KAVANAGH, Thomas Boreishon (1767-1837), of Borris House, co. Carlow

In spite of his distinction as ‘The MacMorrough’, a lineal descendant of the ancient kings of Leinster, Kavanagh’s status as one of the wealthiest commoners in Ireland was not sufficient to enable him to recapture a seat for County Carlow at the 1832 general election. He came fourth in the poll just behind his son-in-law and fellow Conservative, Colonel Henry Bruen, and their subsequent petition against the result, citing ‘priestly interference’ in the contest, came to nothing.2Dod’s Parliamentary Companion (1836), 129; The Assembled Commons; or, parliamentary biographer (1837), 105; Morning Post, 31 Dec. 1832; Freeman’s Journal, 26 Mar. 1833; CJ, lxxxviii. 241, 384.

Kavanagh’s ‘princely’ descent and military experience on the continent furnished him with a reputation as ‘a polished and highly informed gentleman’.3Standard, 26 Jan. 1837, quoting Dublin Evening Mail. His extensive ancestral estates spread over the counties of Carlow, Kilkenny and Wexford, and the aristocratic connections he made through marriage, enabled him to exert considerable political influence in the region.4His second wife, an antiquarian and traveller, was renowned as a ‘woman of high culture and unusual artistic power’: D. Murphy, ‘Kavanagh, Lady Harriet Margaret’, Dictionary of Irish Biography, v. 7-8. However, despite being regarded ‘even by the most virulent of his political opponents’ as ‘a judicious and liberal landlord’,5Standard, 23 Jan. 1837; Gent. Mag. (1837), i. 318. In 1883 his son owned 29,025 acres with an annual valuation of £15,608: J. Bateman, The great landowners of Great Britain (4th edn., 1883), 246. he was notorious for having his agents scour the ‘Kavanagh country’ for electoral supporters in order to keep them ‘cooped’ until needed.6A. Macintyre, The Liberator. Daniel O’Connell and the Irish Party 1830-1847 (1965), 95. At the by-election precipitated by Kavanagh’s death, his agents were at their ‘usual game’ of ensuring that ‘many of the freeholders were kidnapped’ and accommodated ‘in Borris Castle, spending the week in scenes of rioting and drunkenness’: Freeman’s Journal, 15 Feb. 1837. After it was discovered that his eldest son, Walter (1814-36), was not yet of eligible age to stand for the county at the 1835 general election, Kavanagh was requested by the local gentry to take his place, and duly offered ‘to rescue the country from the grasp of factious demagogues’.7Belfast News-letter, 12 Dec. 1834; Standard, 17 Dec. 1834; Morning Post, 8 Jan. 1835, quoting Carlow Sentinel; Parliamentary Test Book (1835), 91. Having secured ‘the utter submission’ of his tenants, he was returned in a close contest which was subsequently declared void. He and Bruen were defeated in the subsequent by-election, when he was nominated in his absence.8K.T. Hoppen, Elections, Politics, and Society in Ireland 1832-1885 (1984), 160; Morning Post, 19 June 1835. However, after a long-protracted contest before another committee of the House the two men were seated on petition, 19 Aug. 1835.

Kavanagh had been known as a lax attender in previous parliaments, and does not appear to have sat on any select committees or introduced any bills.9HP Commons 1820-1832, v. 885. He rarely spoke in debate, interjecting on just two occasions to defend certain Carlow magistrates against charges of misconduct. In March 1835 he refuted an allegation that members of the bench had indemnified persons who had ‘perpetrated outrages in his favour’ during the recent disputed election. He used the opportunity to accuse the local Catholic clergy of having made collections from the altar to pay the fines of members of ‘the Priests’ party’ convicted of abuses against his own supporters. He also privately alerted the premier, Sir Robert Peel, to the need to remedy ‘the outrageous practices of the Irish priests’, upon which the result of future Irish elections would ‘much materially depend’.10Hansard, 6 Mar. 1835, vol. 26, cc. 590-6; 18 Mar. 1835, vol. 26, cc. 1136-8; HP Commons 1820-1832, v. 885-6. An ‘open, manly, straightforward supporter of the British constitution’, Kavanagh voted for Sir Charles Manners Sutton as speaker, 19 Feb. 1835, supported Peel on the address, 26 Feb., divided against the repeal of the malt tax, 10 Mar., and paired in opposition to Lord John Russell’s motion on Irish Church temporalities, 2 Apr. 1835.11Standard, 23 Jan. 1837; Dod’s Parliamentary Companion (1836), 129. He was absent from the important divisions on the Irish municipal corporations bill in 1836, but voted against the government’s motion on tithes and the Irish Church, 3 June 1836.

