Co. Kerry

The large county of Kerry, with its famously rugged and beautiful coastline, was home to a sizeable Catholic population, but, as was reported by the Dublin barrister Arthur Chichester Macartney to the Irish lord chancellor in 1822, the inhabitants were ‘wretchedly poor, and in civilization and improvement 150 years behind the northerns’.Add. 37298, f. 320; S. Lewis, Top. Dict. of Ireland (1837), ii. 39, 42. In 1818 the leading electoral patron, with his large estates in the east of the county, remained the Catholic Irish peer Lord Kenmare of Killarney House, whose family had controlled the disfranchised borough of Ardfert in the Irish Parliament. He, who became the 2nd earl on succeeding his far more active father in 1812, was usually credited with the prevailing influence in radical sources, but, like the 1st earl, he had to act in conjunction with the wishes of the other major interests. Still, it was largely through his support that the long-standing Whig Maurice Fitzgerald, knight of Kerry, a country gentleman of modest means but powerful connections, whose family had owned the disfranchised borough of Dingle for much of the eighteenth century, continued to hold the county seat that he had first won in 1795. Oldfield, Rep. Hist. (1816), vi. 235; Peep at the Commons (1820), 21; F.B. Hamilton, Picture of Parl. (1831), 45; Hist. Irish Parl. ii. 244-6; HP Commons, 1790-1820, ii. 659-61; A.P.W. Malcomson, John Foster, 340. The other principal electoral magnate, with his property based in west Kerry, was the 1st Baron Ventry (d. 1824) of Burnham House, who, in default of a suitable relation as his client Member, had mostly allied himself with the veteran James Crosbie of Ballyheigue. Crosbie, a kinsman of the 2nd earl of Glandore of Ardfert, who had been the influential head of the Crosbie parliamentary dynasty till his death in 1815, had served as the Kerry Member for nearly as long as the knight. As the militia colonel, custos rotulorum and sole governor, he held an exalted position in the county, and, as an adherent of Lord Liverpool’s Tory administration, he received most of its official patronage, so remaining well entrenched, despite his indolence and impecuniousness. Add. 40296, ff. 12, 13; 40297, ff. 7, 55, 56; 40298, f. 22; Hist. Irish Parl. ii. 244, 245; HP Commons, 1790-1820, ii. 659-61.

The most nationally prominent of the generally absentee landlords was the 3rd marquess of Lansdowne of Bowood, Wiltshire, who was at least once accused of mistreating his Catholic tenants. Dublin Evening Post, 3 Jan. 1822. He occasionally interested himself in electoral matters, although more typical of such figures was the marginally important 2nd Lord Headley of Aghadoe House. By contrast, the obscure would-be bishop and embittered cuckold, the 4th Baron Branden, who lived out his life in the remote rectory of Castleisland, played little part in county affairs. Add. 38282, f. 34; CP, ii. 280. Among the more influential local landowners, who were often confusingly intermarried, were Sir Rowland Blennerhassett of Blennerville, a relation of Arthur Blennerhassett of Ballyseedy; Sir Edward Denny* of Tralee Castle, who (with his father-in-law judge Robert Day of Loughlinstown, county Dublin) nominated the Member for the county town of Tralee; and Sir John Godfrey of Kilcolman Abbey. All of these had had ancestors in the Irish Commons, as did John Bateman† of Oakpark and Major William Carique Ponsonby of Crotto, while Richard Townsend Herbert of Cahernane had himself sat for Kerry in the 1780s, as from 1806 to 1812 had his kinsman Henry Arthur Herbert of Muckross, who was succeeded by his son Charles John in 1821. The chief Irish Catholic agitator Daniel O’Connell*, whose brothers John and James resided at Grenagh and Lakeview respectively, succeeded his uncle Maurice to Derrynane in 1825 and came to wield an electoral influence greater than territorial strength would ever represent, although he was not averse to exploiting the advantages of more customary political manoeuvring, for instance over the expected appointment of a new assistant barrister. O’Connell Corresp. ii. 847a; iii. 1329a.

