Built along a narrow peninsula at the centre of Galway Bay, the overwhelmingly Catholic borough of Galway was described in 1818 by John Christian Curwen* as being ‘of great length and crowded with low, mean cabins, which shelter a numerous population, living apparently in great poverty’, and in 1834 by Maria Edgeworth as ‘the dirtiest town I ever saw, and the most desolate and idle-looking’. Its manufactures were in decline and its port in need of attention, but what prosperity it still boasted was maintained through its trade and fisheries; the prevailing indigence no doubt contributed to the corruption and violence of elections, while the tight-knit seafaring community at Claddagh was said to be a law unto itself.
little more than a name: the ancient state and insignia of that formerly proud and opulent body have been entirely laid aside, the old and creditable offices of alderman, chamberlain, burgess, etc., have fallen into disuse and its possessions have been alienated; so that it now seems to be upheld by the respectable [Daly] family in which it has become almost hereditary, merely for the valuable patronage which it confers, and for the parliamentary representation of the town, which is commanded by means of the non-resident freemen.
However, as his History also pointed out, the electoral patron, the former Tory Member and many times mayor James Daly of Dunsandle, who had sat for the county since 1812 and had gradually taken over the handling of borough affairs from his Whig colleague and cousin Denis Bowes Daly† (d. 1821) of Dalystown, had been opposed since the Union by a growing independent interest, and it was unclear which side would ultimately triumph.
Of the two elements in the electorate in the county of the borough of Galway, which extended three or four miles beyond the confines of the town, the role of the 40s. freeholders, who usually accounted for about half the total number of electors, was uncontroversial. By contrast the right of voting exercised by the freemen was contentious for two reasons. First, by the terms of a special dispensation in the Galway Act of 1717 (4 Geo. I, c. 15 [I]), the admission of freemen by virtue of their status as tradesmen was restricted to Protestants only, so that, notwithstanding the Relief Act of 1793, the resident Catholic tradesmen, who had organized themselves into an informal system of trade guilds in order to further their claims, were effectively disfranchised. Second, with the usual qualifications of birth, marriage and apprenticeship being no longer recognized, Daly was able to secure electoral domination by creating honorary freemen among the (Catholic) tenants on his distant estates, so that almost all the freemen were in fact non-resident.
Yet, by the general election of 1820, the political standing of Blake, whose side of the story was later propagated in numerous letters to the press and a series of election petitions to the Commons (which he probably drafted), had been badly damaged. Taking advantage of a legal ruling in 1818 in favour of the validity of the non-resident freeman votes, of which he promptly manufactured several hundred more, Daly made public the secret arrangement he had agreed with Blake at that year’s election; it suited Blake’s purpose to portray Daly as the instigator of this compromise, but it does appear to have been Daly’s modus operandi to subvert potential rivals in this way. Under this deal, Blake was to back the Liverpool administration in the House and to leave the borough patronage to Daly in return for enjoying undisturbed possession of his seat; Prendergast had retired during the poll for this reason. For all his protestations of having their true interests at heart, at least in holding on to the seat against an otherwise overwhelmingly strong patron, this revelation compromised Blake’s credibility with the independent freeholders, who in any case disliked his continued alignment with ministers.
On the hustings, 30 Mar. 1820, when Prendergast was proposed by Charles Blake of Merlin Park and Valentine Blake by Robert Hedges Maunsell, a nephew of Eyre and himself a possible independent candidate, Daly denied none of the allegations voiced against him, but stated that he would accede to the electors’ requests provided his interest was preserved. Prendergast, a pro-Catholic ministerialist, led throughout the nearly two-week poll and finished with a majority of 434, having received the votes of 948 (65 per cent) of the 1,462 electors (832 freemen and 630 freeholders) polled; Blake received only three votes fewer than he had in 1818, but was overwhelmed by Prendergast’s additional 618 votes, which were presumably almost all from newly created non-resident freemen.
Galway issued addresses to the king on his visit to Ireland in August 1821 and to Lord Wellesley on his appointment as lord lieutenant in January, and again, following the Orange attack on him in a Dublin theatre, in December 1822. A meeting was held to raise a subscription for famine relief, 6 May, and mercantile petitions for repeal of the salt duties reached the Commons, 19 July 1822, 14 Apr. 1824.
From the autumn of 1824 speculation arose over the implications of the known ambitions of Clanricarde, who was eyeing one of the county Galway seats as well as the borough representation. In particular, it was widely supposed that Daly, in order to secure his own return for the county against Clanricarde’s candidate James Lambert* of Cregclare, would coalesce with his colleague Richard Martin of Ballynahinch Castle, in exchange for which Martin’s eldest son Thomas Barnewall Martin†, who had been thought of as an independent challenger in 1812, would be given a free run for the town, provided he respected Daly’s supremacy there.
we will see about Mr. Valentine Blake, but I am afraid he is not a very producible person. He has just written to me the most preposterous letter that could be imagined - to procure my interference with the lord chancellor to alter some judicial proceedings in the House of Lords ... But I do not mean that I will not therefore do what I can to take him off your hands, though (after such a specimen) I must be very cautious as to the mode of doing it.
Referring to the rapturous reception given to O’Connell, including at a dinner for him, that summer, Clanricarde replied optimistically to Canning, 19 July, that ‘O’Connell has great influence and he has spoken in Galway town in my favour knowing my politics to be ministerial, and this act may have great effect on my popularity’.
His negotiation with the Martins having failed, Daly adopted a two-handed covert strategy prior to the dissolution in 1826. He indicated to the independents that he was ready to accept one of their number, although he placed his veto against Blake, and simultaneously he agreed to allow Clanricarde (in return for not opposing him in the county) to bring forward his own man in the form of this same, ostensibly independent, individual. The choice fell on Thomas Gisborne Burke of Greenfield, a relative of Clanricarde, for whom Blake, in order not to alienate Daly, obligingly gave way.