In spite of having been in ‘excellent health’, the ‘irreparable loss’ of his eldest son and political heir in August 1836 precipitated Kavanagh’s rapid decline. He was absent from a political dinner given in his honour in January 1837, and died at his residence shortly afterwards ‘from the fatal effects of gout in the stomach’.12Standard, 2 Sept. 1836, 20, 26 Jan. 1837; Morning Chronicle, 21 Jan. 1837; The Times, 24 Jan. 1837. His remains were interred in the family vault at St. Mullins, co. Kilkenny, the funeral reportedly attended by 21 clergymen of the established church, most of the gentry of the county, and more than 10,000 local people.13Gent. Mag. (1837), i. 318; Morning Post, 6 Feb. 1837. Given the sectarian tensions that existed in Carlow, Kavanagh had been a divisive figure. A desire to preserve his memory ‘from the insults of faction’ proved futile, however, after it was reported that days prior to his death O’Connell had announced at Carlow that had Kavanagh not made a ‘false alliance’ with Protestantism14His father, Thomas Kavanagh (1727-60), was raised as a Protestant, and Kavanagh was educated at Trinity College, Dublin. Yet he does not appear to have conformed to the established church until he returned from service abroad when he was returned, through the influence of the earl of Ormonde, to the Irish parliament. Kavanagh’s defence of Borris against attack by Catholic rebels on 12 June 1798, and his active role as a magistrate after the rising, attest to his identification with the Protestant ascendancy. His eldest brother, Walter, re-embraced Catholicism shortly before his death whereupon his remains were wrested from the family by local Catholics: E. Johnston-Liik, History of the Irish Parliament 1692-1800 (2002), v. 3-4; Assembled Commons (1837), 105; J. Hughes, ‘The Fall of the Clan Kavanagh’, Journal of the Royal Historical & Archaeological Society of Ireland, 4th ser., ii (1873), 282-305 (at 304); W.O. Cavenagh, ‘Clan Kavanagh in the Imperial Service’, Journal of the Royal. Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 6th ser., xii (1922), 42-51 (at 49); F.B. Hamilton, The Picture of Parliament, containing a biographical dictionary of the Irish members (1831), 44; D. Gahan, The People’s Rising: Wexford 1798 (1995), 165-7; J.G. Patterson, In the Wake of the Great Rebellion: Republicanism, Agrarianism and Banditry in Ireland after 1798 (2008), 153, 187; Freeman’s Journal, 4 Dec. 1832; Anti-Jacobin Review and True Churchman’s Magazine and Protestant Advocate, liv (1818), 456-8. he might have gone to his grave in ‘peaceful obscurity’ and not have had ‘the dead cats and dogs of the neighbourhood thrown into it along with him’.15Standard, 23 Jan. 1837. The matter was subsequently taken up by the earl of Charleville at the great Protestant meeting in Dublin: Standard, 28 Jan. 1837.

Kavanagh was succeeded by Thomas, the eldest son by his second marriage, then a minor. Thomas died unmarried from tuberculosis on passage from Sumatra to Australia in 1852, and his brother Charles died the following year after his dressing-gown caught fire shortly before he was due to marry.16Standard, 23 Aug. 1852; Gent. Mag. (1853), i. 451. Kavanagh’s estates and title of ‘MacMorrough’ subsequently passed to his youngest son Arthur (1831-89), who sat as Conservative member for county Wexford, 1866-8, and county Carlow, 1868-80.17J.M. Rigg, rev. H.C.G. Matthew, ‘Kavanagh, Arthur Macmurrough’, Oxford DNB, xxx. 920-1. His grandson, Walter Macmurrough Kavanagh (1856-1922) was Home Rule MP for Carlow (1908-10): Dictionary of Irish Biography, v. 20-1.