Co. Louth

Louth was the smallest county in Ireland at 200,000 acres and had the second smallest population of 108,168 in 1831. There were several market towns, including the disfranchised boroughs of Ardee, Carlingford and Dunleer, and a flourishing agricultural market and shipping port for cattle at Dundalk, where county elections took place. S. Lewis, Top. Dict. of Ireland (1837), ii. 317, 318; The Times, 15 Dec. 1832; PP (1831-2), xxxvi. 299. The representation had long been dominated by the last Irish Speaker, John Foster of Collon, who had sat undisturbed since the Union, and Robert, 2nd earl of Roden, whose son and heir, the staunchly Protestant Viscount Jocelyn, had sat since 1806. At the 1820 general election there were rumours of a challenge from their erstwhile ally Viscount Clermont of Ravensdale Park, Member, 1801-6, who the previous year had threatened to put up his pro-Catholic nephew Sir Henry James Goodricke of Ribston, Yorkshire, to ‘relieve the county from the thraldom in which it has been so long kept’. Nothing came of this and the Members, opponents of Catholic relief and supporters of the Liverpool government, were returned unopposed. Malcomson, 139; PRO NI, Redhall mss MIC582/1/19, 16 Mar.; Dublin Evening Post, 18 Mar. 1820. Thereafter the Foster and Jocelyn interests sought to consolidate their electoral strength by attending to the registration of their tenants, none of whom, however, was eligible to vote at the by-election of August 1820 necessitated by Jocelyn’s succession to his father’s earldom. (After 1809 Irish freeholders had to have been on the register for at least one year before they could vote.) John Jocelyn of Tairhill, brother of the late earl, came forward as the family nominee with the approval of Foster. He was joined by Blayney Townley Balfour of Townley Hall, one of the leaders of the ‘old independent interest’ and a supporter of emancipation, who offered with the backing of Sir Edward Bellew of Barmeath, an influential local Catholic landowner. After an ‘examination of the registries’ it became clear that Balfour had no chance and he withdrew, leaving Jocelyn to be returned unopposed. Malcomson, 139, 319; Redhall mss 1/34; Belfast News Letter, 1 Aug. 1820. He and Foster got up a loyal address to the king at a county meeting, 8 Jan. 1821. Belfast Commercial Chron. 17 Jan. 1821. Foster’s elevation to a United Kingdom peerage as Baron Oriel in July that year created another vacancy, for which his son and heir Thomas Henry Skeffington came forward. Clermont and Bellew backed Balfour, but by the time the writ was moved the 293 freeholders registered by Oriel in the previous year were qualified, albeit by only a matter of days. As Balfour’s son observed, ‘Skeffington must come in, as our registry is hardly old enough’. This, and a realization that either by the death of Oriel or his wife Viscountess Ferrard, a peeress in her own right, there must soon be another vacancy, convinced Balfour to decline and Skeffington was returned unopposed. Malcomson, 140, 319; Add. 40329, f. 227; Dublin Evening Post, 30 Sept. 1821. In January 1824 his succession to his mother’s peerage brought about the anticipated vacancy, for which it had ‘long since been arranged’ that Oriel’s nephew John Leslie Foster of Rathescar would come forward. As Oriel and Clermont had recently rekindled their ‘old and long intimacy’, no opposition was expected ‘unless a burst of Catholic feeling should create one’. Balfour, ‘who was to have opposed him, will not it is believed now stand’, noted Goulburn, the Irish secretary, to Peel, the home secretary, 19 Jan. Foster was duly returned unopposed. Malcomson, 140; Add. 40330, f. 11; 40360, f. 128; Drogheda Jnl. 25, 28 Feb. 1824. He gave steady support to the ministry, opposed Catholic relief and presented Louth petitions for maintenance of the corn laws and attention to the interests of millers, 28 Apr. 1825. The Times, 29 Apr. 1825; CJ, lxxx. 350, 351.

