Politics and Political Culture in Britain and Ireland, 1750-1850: Essays in Tribute to Peter Jupp

By Ulster Historical Foundation

Before his untimely death in the summer of 2006, Peter Jupp was widely recognised as one of the key influences in the recovery of British and Irish political history in the 'long' 18th century. His unrivalled knowledge of collections in public and private archives had made him well-nigh indispensable to several generations of historians. This volume had initially been conceived to mark Peter's retirement after 40 years service to Queen's University Belfast. With his sudden passing, it became all the more important to acknowledge appropriately the true extent and depth of Peter's contribution -- as lecturer, researcher, author and mentor.

These essays are now published to celebrate that achievement. They focus on the themes in which he himself was interested: elections and parliament; reaction and reform; political biography; the history of print and ideas; crowds and popular movements. Moreover, they relate to a period, the 18th and first half of the 19th centuries and the changing nature of relations between Ireland and Great Britain, so crucial to an understanding of contemporary affairs, all of which has been so handsomely illuminated by Peter''s published work.

The contributors have come together as former students, colleagues and friends -- often all three -- to pay tribute to his enthusiasm for this shared interest and to acknowledge the remarkable impression Peter Jupp has left on the study and wider understanding of British and Irish history.

The contributors to the collection of essays include: Suzanne Kingon, Martin McElroy, Jacqueline Hill, Allan Blackstock, Nini Rodgers, A.P.W. Malcomson, Trevor Parkhill, Richard Gaunt, Michael Hopkinson, Petri Mirala, Frank O'Gorman, Eoin Magennis, Patrick McNally, and Mary O'Dowd. Short forewards are provided by Marianne Elliott and David Hayton.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ulster Historical Foundation
• Release date: Jun 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781908448729

Book preview

ELLIOTT

Peter Jupp as supervisor

Long after my Ph.D. was completed, I well recall a conversation I had with Peter Jupp during the interval at a jazz event concerning postgraduate supervision. Knowing that he was approaching retirement, and given his long years of experience, it occurred to me to ask him how he saw supervision. As often with Peter, the answer was surprising.

I thought that he would have had something to say on historical topics or at least on administrative logistics, regular meetings and so on; but instead he said that research students should, in an ideal world, be introduced to the art, architecture, literature and music of their period, as well as actually engaging with a history Ph.D. Typically, this answer provoked more thought rather than more questions. I realised that underlying the suggestion was a very particular and deeply held view on scholarship and academic life. This started me thinking about my own experience of being supervised by Peter.

In keeping with his views of scholarship as a way of life as well as a means to an end, discussions on my topic took place at a party, in his study in Osborne Park and even during dog walks along the River Lagan, where history sometimes competed with angling, yet another of Peter’s many interests. I should not have been surprised by this breadth as, during my undergraduate days at Queen’s, I had the privilege of going on wonderful field trips organised by Peter and other colleagues from the History Department. In Derbyshire, for example, we combined scheduled trips to historical sites and big houses with visiting what Peter assured everyone was the best rhythm-and-blues joint in Manchester. As students we were amazed and impressed in equal measure at how someone could talk with authority on the great Whig landowners at Chatsworth in the morning and then, that same evening, emerge from the back of a smoky music club to book the band for the Belfast Festival.

These sessions, for their relaxed and varied surroundings belied the serious academic purpose, were little short of inspirational. It was an eye-opener, for instance, to see Peter operating in his study. There he sat, surrounded by shelf upon shelf of books ranging from the most recent works in his field to what, from their bindings, were clearly texts contemporary to Peter’s area of study. More was to come: when we got on to specific individuals relating to my research topic, he would occasionally stop, delve into some recess and produce a Gillray cartoon with images of, say, Pitt or Fox, to illustrate his point. Peter was as generous with his research materials as he was with his time: it was unusual to go away empty handed. ‘What year were you interested in?’, I remember him asking. ‘1807, was it? Then you must borrow this.’ With that he stooped to the lowest shelf of all, which contained row after row of ring binders arranged chronologically and containing transcripts of original documents, and, with considerable aplomb, drew out the one belonging to the year in question.

