County Limerick, a thriving area of pastoral farming and linen production, was so heavily populated by Catholics that Oldfield commented in 1816 that they, ‘in questions where their interest is concerned, must command the return of the Members’.1 Nevertheless, the choice of these invariably pro-Catholic Members was mainly determined by the relatively large number of leading peers and country gentlemen, who, frequently permitting their electoral rivalries to develop into contests, furnished the representatives from their own families in the century before the Union and beyond.2 According to an ‘alphabetical state of the county up to May 1st 1820’, which purports to be an analysis of the voting strengths of all the proprietors, the top seven landowners (having over 200 votes) accounted for 25 per cent of the 8,706 registered electors, and the next 12 landlords (possessing between 100 and 200 votes) accounted for another 17 per cent. A similar document, entitled ‘county Limerick registries commencing 6 Apr. 1818 and ending 6 Apr. 1826’, which presumably indicates the number of additional voters registered in that period, shows these same 19 proprietors having over 4,000 votes between them and adds four others with over 100 votes each.3

By the start of this period the largest interest was held by a judge, the chief baron of the Irish exchequer Standish O’Grady of Cahirguillamore and Rockbarton (later the 1st Viscount Guillamore), with 506 or six per cent of the votes; adding the other O’Gradys gives a total of 1,043 or 12 per cent (or 1,511 for the ‘family’ in the 1818-26 list). O’Grady had attempted to demonstrate his influence by securing the nomination of the sheriff in 1812, but had failed to obtain the backing of the Liverpool administration, being passed over for the office of custos rotulorum in 1818, when his son and namesake unsuccessfully contested the county. But he had at least surpassed his nearest rival, the 2nd earl of Clare of Mount Shannon, who had 456 or five per cent of the votes (and 355). With official support, his mother had attempted to keep the family interest alive in the years since her husband lord chancellor Clare’s death in 1802, their long-serving locum being William Odell of The Grove, Rathkeale, a junior minister, and Clare was usually credited with the electoral patronage of one of the seats. Odell, who came to a sorry end, made way for Clare’s younger brother Richard Hobart Fitzgibbon in 1818, when, no doubt at great expense, many hundreds of tenants were brought to the poll. The new Member became militia colonel and sole governor of the county that year, but proved a disappointment to ministers in the Commons.4

The only other resident peer having a major stake, with 280 votes (or 467 in the second list), was the 1st earl of Limerick of Dromore Castle, who occasionally sought to oppose the Clare interest. His estates within the county of the city of Limerick secured the seat there to his son-in-law Thomas Spring Rice, the son of Stephen Edward Rice of Mount Trenchard, in mid-1820; this was achieved in the face of opposition from the 2nd Viscount Gort of Roxborough (and Loughcutra Castle, county Galway), who only had 25 votes in the county. Of the notable absentee peers, the most important, with 272 (and 105) votes, was the 3rd Viscount Courtenay of Powderham, Devon, who, despite selling some of them, drew an enormous income from his estates near Limerick city.5 The 3rd earl of Kingston of Mitchelstown Castle, just across the county boundary in Cork, where he had his principal electoral interests, had 232 (and 376) votes. Viscount Mountearl (formerly Baron Adare) of Adare Manor, who just prior to the Union had sat for the disfranchised borough of Kilmallock, the property of the parliamentary family of the Olivers of Castle Oliver, had no significant holding in 1820. This was presumably because his heir Windham Henry Wyndham Quin of Dunraven Castle, Glamorgan, who had sat for county Limerick as a pro-Catholic Whig since 1806, bowed out of the representation at the general election that year. He had been appointed custos in 1818, on the death of the 1st Baron Muskerry of Springfield Castle, but the following year his reputation was tainted when a parliamentary committee reported that he had manipulated the office and emoluments of the clerk of the peace for electoral advantage.6 He succeeded his father as 2nd earl of Dunraven in 1824 and was another absentee who added substantially (231 votes) to his interest in the early 1820s; as did the 2nd Baron Decies, a non-resident clergyman (164).

