectual one except myself, and I have no such intention’.Wakefield, Account of Ireland, i. 264; PRO 30/9/1/2, pt.
The most important landowner in Kildare at the beginning of this period was the 2nd Duke of Leinster (Fitzgerald), whose estate was reliably estimated to comprise 70,000 acres, or nearly one-fifth of the entire county.Wakefield, Account of Ireland, i. 263. The Fitzgeralds, who were closely related to several important Whig families (Fox was Leinster’s cousin), had largely dominated county elections in the 18th century until the immediate pre-Union years, when pressing domestic and financial problems began to weaken their interest.