When I ventured forth into actual archival research, a somewhat baffling and overwhelming experience for the uninitiated, he was hugely supportive and enthusiastic. Two experiences stick out, but they are representative of many. First, at an early stage in my work, he recommended that I went on a course giving an ‘introduction to sources in London’ at the Institute of Historical Research. Initially I hesitated. I asked if the time would not be better spent focusing on sources with a direct bearing on my topic. ‘Plenty of time for that,’ was the reply. ‘This will show you that there is a bigger world of historical research out there than you know about.’ Then he proceeded to give me a list of Jupp-recommended jazz venues, music clubs and galleries to visit in my spare time. On another London trip, I remember phoning him from the British Library, unsure whether I should record the foliation of a volume of letters in my notes. Though busy, he was delighted to hear from me and wanted to talk about whether I had found anything interesting. This made me feel that what I was doing was worthwhile and fired me with eagerness to do more; it came, as I now see, from his own ever-fresh enthusiasm for historical research.

ALLAN BLACKSTOCK

Peter Jupp and history at Queen’s:

a personal appreciation

For many people, both inside and outside Queen’s, the name of Peter Jupp was for many years synonymous with the School of History at the university. Peter spent almost his entire working life in Belfast. Originally appointed as a lecturer in modern history in 1964, he advanced to a chair of British history in 1993, and after his retirement in 2005 was made emeritus professor, a distinction that gave him great pleasure. His death was a blow felt with particular sharpness by his former colleagues at Queen’s, to whom he had been, and remained, an exemplar of true academic values and a cherished friend.

Pete, as he preferred to be called, had originally come to Queen’s from Reading, where he had taken his Ph.D. under the guidance of the formidable Arthur Aspinall, a specialist in the history of late-eighteenth-and early-nineteenth-century England with a particular penchant for studying ‘high’ politics – courts and cabinets – and for collecting and editing historical texts. Aspinall cast a long shadow over Pete’s scholarly career. Like his mentor, Pete was a scrupulous practitioner of the traditional virtues of documentary research, and followed ‘paper trails’ to country houses and record offices in the same way that Aspinall had done, though without the benefit of an accompanying secretary to take down notes from dictation. In some important respects he might be seen as Aspinall’s heir – literally, in one sense, as he inherited his former supervisor’s massive collection of notes and transcripts of late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century British political papers, but also metaphorically. Before his appointment at Queen’s he had worked briefly for the History of Parliament Trust in London, on the House of Commons section (1790–1820) then being edited by Aspinall, and he was to contribute many Irish entries to the volumes that were eventually published under the editorship of Roland Thorne. His doctoral research – designed, one suspects, to feed into Aspinall’s contributions to the History of Parliament Trust – was focused on Irish elections. His later work also followed in Aspinall’s footprints, treating the evolution of government policy – notably his monumental biography, Lord Grenville (1985) and the closely argued British politics on the eve of reform: the duke of Wellington’s administration, 1828–1830 (1998) (which grew out of the special subject he taught to modern-history finalists) – and engaging with the wider political worlds of Britain and Ireland and the workings of public opinion. This was work that Aspinall had pioneered, albeit in a narrower way, with his work on the newspaper press. Pete’s final book, The governing of Britain, 1688–1848: the executive, parliament and the people, published in 2006, was an attempt to draw together ‘high’ and ‘low’ politics. Though this book was not a conscious summation of his life’s work – many other projects were lined up for what his family and friends trusted would be a long and productive retirement – it may serve as a final verdict on what had been enduring preoccupations.

Aspinall was not, however, the only important intellectual beacon. Others may be traced, and none was more important than Pete’s first professor at Queen’s, Michael Roberts. The influence of Roberts over Queen’s historians – perhaps it might be better expressed as the stamp put by Roberts on history at Queen’s – could be felt long after his retirement and relocation to South Africa. This was not just the lasting memory of a particularly dominant figure, a kind of looming presence like Sir Lewis Namier at the History of Parliament Trust during Pete’s time there. For those who had worked under Roberts, Pete especially, there was both a deep intellectual respect and the acquisition of an in-grained (and perhaps not always acknowledged) set of assumptions about the way scholarship should be practised and the way a university department should conduct its business. Pete’s own approach to his subject was a reflection of Roberts’s own profound commitment to historical research as an enterprise of high seriousness. Roberts – a historian who began by writing about English Whig politicians and M.P.s of the early 1800s and ended as the acknowledged authority on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Sweden – may perhaps also be credited with the broadening of Pete’s scholarly horizons, first through his teaching and then in his writings. The quintessential British political historian became someone who was eager to set his own findings in the wider European context; who read and taught extensively in the European history of his period; who was enthusiastic about appointing European historians to posts at Queen’s, followed their work closely and sought to understand parallel developments in the representative institutions and government agencies of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century France, Germany, Italy and even Poland.