In 1817 nearly 3,000 freeholders were added to the registers in expectation of a contest at the general election of the following year, when Denny’s eldest son Edward, who briefly sat for Tralee, in the end left the knight and Crosbie in undisturbed possession. PP (1824), xxi. 685; HP Commons, 1790-1820, ii. 660, 661. In the following years there were far fewer new registrations, and, although Denny and Arthur Blennerhassett were both spoken of as candidates, the sitting Members, who were jointly backed by the principal patrons, were returned unopposed at the general election of 1820. PP (1824), xxi. 685; Dublin Evening Post, 10, 17 Feb., 9, 11 Mar.; General Advertiser or Limerick Gazette, 18, 22 Feb., 10, 24 Mar. 1820. On this occasion both Crosbie, who again used his entrée to ministers to plead for a promotion in the peerage for Ventry, and, unlike in 1818, the knight, who was fêted at a public dinner in his honour, had the support of another non-resident landlord, the 1st Viscount Ennismore of Convamore, county Cork, who had a substantial estate at Listowel. Add. 38458, f. 298; PRO NI, Fitzgerald mss MIC639/11/6/28; O’Connell Corresp. ii. 825, 826. The knight and John O’Connell stifled the requisition for a county meeting on the Queen Caroline affair in January 1821, as, in James O’Connell’s words, ‘the friends of Lord Castlereagh* and co. were well aware that they would be met ... by a number of independent freeholders, though the wretched aristocracy of Kerry would support any measure that had the appearance of loyalty’. Dublin Weekly Reg. 27 Jan. 1821; O’Connell Corresp. ii. 889. The Catholics met in Tralee, 31 Mar., and ‘of course did what we chose’, as Daniel O’Connell reported to his wife; his brother John believed that the county was alarmed by the securities in the Catholic bill the following month, but its Catholic priests had their petition in its favour presented to the Lords, 11 Apr. 1821. O’Connell Corresp. ii. 894a; Fitzgerald mss MIC639/11/6/32; LJ, liv. 189. The Catholic clergy were thanked for helping to maintain order during the unrest that autumn, but there were repeated disturbances the following year because of widespread agricultural distress and Daniel O’Connell wrote to his daughter Kate in May that ‘there is nothing but grief and woe in Kerry. The people are starving and the gentry in bitter want. No rents, no money, the fever and famine raging’. Dublin Evening Post, 25 Oct. 1821; O’Connell Corresp. ii. 935, 937, 944, 949, 958, 962, 964, 968. A petition from the grand jury complaining of excessive county presentments was brought up by Spring Rice, 24 June 1822. CJ, lxxvii. 369; The Times, 25 June 1822.

The county met in February 1822 to welcome the appointment of the pro-Catholic lord lieutenant Lord Wellesley and at another gathering, 2 Jan. 1823, John and James O’Connell, with Ponsonby in support, secured an address congratulating him on his escape from the Dublin Orange theatre riot, which was presented to him by a delegation led by Daniel O’Connell on the 21st. Dublin Evening Post, 2, 7 Feb. 1822, 9 Jan. 1823; O’Connell Corresp. ii. 987, 990. That spring, with a Catholic bill in prospect, Daniel O’Connell, who began a surreptitious canvass, dismissed the future chances of election of Crosbie and others, including Godfrey and Blennerhassett, whose financial affairs were said to be in ruins, and doubted that one of Kenmare’s family would really offer. O’Connell Corresp. ii. 1004, 1036. Day advised his former ward, the knight of Kerry, 2 Feb. 1824, that he should put the 2nd Baron Ventry (d. 1827), Kenmare ‘and all your friends upon the alert to repair their dilapidated resources’, and expressed the wish that there could be a secure agreement between him and a new candidate, William Hare, the grandson of the earl of Listowel (as Ennismore had become) and son of the Member for county Cork (who was now styled Lord Ennismore). By the start of April Major Edward Mullins of Barnhone House, Ventry’s brother, reported to the knight that he had already registered ‘978 right good freeholders at your service’ and, with upwards of 1,500 expected to be added in total, he observed that ‘I think the question is set at rest’. Fitzgerald mss MIC639/11/6/58, 62. John O’Connell chaired the meeting, attended by Hare, of the county’s Catholics to promote their cause, 28 Mar., and another, 10 July, when the Catholic rent was approved for collection, with James O’Connell as its treasurer. O’Connell Corresp. iii. 1117; Dublin Evening Post, 6, 13 Apr., 15 July 1824. Spring Rice commented during a period of electoral speculation in the autumn of 1824 that the knight would ‘ride the foremost horse’, but that Hare, although harmed by his father’s poor reputation, would ‘beat Colonel Crosbie hollow’, especially as the latter was tainted by corruption. Dublin Evening Post, 19 Aug., 11 Sept.; Lansdowne mss, Rice to Lansdowne, 2 Sept. 1824; Add. 37302, f. 350. The Protestant county meeting, chaired by Crosbie, approved a petition in favour of Catholic relief, 5 Feb., and this was presented to the Commons by the knight, 10 Mar., and to the Lords by Lansdowne, 9 May 1825. Dublin Evening Post, 10 Feb.; The Times, 11 Mar., 10 May 1825; CJ, lxxx. 184; LJ, lvii. 770. A petition from the landed proprietors, merchants, farmers and inhabitants for alteration of the regulations relating to the butter and corn trades was brought up, 29 Apr. CJ, lxxx. 355. Crosbie, like Daniel’s son Maurice O’Connell*, was present at another gathering of the county’s Catholics, 7 Aug. 1825. Dublin Evening Post, 13 Aug. 1825.

