MACNAMARA, Francis (1802-1873), of Ennistymon House and Doolin, co. Clare

Macnamara was born in London and came from a branch of an old Milesian family said to have been descended from the ancient admirals of Munster.1His grandfather, Francis Macnamara, represented Ardee 1776-83, County Clare 1790-7, and Killybegs 1798-1800, in the Irish parliament where, having supported Catholic emancipation in 1793, he voted for the Union in 1799 and 1800: E. Johnston-Liik, History of the Irish Parliament 1692-1800 (2002), v. 172-3. His father, a Protestant military officer with an extensive estate in county Clare, was a noted duellist and a political ally of Daniel O’Connell. He had, however, declined to stand for the county in April 1828 after Macnamara expressed concern over the personal expense that was liable to be incurred.2HP Commons, 1820-32, vi. 291. Having again acted as an advisor to his father at his return for the county in 1830, Macnamara, then a serving cavalry officer and no stranger himself to the duelling field, was returned for Ennis at the 1832 general election pledged to repeal.3HP Commons, 1820-32, iii. 692; Sheffield Independent, 15 Dec. 1832. Macnamara had acted as second to Standish Stamer O’Grady in his notorious and fatal duel with Captain John Rowland Smith on 18 March 1830: Freeman’s Journal, 22 Mar. 1830; Annual Register, lxxii (1831), 137-8; J. Kelly, That Damn’d Thing Called Honour: Duelling in Ireland, 1570-1860 (1995), 267. After an expensive four-way contest, he overcame a petition against his return from a rival repealer in March 1833.4CJ, lxxxviii. 38-9, 172.

Macnamara soon came to regard his return as ‘a false step’, feeling that he would be regarded as insufficiently radical by the repealers of Ennis, and as too advanced a reformer by more moderate Liberals. While he approved of O’Connell’s National Council, he was unable to attend its meeting in Dublin in January 1833, and failed to vote for O’Connell’s amendment to the address, 8 Feb.5HP Commons, 1820-32, iii. 698; Morning Chronicle, 14 Jan. 1833. More seriously he was absent from the early divisions on the suppression of disturbances bill in March, and despite voting for the first reading of the Irish Church temporalities bill, 11 Mar., was unaccountably absent from that day’s division on the second reading of the coercion bill. Unlike most repeal MPs, he divided against the abolition of military flogging, 2 Apr., but voted for the removal of Jewish disabilities, 22 May. He does not seem to have voted in any other important divisions in the 1833 session, and does not appear to have spoken in debate. However, unlike ‘so many Irish members’ who had ‘become tired of the discharge of their duties’ and returned to Ireland before the end of the session, Macnamara dutifully attended the debate on the Irish grand jury bill in July and August 1833.6Freeman’s Journal, 5 Aug. 1833.

Although it was regarded by some as ‘a singular thing’ that an officer in active service had entered parliament ‘for the purpose of enforcing a repeal of the Union’, Macnamara purchased command of a troop of the 8^th Hussars in October 1833.7Freeman’s Journal, 11 Oct. 1833; Sheffield Independent, 15 Dec. 1832, quoting Limerick Chronicle. He appears to have been the only repealer then serving in the British army: A. Macintyre, The Liberator. Daniel O’Connell and the Irish Party 1830-1847 (1965), 308. He does not appear to have introduced any bills, or sat on any select committees, but joined O’Connell in the minority which supported Harvey’s motion for an inquiry into the pensions list, 18 Feb. 1834 (and would again, 5 May), and voted for Lord Chandos’s motion for a committee on agricultural distress, 21 Feb. 1834. He was, however, absent from the division on the corn laws, 7 Mar. He and his father (who had been returned again for County Clare in 1832) were the only repealers to support Lord Althorp’s scheme to replace church rates with a land tax, 21 Apr., but he duly voted for O’Connell’s repeal motion, 29 Apr., and backed his opposition to the second reading of the Irish tithes bill, 2 May.

After helping to establish a branch of the Agricultural and Commercial Bank at Ennis in December 1834, Macnamara retired at the 1835 general election.8Morning Post, 16 Dec. 1834. He left the army in April 1837 and appears to have taken no further part in politics until early 1847, when he organised a petition in favour of Lord George Bentinck’s Irish railways scheme. He addressed the electors of Ennis at the 1847 general election but, after a ‘manly and straightforward’ canvass, retired in favour of The O’Gorman Mahon.9Morning Post, 1 May 1837; Standard, 22 Feb. 1847; Morning Post, 28 June 1847; Freeman’s Journal, 31 July 1847; Examiner, 21 Aug. 1847. He participated in a public meeting on the Irish poor law in January 1849 but does not appear to have taken a subsequent role in politics.10Freeman’s Journal, 31 Jan. 1849.

Macnamara inherited his father’s estate of more than 15,000 acres in county Clare in 1856, settling at Ennistymon in 1863, where he earned a reputation as ‘a liberal, genial, and paternal landlord’. A ‘honourable and high-minded’ member of the county gentry of Clare, Macnamara died at his residence in Park Lane, London, in June 1873, where he had been staying for two months prior to his demise, his health having been for some time failing ‘more from the natural decay of nature than from any special disease’.11J. Bateman, The Great Landowners of Great Britain (4th edn., 1883), 293; Daily News, 30 June 1873; Freeman’s Journal, 1 July 1873. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Henry Valentine (1861-1925), a militia officer and high sheriff of Clare in 1885.12Macnamara’s great grand-daughter Caitlin (1914-94), married the poet Dylan Thomas in 1936.