Cork and Youghal

The city of Cork and the town of Youghal occupied similar harbour sites accessible to the south coast of co. Cork, some 30 miles apart. With a population of about 5,500 in 1641, Cork was five times larger than its neighbour, but size did not necessarily equate with economic importance. M. MacCarthy-Morrogh, The Munster Plantation (Oxford, 1986), 259. By the beginning of the seventeenth century the economic dominance of Cork and Waterford cities as trading ports had been challenged by the rising importance of Youghal, which was described as ‘a lurcher, for it hath gotten the traffic from them both, especially for transporting cattle’. Stowe 180, f. 39r. Indeed, Youghal was eager to secede from co. Cork altogether, and there were moves to create two separate counties in 1584, 1606 and afterwards. Council Bk of the Corp. of Youghal ed. R. Caulfield (Guildford, 1878), pp. xxx, xlvi. The rivalry between the two boroughs was heightened by Youghal’s status as a staple port (granted in 1616), which restricted Cork’s right to export wool, although Cork had attained its own staple rights by 1639. Council Bk. of Youghal, pp. xxxii-iii; CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 307; Add. 19843-4, passim; D. Kelly and T. O'Keeffe, Youghal (Irish Historic Towns Atlas no. 27, Dublin, 2015), 5-6. There were also political differences between the two boroughs. Cork was governed by a handful of prominent Catholic families who were fiercely independent, deeply suspicious of Protestant settlers, and downright hostile to the government garrison. CSP Ire. 1625-32, pp. 112-5, 169, 547. Youghal was dominated by two influential New English settlers, Sir Laurence Parsons and his ally, Sir Richard Boyle, 1st earl of Cork. Both had trading interests in the town, the latter having leased the College of Youghal as his private residence. CSP Ire. 1625-32, pp. 211, 314, 452, 429. The influence of the earl of Cork in Youghal before 1641 should not, however, be overstated: in the elections for the Irish Parliaments of 1634 and 1640 both boroughs returned Catholic townsmen as MPs. H. Kearney, Strafford in Ireland (Cambridge, 1989), 239; McGrath, Biographical Dict.

On the outbreak of rebellion in 1641, Cork and Youghal remained loyal to the crown. CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 54. As the crisis continued, the Boyles were quick to reinforce their authority in Youghal. Joshua Boyle, a servant and kinsman of the earl of Cork, was elected as recorder in 1642, and the town’s military governors were, successively, the earl’s sons, Viscount Dungarvan (Sir Richard Boyle*) and Lord Broghill (Roger Boyle*). Council Bk of Youghal, 216-7; Add. 25287, f. 13. The city of Cork also came under Protestant control. From 1642 the city’s governor was Sir Peregrine Bannister, and in 1643 the corporation appointed the new lord president of Munster, Lord Inchiquin, and his brother and lieutenant-colonel, Henry O’Brien, as councillors. Council Bk of the Corp. of the City of Cork ed. R. Caulfield (Guildford, 1876), 204. Although the cessation of arms agreed in September 1643 promised to return a degree of stability to co. Cork, the Protestant commanders, led by Inchiquin, found the situation increasingly untenable, and rejected the arrangement by declaring for Parliament in July 1644. At the same time, the Catholic populations of Cork and Youghal were unceremoniously expelled. CSP Dom. 1644, p. 406. Other hardships soon followed. Cork was threatened, and Youghal was besieged, by Catholic forces under the 2nd earl of Castlehaven in 1645; and both towns became little more than military depôts for Parliament in the late 1640s. HMC Egmont, i. 260, 367-8; CSP Dom. 1645-7, pp. 231, 293. Inchiquin’s decision to re-join the king in 1648 caused more uncertainty, and although the defection of the garrison officers in November 1649 (engineered by Lord Broghill and other local officers) saved the fabric of the towns from destruction by Cromwell’s army, both were by that time close to economic ruin. Council Bk of Youghal, pp. liii-lvi.

