BRUEN, Francis (1793-1867), of Coolbawn House, Enniscorthy, co. Wexford of 17 Carlton House Terrace, London, Mdx.

After graduating from Oxford with a first class degree in classics,2A wealthy student, he was a grand compounder of his college: Bury & Norwich Post, 5 July 1820. Bruen returned to county Carlow, where his family maintained great political influence and his brother Henry Bruen had represented the county since 1812. He married the daughter of the earl of Westmeath and, under a settlement made shortly before the earl’s death in 1795, was bequeathed 9,000 acres under various tenures in county Wexford, as well as smaller properties in Kildare, Galway and Carlow, including a substantial property in the borough.3J. Bateman, The Great Landowners of Great Britain (4th edn., 1883), 62; The Times, 28 Feb. 1839; Freeman’s Journal, 31 July 1883. He became tenant for life of an estate at Coolbawn, county Wexford after his brother, John Bruen, died intestate in 1828.4John had been severely injured when his horse ran into a tree while hunting in 1821: Freeman’s Journal, 15 Feb. 1821, quoting Carlow Morning Post. Here he built a ‘very magnificent’ mansion, said to have cost as much as £50,000, commissioned extensive plantations of timber, and constructed high quality housing for his tenants.5Freeman’s Journal, 19 Apr. 1844, 30 July 1866.

Regarded as ‘an excellent landlord’, Bruen was approached by the freemen of Carlow to rescue them ‘from the grasp of corporate monopoly’ and challenge the entrenched Charleville interest at the 1830 general election, with a promise that they would pay all the expenses consequent upon the opening of that Borough’.6Morning Chronicle, 26 June 1830; Standard, 3 July 1830; The Times, 23 July 1830. He was thought to have expended £1,500 on the election: Belfast News-letter, 17 Feb. 1835. With the status of the borough having recently been considered in parliament, he was able to enlist the support of a section of the Carlow Liberal Club, but was refused a poll against Charleville’s son Lord Tullamore. He petitioned against the result without effect.7The Times, 20 July 1830; HP Commons, 1820-1832, iii. 680-1; Morning Post, 6 Nov. 1830. At the 1832 general election, by when the personal influence of Charleville had ceased, Bruen was narrowly defeated by Daniel O’Connell’s brother-in-law, Nicholas Aylward Vigors, having, much to O’Connell’s annoyance, again drawn support from a Liberal faction in the town.8Freeman’s Journal, 7 Dec. 1832.

Bruen, however, defeated Vigors in 1835, having acquired the backing of an influential local Catholic politician, Patrick Finn, who had hitherto strenuously opposed the Bruen influence in the county.9HP Commons, 1820-1832, iii. 681. Bruen resolved to ‘maintain the constitution in Church and State in its integrity’, but offered ‘no opposition to the correction of abuses which were really felt to be such’ and attracted significant support from, in Finn’s words, the ‘honest, independent, and undaunted Catholics’ who were prepared to defy O’Connell.10P. Finn to D. O’Connell, 11 Feb. 1835, in Belfast News-letter, 17 Feb. 1835. For more on the controversy between the two, see ibid., 27 Feb., 27 Oct. 1835. Although lauded by Finn as ‘a gentleman of enlightened views’ and ‘brilliant talents’, Bruen subsequently proved to be a strenuous opponent of the Whig administration.11Parliamentary Test Book (1835), 26; Belfast News-letter, 3 Feb. 1835. He supported Charles Manners Sutton as speaker, 19 Feb. 1835, voted for the government’s address in reply to the king’s speech, 26 Feb., and divided against Lord Chandos’s motion for the repeal of the malt tax, 10 Mar. In opposing Lord John Russell’s motion on Irish Church temporalities, 2 Apr., he argued that the revenues of the Irish Church had ‘been greatly exaggerated’ and contended ‘most resolutely that every farthing of such surplus would be more than swallowed up by Protestant objects and Protestant wants’. He also accused the majority of the House of cheering ‘on to the quarry a deluded and infuriated multitude, maddened by agitation … who, in despoiling the heretic Church’ would ‘draw over my most miserable and devoted country a sword that will reek with the blood of the best and bravest of Protestants, aye, and Catholics’.12Hansard, 6 Apr. 1835, vol. 27, cc. 848-52. In June he voted with the minority on Edward Cayley’s motion on currency reform, but supported Sir Robert Peel’s motion to divide the government measure on Irish Church reform into two bills, 23 July.13The Assembled Commons (1837), 29. That month he served on the select committee on the admission of ladies to the Strangers’ Gallery.14PP 1835 (437) xviii. 97.

