Since 1761 a tripartite alliance had dominated Louth elections. John Foster of Collon was its mainstay and he retained his seat unquestioned throughout this period: had he chosen to contest another seat, it was regarded as a foregone conclusion that his son and heir Thomas Henry Foster would have replaced him, which he eventually did. The other parties were the Fortescues of Dromiskin, created earls of Clermont, who supplied the other Member from 1768 until 1806 when William Fortescue succeeded to the peerage; and the Hamiltons of Dundalk, created earls of Clanbrassill, whose estates passed in 1798 to the Jocelyns, earls of Roden. The Jocelyns, who were already patrons of Dundalk, but sold that seat, supplied the other Member from 1806.
The only snag to this arrangement was the fact that Viscount Jocelyn, returned in 1806, was a minor. At first one of the Fortescues was to have been his locum tenens. Blayney Balfour of Townley Hall, ‘a gentleman of considerable property’ who had stood for the county in 1767, put forward his pretensions that year on the grounds of Jocelyn’s ineligibility to act in Parliament until he was of age. Foster discouraged him, admitting the snag, but supposing it likely that Jocelyn’s uncle John Jocelyn would replace him as candidate. A county meeting in Balfour’s favour was therefore abandoned and he did not persevere. Once this was clear, Viscount Jocelyn was returned, although, as the chief secretary reminded the premier, ‘by the law on this side of the water, the return of a minor cannot be sustained, if it is challenged’.
John Foster’s arrangement of county politics was threatened after 1809 by a quarrel with Lord Clermont over county patronage, by the weakening of his links with government and by the growth of Catholic opinion, but there was no contest until 1826.
Number of voters: about 600 in 1815