The next largest interest was that of ‘Tom Lloyd’, presumably the county’s assistant barrister Thomas Lloyd* of Beechmount, who had 229 (with 160 in the 1818-26 list). He was followed by Peter Low and his son John of Lowtown, with 219 (and 202), and the former county Member John Waller of Castletown, with 160 (and 93), while Colonel William Thomas Monsell of Tervoe, who three times unsuccessfully contested the county, with 117 (and 63), headed a group of six commoners with just over 100 votes. The smaller interests among the noblemen included: the 4th Baron Massy of Hermitage, with 121 (and 106, plus another 127 for his ‘family’), whose father had been one of the patrons of the other disfranchised borough of Askeaton and had sometimes shown a desire to interfere in the county; the 3rd Viscount Southwell of Castle Mattress, a Catholic, with 114 (and 121) votes; the 1st earl of Charleville of Charleville Castle, King’s County, with 104 (and 51) votes; the 6th Baron Carbery of Castle Freke, county Cork, with 98 votes; the 2nd Baron Cloncurry of Abington (and Lyons House, Kildare), with 14 (and 47) votes; Massy’s kinsman, the 3rd Baron Clarina of Elm Park House, with 14 (and 22) votes; and the 2nd earl of Kenmare of Killarney House, Kerry, with eight (and ten). The baronet Sir John Allen De Burgho of Castleconnell held 91 (and 61) votes, the knight of Glin (John Fitzgerald) of Glin Castle had 70 (and 119), and Limerick’s nephew Sir Aubrey Vere Hunt (later styled Sir Aubrey De Vere) of Curragh Chase, whose father Sir Vere Hunt (d. 1818) had had ambitions to represent the county, possessed 32 (and 19) votes.

An average of 400 freeholders a year were added to the registers between 1817 and 1820 inclusive, and newspapers reported that the electorate was over 10,000 at the general election of 1820.7 Once Wyndham Quin had announced his withdrawal and it had become clear that Odell would not persist, a contest developed between Fitzgibbon, who was considered safe, O’Grady, who was reckoned an opposition sympathizer, and Hunt, who, like Fitzgibbon, obtained grudging government support, even though they both backed Hunt’s Whig brother-in-law Rice in the city contest.8 Fitzgibbon, proposed by Colonel Edward Croker of Ballinagar, led throughout the eight-day poll, while O’Grady, nominated by Thomas Henry Royse of Nantinan, kept comfortably ahead of Hunt, introduced by Monsell, although he brought in his brother Waller O’Grady, a Dublin barrister, as a security.9 According to Aubrey De Vere fils, the better poet of the two, his father, who was a self-styled liberal Tory or Canningite and anticipated being beaten by the votes of ‘dead men’, was defeated

after an odd fashion. A country gentleman with whom my father had always been on the friendliest terms, and who had waited for the last day of polling in order to impart a more emphatic character to his proceeding, rode into Limerick at the head of his numerous tenantry, and voted against him! Between the two there had never been a coolness, but many years before he had had a quarrel with my father’s uncle, the earl of Limerick; he had vowed revenge, and the opportunity had come.

Hunt forgave the offender and promised to stand again in the future, on conceding defeat, 30 Mar. 1820, when Fitzgibbon, a wayward ministerialist, and O’Grady, a similarly inconsistent and inactive Whig, disputed the mantle of ‘independence’, which really belonged to the latter.10 Fitzgibbon, who had a majority of 858 over O’Grady and of 1,274 over Hunt, polled more votes than anyone else standing in an Irish constituency at that election.11 The candidates split the sheriff’s expenses of £1,300 between them, with O’Grady, who perhaps settled his brother’s share as well as his own, paying nearly £400.12