Roberts’s administration of the Department of Modern History also set a pattern that Pete, consciously or unconsciously, followed when he succeeded Roberts’s own successor, Lewis Warren, as head of department. Again, we see the same high seriousness of purpose. Pete had never been one of those academic prima donnas in whose perspective the daily, and essential, business of a university department – teaching and administration – presents only an unwelcome distraction from the more important task of writing their own books and advancing their own reputations. He did his fair share and more of the routine chores, but he did so not merely out of a sense of duty to colleagues but from a belief that these were more than routine chores; indeed, they were the very essence of the position he felt himself so fortunate to occupy. He was not only head of department, but for a time dean of the Faculty of Arts. The manifold responsibilities that these posts involved were taken very seriously.

Perhaps the best example was his stewardship of the Wiles lectures. Pete not only attended every lecture and chaired every discussion while he was departmental head and chair of the trustees, but he also took great pains to look after the distinguished guests during the week of the lectures, arranging a day out for them – usually a morning in a local country house and demesne, followed by a good lunch – and visits to wherever they wished to go, whether it were to second-hand-book dealers or sectarian murals. Typical was his determination to read beforehand about the subject of the lectures. He would produce reading lists for colleagues to do the same – but at the end of a teaching term, and with examinations in prospect, few of us had the energy or self-discipline to do our ‘prep’ to anywhere near the same extent.

Roberts had believed strongly in collegiality and the fostering of a sense of common purpose. His approach to academic appointments, for example, paid much more attention to personality than would be allowed for in today’s R.A.E.-driven culture: it is popularly recorded that in his day the successful interviewee would be the man or woman most likely to fit in. By the time Pete took over, equal-opportunities legislation and the increasingly litigious nature of academic life (in Northern Ireland especially) ruled out of court such a reliance upon instinct and first impressions. Although appointments were still made with strict regard to the merits of research and the ability to teach, collegiality was still a highly valued commodity. All decisions, whether on major issues of strategic direction or on the most mundane details of procedure, were taken at staff meetings, after a lengthy discussion in which the voice of the most junior lecturer was as important as that of the most senior professor. Pete’s obvious anxiety that the department proceed by consensus produced long meetings, and sometimes gave scope to differences of personality as well as opinion, which he was not at his best in trying to quell. It also resulted in a cautious – perhaps sometimes ponderous – response to the shifting dictates of central university authorities, which kept the subject and its teaching in a strongly traditional form. This was no bad thing, perhaps, since the requirements and priorities of a modern university have a tendency to revolve with each new occupant of the vice chancellor’s office, and the demands of funding councils and the mandarins of quality assurance display a similar enthusiasm to those in pursuit of fashion. It was a proud moment for Pete when he skilfully organised the department’s response to the H.E.F.C.E. teaching-quality audit in the autumn of 1994. Not only was he justifiably proud of (what was now the School of Modern History) being given a rating of ‘excellent’, but he was also peculiarly gratified to hear that a senior academic on the visiting panel had been overheard saying that the grade had been awarded only with great reluctance because teaching and assessment methods remained so very conservative.

This image of a traditional research historian and the representative of a deeply conservative tendency in the administration of his department and its teaching is, however, very misleading, for probably the most persistent and endearing qualities that Pete displayed, both as a historian and as a teacher, were enthusiasm and open-mindedness. For someone who usually had strong opinions to express – on anything from politics to jazz, cars to crime writing, fly-fishing to the fortunes of Tottenham Hotspur – he was surprisingly undogmatic, willing to listen, willing to be persuaded and to take up new ideas. Students, both undergraduates and postgraduates, found this attitude intensely stimulating. So too did his colleagues, within Queen’s and beyond it. His devotion to collegiality found a very apt expression in his enthusiasm for the work of fellow historians, especially new appointments, who were made to feel that their particular contribution to scholarship was the most important thing that was going on at that moment. His willingness to take up new ideas and historical interpretations in his own research, to test them out and to push them further, could be quite startling. For example, the Wiles colloquium he organised with Eoin Magennis in 1998, and which gave rise the collection of essays Crowds in Ireland c. 1720–1920 (2000), was based around an interesting but somewhat neglected first book on crowd behaviour in England in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries by a young historian, Mark Harrison, which Pete read, was impressed by, and looked to adapt for his own purposes. His last book was in a way typical of this attitude and combined a respect for traditional virtues with an openness to change, since it was both deeply traditional in its focus and at the same time innovative in methodology and in tune with current trends in the historiography of the ‘long eighteenth century’.