In 1825 the Irish under-secretary William Gregory observed that, as in Galway, the implementation of a £10 franchise would have little effect on the respectability of the electorate in Kerry. N. Gash, Secretary Peel, 415. There were roughly 6,700 registered electors that year, of whom nearly 1,200 (or 18 per cent) were classed among the more affluent £50 or £20 freeholders, but another source put the total at just over 5,000 by the time of the general election of 1826. PP (1825), xxii. 96; Dublin Evening Post, 22 June 1826. At meetings in April and June the O’Connells, his relative Bateman and others had rallied to the side of the vulnerable Member Crosbie, including by raising a subscription, but by that time the outsider Hare, with the territorial influence of Kenmare and Ventry behind him, was considered likely to succeed alongside the knight, even though his father’s anti-Catholicism was still reckoned a possible stumbling block. Dublin Evening Post, 6 Apr., 10, 15 June; Morning Reg. 13, 17 June; Freeman’s Jnl. 20 June 1826; J.A. Gaughan, Listowel and its Vicinity, 301, 302, 307, 308. On the hustings, Saturday 24 June, the knight was proposed by Kenmare’s brother Captain Thomas Browne of Prospect and Godfrey, Crosbie was nominated by Ponsonby and John O’Connell, and Hare, who stressed his pro-Catholic credentials, was introduced by Mullins and Blennerhassett. Neither of the sitting Members, who were credited with winning on the show of hands, was granted a hearing by the excitable crowd and, at Hare’s insistence, the poll was ordered to begin on the following Monday. However, on Sunday the 25th a party of Ventry’s tenants were confronted by a mob of Crosbie’s supporters and on the soldiers of the rifle brigade being called out of a corn store, where they were guarding Ennismore’s voters, the sheriff John Hickson of the Grove, Dingle, and the magistrates Mullins and George Rowan of Ralanny ordered them to fire into the rioters, resulting in five deaths and many injuries. Apparently driven wild by this outrage, Crosbie burst into Ennismore’s inn, where he was at dinner, and hit him while remonstrating against his infamous conduct. On the excuse of this violence, Hickson, whom O’Connell considered guilty of wilful murder, delayed the start of the poll to 3 July 1826, which O’Connell advised Crosbie was in itself sufficient grounds for him to apply to have the election set aside. Dublin Evening Post, 27, 29 June, 1, 4 July; Morning Reg. 28 June; Freeman’s Jnl. 5, 7 July 1826; JRL, Spring Rice coll. Eng. ms. 1189, p. 51; O’Connell Corresp. iii. 1320, 1322; Gaughan, 302, 303.