County meetings were held in January and August 1821 to approve loyal addresses to the king; at the former, the future colonial governor Colonel Richard Bourke of Thornfield (Thornville) carried a petition complaining of agricultural distress, and this was presented to the Lords by Limerick, 16 Feb., and to the Commons by Fitzgibbon, 19 Feb.13 The county and city Catholics met together, under the chairmanship of the Limerick banker William Roche, 24 Mar., when Daniel O’Connell* presumably gave them the benefit of his intended ‘flaming harangue’.14 However, the ensuing pro-Catholic petition, brought up in the Commons by Fitzgibbon, 28 Feb., and the Lords by Lord Lansdowne, 5 Mar., denounced the securities included in the current proposed legislation, as did another from the bishop and priests of the Catholic diocese of Limerick, which both Members denied was representative of opinion in their constituency, 2 Apr., but which was presented to the Lords by Lord Donoughmore, 6 Apr., and to the Commons by Rice, 11 Apr.15 As at the time of general election, the county descended into violent unrest in October 1821, when Major Richard Going, the chief constable of the peace preservation force, was assassinated and the complaints of mistreatment by absentee landlords forced the removal of the detested Alexander Hoskins, the English agent on the Courtenay estates.16

Agricultural distress was again considered on 6 May at a meeting chaired by the sheriff, Waller’s son John Thomas Waller, whose petition for protection of the butter trade was brought up by Fitzgibbon, 30 May 1822.17 In January 1823 Waller and O’Grady secured an address, congratulating him on his escape from injury during the recent Dublin Orange theatre riot, to the lord lieutenant Lord Wellesley, who that month expressed his delight that the co-operation of the gentry had contributed to the re-establishment of peace there.18 Although the county remained mostly calm the following year, landlord exploitation continued and there was the occasional violent outrage.19 Following a meeting on 22 Mar., the petition of the county and city’s Catholics for settlement of their claims was presented to the Lords by Lansdowne, 31 May, and to the Commons by Rice, 4 June 1824.20 They had intensified their agitation by that winter, when the chief constable at Rathkeale reported that they were demonstrating an ‘arrogance and pride at their numerical strength, as well as the money they are likely to command’, in the form of the ‘rent’.21 Their petition against the suppression of the Catholic Association was brought up, 18 Feb., by Rice, who on 28 Mar. presented the respectably signed Protestant county petition for Catholic relief, which was brought up in the Lords by Lansdowne, 9 May 1825.22

In August 1824 Rice commented on the representation of the county that ‘matters seem still in suspense’, but the following month it was rumoured that Hunt would offer again on Lord Limerick’s interest, so involving the sitting Members in a hard struggle.23 During the renewed electoral speculation a year later, when it was supposed that Kingston’s son Robert Henry King* might offer, Lloyd, who resigned his legal office in the county, emerged as the popular contender. Fitzgibbon, but not O’Grady, signed the requisition for another pro-Catholic meeting of the county’s Protestants, which in early October 1825 was refused by the sheriff John Massy, a close relative of the 4th Baron Massy; late that month he, unlike his colleague, attended the Munster provincial Catholics’ meeting in Limerick with Lloyd, of whose candidacy O’Connell wrote to his wife that ‘everybody is glad of it [and] I gave him considerable support’.24 The following month the chief baron, to head off what he suspected was Clare’s close friendship with Peel, the home secretary, approached Goulburn, the Irish secretary, to request ministerial support. He also alleged that Clare, despite having agreed an alliance with the O’Gradys, was now coalescing with the third candidate, a course which the chief baron had himself refused to countenance.25 Hunt and Lloyd’s names headed the requisition for another county meeting, 11 Apr. 1826, when O’Grady junior unsuccessfully opposed John Massy’s motion for a petition against the suppression of small Irish banknotes, which was carried with Lloyd’s support; it was presented by Fitzgibbon and Limerick on the 20th.26