The fact that Pete was a man quite without intellectual pride, or the kind of jealousy of his own achievements that too frequently disfigures great scholars, not only made him a wonderful colleague and a great friend but also served him remarkably well in the classroom. Leaving aside a healthy disrespect for bureaucratic necessities and a style of handwriting which made deciphering his (sometimes sardonic) marginal comments a test of palaeographic skills, he was in many respects a model teacher – a lively and authoritative lecturer, a patient and conscientious tutor with a real concern for the well-being of his students, and a research supervisor who encouraged students to stand on their own feet and gave them the confidence to do so. The achievements of his research pupils, some of whom are contributors to this volume, stand as testimony to these talents, and it was fitting that in his last year before retirement his special subject (despite labouring under its third different title in five years) produced a good crop of firsts and several entrants into the M.A. in British history (a Jupp creation), one of whom has now embarked on a Ph.D. course.

Pete’s contribution to the life of Queen’s for over forty years was truly remarkable, inside and outside the department which he served wholeheartedly and to which he was unswervingly loyal through all its vicissitudes, its mergers and its restructurings. He gave unstinting support to student-organised events, leading field trips in Ireland and Britain, dancing inimitably and even deejaying at history-student formals. He was a mainstay of the music scene at Queen’s, especially in the promotion of jazz; he was a great supporter of the university bookshop. In short, he was an advocate of everything that has traditionally made up the life of a university. Above all, he was someone who still cherished the ideal of a university as a community of scholars, and a department as a group of colleagues rather than a regiment of ‘staff’ to be line managed. His retirement – after a final year in which he had, true to form, demanded to be ‘loaded up’ with teaching – was disappointingly low key for the host of friends and admirers who had hoped to be able to pay him their respects on a formal occasion. He refused a formal farewell celebration, reportedly on the grounds that he did not wish to oblige people to pay to have dinner with him, but was pleased as well as embarrassed to be ambushed by colleagues at a departmental leaving party. Of course, we all assumed that he would be around for years to come, and his declared intention to play a part in the life of the School of History and Anthropology was manifest in the first, and, as it turned out, only, year of his retirement by his attendance at seminars and lectures and by familiar bursts of laughter in offices and corridors. His final illness cut off this continued association suddenly and savagely. The memorial gathering that Belinda and his family organised at Queen’s proved to a unique event, packing the Great Hall, with those at the back standing four or five deep. Friends and admirers came from far and wide, across Britain and Ireland.

Memories were shared. Inevitably, there was laughter, for Pete brought a vast amount of warmth and humour into life. Indeed, it is for his personality as much as his achievements that he will be remembered by those of us who had the privilege to know him and to work with him.

DAVID HAYTON

‘An Unhappy Angler [Sir Robert Peel] Fishing for a Budget’ by HB [John Doyle] published 26 May 1841.

Ulster counties in the age of emancipation and reform

SUZANNE KINGON

The traditional picture of Irish county elections between 1793 and 1826, propagated by J.H. Whyte among others, was that the great majority of voters were content to vote as their landlords required.¹ In only six of over forty contested elections were there any signs of disobedience by electors to their landlords’ instructions. The main reasons for this were not fear of reprisal, but the electorate’s general apathy and loyalty to their landlords. A new epoch was ushered in by the general election of 1826, which saw Catholic tenants revolt in a number of constituencies, organised chiefly by the Catholic clergy.