By early 1825 Jocelyn’s poor health and his family’s lack of an obvious successor had prompted calls from the ‘old independent interest’ for him to make way for Sir William Bellingham of Castle Bellingham. Roden apparently relented, offering to let Jocelyn ‘resign any time he wishes it, before the dissolution’, but at a meeting with Bellingham, 12 Feb., Oriel urged him to ‘be patient and not risk a contest while the Catholic Association existed, in the present uncertainty of what may be the discontent and party rage on their disappointments’, and persuaded him ‘not to solicit, advertise or canvass, till a dissolution be announced, except in the case of Jocelyn’s death’. By September, however, it had emerged that Bellingham was ineligible to sit in Parliament, and Matthew Fortescue of Stephenstown, another prominent member of the ‘independent interest’ and a kinsman of Clermont, was adopted with the backing of Roden, whose ‘locum tenens’ he was later alleged to be. PRO NI, Chilham (Foster) mss T2519/4/2044; Malcomson, 141-2; Drogheda Jnl., 17 June 1826. On 17 Oct. 1825 a meeting of the ‘Catholics of Louth’ was held at Dundalk, chaired by Bellew and their ‘secretary’ Anthony Marmion, who issued a circular four days later denouncing the ‘unnatural state of the representation’ and calling for a meeting of the freeholders to nominate ‘one or two liberal candidates who will pledge themselves to support civil and religious liberty in Parliament’. Nothing came of this, and the meeting ended acrimoniously. Marmion failed to carry a motion censuring Daniel O’Connell* for his ‘corrupt and personal’ support of the ‘wings’ of the Catholic relief bill, made in response to a vote of thanks proposed by Nicholas Markey of Welchestown, and O’Connell subsequently denied the charges distinctly in the Catholic press. O’Connell Corresp. iii. 1258; Malcomson, 142, 143; Dublin Evening Post, 3 Nov. 1825.

At the 1826 dissolution Jocelyn quietly retired. Balfour was pressed to stand on the Catholic interest, but he refused and it was expected that Foster and Fortescue would be returned unopposed. On 13 June, however, Alexander Dawson of Riverstown, who the previous day had secured 600 ‘promises’, started as an ‘emancipator’, expressing disappointment that no one had offered to ‘rescue’ the county from its ‘hereditary bondage’ and urging the Catholic freeholders to ‘imitate the illustrious electors of Westminster’ and return him free of expense, ‘not so much for myself, but for the cause of our beloved country’. Encouraged by the Catholic press and reports that the Catholic Association (and O’Connell in person) would assist the campaign, Bellew threw his considerable influence behind Dawson, offering to serve as chairman of his committee and donating £240 to his subscription. The support of other leading Catholics quickly followed, notably Edward Byrne of Dundalk (£240), George Taafe of Smarmore (£120) and James Curragher of Cardistown (£72), and within a week the fund had reached £2,173 (including £360 given by Dawson). Malcomson, 142, 143; Dublin Evening Post, 25 May, 6, 15, 20 June; Drogheda Jnl. 7, 14, 21 June 1826; PRO NI, Foster mss D207/73/60, 64; Chilham (Foster) mss T2529/11/1, 2. In the event Richard Sheil* came instead of O’Connell and, after mass on Sunday 18 June, made a speech to a large crowd outside Dundalk chapel, likening the claim of Irish landlords to direct their tenants’ votes to their feudal right ‘upon the marriage of the daughter of any of his tenants, to conduct her to his own bed’:

If you would regard that man as a degraded and despicable wretch, who would give up his daughter to his landlord, you should hold the Catholic freeholder as hardly less abominable and base, who would surrender his integrity, yield up his honour, sacrifice his conscience, and immolate his religion, to the dictates of an oppressive and tyrannical master. Foster mss D562/14691.

The speech, Markey informed O’Connell, ‘astonished all parties’ and Louth ‘after slumbering fifty-five years is again awake and determined to be free’. O’Connell Corresp. iii. 1316. A ‘vast multitude with banners of green’, estimated at ‘not less than 5,000 persons’ by O’Connell, accompanied Dawson in an ‘old gig’ to the nomination, 21 June, when Foster, who appeared to have been taken completely by surprise, denounced the attempts of the Association to ‘separate the tenantries from their landlord’ and vigorously defended his conscientious opposition to emancipation. Sheil, who had ‘announced himself a freeholder of the county’ and demanded to speak, retorted that ‘our conscience compels us to vote against you’ and argued at length in support of Dawson. Fortescue claimed not to have made up his mind on the Catholic question, but was shouted down amidst charges of being Roden’s nominee. A violent seven-day poll ensued, which, as Fortescue’s uncle Henry McClintock observed, was ‘decidedly Papist against Protestant’ owing to the ‘great exertions of the Roman Catholic priests, who are indefatigable for Dawson’ and ‘harangue the freeholders coming in and tell them if they vote for Dawson their souls will be saved but, if they oppose him, they will be damned’.Sketches, Legal and Political ed. M. Savage, i. 167-72; O’Connell Corresp. iii. 1316; Dublin Evening Post, 27 June; Drogheda Jnl. 1 July 1826; Redhall mss 1/43. Foster later told Peel that the priests had ‘visited every Catholic who had a vote’ and raised ‘a personal fury almost demoniacal’ against him:

