Cos. Kerry, Limerick and Clare

The list of MPs for the three counties of Kerry, Limerick and Clare speaks for itself. Throughout the 1650s, the New English soldier, Sir Hardress Waller, and his son-in-law, Colonel Henry Ingoldsby, were able to dominate the civil and military government of the south-west corner of Ireland, and to monopolise its electoral patronage. This was only possible because of the devastation created by the Irish wars and Cromwellian conquest, which left a tabula rasa, with each county bereft of its distinctive social, political and constitutional characteristics. Historically, the three counties were very different. In the sixteenth century, rain-swept County Kerry was thought remote and wild, with political power shared by the Fitzgeralds, earls of Desmond, and the remaining Gaelic Irish clans, led by the MacCarthy Mór family (later ennobled as viscounts Muskerry) in the mountainous south. County Limerick, by contrast, was low-lying and prosperous, with a thriving pastoral economy and trade-links with the rest of Ireland and Europe through the city of Limerick and the other towns on the River Shannon. County Clare was mixed geographically and economically, with the south enjoying similar conditions to Limerick, but the north dominated by the poor soil of the Burren uplands. Clare was outside the Desmond area of influence, instead being controlled by the Gaelic O’Briens, earls of Thomond, who enjoyed a better relationship with the English government than their Fitzgerald neighbours. M. McCarthy-Morrogh, The Munster Plantation (Oxford, 1986), 8-10. Indeed, it was not even clear that Clare was part of Munster, as the president of the province had no jurisdiction, and the county was often lumped together with Galway for administrative purposes. CSP Ire. 1625-32, pp. 64, 69. The later amalgamation of the three counties thus cut across all these geographical, economic, political and constitutional differences.

The Desmond rebellion of 1579 changed the character of the region, as the attainder of the Fitzgeralds and their followers released land for plantation. The loyalty of the earl of Thomond ensured that Clare remained unaffected, but by the early seventeenth century large parts of Kerry and Limerick were in the hands of New English settlers, notably the Berkeleys, Brownes, Herberts, Dennys, Courtenays, and the ubiquitous Boyle family. Not that the indigenous social and political patterns disappeared overnight. The 1st earl of Cork’s rentals show that, despite his efforts to introduce English farmers, most of his tenants in Kerry and Limerick were Old English or Gaelic Irish in origin. NLI, MS 2639, unfol. This mixture was also reflected in the parliamentary elections for the counties for the Irish Parliaments of 1613, 1634 and 1640. In 1613 Kerry returned a Gaelic MP, Daniel O’Sullivan, and an Old Englishman, Stephen Rice; Limerick elected two New English settlers: Sir Francis Berkeley and Sir Thomas Browne; and Clare elected Sir Daniel O’Brien and Boethius Clancy – both connected with the earl of Thomond. CJI i. 6, 8, 9. In 1634 Limerick fielded two Old English landowners, Sir Edward FitzHarris and Richard Stevenson; Kerry returned one New Englishman, Sir Valentine Browne, alongside the Old English John Fitzgerald; and Clare elected the same members as in 1613. H.F. Kearney, Strafford in Ireland (Cambridge, 1989), 241, 245-7. In 1640 there were more New Englishmen in evidence, with Sir Hardress Waller being elected for Limerick alongside FitzHarris, and Browne being joined as MP for Kerry by Sir Edward Denny; but Clare again returned two O’Briens, and there is little evidence of an increasing New English dominance of elections across the region as a whole. CJI i. 217-9; McGrath, Biographical Dict. Until 1641, the intermingling of New English, Old English and Gaelic Irish did not create obvious tensions. Newcomers, including the Boyles, Wallers, St Legers and Brownes, were prepared to marry their children into the Old English or even Gaelic Irish dynasties; and only a few years before the rebellion broke out, Piaras Feiritéir, the Gaelic poet from County Kerry, praised his New English landlord as the ‘brave earl of Cork’. N. Canny, The Upstart Earl (Cambridge, 1982), 127-8.

The apparent amity between the different ethnic groups in Kerry, Limerick and Clare may have helped delay the outbreak of rebellion in these counties until the beginning of 1642, but it did not lessen the ferocity of the conflict thereafter. The earl of Thomond supported the government, and fortified his castles at Clare and Bunratty, but many of his family and clients joined the rebellion. CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 387. Viscount Muskerry remained loyal until the spring of 1642, when he declared for the Confederate Association, and in June he commanded the force which took Limerick City after a short siege, and using the cannon captured there, proceeded to reduce most of the other castles and towns in the area. M. Lenihan, Limerick, its History and Antiquities (Dublin, 1866), 150-1. The Confederates controlled most of the region during the later 1640s, and in 1646 Muskerry finally managed to take the strategically important castle at Bunratty, which commanded the approaches to Limerick by river. The parliamentarian, Murrough O’Brien, Lord Inchiquin, made various gains in County Limerick in 1647, but it was only with the Cromwellian invasion that the dominance of the Confederates was at last seriously challenged. In 1651 Henry Ireton* besieged Limerick City, while other officers (notably Lord Broghill (Roger Boyle*), Sir Hardress Waller and Edmund Ludlowe II*), were active in reducing resistance in Kerry and Clare. With the fall of Limerick in October, and the defeat of Muskerry at Ross Castle in Kerry in the following spring, Parliament regained control of south-west Ireland. Lenihan, Limerick, 157, 161, 171, 181; Ludlow, Mems. i. 261, 276-7, 284, 286-7, 290, 514, 523, 526. Not that there was much immediate advantage to be gained. The Cromwellian campaign had laid waste large areas of Limerick and Kerry, hindering the inhabitants’ ability to pay parliamentarian taxes, while Clare was ‘totally ruined and deserted’ in June 1653, a situation which put an additional burden on the city and county of Limerick. Ire. under the Commonwealth, ii. 343, 345, 359-60.

