Cos. Tipperary and Waterford

Tipperary, a large county stretching from the River Shannon in the north to the River Suir in the south, was an important agricultural district, containing some of the best pasture land in Ireland. Waterford, between the Suir and the sea, was more mountainous, but still prospered thanks to the prominence of its ports, especially the city of Waterford in the east and the town of Dungarvan in the west. Close economic links had developed between the two counties, with produce from Tipperary being transported down the Suir from Clonmel to Waterford, for export to Britain and Europe. Socially and politically, counties Tipperary and Waterford formed the border between the medieval lordships of Ormond and Desmond. The Butlers, earls of Ormond, enjoyed palatine status in the liberty of Tipperary, and owned substantial estates there, including the castles of Thurles, Roscrea and Carrick-on-Suir. The Fitzgeralds, earls of Desmond, had dominated Waterford with the support of the Power family, and during the sixteenth century there was bitter rivalry between them and the Butlers over lands disputed areas of Tipperary, and such issues as the wine prizage from the ports of Waterford and Dungarvan. Description of Ireland, 1598 ed. E. Hogan (Dublin, 1878), 157-65, 207-16. Although the Desmond Fitzgeralds had been destroyed by Elizabeth I, much of their estate in the region was granted not to the Butlers but to New English settlers, principally the 1st earl of Cork and the extended Boyle family, who were happy to revive claims to the wine prizage and other feudal dues which they claimed to have acquired with the Desmond lands. Add. 19832, ff. 47-9. Such claims, and aggressive attempts by the Boyles to force a plantation on Butler lands in the baronies of Upper and Lower Ormond (in northern Tipperary) in 1630, were encouraged by the government’s own attempts to reduce the Ormond influence in the region. Chatsworth, Cork Letterbook I, pp. 167, 207-11; CSP Ire. 1625-32, pp. 483-4; 1647-60, pp. 150-2, 160. The limited success of these schemes can be seen in the returns for the Irish Parliaments of 1634 and 1640. In 1634 County Tipperary returned Thomas Butler and Theobald Purcell, local landowners with connections with Ormond; and in 1640 Butler was again returned, this time with his kinsman, James Butler. County Waterford showed more sign of political change: in 1634 the MPs were both Old English landowners, Jacob Walsh and John Power, but in 1640 Power was joined by a New English settler, with connections with the Boyles, Richard Osbourne. H.F. Kearney, Strafford in Ire. (Cambridge, 1989), 242-4; McGrath, Biographical Dict.

During the Irish rebellion, counties Tipperary and Waterford soon came under Confederate control, and for the early years of the war were milked for money and supplies, but did not suffer the worst effects of the fighting. CSP Ire. 1633-47, pp. 403, 593. This situation changed in 1647-8, when the Protestant commander, Lord Inchiquin, marched from County Cork into County Tipperary and sacked the cathedral town of Cashel, intending to strike at the Confederate headquarters at Kilkenny. According to the mayor of Waterford in September 1647, Inchiquin ‘now ranges where he pleases, burning, killing and destroying the county of Tipperary’, and Inchiquin himself estimated that in three weeks he had burnt ‘in this county above £20,000 worth [of corn]’. Tanner Lttrs. 265-7, 268. In 1649 and 1650 Oliver Cromwell’s* forces besieged Waterford City and sacked Clonmel, destroying the trade routes vital to the local economy. The countryside was also ravaged. In November 1651 the parliamentary commissioners recommended that Waterford be relieved of further increases in the assessment payments, and in February 1652 Tipperary was classed as ‘yielding no revenue’ for the state. Ire. under the Commonwealth, i. 79, 140. The Cromwellian land settlement removed the Old English landowners from much of Tipperary and Waterford; and under the plans drawn up in 1653-4, 153,000 acres in Waterford and 516,000 in Tipperary were to be assigned to the adventurers and soldiers. Ire. under the Commonwealth, ii. 384, 405. The old pattern of landowning did not, however, vanish overnight. Prominent Old Protestant landowners, including the 2nd earl of Cork (Sir Richard Boyle*), kept their lands in County Waterford, and still hoped to make gains in County Tipperary; their new opponents were not the Butlers, but the equally acquisitive army officers who had acquired the lands of Ormond and others in the region. The local importance of military men can be seen clearly in the list of assessment commissioners appointed in 1654, in which colonels and majors were more numerous, and more prominent, than long-established Protestants families such as the Fentons, Smithwicks, Osbournes and Foulkes. An Assessment for Ire. (Dublin, 1654).