During Tom Martin’s cross-examination my situation was once or twice rather ticklish, having never heard from you the exact nature of your understanding with Daly, and therefore I had to take care to say as little as possible and yet not to say too little, for you can conceive nothing like the fears of the people here of being betrayed by us. Were you to have perceived the deathlike silence during every question of T. Martin’s to me, and my reply, and the wild bursts of applause which succeeded, you would have felt at once (what was indeed the fact) that my being able to come in without the aid of the non-resident freemen depended on each of those replies. The scene was the crisis of our popularity, for the body of the people have more unbiased votes among them and one of much more importance here than I thought. Pray send me without delay the particulars of your understanding with Daly, and watch him, for I am convinced he has a twist in him about the town yet.
The upshot was that Martin briefly started on his own account; Burke soon withdrew rather than incur further odium; Dudley Persse of Roxborough was substituted for him by Clanricarde, despite Canning’s plea for him to compromise; and O’Hara, the respected recorder, emerged as an unexpected and unlikely candidate.
Persse, hopelessly unpopular as Daly’s suspected nominee, even though he purported to be the Clanricarde and independent candidate, was greeted with only lukewarm applause when he was proposed by Charles Blake, 17 June 1826. However, O’Hara, who received the endorsement of the committee of independents and was nominated by their chairman, Dr. Henry Blake of Renvyle, was acclaimed for his pledges to support the Catholic tradesmen and promote town improvements. A poll was begun but it soon degenerated into violence, especially after the brutal county contest, with which it was closely bound up, started in the town two days later: Persse, who was beaten up, resigned after only four of his supporters had been allowed to vote, and, standing in his place, neither Burke, who likewise withdrew under threat of assassination, nor Walter Blake of Oran Castle, whose schooner was burnt out, could get a single voter to the booths. O’Hara, who apparently received the votes of many independents, was therefore returned after an abbreviated poll, but it was Daly, not his opponents, though they kept their faith in O’Hara for a time, and still less the duped Clanricarde, who had cause for celebration. For O’Hara, another largely inactive pro-Catholic Member, was, despite his protestations to the contrary, as much Daly’s man as Prendergast had been; it soon transpired that Daly, who had attempted to poll the non-resident freemen for O’Hara, had set up Burke and Persse as decoys for his true object, which was to give the seat to a local loyalist.
In November 1827, when he presided at the dinner in honour of the young liberal William McDermott of Springfield, O’Hara, who had asked how he should improve the condition of the town, was urged to unite in opposing the dominant corporation over the admission of the resident Catholics.
Following meetings of the inhabitants, 1 Mar., and the corporation, 4 Mar., pro-Catholic petitions were presented to the Lords by Clanricarde and Anglesey, 9, 12 Mar., and to the Commons by O’Hara, 18 Mar. 1829.
Both O’Hara, who chaired the meeting at which it was decided to petition for a bill to improve the local docks and for a revival of the Galway franchise bill, 10 Jan. 1830, and his main rival for the representation, Blake, who enlisted O’Connell’s support, were active in promoting the interests of the town that year, their efforts being avidly reported in the local press.
O’Hara was challenged only by Blake, though there were rumours that James Hardiman Burke or the barrister John Henry North* would start on the corporation and Daly interest or that Thomas Martin would canvass as an independent, at the general election of 1830, when the electorate was said to have risen by 587 freeholders and 146 honorary freemen since 1820.
A town meeting, under the chairmanship of the radical Galway barrister Lachlan Maclachlan, approved petitions in favour of another legislative attempt to enfranchise the Catholic tradesmen, 29 Sept., and numerous petitions to this effect were brought up from 18 Nov. 1830 onwards. Although Rice moved the first reading of a new franchise bill, 3 Feb. 1831, there was no possibility of taking it further that session, and the Galway Docks Act amendment bill, which was introduced by O’Hara, 13 Dec. 1830, also ran out of legislative time.
The usual names were touted at the general election of 1831, when the main surprise was that O’Hara, who had voted for the English reform bill, chose to retire from the fray on the ostensible ground that the cause of independence had already been secured, and that Daly, who might have stood himself or brought forward Thomas Martin, decided not to contest the seat. The scene therefore looked set for a struggle between two Catholic Liberals: Thomas Bodkin’s young son John James Bodkin of Quarrymount, a native and resident, and Andrew Henry Lynch†, son of James Lynch of the Castle, Galway, who had rendered effective service to the town in his practice as a London barrister.
The vexed question of the franchise had been raised during the election and another meeting took place, under Bodkin’s superintendence, to petition for giving the vote to the Catholic tradesmen, 12 May 1831. To the surprise and delight of the Connaught Journal, in June Daly at last acted to promote what the newspaper termed his own true interest, both by sanctioning the admission of nearly 800 mostly Catholic inhabitants to the freedom, though it was alleged he favoured his political supporters, and by releasing funds for the improvement of the town.
In January 1832, when the boundary commissioners visited Galway, there were 1,006 freemen, of whom only 83 were resident within seven miles of the borough, and 1,088 freeholders, including 921 40s. ones, making a total electorate of 2,094, exclusive of the 1,034 newly elected and mostly Catholic freemen, all but three of them residents, who had not yet been admitted because of the prohibitively expensive stamp duty. It was calculated that after the passage of the Irish measure, the electorate would comprise the 1,088 freeholders plus the 83 resident freemen and 454 new £10 householder voters, making 1,625 in total.
in the freemen and 40s. freeholders
Number of voters: 1462 in 1820
Estimated voters: about 2,100 in 1831
Population: 27775 (1821); 33120 (1831)