Ireland’s largest county of Cork, with an overwhelmingly Catholic population, had a valuable copper and mineral mining industry and extensive farms producing wheat, oats and barley, much of which was exported, but the condition of its numerous peasantry, who subsisted mainly on potatoes, was ‘very wretched’. There were several market towns, including the disfranchised boroughs of Baltimore, Castlemartyr, Charleville, Clonakilty, Doneraile, Midleton, and Rathcormack, and the parliamentary boroughs of Bandon Bridge, Cork, the venue for county elections, Kinsale, Mallow and Youghal. The representation continued to be dominated by the leading magnates: the 3rd earl of Kingston, a former Whig who had come over to the Liverpool government in search of patronage following the return of his heir Lord Kingsborough, a supporter of Catholic claims, in 1818; the 3rd earl of Shannon, who had allied himself with Kingston in 1817 in an attempt to bolster his interest; the Whig 6th duke of Devonshire, whose influence declined in this period, and Viscount Ennismore, later earl of Listowel, whose heir Richard Hare had sat as a ministerialist with the support of the ‘high church’ Protestant gentry since 1812. The earls of Bandon, Cork and Donoughmore could also command votes, and there was a growing Catholic interest led by the editor of the Freeholder, John Boyle of Cork, who, in order to interrogate the candidates at the hustings, had stood unsuccessfully in 1818.
Shortly before the 1820 dissolution Hare complained to Lord Liverpool that owing to the government’s ‘neglect’ of his ‘numerous’ patronage requests on behalf of those who had ‘so strenuously supported’ him at the last election, ‘should a contest again arise between candidates, the results might be very different’. He cited their refusal to promote the nephew of Robert Hodges Eyre of Macroom, ‘whose interest is more considerable than that of any other individual’.
At a county meeting on the Queen Caroline affair in January 1821 the ‘ministerialists sustained a complete defeat’ in their attempts to resist calls for ‘discussion’ by William Wrixon Becher, Member for Mallow, James Ludlow Stawell of Kilbrittain Castle and Arthur Creagh of Laurentinum.
At the 1826 general election Kingsborough retired on account of ill health in favour of his younger brother Robert King. Hare, who had become Viscount Ennismore on his father’s elevation to an earldom in 1822, offered again, regretting that there was ‘insufficient time’ for him to canvass. In a public row with the Southern Reporter, which had attacked him for failing to vote in the 1825 divisions on Catholic relief, ‘upon which every man ere now ought to have formed an opinion’, he accused the paper of a ‘misstatement’, insisting that his name had been omitted from the hostile minority, which they denied, saying ‘his memory has been somewhat treacherous’. Stawell was rumoured, and a meeting of those who objected to the county remaining a ‘close borough’ was convened on 19 June at Conway’s Hotel to support an ‘independent candidate’. By the eve of the election, however, no one had started. ‘It would seem improbable that anything will rouse the electors from the degraded condition to which they are reduced’ by having Members ‘nominated by two or three aristocratic families’, lamented the Southern Reporter. At the nomination Stawell and Boyle carried out a lengthy ‘catechizing’ of Ennismore, who defended his opposition to emancipation ‘without securities’ to the accompaniment of ‘hisses’. King promised to support Irish tithe reform and emancipation as ‘a measure of justice’, but was ‘neither able nor disposed to answer’ questions about parliamentary reform. They were returned unopposed, Ennismore allegedly ‘a little shaken at the feeling evinced ... on the subject of emancipation’.
In September 1827 a vacancy was created by the death of Ennismore, whose name in that year’s division on Catholic relief had appeared in both the minority and majority lists. A number of candidates were rumoured, including Stawell, John Smith Barry of Fota Island, an ‘uncompromising supporter of the constitution in church and state’, Lords Dungarvan, Bernard and Berehaven, respectively the eldest sons of Cork, Bandon and the earl of Bantry, and William Smith Bernard, Bandon’s second son. Talk of Lord George Beresford*, son of the marquess of Waterford, who had been ousted from county Waterford by the Catholic Association in 1826, was dismissed as ‘idle rumour’, as were reports of a ‘second man’ being brought forward by Kingston, who had ‘the means of winning the second seat’, but was ‘too well skilled in electioneering tactics’ to commit such an ‘unpalatable act’. Wrixon Becher, who had retired from Mallow, was spoken of by the independents as a fitting successor to his cousin Ennismore and a ‘likely’ recipient of support from Kingston and Shannon, who together had a ‘clear majority’ on the registry, but he declined. Shortly thereafter it was reported that the earls ‘intended to put the representation in the custody of some locum tenens’, who would ‘just keep the seat warm’ until Shannon’s heir came of age. On 10 Oct. they brought forward Cork’s son, John Boyle of Marston, Somerset, who was described as ‘a student’.