Kerry, Limerick and Clare were now firmly under military rule. Sir Hardress Waller, who had been made governor of Limerick City after the siege, soon passed the post to his fellow-officer, Colonel Henry Ingoldsby, who became his son-in-law in 1653. Lenihan, Limerick, 181. Waller’s control of the area was extended by his influence in the city, and the creation of the precinct system of government in early 1652, which combined counties Limerick and Clare into one unit, and Kerry into another, with administrations staffed by men from Waller and Ingoldsby’s regiments. SP28/85, f. 44; SP28/90, ff. 323, 327; SP63/281, unfol. Waller also benefited from his existing New English connections, and in 1653 he cemented his relations with the dominant Boyle family by marrying his daughter to their cousin, Maurice Fenton*. As the decade continued, Waller and his friends received large areas of forfeited land, especially in Clare and Limerick, as rewards for their military service. The extent of Waller’s grip on the three counties is reflected in the elections for the protectorate Parliaments. Under the new electoral rules, the three counties were to return two MPs at an election at Rathkeale in County Limerick. CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 800. Waller and Ingoldsby were able to carve up the constituency between themselves, and to put friends and relatives into the borough seats, in all three elections in 1654, 1656 and 1659. TSP ii. 445; HMC Egmont, i. 556. The indenture for the county election held on 1 August 1654 states that the return was made at a meeting of the ‘gentlemen and inhabitants’ of the counties, but only six are named in the document, and only four of these (including William Purefoy II* and Walter Waller*) appended their signatures. C219/44, unfol. All six went on to be named as assessment commissioners for Limerick and Clare in the following October, and this further suggests the electorate was tightly controlled on this occasion. An Assessment for Ire. (Dublin, 1654).

There was broader local engagement with the election on 20 August 1656, when the indenture was signed by at least 25 individuals, including not only Waller clients such as Purefoy and George Ingoldsby* but also representatives from Old Protestant families, such as the Dennys and Southwells, and even the Old English (but Protestant) Richard Fitzgerald of Castle Dod. C219/45, unfol. The only problem on this occasion was an embarrassment of riches, as Waller had also been returned for counties Kildare and Wicklow, and had omitted to stipulate his choice; but the Commons allowed him his own preference, to sit for the three south-western counties. CJ vii. 443b. Although the result in the 1659 election was the same as before, the political background was rather different, as there are signs that the three counties were experiencing something of the internal tensions that emerged in the same period among the Old Protestants of neighbouring County Cork. In a letter to her father, the 2nd earl of Cork (Sir Richard Boyle*), Frances Courtenay, wife of Colonel William Courtenay of Newcastle West in County Limerick, confided that her husband was ‘very lucky … to be out of his county when the choosing of knights of the shire was’, as the gathering was used as the opportunity to gain signatures for a controversial ‘address’, apparently critical of the government or its policies. Indeed, the gentlemen of Kerry

refused to sign it, but brought a paper drawn by Mr [Arthur?] Denny with all their hands to it, and then gave it to the governor withal telling him in public that neither the county of Limerick or Clare had done the like.

Ingoldsby responded warmly to this rival petition, with ‘a letter of general thanks to all in Kerry’. Chatsworth, CM/30, no. 76. The content of the original address is unknown, but the fact that the Kerry landowners refused to sign and then used their own petition to wrong-foot their neighbours reveals underlying divisions within the Old Protestant community in the last months of the protectorate.

Waller’s disgrace in the spring of 1660 brought such divisions into the open. There was a scramble for his lands, now forfeited, and men like Lord Broghill (now earl of Orrery) - who was appointed president of Munster after the Restoration - were ambitious to extend their power in the area. Lenihan, Limerick, 203. But there were others who jostled with Broghill for local pre-eminence, not least the former royalists such as the earl of Thomond, who sought to have their influence restored, and Sir Henry Ingoldsby, who, having distanced himself from Waller, had survived the Restoration with his regional interest largely intact. Perhaps predictably, the General Convention in March 1660 saw the return of men with connections to the Boyles and Ingoldsbys, and the 1661 elections for the Irish Parliament confirmed that the Old Protestants had secured control over most of the region. County Kerry elected Sir Arthur Denny and John Blennerhassett – both pre-1641 settlers – and County Limerick was represented by two Englishmen with connections to the Boyles, Sir William King and Robert Oliver. On occasion, the old families were still able to hold their own against the newcomers, and, in a rather odd combination, County Clare elected the former Cromwellian, Sir Henry Ingoldsby, and Thomond’s son and heir, Lord Ibracken. Clarke, Prelude to Restoration, 216-7, 221-2; CJI i. 589-92. The Gaelic Irish and Old English had undoubtedly lost out during the Restoration settlement, but with the O’Briens still dominating County Clare, at least, Old Protestant supremacy does not seem to have been as complete as it was in other parts of Ireland.