Crosbie continued for a few days of polling, but, trailing badly, he withdrew with a view to a petition, so the knight, who denied he was in coalition with his new colleague, and Hare, who defended the due deference that tenants owed to their landlords, were elected. They received support from respectively 89 and 81 per cent of the total of 2,437 voters polled, though it was claimed that Crosbie (17 per cent) had over 1,400 electors in reserve. Ministers, who considered the election violence excessive even by Irish standards, had the sheriff superseded, an inquest having found that the order to fire had been unnecessary and unjustifiable, and instituted proceedings against Mullins and Rowan, but they vindicated the conduct of Major Richard Wilcocks, the inspector-general of the Munster police, against the knight’s complaints. Add. 40305, f. 188; 40332, f. 111; 40334, f. 173; 40388, f. 299; 40389, f. 13; Dublin Evening Post, 6, 8, 11, 13, 18 July; Freeman’s Jnl. 18 July 1826; PP (1829), xxii. 13; J. King, Hist. Kerry, 155, 156. Crosbie’s petition, which alleged that the partisan sheriff had delayed the polling solely to deprive his supporters, who mostly returned home, of the chance of voting and that Hare had been guilty of intimidation, was brought up, 5 Dec. His request for more time to enter into his recognizances failed on a technicality, 13 Dec. 1826, and the order for consideration of the election was discharged, 8 Feb. 1827. CJ, lxxxii. 81, 82, 118, 125, 126. It had been rumoured that Ennismore would have withdrawn his prosecution against Crosbie if he dropped his petition, but the latter eventually pleaded guilty to the charge of threatening to horsewhip his opponent. Dublin Evening Post, 24 Feb.; The Times, 27 Nov. 1827. The Catholics met again in July 1826 and early the following year Daniel O’Connell, who had been agitating there, noted that Kerry was ‘quite organized for the collection of Catholic rent, registry of freeholds, etc.’ Freeman’s Jnl. 4 Aug. 1826; O’Connell Corresp. iii. 1374. The petition of the Catholics, Dissenters and Protestants of the county for freedom of religious education was presented to the Commons, 15 Feb., and the Lords, 27 June 1827. CJ, lxxxii. 177; LJ, lix. 451.

The active pro-Catholic knight of Kerry, who had been appointed a lord of the treasury in the Canning ministry, was re-elected unopposed in July 1827, when John O’Connell praised his conduct at the expense of the lazy and non-resident Hare (who was styled Lord Ennismore following his father’s death later that year). Kenmare, who had given the knight his full support, expressed the wish, apparently at a meeting of Catholics in Killarney in December 1827, that he should be returned free of expense at the next opportunity. Dublin Evening Post, 24 July, 4 Dec. 1827; Fitzgerald mss MIC639/12/6/61, 79. Daniel O’Connell and his brothers played a prominent part at the county meeting got up to oppose the Irish Subletting Act, 27 Mar. 1828, when Ponsonby unsuccessfully moved an amendment attacking the details but not the principle of the measure. Kerry Evening Post, 29 Mar. 1828; O’Connell Corresp. iii. 1453. This petition was evidently not presented, but one from the clergy of Tralee and other inhabitants of the county calling for an improvement in the state of Ireland was brought up, 5 June. CJ, lxxxiii. 402. O’Connell, now Member for Clare, was active in Kerry that autumn, including at the Catholic meeting chaired by his brother John on 15 Oct. 1828, when numerous petitions, among them one for a legal code, were approved. Dublin Evening Post, 9, 21, 23, 30 Oct.; Western Herald, 16, 20 Oct. 1828; O’Connell Corresp. viii. 3409. No Brunswick Club was established that year, but the Orangemen’s opponents were equally ineffective; in January 1829 Daniel O’Connell protested to his brother John that ‘everybody is exclaiming against Kerry, afraid of a few paltry and malignant Brunswickers’, such as Headley, and urged him to arrange a strong county address on the recall of the pro-Catholic lord lieutenant Lord Anglesey and the foundation of a Liberal Club. Kerry Evening Post, 31 Dec. 1828; O’Connell Corresp. iv. 1507. An address was agreed at a gathering under Mullins’s chairmanship, 1 Feb., and was presented to Anglesey, 20 Feb. 1829, by a delegation of the Members, the O’Connells and Charles James O’Donoghue, the O’Donoghue of the Glens.