According to a parliamentary return, the number of freeholders was as high as 12,786, including over 10,000 40s. ones, in 1825, and the electorate certainly numbered above 8,000 at the general election of 1826. With Fitzgibbon safe, O’Grady, who was characterized as insufficiently liberal on the Catholic question, was challenged by Lloyd, who had a good local reputation and claimed to be the choice of the independents, but was apparently dependent on Kingston’s interest.27 On the hustings, 23 June, Fitzgibbon, proposed by Croker, and O’Grady, nominated by William Gabbett of Caherline, relied on their proven track record, while Lloyd, introduced by Monsell, claimed his long service as a senior magistrate would stand him in good stead as a Member. O’Grady insisted several times that he would overtake Lloyd during the week-long contest, which was punctuated by disturbances and was said to have cost the candidates upwards of £30,000, but he finished third, asserting that he would soon reassert the independence of the county against an aristocratic cabal.28 Fitzgibbon (with 329 more votes than in 1820), who was ahead in the 40s. and £20 classes of freeholders (but not among the £50 ones, 213 of whom voted for him, compared to 237 for Lloyd), increased his majority over his colleague to 1,466 and over the defeated candidate (O’Grady’s total falling by 869) to 2,056.29 A pre-emptive petition, alleging that O’Grady had been guilty of treating and bribery, was presented, 5 Dec. 1826, but was ruled out of order the following day. A petition accusing the sheriff of having improperly admitted Catholic freeholders to vote was brought up on the 7th, but the election committee reported its decision against seating O’Grady in place of Lloyd, 16 May 1827.30

The Catholics of the county and city had met, with O’Connell in attendance, in July 1826, and their petition for relief was brought up in the Commons, 14 Feb. (when one was also presented from the Protestants), and the Lords, 23 Feb. 1827, probably by Rice and Lansdowne, respectively.31 They gathered again, 21 Mar., O’Connell recording that ‘a proper feeling of indignation was manifest’ at the recent defeat of the latest relief motion in the Commons, and 11 Aug. 1827, when regret was expressed at the death a few days earlier of the pro-Catholic premier Canning.32 In October 1828 the county’s Brunswick Club was established at a meeting chaired by Lord Massy, with Gort as its president, and the following month it was reported that ‘500 new members have been lately added to the club in one day’; but it was quickly pointed out how many of the leading proprietors favoured emancipation and several of them, including the Members, were sympathetic to the activities of the city’s Independent Club at that time.33 Lord Massy chaired the Brunswick meeting at which an anti-Catholic petition was agreed, 3 Jan., but the extent to which this represented the real opinion of the county towards emancipation was questioned in the liberal press and in the Commons by Lloyd, on its being brought up by George Moore, 26 Feb.; it was presented to the Lords, perhaps by Gort, to whom it had been entrusted, 13 Mar. 1829.34 There had been 9,277 registered electors, including 6,714 40s. freeholders, at the beginning of the year, so the newspaper claim that 25,000 such freeholders would lose their votes under the Irish Franchise Act that year was plainly an exaggeration. Only 560 had been registered up to 20 June 1829, of which Kingston held the most with 82, and not much credence can be given to the semi-official total of 9,856 registered electors, including 7,274 £10 freeholders, for the beginning of the following year, as this must have included very many out-of-date entries. A more likely figure is the total of 3,142 given in another parliamentary return.35

The death of Lloyd in December 1829 led to feverish preparations for what was expected to be the first Irish contest since the alteration of the franchise, with the £50 and £20 freeholders attempting to impose their weight of influence and numbers.36 Nothing came of the rumoured candidacies of Lord Glentworth, Limerick’s heir, Thomas Goold, the third serjeant, or Hunt, who failed to attract the backing of government, but O’Grady immediately offered. He had only minor supporters among the aristocracy and received the not entirely desirable public endorsement of O’Connell as a trusted independent, but he confided to his supportive father-in-law Lord Anglesey, the once and future lord lieutenant, that ‘I do not think there is any religious difference likely to show itself as I am supported by the majority of Protestant clergymen and by many of those gentlemen who headed the quondam Brunswick party’.37 He was challenged by the usually Tory James Hewitt Massy Dawson of Ballynacourty, Tipperary, who had long ago been interested in standing and who now resigned the seat at Clonmel which he had occupied since 1820. Although he was unpopular as an outsider, and was suspected of being merely a seat-warmer for Dunraven’s elder son Lord Adare, he was the favourite to succeed, not only because he stood on Kingston’s interest, but also because Lord Massy’s family rallied to him as their kinsman and he benefited from the combined interests of Clare, Dunraven and Limerick, as well as those of several of the country gentlemen.38 Accusing O’Grady’s family and friends, who had apparently neglected to increase their strength on the registers, of using the influence of Catholic priests to bolster their cause, Massy Dawson appealed to ministers for sufficient forces to be deployed to preserve order. They were willing enough to oblige in that respect, but declined to intervene directly on his behalf, Peel being particularly irritated by a request that one of his supporters be given a baronetcy, while Wellington was equally angered by the chief baron’s attempt to influence the choice of sheriff in favour of one of his son’s partisans.39 As Rice, who thought O’Connell’s union with the O’Gradys ‘a strange one’, reported to Peel in January 1830, Massy Dawson’s committee had told him ‘that all goes well and that they will beat O’Connell. It is his election against the gentry of the county’.40