The decline of Cork and Youghal continued under the commonwealth. In the summer of 1650 plague spread from Waterford to Cork, Youghal and Kinsale. HMC Egmont, i. 496, 499, 500. In 1651 Youghal corporation complained that the town was crippled by government taxes. Council Bk of Youghal, 289-90. Trading revenues were hard pressed: a situation not helped by the ruinous state of the coastal defences, and the depredations of pirates. Ire. under the Commonwealth, i. 250. The corporate structure of both boroughs was also affected. Youghal remained a corporation, and council-books were kept throughout the 1650s, but in February 1651 a swearing of freemen at large suggests that the town’s administration was now dominated by military men, under its governor, Colonel Robert Saunders. Council Bk of Youghal, 285. Cork’s charter was forfeited by novesance before 1649, and the corporation petitioned for a new charter as part of its surrender terms. Council Bk of Youghal, 282. Oliver Cromwell’s* answer to this petition assured them that the charter would be renewed. Council Bk of Youghal, 283. The council of state considered the matter in March 1651; the former governor, Colonel John Hodder, was still hopeful of a re-grant in December 1651; but a new charter of incorporation was not granted until the later 1650s. CSP Dom. 1651, p. 66; HMC Egmont, i. 504; Eg. 2549, f. 113v. In the meantime the appointment of Colonel Robert Phaier as governor of co. Cork increased the grip of the military on the government of the city, and he was later accused of encouraging Quakers within the garrison. CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 530; Barnard, Cromwellian Ireland, 109-110.

Despite a heavy military presence in both boroughs, the Boyle family had, by the mid-1650s, re-emerged as the dominant force in the locality. The 2nd earl of Cork was able to reassert his position in Youghal thanks to his continued land-holdings in the borough and his residence at the college; and the governor, Robert Saunders, was a tenant of the earl. NLI, MS 6255, unfol. Boyle family influence in Cork city was also growing, and the Civil Survey of 1654-6 shows that the Catholic landowners within the borough had by this stage been replaced by Old Protestant families, such as the Claytons, Kingsmills, Jephsons, Boyles, Muschamps, St Legers, Gethings and Percivalles, many of whom had served under (or had come to terms with) Lord Broghill during the 1640s. Civil Survey, vi. 406-456. The appointment of the Boyle associates Henry Markham* and Vincent Gookin* as two of the five commissioners for letting crown property in the mid-1650s may have facilitated this rapid rise in Boyle clients owning land in Cork city. Ire. under the Commonwealth, ii. 665-6. The Boyles were also able to exert a degree of influence over religious appointments in both boroughs. The borough ministers, James Wood in Youghal and Joseph Eyres in Cork, both served the earl of Cork privately. Chatsworth, CM/29, unfol.: passim.

Boyle dominance explains the electoral history of Cork and Youghal under the protectorate. The election in 1654 was carefully managed by the earl of Cork, who met with his uncle, Sir William Fenton, at Fermoy on 12 July ‘about the election’. Chatsworth, CM/29, unfol.: 25 July 1654. The election indenture, signed on 2 August, included at least 20 signatures, many of whom had connections with the Boyle family. These included three members of the Fenton family (including Sir William and his son, Maurice*), two Hodders, several Boyle tenants (including Thomas Baker, John Brelsford, Richard Scudamore and Thomas Woodliffe), a business associate (the Cork merchant, Christopher Oliver), and the mayor and baillie of Youghal. C219/44, unfol.; NLI, MS 6256; Chatsworth, CM/29, unfol.: 20 Oct. 1651; CM/28, no. 42. The result was the election of the co. Cork landowner and ally of Lord Broghill, William Jephson. In August 1656 Jephson was again returned for Cork and Youghal. TSP v. 327. The various meetings of Jephson with the earl of Cork in August 1656, immediately before this election, again suggest that he was backed by the Boyles, and his closeness to Broghill politically is confirmed by his prominence in the kingship crisis in the spring of 1657. Chatsworth, CM/29, unfol.: 11, 18 and 19 Aug. 1656.