In April 1829, the emancipation bill having just passed, the county met to subscribe nearly £1,500 to towards the national tribute to O’Connell. Kerry Evening Post, 4 Feb., 25 Apr.; Dublin Evening Post, 21 Feb., 28, 30 Apr. 1829; O’Connell Corresp. iv. 1557. The new registration required by the related Franchise Act proceeded slowly because of the close scrutiny to which potential electors were subjected, and, with the 3rd Baron Ventry’s interest reckoned to have suffered, there was speculation that year that Hare would be challenged at the next election by a range of possible candidates, including Crosbie, whom the Castle were reluctant to countenance. Fitzgerald mss MIC639/13/7/7; Add. 40337, ff. 170, 183; Dublin Evening Post, 6 June, 2 July; Western Herald, 25 June 1829. The electorate fell from 4,593 (including 3,776 40s. freeholders) on 1 Jan. to just 1,024 (including 126 £10 voters) at the start of the following year. PP (1829), xxii. 467. A county meeting, at which Maurice O’Connell deputized for his absent father, again called for the repeal of the Subletting Act, 30 Oct. 1829. Kerry Evening Post, 24, 31 Oct. 1829. Both Daniel, who Spring Rice considered would not have much chance, and Maurice O’Connell, for whom the appointment of an agent was recommended, may have considered themselves possible candidates at the turn of the year, as apparently did Lansdowne’s elder son, Lord Kerry, and the not quite yet of age heir to Muckross, Henry Arthur Herbert, a future Kerry Member and Irish secretary. NLI, Monteagle mss 549, Rice to ?Lansdowne, 23 Sept.; Dublin Evening Post, 24 Nov. 1829, 18 Mar. 1830; O’Connell Corresp. iv. 1635. On the knight, reverting to his original Tory allegiance, being named by the duke of Wellington, the prime minister, as vice-treasurer of Ireland in April 1830, he stood for re-election that month. Daniel O’Connell, who nevertheless gave his brothers leave to support him, denounced his political conversion in what the knight described as an ‘atrocious manifesto’, a ‘firebrand’ intended to ruin his otherwise certain success. Dublin Evening Post, 6, 17, 27 Apr. 1830; Wellington mss WP1/1108/34; O’Connell Corresp. iv. 1662a. However, the knight, nominated by Godfrey and John O’Connell, justified his support for Wellington as the bringer of emancipation and stressed his commitment to local interests, so that, despite being questioned about government’s intended Irish tax increases, he was returned in what he termed ‘the most cordial and satisfactory manner’. Kerry Evening Post, 21 Apr.; Western Herald, 22 Apr.; Fitzgerald mss MIC639/9, knight of Kerry to Fitzgerald [Apr. 1830]. Following a requisition to petition against the enhanced stamp and spirit duties, John O’Connell ensured that the proceedings on 25 May did not lead to hostilities being directed against the knight, who, despite his government office, brought up the petition in the Commons, 7 June, as Lansdowne had in the Lords on the 4th. Fitzgerald mss MIC639/13/7/58; Western Herald, 17, 27 May 1830; CJ, lxxxv. 521; LJ, lxii. 603. Lansdowne complained to Wellington that even though the knight had sought relief measures, Kerry was still suffering terribly from distress in June 1830. Wellington mss WP1/1123/14.