Very many Protestants were forced to vote against me by the threats of assassination or having their houses burnt. My voters were waylaid by large mobs along every line of road, and severely beaten, not merely in coming but in returning. Lord Oriel’s tenantry, who most of them proved steady, were attacked ten miles distant from the county town by a mob of above a thousand persons collected for the purpose, and the continued escort of military became at last indispensable. When the poll commenced, all the priests of the county were collected and distributed through the different booths, where they stood with glaring eyes directly opposite to the voters of their respective flocks as they were severally brought up. In the county town the studied violence and intimidation were such that it was only by locking up my voters in inclosed yards that their lives were spared. Parker, Peel, i. 410, 411.

At the end of the first day Dawson, Foster and Fortescue had secured 97, 123 and 90 votes respectively, but after the second, during which there was ‘great rioting’ and the infantry were summoned, Dawson was ahead by 45. Thereafter his lead widened, though the ‘exact state of the poll’, as McClintock noted, became ‘impossible to know’ owing to ‘several mistakes in the pollbooks’. Redhall mss 1/44. By the fifth day, when it appeared that Dawson had secured 797 votes to Foster’s 535 and Fortescue’s 515, it had become ‘notorious’ that the Catholics could have successfully fielded another candidate. Foster and Fortescue, who had initially ‘polled together by a kind of tacit coalition’, now began to ‘throw every impediment in each other’s way’ and to demand plumpers from their supporters. To the surprise of the Catholic press, however, Dawson’s supporters were not instructed to deploy their second votes against Foster, the more prominent anti-emancipationist, until the last minute, even though Fortescue had declared that ‘he was not such an enemy as people thought to the claims of his Catholic brethren’. Dublin Evening Post, 24, 27, 29 June 1826. As Foster recalled, towards ‘the close of the election the Catholics threw in their votes to the other Protestant candidate merely to get me out, but they were a little too late’. Parker, Peel, i. 411. It was subsequently claimed by James Abercromby* that when ‘it turned upon Sheil’ to decide between them, John Henry North*, Foster’s brother-in-law, ‘so prevailed upon Sheil that he gave his preference to Foster, for which he is condemned’. However, as a local paper suggested, Catholic hostility towards Roden, led by Marmion, was also a factor. In the event, Foster only secured his return in second place by five votes. Brougham mss, Abercromby to Brougham, 12 July; Drogheda Morning Post, 26 July 1826.

Much was later made of the unconstitutional interference of the Association and the ‘fury of the Popish mob and priests’, who, as Foster asserted at the declaration, 30 June, ‘lavishly superadded all the terrors of another world to every act of intimidation that can be practised in this’. Redhall mss 1/45; Drogheda Jnl. 5 July 1826. Moves for a petition against Dawson’s return, however, came to nothing. Malcomson, 147. Abercromby hailed the contest as a ‘sort of little bloodless revolution’ in which ‘the political power of the state has passed from the landed aristocracy, the natural supporters, into the hands of the Catholic priests, the natural enemies of government’, adding, ‘this would be strange in any country, but in this, where there is no middle class to steady the vessel, the purport is not a little awful’. Brougham mss, Abercromby to Brougham, 12 July 1826. Writing in similar terms to Peel, Foster contended that ‘the landlords are exasperated to the utmost’ and ‘the power of these priests is become so tremendous, and their fury in the exercise of it so great, that I begin to fear a crisis of some kind or other is not far distant’. Parker, Peel, i. 411, 412. Other factors, however, were also at work. A few days before the election Oriel’s tenantry had received confusing notices on behalf of Lord Downes, the trustee of his estates, referring in error to ‘the late Rt. Hon. Lord Oriel’. Foster’s brother William believed that ‘the offensive word late’ had ‘occasioned much speculation’, while Oriel, who was abroad at the time, asserted that ‘it nearly proved fatal to John Leslie’s election’. Foster mss D207/73/6; Malcomson, 328. More significantly, not only had the Fosters entered the contest with only 270 of their tenants registered as freeholders (compared with 420 in 1821-2), but as a result of objections from Sheil, 105 of them were found to have ‘affidavits of registry filled by incompetent persons’ and were struck off, despite the attempts of North to persuade the returning officer of ‘the assessor’s stupidity’. (Roden, by contrast, had reregistered 224 of his 298 freeholders ‘in one batch’ in May 1825, all of whom became eligible to vote shortly before the poll.) After the election the Fosters issued new affidavits and reregistered their tenantry, bringing their strength back up to 360 voters by December 1828. Similar activities by the Louth Independent Club, which had been formed out of Dawson’s committee and was chaired at its quarterly meetings by Bellew’s son Patrick, added 170 new Catholic freeholders to the registers in September 1826 and hundreds more at ensuing revisions. Malcomson, 146, 150, 320; Dublin Evening Post, 20 June, 1, 8 July 1826; 3 July 1827; Foster mss D562/14691; D207/73/65, 136. Their attempts in 1828 to procure Thomas Wallace II*, a well-connected pro-Catholic agitator, as a future candidate for the county, however, came to nothing. Wellington mss WP1/953/6.