There were scenes of considerable disorder on the hustings, 25 Jan. 1830, when O’Grady, proposed by James Denis Lyons of Croom House, was only well enough to stake his claim with the £10 voters, and Massy Dawson, nominated by Monsell, could only with difficulty represent himself as a close resident and honest potential representative. A severe contest, replete with handbills and squibs, followed, during which the unrest culminated in a nearly murderous attack on Massy Dawson and the high spirits of O’Grady’s supporters reached fever pitch on his taking an unbeatable lead.41 In a repeat of the county Waterford and Clare elections of 1826 and 1828, the Catholic freeholders largely deserted their landlords, and according to the later, overcoloured description by Hunt’s son De Vere, Kingston, who had ordered in his dependants en masse, attended the proceedings at the open window of his friend Lord Limerick’s house:

They were big and burly men both, and in high good humour, now quaffing a bottle of champagne, now leaning out and chaffing the city mob, which cheered them to the echo, for it united the old Irish taste for chieftainship with the novel aspiration after democratic power ... The appointed hour was sounded ... In mile-long cavalcade the K[ingston] tenantry rode down Limerick’s chief street; another and larger crowd cheered them and their fine horses, and doubtless that acclaim sent an exhilaration into their heads as potent as the fumes of champagne could have created there. After an hour or two a dullness began to spread over the gay apartment, and many talked in whispers. The earl soon perceived that all was not right, and its usual sternness returned to his strong face. ‘You are hiding something from me,’ he exclaimed, ‘something has gone wrong; what has happened?’ After a pause a gentleman moved forward and replied, ‘My lord, what has gone wrong is this, the K[ingston] tenantry have voted’. ‘What of that?’ ‘My lord, they have voted with the enemy to a man! The other tenants are following their example. The election is lost!’ I record these things as they were described to me by those who witnessed them.

The shock, at least according to De Vere, was enough to tip Kingston, who meditated savage retribution, into insanity.42 After just over a week’s polling, O’Grady was elected with a majority of 215, although Massy Dawson, who made a formal complaint to the sheriff about the orchestrated disturbances, threatened to petition. O’Grady, who received the votes of 57 per cent of those polled, had a majority among the higher classes of freeholders, but Massy Dawson beat him by about 3:2 among the £10 freeholders, who accounted for 28 per cent of the total number of voters.43

Massy Dawson’s petition, which, as well as citing bribery and corruption, alleged intimidation and obstruction on the part of O’Grady and the collusive indifference of the election officers, was brought up, 19 Feb. 1830. After his agent had successfully applied for a postponement because of the difficulty of securing the attendance of witnesses, 3 Mar., the committee was appointed, 27 Apr., and it found in his favour, striking off O’Grady’s Catholic voters for having omitted to sign the roll containing their subscription to the qualification oath, 3 May.44 The county’s police magistrate Thomas Philip Vokes was apparently willing to attest that he had not been as unduly concerned by the conduct of the sheriff, William Scanlan of Ballyknockane House, as the petition had claimed, but nothing came of this. Massy Dawson gloated over his victory amid renewed canvassing that month, but O’Grady, who was quick to renew his candidacy on behalf of the independents, received the assurances of the Irish secretary, Lord Francis Leveson Gower, that the Castle had been

unable to consider you merely in your character of an officer and a gentleman, but were compelled also to look at you as the representative of a powerful election interest, to which another was opposed. They may have been wrong in their choice, but its adoption was compatible with every personal respect.45