The decision of one of Kenmare’s relatives - in the end not his brother-in-law Robert John Wilmot Horton* nor Thomas Browne, but his brother William Browne of Woodlawn, a Catholic - to stand with government backing at the general election of 1830 put paid to the aspirations of Blennerhassett and of both Edward Mullins and his nephew Frederick William Mullins* of Beaufort House, and nothing came of the supposed candidacies of Crosbie, Herbert, Kerry or John O’Connell. Furthermore, Browne’s intervention also caused the retirement of Ennismore, whose loss of allies and lack of strength on the registers were probably the changed circumstances to which he alluded in his parting address, and evidently prevented the entry of Daniel O’Connell, who wrote to a friend that ‘but for Lord Kenmare’s brother, I would be returned for Kerry’. Ibid. 1124/3; Fitzgerald mss MIC639/13/7/58; Warder, 19 May, 2, 19, 26 June; Western Herald, 27, 31 May, 3, 10, 14, 17, 21 June, 5, 8, 15 July; Dublin Evening Post, 3, 10, 15, 24 June, 10 July 1830; O’Connell Corresp. iv. 1692. The other sitting Member, whose arrival was delayed by official business, being ‘quite safe’, as the Irish secretary Sir Henry Hardinge* noted, Browne, whose commitment to a contest was questioned, was challenged by Crosbie’s son and militia subordinate Major Pierce Crosbie. His stated intention was to make the county independent of what he alleged was a coalition of the major interests, a claim denied by Kenmare, though he certainly favoured the knight’s return. Add. 40313, f. 17a; Fitzgerald mss MIC639/13/7/64, 70, 71, 73, 75, 76; Western Herald, 8, 19, 22, 29 July, 2, 5 Aug.; Kerry Evening Post, 10, 28 July, 4 Aug. 1830. On the hustings, 13 Aug., the knight, again proposed by Godfrey and John O’Connell, could not gain a hearing, being shouted down with cries of ‘Boys, remember Paris!’; Browne, nominated by the naval captain Thomas Herbert, son of Richard Herbert, and Frederick Mullins, promised government his independent support; Crosbie, introduced by Ponsonby and counsellor John Collis of Kinsale, opposed the impending tax rises and favoured economies and retrenchment; and Bateman, who finished fourth, was presumably put in nomination as a security for Crosbie. After three days’ polling, Crosbie, for whom Collis claimed an additional 400-500 unpolled supporters, resigned with 217 votes (including, as he asserted, an improbable 101 plumpers), representing support from 40 per cent of the total of 543 voters polled (the electorate having apparently fallen to 834 since the beginning of the year). Browne and the knight, having received the votes of 72 and 70 per cent of those polled, celebrated their success, including at a dinner presided over by John O’Connell in Killarney, and plans were put in train for an Independent Club and a better system of organizing registrations. Wellington mss WP1/1173/8; Western Herald, 19 July, 16, 19, 23, 30 Aug.; Dublin Evening Post, 17, 19, 21 Aug. 1830; PP (1830-1), x. 203; Hamilton, 44, 45.

Daniel O’Connell, who was honoured at what he called ‘the best public dinner I ever was at’ in Killarney, 7 Oct. 1830, took a lead at county meetings in Tralee, where he announced his future candidacy for the county: on the 8th, for expressing approval of the recent revolutions in France and Belgium; and the 9th, for petitioning for the repeal of the Subletting and Vestry Acts, parliamentary reform and repeal of the Union. Western Herald, 4, 11, 18 Oct. 1830; O’Connell Corresp. iv. 1716. According to Kenmare, Kerry remained ‘perfectly tranquil’ the following month, despite the repeal agitation engineered by O’Connell, whose brother John deplored his attacks on the Union and regretted Wellington’s resignation. Fitzgerald mss MIC639/13/7/98, 99. John O’Connell was hissed at the county meeting arranged to show confidence in the Provincial Bank of Ireland after Daniel O’Connell’s call for a run on the banks, 31 Jan. 1831, when the Rev. Thomas O’Sullivan, parish priest of Killarney and editor of the radical Tralee Mercury, carried an amendment in support of the prevailing repeal activities. In retaliation, in February the sheriff, Godfrey’s son William Duncan Godfrey, Kenmare, Headley, Ventry, James Crosbie and many other respectable landlords signed a loyal address to the recently reappointed lord lieutenant Anglesey, praising his determination to suppress O’Connellite populism. Western Herald, 31 Jan., 17 Feb.; Dublin Evening Mail, 18, 21 Feb. 1831. John O’Connell instigated the county meeting which petitioned for the Grey ministry’s reform bill, 8 Mar. The knight, who was criticized later that month for voting against the measure, refused to present it, and it was brought up in the Commons by Matthew Wood, 22 Mar., and the Lords, probably by the prime minister, 23 Mar. 1831. Western Herald, 10 Mar., 4 Apr.; Kerry Evening Post, 9, 30 Mar. 1831; CJ, lxxxvi. 419; LJ, lxiii. 364.

