Cos. Meath and Louth

Meath and Louth, immediately to the north of County Dublin, were traditionally included in the English Pale. Meath was one of the biggest and most prosperous of the Irish counties, and, as a result, was double-rated in the taxes of the late sixteenth century. Description of Ire. 1598 ed. E. Hogan (Dublin, 1878), 90. Before 1641 the county was dominated by Catholic Old English families, especially the Nugents (earls of Westmeath), Dillons, Plunkets, Barnewalls and Husseys, who owned the majority of the land and were well represented in local commissions and in the county and borough seats in successive Irish Parliaments. CSP Ire. 1625-32, pp. 73, 250-1; 1633-47, p. 65; CJI i. 219; H. Kearney, Strafford in Ire. (Cambridge, 1989), 227; McGrath, Biographical Dict. A few New English settlers (including Viscount Ranelagh, Sir Adam Loftus and Sir William Ussher) had become established in the south and east of the county, but even in this area their influence was outweighed by the Old English. Civil Survey, v. 47, 77, 110, 130, 162, 193, 215, 254, 317, 337, 373. Louth was smaller and poorer than Meath: in the first subsidy of 1640 it was rated at a third the value of its neighbour. CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 232. Louth also had the disadvantage of being on the frontier of Ulster, and during the Nine Years’ War it had been ‘exposed to the incursions of the rude people’ of that province, who ‘kept a great part of this country waste’ to prevent English troops from receiving food and other assistance on their expeditions into counties Armagh and Monaghan. Description of Ire. ed. Hogan, 3. Despite its geographical position, Louth contained ‘good arable land’, and, like Meath, was a stronghold of the Old English. Civil Survey, x. 52-3. Before 1641 the local commissions and Irish parliamentary seats were the preserve of such families as the Bellews, Dowdalls, Cashells, Plunkets and Barnewalls - some of whom also owned land in Meath. CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 65; Description of Ire. ed. Hogan, 4-5; CJI i. 219; Kearney, Strafford in Ire. 225; McGrath, Biographical Dict. The Catholic lords and gentry of Meath and Louth formed an important part of the Old English lobby group, whose moves to resist encroachment by the English government and the New English planters culminated in the ‘Graces’ demanded in 1628 and again in 1641.

The tensions between the Old English and the Dublin government erupted in the early stages of the Irish rebellion in 1641. Despite efforts by Viscount Gormanston and other lords of the Pale to distance themselves from the rebellion, by early November the Louth gentry were known to be collaborating with the Monaghan insurgents, and there had been widespread violence in Meath, encouraged by rebels from County Cavan. M. Perceval-Maxwell, Outbreak of the Irish Rebellion (Dublin, 1994), 223-4, 240-2. Drogheda was besieged, and the areas north of the River Boyne had come under rebel control by the end of November. CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 350. The Boyne continued to be the frontier between Protestant and Catholic spheres of influence in this region throughout the 1640s. The king appointed Viscount Moore of Drogheda as governor of Louth, and Sir Henry Tichborne supposedly ruled Meath, but their areas of control did not extend much beyond the strongly-defended garrison towns of Drogheda, Dundalk and Trim. CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 379; 1647-60, p. 774. The uneasy truce established between the royalists and the Confederate Catholics under the cessation of arms of September 1643 did little to reduce tensions, with local commanders, such as William Cadogan* in Trim, barely able to restrain their troops in the face of Confederate provocation. HMC Ormonde, o.s. ii. 20-39. When Ormond surrendered Dublin to Parliament in June 1647, the north Leinster garrisons came under the command of the new governor of Dublin, Michael Jones, who immediately mounted a vigorous campaign in the region, defeating the Confederate forces under Thomas Preston at Dungan’s Hill, near Trim, in August 1647. In June 1649 the royalist Lord Inchiquin took Dundalk and Drogheda, and it was his men, commanded by Sir Arthur Aston, who were massacred when Oliver Cromwell* stormed the latter town in the following September. Thereafter Meath and Louth became a base for Cromwellian operations against southern Ulster, which continued at least until the summer of 1652. Ludlow, Mems. i. 327.

The electoral history of the two counties in the 1650s was influenced by their inclusion in the Cromwellian land redistribution, and the continued dominance of the local garrisons and their commanders after the end of hostilities. The Irish wars had caused much damage to the northern Pale, and as early as 1647 Meath was described as having been ‘disabled’ by the fighting. CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 713. The monthly assessments raised in 1651 suggest that Louth was even harder hit: its monthly rate of £330 was a quarter of that imposed on Meath (£1,500). Ire. under the Commonwealth, i. 60, 78. Later assessments suggest that the two counties bounced back fairly quickly: in 1654 Louth was rated at nearly £600 while Meath was expected to pay over £2,300. An Assessment for Ire. (Dublin, 1654). The region was very attractive to new settlers because of the quantity and quality of its agricultural land. In December 1653, 185,000 acres in Meath and 58,000 acres in Louth were allocated to settling the claims of the English adventurers and Cromwellian soldiers, while the barony of Ardee, north of Drogheda, was reserved for the pre-1649 officers. Ire. under the Commonwealth, ii. 384. The eagerness of adventurers and soldiers to sell their debentures gave Old Protestants a chance to increase their landholdings, the most notably example of this being Dr Henry Jones in County Meath. Clarke, Prelude to Restoration, 188. The assessment commission appointed in 1654 showed the dominance of the new order. The list of commissioners for Meath was headed by Old Protestants Sir Charles Coote* and Dr Henry Jones, but also included military men such as John Fowke*, William Cadogan and Thomas Stanley*; while in Louth the balance was in favour of newcomers, with Fowke, Cadogan and Stanley being joined by William Aston* and the Old Protestant, Henry Bellingham. An Assessment for Ire.

From 1654 Meath and Louth were combined into one constituency, returning two MPs to Westminster, with the elections taking place at Drogheda. CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 800. This no doubt gave the governor of Drogheda, Colonel John Fowke, considerable influence over the results, although the lack of surviving election indentures makes the process more opaque than in other constituencies. In 1654 Fowke was himself elected, alongside the County Meath landowner, William Cadogan. By the autumn of 1656 Fowke was returned with his friend, William Aston. The two had much in common: they came from Staffordshire and had served together in Ireland in the later 1640s, and were now neighbours in Ardee barony in County Louth; they were also supporters of the acting governor of Ireland, Henry Cromwell*. Fowke’s death in the autumn of 1657 left a seat to spare, and in 1659 Aston was returned with another key ally of Henry Cromwell, Anthony Morgan.

The Cromwellian occupation had completely changed the social and political character of the two counties. The Old English landowners had been transplanted to Connaught; their lands were taken over by soldiers and adventurers, and then passed to Old Protestants or pre-1649 officers of English origin: and it was these new men who now controlled the region. In the elections for the General Convention, which met in Dublin in March 1660, Louth returned William Aston with an Old Protestant veteran of the Irish wars, Henry Bellingham, while Meath elected Sir William Cadogan with Dr Henry Jones. Clarke, Prelude to Restoration, 188, 194-5. The Restoration brought some of the Old English families back to Meath and Louth, but the newcomers clung on to the political dominance they had acquired under Cromwell. As a result, in the elections for the Irish Parliament of 1661 Sir Thomas Stanley* and Henry Bellingham were returned for County Louth, and Sir Robert Forth and Sir Theophilus Jones* for County Meath. CJI i. 592.