Peter Jupp challenged this traditional image of county electoral politics. He demonstrated that in at least eighteen counties the Catholic vote or interest was an important factor in elections even before 1820.² The traditional proprietorial interests were still the first consideration but the Catholic interest exercised a considerable negative veto over who was elected. The number of occasions after 1807 when at least one leading proprietorial interest or candidate did not support emancipation in constituencies where a Catholic interest existed was extremely small. That other traditional element in county politics, the independent gentry, was increasingly unimportant in the numbers game of the post-union period.³ Jupp consolidated his argument in a complete series of constituency histories and member biographies for Ireland.⁴ None of the eighteen counties where he found a Catholic interest was in Ulster. The first half of this essay examines electoral politics in the northern counties from the Act of Union until the 1826 general election. It argues that in Ulster the gentry did not become unimportant at elections as elsewhere in Ireland. It then addresses the impact of the seismic events of the late 1820s – the breakdown of Lord Liverpool’s Tory coalition, Catholic emancipation, and the 1829 disenfranchisement of the Irish 40s. county freeholders. K.T. Hoppen has commented that Ulster was remarkable for the way in which particular families were able to retain the county representation until at least the 1870s and sometimes beyond.⁵ In a long-term perspective, this is true. But the period between 1829 and 1832 produced great uncertainty amongst contemporaries. Political identities were in flux and the pattern of electoral politics was disrupted decisively in a number of counties. The period also produced a lasting change in the language of Ulster electoral politics.

I ELECTIONS 1800–26

Negotiation rather than contest was certainly the order of the day in the Ulster counties prior to 1829. The seven general elections between 1800 and 1826 saw only nine contests and there were only three contested by-elections.⁶ Tenants deferred to their landlords almost without exception until the 1826 general election. However, the smaller gentry were more important in Ulster than in the rest of Ireland. Under the banner of the independent interest they challenged the electoral control of the largest local landlords, particularly in Counties Down, Fermanagh, Tyrone, and to some degree in Londonderry and Done-gal. In three counties, Armagh, Cavan and Monaghan, whilst old proprietorial considerations remained of considerable importance, the Catholic or emancipation question became increasingly crucial in electoral politics. This produced close and violent contests in 1826 and substantial tenant revolt in Cavan and Monaghan. County Antrim was the exception. It was almost completely dominated by a couple of leading proprietorial interests, both Tory and Orange, and had little in the way of an independent interest or wider public involvement in elections. An electorate, theoretically numbering 7,068 in January 1829, had been given no opportunity to exercise its franchise since the Act of Union.⁷ The two largest proprietors, Earl O’Neill and the second marquess of Hertford, with the support of the third earl of Mountcashell, divided the representation between them with one seat each.⁸ In 1815, T.H. Oldfield commented that the marquess of Hertford ‘returns a member with as much ease as the owner of Old Sarum’.⁹

Counties Down and Fermanagh must serve as examples of the strong independent interest existing in at least five of the Ulster counties before 1826. In County Down, the largest landed interests, the Hills and the Stewarts, from 1812 had agreed an electoral truce and held one seat each.¹⁰ There was strong and concerted opposition to this junction from among members of the gentry like Matthew Forde of Seaforde, Gavin Hamilton of Killyleagh, the Crawfords of Crawfordsburn and William Montgomery of Grey Abbey, under the banner of the independent interest.¹¹ Despite their vocal and persistent opposition, they had little success. This was due firstly to the ‘personal’ interest of the two leading families: the Hills registered about one quarter of the electorate and the Stewarts about one eighth. Secondly, both had a large general interest permanently in their support. The Hills were always supported by their relative, the second viscount of Dungannon, and leading members of the gentry, such as the Delacherois of Donaghadee, the Crommelins of Carrowdore, the Reillys of Scarva and the Matthewses of Springvale. The Stewarts were generally supported by most of the county nobility, including the second earl of Annesley, the twenty-first baron de Clifford and the twelfth earl of Kilmorey, and by their neighbours in East Down, the Blackwoods, Wards, Prices and Gordons. Finally, both families were adept at canvassing the support of temporary allies.