Both the knight of Kerry, who had intended for some time to stand down, and Browne, who apparently had little appetite for continuing, initially announced their retirement at the ensuing dissolution. This left the field open to a number of suggested alternatives, such as John Bernard of Ballynagar, James Crosbie, Thomas Herbert, Frederick Mullins and John O’Connell, but their aspirations were subordinated to those of Daniel O’Connell, who eventually left county Waterford to stand for his native county, though not without preparing a possible retreat to county Tipperary. Fitzgerald mss T3075/18/61; MIC639/14/7/22, 23, 26; Freeman’s Jnl. 27, 29 Apr.; Western Herald, 28 Apr., 3, 10, 17 May 1831; PRO NI, Anglesey mss D619/28C, pp. 109-11; O’Connell Corresp. iv. 1800, 1802, 1805, 1806. He told the Irish under-secretary William Gosset*, whom he soon unavailingly urged to exercise the influence of government against Kenmare, that he hoped Browne would persist, as it was ‘difficult to find a second reformer of sufficient cast’. Derby mss 920 Der (14) 121/2, Gosset to Smith Stanley, 28 Apr.; 125/12, O’Connell to former, 6 May; Grey mss, Smith Stanley to Grey, 9 May 1831; O’Connell Corresp. iv. 1808, 1809. Browne, perhaps partly for this reason and also because he was requisitioned by the inhabitants of Killarney, briefly re-entered, but when he withdrew again, fearing defeat, O’Connell settled on Mullins as his running mate. With many Tories, notably Daniel Cronin of the Park, Killarney, dismayed at the transfer of the ‘county bound hand and foot to the great O’Connell’, the knight submitted to the demands of Kenmare and such friends as Blennerhassett, Day, Headley and Ponsonby, and even of former opponents of his liberal views, to re-enter as an anti-reformer, so a severe contest was expected. Yet, as Kenmare, who had warned the knight that he could not vouch for the reliability of his tenants, retreated from supporting him and returned to his original intention of giving his dependants a free choice, the knight, who complained that government had not put in place sufficient forces to maintain order and was advised by Cronin to decline a contest for his own safety, was forced to resign just before the poll. Fitzgerald mss MIC639/14/7/19, 20, 24-32; Wellington mss WP1/1184/9, 24, 31; Western Herald, 3, 5, 7, 10, 17 May; Freeman’s Jnl. 5, 9, 10, 13, 14 May; Dublin Evening Mail, 18 May 1831. With the energetic support of the Catholic tenantry and the priesthood, as well as the vociferous support of the Tralee trades, O’Connell boasted that the ‘aristocracy, as is usual, considered the county as their own but the people willed otherwise’. He, proposed by Edward Mullins and the O’Donoghue of the Glens, was duly returned unopposed with Frederick Mullins, nominated by John O’Connell and Wilson Gun of Rattoo; they spoke in favour of parliamentary reform and improvements for Ireland, and shared a celebratory dinner. Western Herald, 10, 12, 14, 17, 19 May; Dublin Evening Post, 17, 19 May 1831; ‘My Darling Danny’ ed. E.I. Bishop, 55; O’Connell Corresp. iv. 1805, 1810. There were reckoned to be about 1,000 registered freeholders at this time. PP (1831), xvi. 200; Parl. Election Results in Ireland, 1801-1922 ed. B.M. Walker, 219.

The knight, who might have stood a chance (as his son Peter thought) had he polled and was in any case congratulated by his friends for his sterling parliamentary conduct, explained that he had withdrawn as much to prevent religious divisiveness as because of his weak hold over his allies’ tenants, asserting that it was his moral duty to avoid the convulsion which O’Connell’s raising of such a political storm looked likely to provoke. Spring Rice coll. Eng. ms. 1189, p. 3; Western Herald, 19 May 1831; Fitzgerald mss MIC639/14/7/23, 36; Wellington mss WP1/1184/31. As he wrote on 14 May 1831 to his former ministerial colleague Peel:

I thought it but fair towards the cause of anti-revolution to try an experiment in my county. I had, however, so unhinged my machinery by my first resignation that it was difficult to reconstruct it. Lord Kenmare, tenaciously my friend, was so much embarrassed by the position in which I had placed him that I insisted on releasing him from all interference in my behalf. That being the principal Catholic strength, the remainder took too much an exclusively Protestant character, which still further increased the excitement raised by all the arts of O’Connell and his gang, and managed through an organization of the Catholic clergy under the letter missive of their bishop [Cornelius Egan of Kerry]. I was denounced for ever after as the enemy of my country and of their religion ... After all our preparations for a contest, in which I had a paper and decided majority, we find that in polling I should be reduced nearly to the Protestants and that I should invoke not only the struggle between tenants and landlords, but that between sects. I have therefore resolved to give the chance of our remaining somewhat longer without revolution and I have declined to poll, protesting against the abandonment of the county to O’Connell’s mob by the government ... Nothing can exceed the indignation and despair of the loyal gentlemen of the county. Add. 40402, f. 46.

Complaining to Smith Stanley, the Irish secretary, about the undoubtedly distressed and disturbed state of Kerry that spring, he repeated his charge that ministers had allowed O’Connell to usurp the representative process, and stated that ‘but for the defection which he caused by seducing young Mullins into the degradation of becoming his instrument, not a gentleman but his own brother would have appeared at the election’. The knight of Kerry continued to bemoan his fate, at some point commenting that the O’Connellite upsurge was ‘a general fury equal to that raised against Vesey [Fitzgerald* in 1828] in Clare and with much more of personal rancour’. O’Connell Corresp. iv. 1817a; Derby mss 124/3, knight of Kerry to Smith Stanley, 30 May, 6 June 1831; O. MacDonagh, Emancipist, 54.

The petition of the gentry, clergy and inhabitants for the grant to the Kildare Place Society was presented, 26 July 1831, by the Tralee Member Walker Ferrand, whose claim that it had been signed by the leading men of the county was denied by O’Connell. CJ, lxxxvi. 697. Holding Kenmare in ‘perfect abhorrence’, as Smith Stanley believed, O’Connell bitterly opposed the Irish lord lieutenants bill, under which the earl was named to that office in Kerry later that year. Browne, Thomas Herbert and James O’Connell were prominent among the reformers who arranged a county meeting in November 1831 to protest against the defeat of the reform bill in the Lords. Anglesey mss 31D/52; Western Herald, 25, 27 Oct., 8, 10, 15 Nov. 1831. The following month Mullins addressed the county to encourage the preparation of petitions criticizing the Irish measure, but few were forthcoming. Western Herald, 13 Dec. 1831; O’Connell Corresp. iv. 1859. By 1832, when a Conservative club was apparently established, the electoral interest was supposed to be in the hands of Lansdowne, Kenmare, the knight and various others, including the O’Connell family. Kerry Evening Post, 24 Oct. 1832; M. F. Cusack, Hist. Kingdom of Kerry, 425; [W. Carpenter], People’s Bk. (1831), 184; Key to Both Houses (1832), 343. There were 1,161 registered electors at the general election that year, when nothing came of Thomas Herbert’s and William Browne’s putative candidacies and Daniel O’Connell, who transferred to Dublin, secured the unopposed return as Repealers of Mullins and his son-in-law Charles O’Connell of Portmagee. Dublin Evening Post, 18 Sept., 8, 22, 27 Dec.; Kerry Evening Post, 24 Nov., 8, 29 Dec. 1832; O’Connell Corresp. iv. 1921, 1943-5a. In another desperately fierce contest in 1835, O’Connell wielded all his considerable popular influence and exploited his infamous intimidatory tactics to defeat Kenmare’s candidate, the knight of Kerry, who never re-entered Parliament, by also bringing in his nephew (his brother John’s son) Morgan John O’Connell. G. J. Lyne, ‘O’Connell, Intimidation and Kerry Elections of 1835’, Jnl. of Kerry Arch. and Hist. Soc. iv (1971), 74-97. Mullins was defeated in 1837 by the Conservative Blennerhassett, and Browne regained his seat as a Liberal in 1841.