Cavan, the southernmost county of the old province of Ulster, was a bleak inland region of limited agricultural and commercial development, but it was populous and contained the disfranchised boroughs of Belturbet and Cavan, where county meetings and elections were held. The Catholic population greatly outnumbered, yet were electorally in thrall to, the almost exclusively Protestant gentry, of whom none individually had a sufficient interest to return a Member.1 The leading figure since the Union had been the only resident nobleman, the 2nd earl of Farnham, a Tory representative peer and joint-governor, whose large and comparatively advanced estate at Farnham gave him an interest which was described by the Irish government in 1818 as ‘very great’. His estimated 1,000 electors were enough to ensure control of one seat, since the potential electorate was only about 6,000 (although one calculation put it as high as nearly 8,000) and in practice was probably far smaller.2

From 1806 Farnham returned his Orangeman cousin John Maxwell Barry of Newtownbarry, county Wexford, joint-governor and colonel of militia, although personal differences occasionally rendered the position of Barry, who in 1817 was appointed to a place at the treasury, perilously insecure. The other seat was occupied by the Dublin wine merchant Nathaniel Sneyd, the custos rotulorum, who had gained it on the eve of the Union on the independent interest, a loose alliance of minor landlords who favoured the Whig opposition at Westminster and perhaps resented the local Farnham hegemony. He was considered ‘a great favourite’, but, having voted consistently against Catholic relief and usually with Lord Liverpool’s administration, risked undermining his electoral base.3 The most likely challenger to the sitting Members was Charles Coote of Bellamont Forest, who had nearly stood as an advanced Whig in 1812 and 1818, but he was in France at the time of the dissolution in 1820.4 Alexander, eldest son of the former county Member Francis Saunderson of Castle Saunderson, offered as a third candidate, with the support of some of the independents; but the leading independent, the 1st marquess of Headfort of Bective Castle, Meath, who boasted of Cavan that ‘our interest has so increased and is increasing in that county that in a few months more, the certain return of one Member of considerable influence instead of another will be our situation’, stayed loyal to Sneyd, who acknowledged this as crucial to his survival.5 On Alexander Saunderson’s withdrawal, Sneyd (proposed by Headfort’s pro-Catholic heir Lord Bective* and Coote) and Barry (nominated by Colonel Joseph Pratt of Cabra Castle and Francis Saunderson) were returned unopposed, although there were calls at the hustings for a representative favourable to the Catholics.6

A loyal address to the king was agreed on the motion of the Right Rev. George de la Poer Beresford, bishop of Kilmore, at a county meeting, 19 Jan. 1821; at another, 13 Jan. 1823, in the face of an unsuccessful Orange opposition, an address congratulating Lord Wellesley, the lord lieutenant, on his escape during the Dublin theatre riots was moved by James Hamilton Story of Ballyconnell House.7 On the earl’s death in July 1823 Barry succeeded as 5th Baron Farnham and, given his stout Orange credentials, was considered certain of being able to return his like-minded nephew (and eventual heir) Henry Maxwell for the county. He received the backing of potential rivals the Saundersons and Sir William Young of Bailieborough Castle, while even Bective acknowledged his claims.8 It therefore came as a surprise at the by-election in February 1824, when Maxwell was introduced by Colonel Henry John Clements† of Ashfield Lodge and Major Thomas Burrowes of Stradone House, that Coote was put up by the farmers John Smith of Tedeehan and John Whitton of Cootehill. A poll was demanded, but on the failure of the then reluctant Coote to appear, Maxwell was declared elected on the 24th by the sheriff, John Hassard of Bawnboy. Apparently in a case of mistaken identity, another Smith was murdered during the ensuing Orange-dominated disturbances.9 A petition from Smith and Whitton, whose claim that Hassard had wrongly abandoned the poll was considered weak by Maxwell’s legal advisor Charles Fox, was brought up on 12 Mar. by the Speaker, who announced that the recognizances had not been entered into, 12 Apr. Allegations of intimidation by Orangemen were raised in another petition, which was presented by James Abercromby and rebutted by Maxwell, 11 May 1824.10

Although the by-election marked no change of political complexion, revelations emerged of a plan to overturn the representation. As Fox related to Maxwell, 13 May 1824, a furious Pratt, who had his own ambitions for a seat, ‘told me what I could not and do not believe, that the bishop, Clements, Coote and Sneyd had all combined together to bring Coote in, and that [Sneyd] was immediately to resign and Coote to come in’.11 In fact, Sneyd denied that he had agreed to retire at any point during the Parliament, but concurred with the summary, prepared by Clements for Coote that month, of an arrangement which apparently dated back to 1820:

Sneyd is to resign at the next general election in consequence of the support you gave him at the last. If called on by you, he is to give notice of his intentions of resigning, so as to give you time to prepare and canvass. You are to receive from me and the bishop our support, and Sneyd is to use his influence with his friends in your favour, reserving at the same time our support for the Farnham interest.12

Despite this last point, that autumn one newspaper boasted that ‘Coote will certainly beat the Barrys upon this their classic ground’, and Henry Goulburn*, the Irish secretary, regretted that Sneyd’s ‘sad disgrace’ in favouring ‘a radical and a papist’ would result in ‘the putting up of a red hot Orangeman and the most violent contest possible in a county where the old Members might have been returned without opposition’.13 Indeed, Alexander Saunderson, ostensibly an anti-Catholic Tory, offered in October 1824 and in January 1825 Henry Robert Westenra* dismissed Coote’s chances, even with ‘the full and most cordial support of the Roman Catholics’.14

The Cavan petition condemning the Catholic Association, with 4,700 signatures, was presented by Maxwell, 10 Feb., but another from the county for Catholic claims was brought up by Bective, 19 Apr. 1825.15 The Catholics were extremely active, and at their meeting, which Bective and the 2nd earl of Gosford of Gosford Castle, county Armagh, were unable to attend, 13 Oct. 1825, Robert Henry Southwell of Castle Hamilton declared his future candidacy on their interest. He, who was a cousin of the Catholic 3rd Viscount Southwell of Castle Mattress, county Limerick, had gained popularity as a magistrate by defending Catholic rioters late the previous year and had since been described by Daniel O’Connell’s* henchman John Bric as ‘an honest man and a patriot’ who was ‘greatly respected and confided in by the people’.16 During electoral speculation in the autumn of 1825, when Young also canvassed, Maxwell was considered safe, but it was thought that the radical Southwell would gain the other seat with the backing of Bective and his father, who Goulburn argued should be deprived of his household position, in spite of his continued support for Maxwell ahead of Coote.17 Farnham, whose candidature had been advocated by Peel, the home secretary, but vetoed by Canning, the foreign secretary, embarrassed ministers by defeating their eventual candidate Lord Mountcashell in the election for the vacant Irish representative peerage at the end of the year.

Given these local rivalries and the national sectarian context, all sides were set for a major confrontation at the general election of 1826, when the result in Cavan provided the most spectacular counter-example to the incipient trend of Catholic triumphs in county Waterford and elsewhere.18 Sneyd duly retired and, despite expectations, played no further part in the proceedings. Southwell fulfilled his promise to stand as an independent, a subscription being raised to meet his likely expenses as he was considerably in debt; he showed his intent to persevere, for instance, by having his agents make a search of the clerk of the peace’s records. This drove Farnham, who for legal reasons was careful to remain in the background, to instruct Maxwell, the clear favourite, in the complexities of voter registration and campaigning.19 Young declined in deference to Maxwell, who (through Clements) advised Coote, despite the latter’s insistence on going to a poll, to ‘stand neuter’ since otherwise, having been ‘ill used by the popish party’, it would end up with ‘his becoming (unwittingly I admit), a faggot for S[outhwell]’. Alexander Saunderson, who because of his friendship with the pro-Catholic William Humphrys of Ballyhaise House was deemed to be privately sympathetic to the emancipationist cause, also entered but, apparently through his relation Fox, he quickly coalesced with Maxwell and once he had pledged to vote against relief he was rewarded with promises of second votes from his soon-to-be brother-in-law’s supporters.20 Delighted by Coote’s junction with Southwell, not least because he wrongly believed that this would induce Clements to switch his support to Maxwell, Saunderson reckoned his running mate would ‘have an immense majority unless the radicals and priests succeed in seducing the tenants from their landlords’. Not only did this danger lead to threats of reprisals (legal proceedings were even begun against 18 40s. freeholders prior to the poll), but it dictated Farnham’s tactics. Since Maxwell’s agent warned him that ‘your Catholic tenantry will vote against you unless watched’, his aunt Lady Farnham advised that ‘none of the Protestants should be polled, but should be sent back and desired to stay at home till called for’, so that his committee could ‘poll off all Romans and doubtful characters first’. For their part, the Catholics, who were addressed by O’Connell after mass ten days before the contest, were equally assiduous in their attempts to procure votes.21

On the hustings, 19 June 1826, Maxwell (proposed by Pratt and Young) and Saunderson (introduced by the Rev. Samuel Adams, later dean of Cashel, and Humphrys) were unable to get a hearing, although the former’s anti-Catholic tirade later appeared in the press; neither the indisposed Coote (nominated by Clements and one Veitch), who was menaced by outlawry proceedings, nor Southwell (represented by Bective and Henry Grattan, the new Member for Dublin), who faced arraignment for debt, were able to be present. The show of hands was declared in favour of Maxwell and Southwell, but, almost from the start of the bitterly disputed six-day poll Maxwell and Saunderson, who presumably shared many splits, established a clear lead over Southwell and the trailing Coote, who kept it open in order to try to regain third place. According to George Marshal Knipe of Erne Hill, who estimated that only about 400 freeholders remained unpolled, 26 June:

I have been at many contested elections, but I never saw any so desperate as that now going on here, either with reference to the interference and audacity of the priests or the ferocity of the mobs. Many persons here are in danger from the beatings they received and almost every estate has lost many of their tenantry, or in other words the tenants have voted with the priests who accompanied the tallies up to the polling booths.22

The unrest culminated on the 27th, when Maxwell (who received the votes of 61 per cent of the 4,706 electors polled) and Saunderson (57 per cent) were declared elected, in a fight between a group of Orangemen and some Coote’s Catholic tenants, one of the most active of whom, Robert McCabe, was killed.23 The failure of the pro-Catholic candidates Southwell (41 per cent) and Coote (40 per cent), despite the fact that perhaps as many as 800 Catholic tenants defied their Protestant landlords’ instructions, was partly caused by Catholic unease at O’Connell’s approval of the proposal to disfranchise the 40s. freeholders as part of the failed relief legislation of the previous year, a point emphasized by Maxwell; but it was largely owing to the contest having been four and not three-cornered, so that Coote effectively dished Southwell, although the latter’s failure was also attributed to the defection of liberals like Humphrys to Saunderson.24

Maxwell, several of whose connections promised retaliation against their rebellious tenants, blamed the Catholic priests for exerting theological pressure on their co-religionists, but his opponents both retorted that the real unconstitutional influence had been exercised by the coalition and its violent supporters over the independent interest.25 The Catholics met to promote their cause, 31 July, and raised a subscription for distrained and evicted tenants, while the leading Protestants, including Farnham and the Members, held a dinner in honour of the defeated county Waterford candidate Lord George Beresford*, 30 Aug. 1826.26 On 27 Nov. Grattan presented a petition from Southwell which alleged incompetent and partisan conduct by the election officials, which was partly at the instigation of Thomas Ellis*, an Irish master in chancery. Others, from Southwell and various freeholders, were brought up complaining that Maxwell had no property qualification, that about 1,000 Catholic voters had not sworn the oaths and that too little time had been allowed for entering into recognizances, 4, 6 Dec. 1826, 8 Feb. 1827, when Southwell was examined at the bar of the House. But another of his petitions was withdrawn, 12 Feb., and the order for further discussion was discharged the following day.27 At twin county meetings attended by the Members, 25 Jan., an address to the king on the death of the duke of York was approved and several anti-Catholic resolutions were passed. The ensuing petition was brought up in the Commons by Saunderson, 2 Mar., but withdrawn because of irregularities, and on 20 June in the Lords, where one in favour of relief from the inhabitants of the county was presented, 8 June.28 That year, in a curious form of post-election retribution, Farnham made vigorous efforts to further the progress of the ‘Reformation’, so that by September 1827, when he was presented with a piece of plate by the noblemen and gentlemen of Cavan, Fermanagh and Monaghan, in recognition of his role in defence of the Protestant constitution, he had secured over 2,000 conversions, many on his own estate.29

Following another Protestant county meeting, the anti-Catholic petition from Cavan was presented to the Commons, probably by Maxwell, 8 May, and to the Lords by Lord Eldon, 7 June 1828. A petition from several inhabitants for improving the condition of Ireland was brought up by Grattan, 19 June.30 On 13 Oct. Sneyd chaired a well-attended meeting to establish the county’s Brunswick Club, of which the indisposed Farnham, who also headed many of the numerous local branches, became president. The Catholics replied with a large meeting under the chairmanship of Gerald Dease of Turbotston, Westmeath, 27 Nov., when they decided to try to advance their interests through the return of a liberal representative, including by means of a registration campaign. The Protestants again gathered in force, 21 Jan. 1829, when Saunderson, who had long acted inconsistently on the Catholic question, refused to commit himself.31 Having voted for the first time in favour of relief, 6 Mar., on 11 Mar. he presented but dissented from the ensuing hostile petition. This was brought up in the Lords, 3 Apr., presumably by Farnham, who, like Maxwell, spoke and voted steadily against the Wellington ministry’s emancipation bill.32 Saunderson incurred the displeasure of many of his constituents for having ‘ratted’ and Lord Granville Leveson Gower*, the Irish secretary, noted that, having for a principle ‘risked his best personal interests, he is hunted down by his own relation Lord Farnham’.33 As a consequence of the related Franchise Act, the registered electorate declined from 6,081, including over 5,000 40s. freeholders, in January 1829 to 1,325, of which nearly 400 were £10 voters, at the start of 1830.34 One speaker at the Catholics’ dinner in honour of the barrister William O’Reilly†, formerly of Kilnacrott, 22 Apr., expressed the hope that the high proportion of his co-religionists who were still enfranchised would continue to show their devotion to the cause. In consequence of Burrowes’s successful motion at a county meeting, 14 Apr., the Cavan petition against the introduction of poor laws to Ireland was presented by Saunderson, 21 May 1830.35