In the House Dawson and Foster took opposite sides over repeal of the Test Acts, for which petitions reached the Commons, 21, 22 Feb., 21 Mar. 1828, and Catholic claims, for which petitions were presented to both Houses, 16 Mar. 1827. CJ, lxxxii. 327; lxxxiii. 90, 95, 189; LJ, lix. 166. Both Members, however, supported the Wellington ministry’s concession of emancipation, against which petitions reached the Commons, 4 Mar., and the Lords, 30 Mar. 1829. CJ, lxxxiv. 103; LJ, lxi. 313. By the accompanying alteration of the franchise, which Foster helped to frame and Dawson opposed, the registered electorate of 1829 was reduced from 2,675 to 365, of whom 286 qualified at the new minimum freehold value of £10, 45 at £20 and 33 at £50 (one 40s. freeholder somehow retained his qualification). PP (1830), xxix. 470. A petition against the disfranchisement of 40s. freeholders holding property ‘in perpetuity’ was presented to the Lords, 10 Apr. 1829. LJ, lxi. 383. That June, prompted by rumours that Foster would be promoted to Irish legal office, two Catholic candidates announced their intention of standing and began to ‘fight among themselves’. Richard Montesquieu Bellew, younger son of Sir Edward, offered ‘on the interest of his ancient house’, headed since 1827 by his brother Sir Patrick. Sheil also declared, attacking the ‘feudal or hereditary sympathies’ of ‘Bellew’s addresses’. The Times, 8 June 1829. Both addressed meetings of the Louth Independent Club, which at its quarterly meeting in May had decided not to disband, and solicited the support of the former Irish viceroy Lord Anglesey, who owned ‘considerable property’ in Louth. F. O’Ferall, Catholic Emancipation, 275; The Times, 8 Aug., 29 Oct. 1829. In September 1829 Sheil offered to withdraw in favour of Lord William Paget* or any other member of Anglesey’s family, a course strongly favoured by Pierce Mahony†, a former parliamentary agent of the Association, who believed that any Paget would be ‘returned without opposition’. Sheil, however, was certain that Bellew would ‘under any circumstances contest the county’. PRO NI Anglesey mss D619/32/A/3/1/212; 32/A/3/1/219. A report that month by William Kiernan of Dundalk, a founder member of the Independent Club who had undertaken the ‘effective registry of the ten pound freeholders’ in June, indicated that Bellew only had 42 freeholders and would be left in ‘a hollow minority’. Sheil’s canvass at the end of the year, by when it was evident that neither Lord William nor Sir Charles Paget* would offer and that Sheil would have Anglesey’s full support, was ‘particularly successful’. Ibid. 33A/70; 32/A/3/1/254.

In April 1830 John McClintock of Drumcar, brother of Henry McClintock and a kinsman of Foster, entered the field stressing his ‘constant residency in the county’ and claiming support from Roden, Fortescue and ‘nearly all the landed proprietors’. Ibid. 32C/3, 8. Balfour advised Lord Francis Leveson Gower, the Irish secretary, 1 May, that ‘McClintock certainly stands, that Bellew is timid and will probably not fight and if this be the case Sheil will unite the Roman Catholic votes, so that we have every reason to dread a regular religious contest’. Leveson Gower regretted that the contest was ‘certain to assume a sectarian character’, in which case he would be unable ‘to exert a government interest in favour’ of Sheil, and agreed with the duke of Northumberland, the new Irish viceroy, that it might be ‘expedient to remain neutral’. Wellington, the premier, did not ‘think it right that the government should depart from its usual course’ of supporting the Fosters ‘in order to gratify’ Sheil, who ‘must stand on the illegitimate property of the priests’, although he could ‘easily account for the anxiety of the lord lieutenant to do so’. Add. 40338, ff. 163, 165. Leveson Gower informed Archdeacon Singleton that he felt ‘much regret in stating that I cannot but defer to the duke’s arguments’, and, in a letter which broke ‘through the ordinary rules’, advised Sheil:

If Mr. McClintock starts for Louth, as a representative of the Foster interest, I am inclined to think that it will be found a matter of obligation on the part of government ... to give such support as it has to give to the representative of an interest which has continuously supported it for many years. NAI, Leveson Gower letterbks. 7. B.3. 33, Leveson Gower to Singleton, same to Sheil, 17 May 1830.

The expected by-election did not occur, and by the time Foster eventually received his commission, it was correctly conjectured that no writ would be moved owing to the king’s approaching death. Belfast Guardian, 11 June 1830.

At the 1830 general election Dawson offered again. Bellew, Sheil and McClintock also came forward, as did Marmion, but merely, noted McClintock’s brother Henry, ‘to give him the power of making a speech’. In a letter read out by Marmion at a county meeting, 15 July, O’Connell offered to stand in the event of the retirement of Sheil and Bellew, who between them ran ‘a great risk of throwing the country into Orange hands’, but only if this did ‘not affect Dawson in any way’. At the same meeting Thomas Fitzgerald of Fane Valley, a wealthy West India merchant who had been solicited to start as an ‘independent’ liberal, declined, stressing the ‘necessity of unanimity and co-operation’. Dawson declared an ‘amicable neutrality’ towards the other candidates, explaining that he would have retired if that ‘independence which was won by so many sacrifices was not alarmingly endangered not so much by the strength of your opponents, as by the unfortunate, but I hope temporary divisions amongst yourselves’. Various attempts to ‘devise a means of uniting the popular interest’, however, proved futile, and a last minute proposal to consult the registry and determine who had the majority came to nothing. Shortly before the election Marmion withdrew and declared for Dawson, using the occasion to denounce the ‘falsehoods’ employed by the Louth Free Press in its support of Sheil, who, he pointed out, ‘actually pays for the stamps bearing its impression’. A turbulent three-day contest ensued, during which two troops of the 7th Hussars were called out to assist the police (who were above one hundred strong) in ‘quelling the riots’, and polling was twice suspended on account of ‘broken heads’. The ‘violent speeches’ of Sheil and his party, in particular, were said to have inflamed ‘the populace to madness’ against the Bellews, who became ‘objects of unmixed execration and contempt’ and were burnt in effigy. Dublin Evening Post, 13, 17 July, 12, 14 Aug.; Drogheda Jnl. 10, 13, 17, 20, 24 July, 14, 17 Aug. 1830; Redhall mss 2/23-5.

Dawson, who campaigned cheaply without recourse to agents or carriages, led throughout, leaving the contest mainly between Sheil and McClintock, who was ahead by 16 votes on the second day and narrowly returned in second place. Five-hundred-and-sixty-nine polled and 36 votes were rejected. Malcomson, 151, states that ‘in 1830 894 voters went to the polls’, but the total registered electorate of that year was only 695. See PP (1830), xxix. 470; Drogheda Jnl. 13 July; Dublin Evening Post, 14 Aug. 1830. The circulation of red handbills listing ‘the Brunswick Papists who voted against the independence of their country and against Richard Sheil’ was condemned as a ‘cowardly’ act by the leading county magistrates. At the instigation of Fortescue, the former candidate, £610 was subscribed to ‘protect all persons ... persecuted on account of their votes at the late election’, including £100 from Fortescue, £30 from McClintock, £30 from Sir Patrick Bellew and £20 each from Ferrard [Skeffington] and Roden. Meetings were also held for the purpose of remodelling the Independent Club under the direction of Berkeley Buckingham Stafford of Mayne. Rumours that Sheil would petition against McClintock’s return on account of his holding office as serjeant-at-arms to the Irish House came to nothing, as did the suggestion of Thomas Flanagan of Sligo, a disreputable local agitator, that Dawson was ready to resign in favour of Lord William Paget*. Drogheda Jnl. 21, 31 Aug.; The Times, 9 Oct. 1830; Anglesey mss 32C/12-14. Dawson supported and McClintock opposed the Grey ministry’s reform bill, in favour of which county meetings were held, attended by Balfour, Fitzgerald and Sir Patrick Bellew, 18 Mar., 3 Apr., and petitions reached the Lords, 23 Mar., and the Commons, 16 Apr. 1831. Drogheda Jnl. 19 Mar.; Dublin Evening Post, 12 Apr. 1831; LJ, lxiii. 363; CJ, lxxxvi. 494.