The continuing political tensions influenced parliamentary representation in the later 1650s. Under the new arrangements, counties Tipperary and Waterford were joined as one constituency, returning two Members at elections held at Clonmel. CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 800. In the election held on 2 August 1654 the army interest secured both seats, with the Baptist governor of Clonmel, Colonel Jerome Sankey (who had acquired landed interests in both counties), being returned with Commissary-general John Reynolds, who had recently been awarded the Butler castle and lands at Carrick-on-Suir. CSP Dom. 1654, p. 295. The election indenture suggests that this was a tightly controlled affair, with the named voters being exclusively recent arrivals, including soldier-settlers such as Colonel Solomon Richards and Captain William Halsey*, and the government treasurer of Clonmel, Thomas Batty; while the presiding sheriff was Colonel Daniel Abbott*. C219/44, unfol. In the event, John Reynolds was also elected to sit for Galway and Mayo, and chose to sit for that seat, and the Parliament was too short for a by-election to be held. In 1656 Reynolds was again elected, this time alongside Daniel Abbott, who was governor of Nenagh in northern Tipperary. Again, local standing seems to have been an important factor, with Reynolds travelling to Tipperary in person ‘to secure his election’. TSP v. 327. By this time, Reynolds had become a firm ally (and prospective brother-in-law) of Henry Cromwell*, and had thus distanced himself from the army interest. This divergence, between the military and Henry Cromwell’s friends, was confirmed in 1659. Although Jerome Sankey was again returned, having been elected for New Woodstock as well, he chose to ‘stick to his election in England’ – apparently as a calculated snub to Henry Cromwell, now lord deputy of Ireland. Henry Cromwell Corresp. 472. Sankey’s fellow MP was a man of a very different stamp: Thomas Stanley. Although a soldier and governor of Clonmel, Stanley was supported in this election by the earl of Cork, who went to the Waterford town of Tallow in January 1659 and ‘conferred with some of the inhabitants there about electing Major Stanley’. Chatsworth, CM/29, unfol.: 6 Jan. 1659. Thus, as the 1650s progressed, the army apparently lost ground to Henry Cromwell’s supporters – a trend which may be discerned in counties Tipperary and Waterford as readily as in the council chamber at Dublin.

During the late 1650s the Boyles had extended their influence into Tipperary as well as Waterford, thus fulfilling the earlier plans of the 1st earl of Cork. In the immediate aftermath of the Restoration, the might of the Boyles was unrivalled. The elections for the General Convention of March 1660 saw Boyle retainers returned as both knights of the shire for Waterford, and as burgesses for at least three of the four borough seats. In Tipperary one member had direct links with the Boyles. Clarke, Prelude to Restoration, 211-15. In the 1661 elections for the Irish Parliament, Boyle clients took one of the Tipperary county seats, and three of the six borough seats; as well as at least three borough seats in County Waterford. CJI i. 593-4. Yet this Boyle hegemony did not go unchallenged for long. The Restoration brought the return of the Butlers as the dominant family in Tipperary, and the landed influence of the family was further enhanced by the arrival of the duke of Ormond as lord lieutenant in 1662. The Cromwellian soldiers who had occupied Butler lands were mostly evicted, and Ormond was again able to establish a near-palatine jurisdiction over the county. With the Boyles still powerful in County Waterford, and the Butlers dominating County Tipperary, in the 1660s the region saw a return to a situation not dissimilar to that of the 1630s.