but the means by which this is effected are worthy the attention of those who admire that bulwark of popular rights, the 40s. a year freehold. He ... has never resided in the county, scarcely even seen it. But Lords Shannon and Kingston have two battalions of organized freeholders raised upon their estates ... who together outnumber all the rest, and it suits them for private and political reasons to have it so represented.
Add. 51687.
The Southern Reporter believed that the ‘county would revolt at such a step’, and a few days later Boyle of Cork started in ‘opposition to his namesake’, who had been ‘silent on the Catholic question’. During the ensuing canvass, however, John Boyle declared his ‘unequivocal’ support for Catholic emancipation, to widespread approval. At the nomination the other Boyle announced his withdrawal, explaining that ‘whenever I took the hustings of this county, or of this city ... there was some obnoxious candidate to be grappled with’, but ‘such is not the case on the present occasion’. After a plea by Stawell for attention to local taxation and grand jury abuses, John Boyle was returned unopposed.
In September 1828 a county Brunswick Club was established with the support of the high sheriff John Longfield of Longueville and John Swete, Bandon’s land agent, but it attracted few ‘Protestant gentry of rank, fortune, and talent’. A Protestant declaration got up in favour of Catholic claims that November was signed by King, Kingsborough, Stawell and Wrixon Becher. On 16 Jan. 1829 a Catholic meeting was held in support of Lord Anglesey, the recalled Irish viceroy.
At the 1830 general election King offered again and John Boyle made way for Shannon’s heir Viscount Boyle, who had recently come of age. Smith Barry was pressed to stand by John Dillon Croker, but, following protests that he was a Brunswicker, he declined, referring to the ‘melancholy situation of the near relative of one of the late Members’. (Kingston had had a mental breakdown and Kingsborough had assumed control of the family interests.) ‘Strenuous efforts’ were made by the independents to ‘bring forth a third candidate’ and ‘redeem the county from being a borough’. John Townsend of the 14th Hussars, grandson of Richard Townsend, Member in the Irish Parliament, 1759-83, was spoken of, but on inquiry his family at Castle Townsend ‘knew nothing’. Ronayne, who claimed to be ‘a cousin’ of O’Connell, was ‘importuned to offer’, but refused, ‘despairing of success in the present state’ of the registry. On the hustings Viscount Boyle professed support for economy and reduced taxation and was unexpectedly endorsed by Boyle of Cork as the ‘legitimate representative of the House of Shannon’. King defended his vote with ministers for an unpopular pension and criticized Smith Barry’s mention of his father’s illness, blaming the state of the registry for his failure to stand. In a lengthy harangue, Ronayne declared that it was ‘useless to seek pledges’ from Members who were ‘not chosen by the county’ and deprecated ‘this mode of filling the Commons’ as a ‘contemptible farce’. King and Viscount Boyle were returned unopposed.
Petitions were presented to the Commons against the grant to the Kildare Place Society, 14, 26 July, and for the re-establishment of the Cork naval depot, 26 July 1831.
By the Irish Reform Act, 687 leaseholders (553 registered at £10 and 134 at £20) and 32 rent-chargers (14 at £20 and 18 at £50) were added to the freeholders, who had decreased slightly to 3,116 (1,735 registered at £10, 473 at £20 and 908 at £50), giving a reformed constituency of 3,835. Three-thousand-and-twenty-two polled at the general election of 1832, when Boyle retired and King stood unsuccessfully as a Liberal against another Liberal, Standish Barry, two Conservatives, and the Repealer and future Chartist Feargus O’Connor.
See I. D’Alton, Protestant Society and Politics in Cork.
Registered freeholders: 5448 in 1829; 3138 in 1830