Co. Waterford

Social and Economic Profile

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.

The nominal patron of this small seaport was the 5th Duke of Devonshire, who owned two-thirds of the manor and would probably have been happy to pocket £15,000 from its disfranchisement at the Union. Owing to his absence and negligence, however, during which William Brabazon Ponsonby was his agent, his interest was reduced to a mere handful of freeholders.

Dungarvan, a port at the head of a spacious bay on the south coast, had a ‘small export trade’ in butter and corn and a declining fishing industry, from which some 3,000 were ‘deprived of employment’ by the withdrawal of the Irish fishing bounties. S. Lewis, Top. Dict. of Ireland (1837), i. 577. A corporation of a sovereign, a recorder, and 12 brethren had been established by charter, 4 Jan. 1609, but ‘become extinct at a very remote period’, leaving the town to be governed by the seneschal of the manor.

The cathedral city of Waterford, a county of itself situated on the navigable River Suir about 16 miles from the sea, could accommodate ships of ‘very large burden’, enabling it to export more agricultural produce than any other Irish port, mainly to England. S. Lewis, Top. Dict. of Ireland (1837), i.