The independent interest was based solely on the belief that the traditional rights of property to representation were jeopardised by an unconstitutional junction of the two leading aristocratic proprietors. Andrew Nugent of Portaferry, for example, reported in March 1826:

There is a strong sensation in the county caused by an idea that the lords are united and wish to keep the representation between them, making what is termed a borough of the county. How far this is in operation, I cannot say, but I should hope there was no arrangement of that kind.¹²

Electoral allegiances were determined by local relationships and considerations, with little reference to national or contemporary issues. Even the Catholic question had little role in County Down elections right up to 1829. In 1826, the pro-emancipation independent, Matthew Forde, was believed to be popular with the Orange or anti-Catholic gentry. In a heated correspondence in the Belfast News-Letter in 1826, ‘an Old Freeholder’ defended the Hill and Stewart alliance,¹³ whilst the anti-Catholic ‘Vindex’ replied that although Forde had made one questionable vote on the Catholic question, he had attached himself to the most valuable body in parliament, the independent country gentlemen. At the 1826 hustings, the radical O’Connellite, E.S. Ruthven, a County Down squire, proposed Lord Arthur Hill. He was seconded by Orangeman and future Brunswicker, N. Delacherois Crommelin, who expressed regret that ‘the sentiments of the noble lord differed from his on the great political question which now agitates the country; but that question, he considered, should be left to the wisdom of parliament’.¹⁴

A memorandum of the Reverend Mark Cassidy, the Stewart agent, in May 1825, demonstrates that residence and local relationships in the county were the critical considerations in electoral politics:

It is easy […] to perceive that Col. F[orde] is using every means to insure the support of the principal interests, and in this he has great advantages over the other candidates, residing among them, taking every opportunity of meeting them, as well in publick at the assizes etc as in private at his or theirs, of social habits, open honest proud and good natured means he is every day becoming more & more a personal favorite with almost every gentleman in the county, and in particular with the old and steady friends of the house of Stewart.

His advice to the third marquess of Londonderry therefore was:

He sh[oul]d spend as much of his time here as possible, not only entertain the heads of houses, but enter into the most familiar intercourse with them, surprise the breakfast table of one in a morning, the dinner of another in an evening, chat with the ladies, view all the imaginary improvements of the house, farmyard, farm etc, and enter into all the domestic concerns of the whole family, nor will this be sufficient, the marchioness must also devote much of her time & ease to the same purpose [;] it will not be sufficient that she entertain the wives and daughters, she must enter into the greatest familiarity with them.

This was necessary ‘not merely before an election and for the avowed purpose of soliciting their suffrages, but when there is no prospect of an election’.¹⁵

County Down was the home of the strongest proprietorial junction but it was by no means untypical in both this and its strong traditional independent interest. In Fermanagh, the county tended to be divided between the Archdalls of Castle Archdall and the Coles of Florence Court, who had been created earls of Enniskillen in 1789. Their dominance appeared overwhelming. The Archdalls had continually held one of the Fermanagh seats since 1731.¹⁶ Henry Brooke of Brooke-borough, the third leading proprietor, headed the independent interest. He had unsuccessfully contested the county in 1806, 1807 and 1812.¹⁷ By 1819, however, Brooke had registered almost 1,400 freeholders, more than Archdall’s 911 or Enniskillen’s 872.¹⁸ Another five independent gentry interests registered over 100 freeholders each. Brooke was too ill to offer in 1820 but in 1823 fiercely contested a by-election with Lord Corry, the eldest son of the second earl of Belmore, who ran on the Enniskillen ticket. Brooke led for half of the five-day poll and finished, amid violent scenes, only 124 adrift.¹⁹ In 1826, it was rumoured that Archdall would remain neutral or support Brooke.²⁰ Lord Belmore believed that some of the leading members of the gentry needed to be courted. He wrote to Enniskillen in February 1826 that, to secure the support of the Irvines of Rockfield, he and his wife were going to preside at a couple of Methodist meetings in that area and asked Enniskillen to express his best wishes to the same.²¹ In the event Archdall and Corry were returned unopposed.

The contests in Fermanagh had nothing to do with national political issues. The landed proprietors of Fermanagh – Archdalls, Coles, Brookes, Irvines, and Creightons – were uniformly Tory and Orange in their allegiances.²² The independent interest in Fermanagh, like that in Down, was based simply on the belief that property was entitled to representation. In the 1820s, it came closer to success than the independent interest in Down but was in the end equally ineffective.