At the 1831 general election McClintock retired without explanation. Dawson stood again as a reformer and was joined by Sir Patrick Bellew, whom, it was alleged, Lord Plunket, the Irish lord chancellor, had ‘made’ come forward ‘in the name of government’. Sir Charles Paget*, Goodricke, Fitzgerald and Fortescue were also rumoured. At a meeting of the Independent Club, 4 May, Sheil was pressed to offer again by Fitzgerald and Stafford, who argued that ‘in so monstrous a crisis Louth required the services of the ablest man she could obtain’. Under pressure, Bellew consented to the ‘popular candidate’ being chosen at a public meeting, which it was conjectured would again end ‘in smoke’. Sensing an opportunity, George Macartney of Lissanoure Castle, county Antrim, came forward as an anti-reformer on the Foster and Roden interests. However, on 16 May Bellew, to the acclaim of the Catholic press, ‘obeyed the public will’ and withdrew in favour of Sheil, who, though already returned for Milborne Port as the nominee of Anglesey, the reappointed Irish viceroy, opted to sit for ‘that county which was foremost to break through the vassalage of the aristocracy’. Macartney promptly withdrew and Dawson and Sheil were returned unopposed. PRO NI, Pack-Beresford mss D664/A/245; Drogheda Jnl. 30 Apr., 3, 7, 10, 14, 17, 21 May; Dublin Evening Post, 7, 17, 19, 21 May; The Times, 25 May 1831. ‘Roden and Ferrard did all in their power to oppose a double radical return’, Charles Thackeray privately informed the primate, ‘but too late from the state of the registry to do any good’. PRO NI, Pack-Beresford mss D664/A/245. At the celebration dinner, 19 May 1831, Sheil announced that he would not offer again and proposed Fitzgerald as his successor, to which Marmion objected and proposed a toast to Bellew. Drogheda Jnl. 24 May 1831. Later reporting on the certainty of his being ‘strongly opposed by the gentry’ at another election, Sheil acknowledged that as ‘he was already in Parliament’, it had been ‘ungracious’ of him to interfere with Bellew, the ‘natural representative of the county’. Sketches, ii. 344. Both Members gave steady support to the reform bill.

Following Dawson’s sudden death in August 1831, the Irish secretary Smith Stanley warned Anglesey ‘not to let the enemy get the start of us’, noting that Bellew, ‘who under other circumstances would be the man, would hardly do, as they have one Catholic for the county already’. Anglesey mss 31D/58. He instead pressed the claims of Clermont’s nephew Goodricke, who duly started as a reformer, saying that he had ‘received an intimation that Bellew would not offer’ and that he was ‘possessed of property in the county’. (He gave his address as Ravensdale Park, then occupied by Clermont’s brother James Fortescue, but his status as a resident was questioned by the Catholic press.) Local opposition was quickly forthcoming and on 12 Sept., at a ‘unanimous’ meeting of the Louth freeholders got up by Stafford and Fitzgerald, Bellew was solicited to start as a reformer, on account of his past services and residence. He accepted and a few days later Goodricke withdrew. Bellew was returned unopposed. Drogheda Jnl. 27 Sept., 1 Oct.; Dublin Evening Post, 29 Sept.; The Times, 3 Oct. 1831.

A petition in favour of the Irish reform bill reached the Commons, 13 July 1832. CJ, lxxxvii. 487. By its terms 96 leaseholders (85 registered at £10 and eleven at £20) and 28 copyholders were added to the existing freeholders, giving a reformed constituency of 863. PP (1833), xxvii. 303. At the 1832 general election Bellew, who had recently been appointed lord lieutenant of the county, declined to give ‘an unqualified pledge’ in favour of repeal of the Union and stood down in favour of his brother Richard, who offered as a repealer. As promised, Sheil made way for the Liberal Fitzgerald. There was no opposition. Anglesey mss 28C/201-3; The Times, 15 Dec. 1832. In 1835 both the Bellews were seated as Liberals after a contest with Ferrard’s second son Chichester Thomas Skeffington Foster, a Conservative. Sir Patrick retired in 1837 and Richard in 1852, but the representation remained in Liberal hands until the Home Rule crisis.