Bruen divided against the Whigs on the address, 4 Feb. 1836, opposed a select committee inquiry into the Royal Dublin Society, 23 Mar., and voted against the third reading of the Irish municipal corporations bill, 28 Mar. 1836.15Morning Post, 26, 30 Mar. 1836. That month he joined his brother in speaking in defence of the landed interest in Carlow.16Hansard, 4 Mar. 1836, vol. 31, cc. 1217-8; Caledonian Mercury, 10 Mar 1836. In May he refuted allegations that he had victimised two of his Catholic tenants who had petitioned against his return, and countered by accusing the parish priest of having practised spiritual intimidation at the election, arguing that under such circumstances ‘the Reform Bill had become a mere mockery in Ireland’.17Hansard, 17 May 1836, vol. 33, cc. 1021-6, 1028.

In 1837 Bruen was defeated by William Henry Maule, a Liberal, after a violent contest, in which Bruen reportedly claimed that ‘the electors were hunted like wild beasts, their prospects in life blighted, their trade ruined, their property destroyed, their persons assaulted’, and the town ‘converted into a hell upon earth’.18Morning Post, 10 Aug. 1837. Accusations of priestly interference and bribery were made against Maule, and Bruen challenged the result without success.19Standard, 1 Nov., 10 Mar. 1838; The Times, 12 Mar. 1838. Nevertheless, after Maule was appointed baron of exchequer in February 1839, Bruen was put forward at the last moment at the by-election, and, enjoying ‘the advantage of all the wealth and influence of his brother’, again received the support of Finn.20Freeman’s Journal, 27 Feb. 1839; Standard, 28 Feb. 1839; Morning Chronicle, 3 May 1839. Although he issued no address and was ‘not present during any part of the proceedings’, he was portrayed as ‘a friend to reform, to the extent that any rational man could desire’, and as someone who had long taken an interest ‘in the trade and prosperity of Carlow’. He thereby enlisted sufficient Catholic support to narrowly defeat an English Liberal, Thomas Gisborne.21Morning Chronicle, 18 Feb. 1839; Freeman’s Journal, 27 Feb. 1839; Standard, 28 Feb., 2 Mar. 1839; Champion, 3 Mar. 1839. Although his unexpected return was thought ‘likely to prove but of brief continuance’, his speech at the Conservative banquet in Carlow that month consisted of a sustained attack upon the Whig administration of Ireland, which he described as ‘the most grinding despotism that ever cursed the energies of a suffering people’.22Freeman’s Journal, 1 Mar. 1839; Standard, 11 Mar. 1839. After opposing Charles Villiers’s motion on the corn laws, 12 Mar. 1839, his return was challenged by his opponent on the ground that the returning officer, being the sovereign of the borough and ‘a warm partisan of the Bruen family’, had illegally rejected nine duly registered voters.23Standard, 21 Mar. 1839; Morning Post, 3 May 1839; The Times, 3 May 1839. Having thrown responsibility for defending the petition onto the electors, he was unable to further participate in the proceedings of parliament.24Freeman’s Journal, 25 Mar. 1839. He attended Peel’s banquet for the Duke of Cambridge, 10 Apr., and was unseated on 12 July 1837.25Belfast News-letter, 16 Apr. 1839; Standard, 11 July 1839.

The proceedings before the election committee were ‘one of the most costly and dilatory … ever known in the history of disputed returns’ and took an unprecedented 69 days to resolve. At an estimated expense of at least £20,000, the adverse decision effectively terminated Bruen’s political career.26Morning Chronicle, 12 July 1839; Freeman’s Journal, 13, 15 July 1839. In 1840 he was forced to re-negotiate the terms of his tenancy with his brother, and, although he agreed to contest the seat in 1841, declined ‘to expend a shilling to carry on the necessary expenses’. Having lost the support of those Catholic electors who had previously backed him, he quickly retired, and rumours that he would contest the county seat alongside his brother came to nothing.27Freeman’s Journal, 19 Apr. 1844; Standard, 19 June 1841; Freeman’s Journal, 28 June, 2, 9 July 1841.

Now residing in London, Bruen allowed his already heavily encumbranced estate to be further mismanaged and, after he failed to pay certain annuities charged against his property a receiver was appointed by the courts in 1843.28Freeman’s Journal, 6 Nov. 1843; Morning Chronicle, 14 Nov. 1843. He was judged to have ‘acted with great imprudence’, and left the country, leaving his unwitting agent ‘in the lurch’ and burdened with a substantial portion of his debts.29Freeman’s Journal, 19 Apr. 1844. His wife having predeceased him in October 1864, Bruen lived on in considerable debt until his estate was sold in the Landed Estates Court in June 1865.30Freeman’s Journal, 30 July 1866. He died in December 1867, and his remaining property was inherited by his nephew, Henry Bruen (1828-1912), MP for Carlow, 1857-80.31Morning Post, 24 Dec. 1867.