No single landlord held a predominating electoral interest in County Monaghan.²³ Since the union, the landlord interests had disputed the representation but without coming to a contest. The leading magnate was the Whiggish and pro-Catholic second baron of Cremorne, who generally returned one member. Since 1818 he had supported H.R. Westenra, son of another large Monaghan proprietor, the second baron of Rossmore, but was unhappy with Westenra’s Westminster record. Westenra refused to regard himself as Cremorne’s nominee, informing his father in 1820 that he would ‘not bow the knee to Cremorne’s wish that I should oppose govt upon every single measure they propose. I will not bow to anyone else’s wish.’²⁴ In particular, Westenra refused to alienate the Protestant interest by declaring in favour of Catholic emancipation. The Protestant gentry in Monaghan were generally unfavourable to the Catholic cause.²⁵ The other electoral camp in the county was, thus, represented by the Tory Orangeman, Charles Powell Leslie of Glaslough, M.P. since 1801. Leslie was returned as independent upholder of the Protestant cause with the support of most of the resident gentry and peers such as Lord Blayney and Lord Templetown.

The balance of forces was changing in County Monaghan. Although Westenra was more impatient than his father, Rossmore, of subservience to Cremorne, both were bent on building up a substantial electoral interest of their own. Another peer, Blayney, built up an electoral interest based on 800 40s. freeholders from his own estate, and by 1824 it was rumoured that he wanted his son, Cadwallader, to contest the county.²⁶ The electoral situation was further complicated by the decision of the absentee E.J. Shirley to take up residence in his newly built seat at Lough Fea, Carrickmacross. Rumoured in 1822, this decision became effective in 1825, when Shirley also became sheriff of the county and enfranchised a large number of his Catholic tenants.²⁷ He seemed certain of electoral success. He initially secured Cremorne’s backing, but by January 1826, despite being supposed favourable to Catholic claims, had also made an alliance with the anti-Catholic Leslie.²⁸ Westenra, determined to defend his seat, launched an attack on this junction, claiming and receiving support as an upholder of the independent interest of lesser proprietors.²⁹ This led to a conglomeration of electoral alliances. Blayney, who had decided to stay his hand electorally, and others gave their support to Leslie and Shirley. Some, like Edward Lucas of Castle Shane, were committed to supporting Westenra and Shirley but were alienated by Shirley’s actions. Cremorne was disgusted by the arrangement and insisted that his tenants’ second votes should be given to Westenra and not Leslie. The Barrett Lennards of Clones were among several landlords who, out of loyalty, promised to continue to support both sitting members – i.e., Westenra and Leslie.

At this point proprietorial rivalry and division on the Catholic question intersected with the campaigns of the new Catholic Association in the exceedingly violent contest of 1826.³⁰ Proprietorial dispute had opened the county to a contest. The critical factor in the result was the rebellion of 40s. freeholders against their landlords’ instructions. Shirley topped the poll with Westenra in second place. Leslie, having held second place for two of the four days of the poll, slipped into third position on 28 June and finally resigned on 30 June. In a circular to the Catholic clergy, O’Connell had emphasised that the object must be to unseat Leslie, an inveterate opponent to Catholic claims.³¹ Counsellor Bric was sent to canvass on behalf of the Catholic Association but the leading role was played by the local clergy, led by the Catholic bishop of Clogher, Edward Kernan, who preached openly in favour of West-enra. As the Dublin Morning Register commented:

The priests in this county [Monaghan] are a single order of men, the most active, the most diligent, the most courageous, the most devoted that ever came under observations. They have laboured night and day among their people – their object is to see that Col. Leslie is not returned to parliament.³²

The major rebellion was that of Catholic tenants on the massive Shirley estate in the barony of Farney. A demand that his Farney tenants should support Leslie was met by a defiant statement promising their second votes to Westenra. According to a list of the 627 ‘Shirley tenants who voted at the election in 1826’, 40% plumped for Shirley, 40% split their votes between Shirley and Westenra, and only 18% split, as instructed, between Leslie and Shirley.³³ Only 1.5% or nine of the tenants did not vote for their landlord: the rebellion was in the tenants’ second vote. By 1826 a mixture of forces was at work in Monaghan. A number of families had ambitions to the representation: Cremorne, Westenra, Leslie, Shirley and Blayney. A substantial portion of the gentry was strongly anti-Catholic and this independent interest provided the basis of Leslie’s support. Proprietorial electoral ambitions substantially increased the numbers of Catholic freeholders. In 1826, therefore, the organisation and momentum of the new Catholic Association made them and the clergy temporarily the dictators of county politics.