Young, now a director of the East India Company, offered, apparently as an independent, at the general election of 1830, when he claimed that he had stood down in 1826 only because he believed that both the eventual Members would remain hostile to concessions. Most Protestants wished and expected him to replace Saunderson and be returned in conjunction with Maxwell, and even Leveson Gower was prepared to support him, if Saunderson dropped out, though he expressed a forlorn preference for Southwell over Maxwell.36 Yet, as Southwell wrote to Maxwell, 12 Aug., he and Coote, who both withdrew their pretensions, were (like the 2nd marquess of Headfort, as Bective had become) willing to back him and Saunderson in order to avoid the expense and agitation of a contest, asking only that Farnham would put an end to ‘the flagitious system of bribery and corruption’ by which alone Young, a comparative newcomer to the county, could gain election. Maxwell replied the following day that he was pledged to a strict neutrality towards the other two candidates; he had already on the 9th issued a circular asking his tenants to plump for him.37 By then, Maxwell (proposed by Sir Robert Adair Hodson of Hollybrook, county Wicklow) and Saunderson (nominated by Theophilus Edward Lucas Clements of Rathkenny) had taken a clear lead over Young (introduced by Captain Edward Cottingham of Belfield, county Dublin) in a rowdy poll, which, on Maxwell’s advice, was kept open for four days. On 14 Aug. 1830 Saunderson, who declared that ‘we are all sick of a contest between the landlords of this county and those who would seduce their tenants’, argued that there was no need to deploy the Farnham tenantry, but Maxwell replied the following day that it was too late to countermand their attendance. Once his supporters had polled, Young withdrew, since he (with support from only 33 per cent of the 879 voters polled) was well behind not only Maxwell (89 per cent), but also Saunderson (51 per cent). Maxwell was blamed by some for conniving in the survival of Saunderson, who acknowledged that it was the allegiance of moderates from both sides which had secured his return, while Young’s closing address, delivered in his absence by his eldest son John Young*, vindicated his decision to contest the county.38

The sheriff and grand jury addressed Lord Anglesey, the Irish lord lieutenant, against agitation for repeal of the Union in March 1831.39 The county petition for the continuation of the grant to the Kildare Place Society was presented to the Commons by Maxwell, 16 Mar., and to the Lords by Farnham, 21 Apr. Saunderson, who, unlike his colleague, voted for the Grey ministry’s reform bill, brought up the Cavan borough petition for it to be granted its own Member, 12 Apr.40 Conceding that his views on reform were incompatible with those of his constituents, Saunderson retired at the dissolution later that month, when Maxwell, apart from losing a few friends who favoured reform, again seemed certain of success. Despite Headfort’s protest against Farnham’s attempting to control both seats, Maxwell united with John Young, who stood as an anti-reformer and was assured of a grant of £1,000 from central Tory funds to cover his share of the expected joint expenses of £1,400.41 Southwell, whose liberal address included calls for alterations to the grand jury laws, tithes, the Subletting Act and national education, at one point considered himself certain of election, having heard that Young would pull out. This proved incorrect and neither the financial resources of Headfort and others, nor the political collaboration of Saunderson, who nominated him, could enable him to prevail, despite being thought to have all the Catholic electors with him. Thus, after the withdrawal of the reformer O’Reilly, who was introduced on the hustings, 12 May 1831, but resigned before the start of the poll the following day, Maxwell and Young (proposed by Maxwell James Boyle of Tullyvin and Dean Adams respectively) convincingly won another short contest against Southwell, who received over 300 plumpers.42

Both Anglesey and Edward Smith Stanley*, the Irish secretary, conceded of Farnham that year, that ‘from property or character as a landlord, and high influence in Cavan, he has the first pretensions’, but Lord Grey was implacably opposed to the idea of making him lord lieutenant of the county.43 The new office was given to Headfort, but the magistrates and gentlemen, including Coote, Sneyd and the Youngs, signed a consolatory address to Farnham condemning this appointment in October 1831. Headfort’s name topped the county’s pro-reform resolutions, which were also signed by Saunderson and Southwell, at the end of the year, while Maxwell, on behalf of his uncle, was prominent at the Protestant county meeting the following January.44 Despite rumours that Farnham would be challenged in his electoral pre-eminence, the sitting Members were returned unopposed as Conservatives at the general election of 1832, when there were 2,248 registered electors, and Cavan remained virtually the Maxwell family’s private fief for many years.45