The first return to Westminster for Clonmel after the Union was delayed owing to a transaction between John Bagwell I and the proprietors Lord Mountcashell and Stephen Moore, whom Bagwell bought out. Moore and John Dennis, the sitting Members, did not ballot for the seat and Bagwell returned his son William. The latter held the seat until 1819 when, on obtaining the county seat, he substituted his brother-in-law, having since 1816 been patron in succession to his father.
Richard Pennefather, whose family had been proprietors of this close borough since the early 18th century, was its parliamentary patron from 1787 until his death in 1831. After the Union, he occupied it for only a few months himself and then as a stopgap, preferring to sell it. The paying guest at the Union, Richard Bagwell, made way for his younger brother John in 1801, but from 1802 Pennefather sold the seat to the government, though John Bagwell was ready to bargain with him for it in 1806 and 1812.
Sligo, a flourishing port, was a close borough at the disposal of Owen Wynne. He returned himself on succeeding his father in 1789 and occupied the seat until June 1806, when he sold it to Col. George Canning of Garvagh for an annuity. The chief secretary was surprised and evidently disappointed when Wynne continued the arrangement with Canning in 1812, thinking the bargain had terminated and that Wynne would either sit himself, return his son-in-law, or offer it to government.Add. 40216, f. 48; 40280, ff.
John, 2nd Earl of Portarlington (d.1845) became owner in fee of most of the borough and patron of the corporation on his father’s death in 1798. By then it had been reduced to the status of a burgess borough. On the Union ballot, Frederick Trench had the luck of the draw against his colleague the Castle official Gregory, but his creation as an Irish peer with the title of Ashtown, 27 Dec. 1800, prevented him from taking his seat at Westminster.Parl. Rep. [I] H.C. 1831-2 (519), xliii.
At Dundalk the principal proprietor was the Earl of Roden, by inheritance from his uncle the Earl of Clanbrassill. He controlled the corporation by restricting the freemen. The return of a Member at the Union was delayed while Roden, who had supported the measure from ‘positive conviction’, came to terms with government. In the event, he returned Isaac Corry in exchange for a place at the navigation board for his brother-in-law John Stratton, one of the retiring Members. Roden was anxious not to ‘endanger the borough which was once so nearly lost to the family’, and on 16 Nov.
Drogheda, the fifth city in Ireland, specialized in linen manufacture and was governed by an exclusively protestant corporation. Representatives of two mercantile families vied for the representation: the Meade Ogles, whose interest dated from over 30 years before the Union and who were abetted on the corporation by Alderman Ralph Smyth; and Edward Hardman, who was sponsored by the veteran neighbouring politician, John Foster of Collon, whose interest was of a personal, rather than a territorial kind.
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.
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.
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.