The election for Cork and Youghal in January 1659 sheds more light on the sort of lobbying likely to have been practised by the Boyles earlier in the decade. Although Jephson was now dead, the Boyles expected to continue their now customary dominance of Cork and Youghal. Yet their hegemony was threatened by the activities of their former client, Vincent Gookin*, who stood against the Boyle candidate, Francis Foulke*. T.C. Barnard, ‘Lord Broghill, Vincent Gookin and the Cork elections of 1659’, EHR lxxxviii. 355-9. An outraged Broghill reported to his brother that Gookin waited on him, ‘to desire me to recede from having Francis Foulke chosen for Cork and Youghal … which I flatly denied, having appeared openly for Francis Foulke and having an assurance from both those places that they would elect him’. Chatsworth, CM/30, no. 65. Gookin’s claim that he acted on the orders of the lord lieutenant, Henry Cromwell*, was rejected by Broghill, who said that he himself had been given orders ‘to take care of elections here’; but Broghill was sufficiently rattled to write to the lord lieutenant for clarification. He also sent express letters to Cork corporation and the freemen of the city, and ‘assured them (God willing) I will ... assist at the election’; at the same time he asked his brother to ‘engage anew all your electors at [Youghal]’. Chatsworth, CM/30, no. 65.

Although the mayor of Cork reassured Broghill of the corporation’s fidelity, Gookin’s challenge called for direct action by the Boyles. NLI, MS 13223/1, no. 10. On 15 January, the earl of Cork and Lord Broghill met at Ballymaloe to discuss the forthcoming elections. Chatsworth, CM/29, unfol.: 15 Jan. 1659. On the following day, Broghill wrote to his brother ‘to know how many votes we may certainly depend upon at Youghal’, and added that, having received assurances of support from the corporation, the masters of trades and other ‘chief men’ in the city, he intended to travel to Cork, and ‘that if I come myself, I need not doubt but to carry it’. Chatsworth, CM/30, no. 66. As a precaution, the fast sermons before the elections were preached by the Boyle ministers in each borough, Eyres and Wood. Chatsworth, CM/29, unfol.: 18 Jan. 1659. On the day of the election, 20 January, Broghill went to Cork in person, where, according to Gookin, he ‘went to the court and there railed upon me and magnified his own services’, and although ‘his lordship had with him but one alderman upon the bench and one in the crowd, and not above 30 of 400 freeholders in the city at the election … his lordship’s own people cried up Lieutenant Colonel Foulke’. Henry Cromwell Corresp. 441-2. In the face of such intimidation, Francis Foulke was duly elected by both boroughs, ‘without six negatives’. TSP vii. 597.

The contrast between the Boyles’ approaches to Cork and Youghal is revealing. It seems that Youghal could be relied upon to follow the lead of the earl of Cork as its resident peer, but Cork city was more independently minded, and needed to be cajoled and pressurized before Boyle influence could prevail. The 1659 elections suggest that, despite the upheavals of the 1640s and 1650s, the two corporations retained their essential characters. Youghal continued to be dominated by the Boyles, while Cork retained a degree of political autonomy. In December 1659, when a force under Francis Foulke occupied Youghal in support of the coup led by Broghill and Sir Charles Coote* in Dublin, Edmund Ludlowe II* accused him of siding with ‘the cavalier party’. Ludlow, Mems. ii. 189. Ludlowe missed the point: Youghal was supporting not the royalists, but the Boyles. This was pressed home in the elections for the General Convention of early 1660, when Cork returned Broghill’s subordinate, Peter Courthorpe, and Youghal elected the Boyle cousin, Henry Tynte. Clarke, Prelude to Restoration, 217. The return of the monarchy was welcomed in Cork with suitable enthusiasm, with trumpets and a cannonade proclaiming Charles II as king in May 1660. CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 442. With the Boyles in charge, the two boroughs remained in Protestant hands, and in the elections for the 1661 Irish Parliament both returned Boyle clients – Courthorpe and Richard Kyrle for Cork, and Boyle Maynard for Youghal. CJI i. 589. In a final gesture of resistance, after the Restoration there was an attempt by the ancient Catholic families of Cork city to regain their lost land and rights, by petitioning the king. Eg. 2549, f. 113v. Despite the support of the duke of Ormond, the earl of Anglesey (Arthur Annesley*) and others, this petition failed miserably. J. P. Prendergast, The Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland (1865), 229. As the mayoral lists for the later seventeenth century suggest, apart from a few years under James II, the corporations of Youghal and Cork were now firmly under Old Protestant control. Council Bk of Youghal, 619; Council Bk of Cork, 1173-4.