Londonderry, a largely protestant county in which linen manufacture flourished, was under the electoral influence of the major tenants of four of the 12 City companies who had been the leading landlords since the Ulster plantation and had let their land in perpetuity. The preponderance lay with the Beresford clan, headed by the Marquess of Waterford and descended from the original manager of the plantation (one of them, John Claudius Beresford was even now agent to the London companies). Waterford leased 24,000 acres from the Drapers, in conjunction with Beresford’s brother-in-law Sir George Fitzgerald Hill, until 1820. The Stewarts, Lord Castlereagh’s family, also had a great interest, through the tenancy of Alexander Stewart, younger brother of Castlereagh’s father. Otherwise the Ponsonbys and Alexander Ogilby of Dungiven, tenants of the Skinners; Sir William Rowley who held 39,000 acres from the Drapers, and Thomas Connolly who leased two substantial estates from the Grocers and Vintners but who died in 1803, held the chief interests.
The Members in 1801 were Castlereagh’s half-brother Charles William Stewart and Sir George Hill, returned a fortnight after the meeting of the Imperial Parliament in place of Henry de la Poer Beresford, who on 3 Dec. 1800 had succeeded his father as 2nd Marquess of Waterford. Hill, the city Member hitherto, was acting as a locum tenens until the marquess’s brother, Lord George Thomas Beresford, came of age, which he did before the election of 1802. The scene was now set for a coalition of the Beresfords and Stewarts to dominate county elections and to share the local patronage.
Ponsonby and Lyle claimed in 1806 that they meant to rescue the county ‘from the condition of a close borough’. They also claimed, on the basis of a meeting on 29 Oct., that they had the support of the linen trade, for which Lord George Beresford had put in his bid; but their opponents rebutted this by pointing out that not more than 25 of 79 signatures to the address in question were actual freeholders. In combination, the Beresford and Stewart interests proved too strong for Ponsonby, who was sanguine and hoped to carry Lyle as well. His petition against the return failed.
When Parliament was dissolved in 1812 both seats were vacant, Beresford and Stewart having accepted office. The new writs issued on 29 July were superseded by the general election. Ponsonby, who was serving in the Peninsula, offered again, his uncle George having canvassed for him.
The election of 1818 was uncontested. Alexander Stewart, ailing and dissatisfied with the preference given to the Beresfords in patronage, made way for his son, as anticipated. Dawson was challenged on the hustings when he claimed independence. ‘It is folly’, remonstrated a freeholder, ‘to talk of the independent freeholders, situated as the county is at present; they have no voice in the choice. It is to the junction of two great families, who happen to have a great registry at present, that he owes his election.’ Dawson claimed that ‘the very man’ who thus contradicted him had signed his return. He had also succeeded in preventing George Canning of Garvagh, brother-in-law of Lord Stewart, from making a nuisance of himself after hinting that he meant to stand for the county with the assistance of the Ogilby interest, by furthering, through the mediation of Lord Waterford, Canning’s private ambition to secure a peerage.
Number of voters: about 8500 in 1815