Tyrone, a county of mountains and bogs intermixed with fertile agricultural areas, collieries and bleach fields, had a population of about 300,000 in 1831. The predominance of its Protestant inhabitants, who formed the bulk of the large electorate, was especially marked in Omagh, the county town, as well as in the disfranchised boroughs of Augher, Clogher and Strabane.
By 1818 the representation was left in the hands of two branches of the Stewart family. Sir John Stewart of Ballygawley House, the former Irish law officer, was again brought in with the support of the Liverpool administration and the approval of the Abercorn and Belmore interests. His distant and, as it turned out, anti-Catholic Whig kinsman William Stewart of Killymoon, whose family had long provided one of the Members with the backing of Caledon and the independent gentry, regained the seat which his father had given up six years earlier, after a compromise with government.
Following the death of Sir John Stewart in June 1825, his heir Hugh, who claimed that his father would have brought him forward as his replacement had he lived, was thought of as a possible successor. However, Belmore, whose elder son Lord Corry had been returned for Fermanagh in 1823, used the opportunity to introduce his other young son, Henry Lowry Corry. The degree of Belmore’s preponderance can be ascertained from the fact that Corry’s colleague, Mervyn Archdall of Castle Archdall, county Fermanagh, placed his interest in Tyrone at the disposal of Lowry Corry, rather than of his nephew Sir Hugh Stewart. Proposed by John Corry Moutray of Favor Royal and Robert William Lowry of Pomeroy, Lowry Corry was elected unopposed later that month, when there were just over 9,000 registered electors.
The clergy and gentry of Tyrone, although unrepresentative of the county as some thought, mustered for a grand dinner in honour of Verner in Omagh, with Corry representing his absent brother, 6 Nov., and attended in force at the anti-Catholic county meeting, with Sir Hugh Stewart taking the lead in proposing resolutions, 1 Dec. 1826.
In December 1828 Belmore, who had been appointed governor of Jamaica that year, unsuccessfully solicited a position in government for his son from the prime minister, the duke of Wellington, to whom he commented that
although in the Protestant county of Tyrone ... I should entertain no doubt whatever of his re-election ... yet at the present moment I should not by any means consider it advisable for him to risk the chance of a contest ... lest it might afford another opportunity for ‘agitation’.
Belmore mss G/39/4; Wellington mss WP1/971/19.
Lowry Corry, who voted against Catholic emancipation, was considered secure, but the almost total absence from Parliament of his sick colleague rendered the latter vulnerable. In the autumn of 1829 Wellington recommended Sir James Matthew Stronge of Tynan Abbey, county Armagh, as a suitable replacement, but Belmore, suspicious of such an interloper, avoided committing himself and asked the premier to deal directly with Corry on the matter. The family strategy was evidently to await the candidacy of a Hamilton on the Abercorn interest, although as this was still managed by young 2nd marquess’s uncle and stepfather, the 4th earl of Aberdeen, the foreign secretary, it was in any case likely that its backing would be given to Stronge.
After the apparently ailing William Stewart had confirmed his resignation, the contenders at the general election of 1830 were: Lowry Corry, who had presented the Tyrone petition against the increased Irish stamp and spirit duties on 9 July; Stronge, the retiring Member’s chosen successor, who was reported to be Caledon’s ‘tool or nominee’ in his bid to turn the county into a ‘close borough’; and Sir Hugh Stewart, a declared ministerialist, who had already won over Belmore and, once Moutray had declined, secured the backing of the independent interest. Yet Stronge, depicted as a creature of government, soon shied from a contest, citing the inadequate state of his registry and complaining of the ‘powerful (and to me unexpected) junction’ against him. (He never sat in Parliament, but his heir of the same name was later Conservative Member for county Armagh.) Lowry Corry, proposed by John Dixon Eccles of Ecclesville and James Lowry of Rockdale as no slavish adherent of ministers, and Sir Hugh Stewart, nominated by Verner and the Rev. John Grey Porter, rector of Kilskerry, as an independent, were elected unopposed.
Caledon, who despite his hostility to reform was appointed lord lieutenant of Tyrone in the autumn of 1831, approved the requisition for a county meeting to address William IV in defence of the Protestant interest. It was held in Omagh under Stronge’s chairmanship, 26 Jan. 1832, when the Orangemen again attended in strength at the dinner, which was presided over by the county’s grandmaster, Joseph Grier of Desertcrate.
Registered freeholders: 6701 in 1829; 773 in 1830