Following a requisition to the sheriff, the knight of Glin, a county meeting approved petitions against the increased Irish spirit and stamp duties, 8 May, and these were presented to the Commons by Fitzgibbon, 20 May, and to the Lords by Clare, 21 May 1830.46

Fitzgibbon, whose position was thought to have been jeopardized by the startling by-election result earlier in the year, offered again at the general election of 1830, when opinion was divided in the press about how safe he was in his seat.47 Despite Clare’s recent appointment as governor of Bombay, both brothers were held in suspicion by ministers because of their inconsistent parliamentary conduct. In particular, the attempt by the Irish government to approach their supporter Peter Low, a former Dublin police magistrate who still occupied an official post, for his interest, incurred the wrath of Clare; in any case Peel declined to dismiss him for refusing to vote as the Castle directed.48 Initially, an optimistic Massy Dawson offered to stand again, and he obtained the requested support of ministers, as well as, for example, the backing of the major interest of Dunraven, who was in hopes of becoming a representative peer, and the minor one of Kenmare, whose brother William Browne* was standing in Kerry as a ministerialist.49 However, with his two opponents having apparently formed a junction, Massy Dawson withdrew by a face-saving address before the expected contest, and Fitzgibbon (proposed by Royse) and O’Grady (by his uncle the Rev. William Waller, rector of Kilcornan, after the late Thomas Lloyd’s son Thomas had failed to arrive in time) were returned unopposed.50 The latter’s re-election was counted as a gain for opposition in Henry Brougham’s analysis of the elections, but, despite the fact that Pierce Mahony† counted them both as ‘pro-government’, they were each listed as ‘bad doubtfuls’ by ministers that autumn and subsequently voted for the Grey ministry’s reform bills.51

There were further ugly agrarian disturbances in April 1831, when Dunraven called a meeting of magistrates and (by 42-12) secured an address to the lord lieutenant for the reimposition of the Insurrection Act.52 There were 3,913 registered electors at the general election the following month, when nothing came of rumours about the emergence of a third candidate, perhaps Southwell’s son Charles Henry Robert Southwell, no doubt partly because Lord Limerick gave his interest to the sitting Members. Thus, Fitzgibbon (nominated by Royse), whose brother was now resident in India, and O’Grady (by Lyons), whose father had now been given an Irish peerage, were again returned unopposed.53 Calm had been re-established by that summer, but the need for a resolute magistracy informed the decision over the choice of a lord lieutenant for the county that year.54 Anglesey illustrated the problem of finding a suitable candidate from among the principal landowners, listing them, for Lord Grey’s benefit, as: ‘Massy [and] Carbery - opposition; Courtenay - !!!; Clare - jobber and absentee; Dunraven - jobber; Limerick - arch-jobber; Cloncurry - does not reside in [the county]’.55 Rice, the treasury secretary, who assumed ministers had Guillamore in mind, complained to Smith Stanley, the Irish secretary, 17 Sept. 1831, that such an appointment ‘would pass over the custos, a man of higher rank, much larger fortune, constant residence, useful exertions as a magistrate and influence in one of your new creation of constituency [presumably the second county seat for Glamorgan]’.56 Smith Stanley judged the choice to lie between Dunraven and Fitzgibbon, who was the eventual choice.57 As was pointed out in one local newspaper, the county failed to meet to pronounce on parliamentary reform that winter.58

Nothing apparently came of a requisition to form an Independent Election Club in October 1832 and, although Dunraven suggested to William Smith O’Brien* of Cahermoyle that he might enter, the only new candidates later that year were a couple of O’Connellite Repealers. They only succeeded in putting the sitting Members, who still represented two of the largest electoral interests in Limerick, to great expense at the general election that year, when there were 2,565 registered electors.59 Yet, O’Connell evidently fixed the replacement of the unreliable O’Grady by Smith O’Brien two years later, and by the following decade, Caleb Powell of Clonshavoy having been returned instead of Fitzgibbon in 1841, both Members had come to espouse the repeal cause.60