The Catholic Association’s successes in 1826 in various constituencies throughout Ireland did bring together those members of the Protestant aristocracy and gentry who had opposed Catholic relief at the election. The leading Protestants of County Cavan, including Farnham, held a dinner in honour of the defeated Waterford candidate, Lord George Beresford, on 30 August 1826. In Armagh, on 5 October, Colonel Verner, late candidate for the representation of that county, was entertained to dinner. Among those present were Beresford, Sir George Hill Bart, M.P. for Derry city, Henry Maxwell, M.P. for Cavan, and Colonel Leslie, the defeated Monaghan candidate.³⁴ Throughout the evening speakers complained of the tie between landlord and tenant being dissolved and of tenant allegiance being transferred to the Catholic cause. Calls were made time and again for unity between Protestant gentlemen in different constituencies in response to the Catholic threat. Colonel Leslie concluded:

Under the present circumstances it is most desirable that the Protestants should be united. Their eyes should now be opened by the attempts made on the exercise of the elective franchise at the late elections in the different counties of Ireland, by a body of men not recognized or connected with the state. Nothing can contribute more to their good understanding than meetings so respectably constituted as the present – it proves that the Protestant gentlemen will not be indifferent to the defence of their constitutional privileges if an attack is apprehended.³⁵

Henry Maxwell urged, ‘let Protestants display but the same zeal and union of purpose in defence of their rights and privileges which their enemies display in their attempts to subvert them, and the cause of Protestantism will yet be triumphant’.³⁶

What is particularly revealing, however, is the criticism made of some of the anti-emancipation Ulster members for their failure to speak out in support of the common cause. The Reverend Dr Robinson asked:

Where are they who represent Protestant Fermanagh? Where are the members for Tyrone? […] Can it be that they are blind to the past, and heedless of the present? That they will not even take warning from the unanimity and art of their opponents? It is a fault – a grievous fault, which I hope ere long, be well redeemed.³⁷

This is a good illustration of the different electoral situations throughout Ulster before 1829. In counties such as Fermanagh and Tyrone electoral politics was still about traditional proprietorial considerations.

II ULSTER COUNTIES AFTER 1829

A series of three events made the 1830 general election a watershed in Ulster. The first was the atomisation of British politics. In parliament, Canning’s acceptance of the premiership in 1827 shattered the existing system. At the dawn of 1828 the Tory coalition Lord Liverpool had used to govern between 1812 and 1827 was divided into ex-Canningites, those who served under Canning without being personally attached to him and the secessionists of April 1827, who were themselves increasingly divided between pragmatists like Peel and those like Lord Eldon who may be defined as ultras.³⁸ The Whigs were also divided into coalitionists who had cooperated with Canning, wait-and-see advocates, those who wanted the Whigs to resume the role of opposition and, outside the main fold, many groups of radicals.³⁹ Political identities were shifting and confused. The second event was the granting of Catholic emancipation in 1829. A number of former anti-emancipationists in Ulster supported the measure, including the M.P. for Londonderry, G.R. Dawson, and the marquess of Hertford, who had long returned one of the County Antrim M.P.s. They were, of course, considered apostates by anti-Catholics. The third event was the 1829 act disenfranchising the 40s. freeholders in the Irish counties. The new minimum £10 freehold franchise reduced the total Irish county electorate from 215,901 on 1 January 1829 to 39,872 on 1 January 1830. In the nine Ulster counties it decreased from 67,182 to 11,199.⁴⁰ These three events impacted to a greater or lesser degree in the Ulster counties, producing localised and particular results that defy easy classification. It remains the case, however, that the world of county electoral politics was by no means immune to the national political events of 1828–32.

In three counties, Fermanagh, Tyrone and Donegal, these events had little effect. In Fermanagh, for example, all the major electoral interests remained ultra anti-Catholic Tories and opposed emancipation. Neither the breakdown of British politics nor the granting of Catholic relief made much impact. Disenfranchisement reduced the electorate from 6,878 to only 1,032.⁴¹ The relative proportion of freeholders registered by each of the leading proprietors, however, hardly changed. In 1830, the independent interest challenged the largest proprietors in traditional fashion. According to Lord Belmore, ‘a change in the Elective franchise caused the old & constant Opponent of Lord Enniskillen’s family (Sir H. Brooke) again to try his strength’.⁴² Archdall and Corry, however, led throughout the six-day poll. In Tyrone and Donegal, too,