County Kerry

CO. KERRY – 92%, [75,000] c. 1,000, [c. 5,000 (1815)]
BOROUGH	TYPE	PATRON	ELECTORATE
Ardfert	Corporation	Earl of Glandore	12 burgesses and 6 freemen
Dingle	Corporation	Maurice FitzGerald heirs –	150 freemen, 2 resident
		Townshend family
Tralee	Corporation	Sir Barry Denny	13 burgesses (unchanged 1800–32)

Co. Kerry - Constituency

The principal interest in Co. Kerry was Lord Kenmare – the largest landowner but a Roman Catholic. Lord Landsdowne (Shelburne) and the Herbert interest were other absentee interests not fully exerted, although used from time to time. The Earl of Kerry’s interest appears to have been joined with the Crosbies, later Earls of Glandore. The four principal interests were the Crosbies, the Blennerhassets, the Fitzgeralds and the Dennys, and they returned the MPs for most of the century. There were other interests, such as the Batemans and by the 1790s the Mullins, who had been present from the beginning of the century, but had expanded their estates around Burnham.

In 1727 a short-lived attempt was made to divide the county between the Crosbies, Dennys and Blennerhassets. The county representation was to be rotated between them and the third participant was to be returned for Ardfert in the case of Crosbie and for Tralee in the case of the other two. Upon the death of one of the original participants his rights were to be transferred to his heir, and ‘All the said three persons do earnestly recommend to their respective families the substance of the foregoing friendly agreement.’

In August 1742 the death of Colonel Arthur Denny without issue dissolved the compact and the ties between him and his brother-in-law, the Earl of Kerry, who then turned to his other brother-in-law, Sir Maurice Crosbie, while the Blennerhassets used the opportunity to try to overturn the Denny interest in Tralee. The boroughs of Ardfert and Tralee were also involved in this compact and its break-up.

Throughout the century Kerry was, despite its apparently orderly pattern of returns, ‘harrassed by electioneering divisions’: these led not only to broken compacts but to duels, suspected murder and even suicide. In April 1794 Sir Barry Denny died and was succeeded by his son and namesake, then in July John Blennerhassett died aged 24. At the ensuing by-election John Gustavus Crosbie of Tubrid (supported by the Blennerhasset family) and Colonel Henry Arthur Herbert, brother-in-law to Lord Glandore, were both candidates. Crosbie took offence at a remark of Sir Barry Denny, the sitting member, and challenged him to a duel; Sir Barry was shot dead.

Then in 1797 Crosbie was killed by a fall from his horse while riding home one night, an incident attributed to the appearance of Sir Barry’s ghost or to Denny poison. Meanwhile, Sir Barry’s father-in-law, who had undertaken the management of his son-in-law’s estate, committed suicide in November 1794, leaving his affairs in disorder. Crosbie Morgell (1488), who sat for the Denny borough of Tralee, was reputed to be a ‘not over scrupulous solicitor’.

By 1800 it has been calculated that there were at least 15 landowners with rent-rolls of over £9,000, and these would all have benefited from the 1793 Catholic enfranchisement. Nevertheless, Crosbies, Fitzgeralds and Herberts continued to represent the county. Its electorate probably rose from about a thousand before 1793 to five thousand in 1815.

ID	County	Year	Type	Ref. No.	Name
1	Co. Kerry	1692	Election	619	Edward Denny
2	Co. Kerry	1692	Election	753	Thomas Fitzmaurice
3	Co. Kerry	1695	Election	619	Edward Denny
4	Co. Kerry	1695	Election	753	Thomas Fitzmaurice
5	Co. Kerry	1697	By Election	1863	William Sandes
6	Co. Kerry	1703	Election	621	Edward Denny
7	Co. Kerry	1703	Election	166	John Blennerhassett
8	Co. Kerry	1709	By Election	167	(Thomas Crosbie (0538) n.d.e.) John Blennerhassett
9	Co. Kerry	1713	Election	621	Edward Denny
10	Co. Kerry	1713	Election	537	Sir Maurice Crosbie
11	Co. Kerry	1715	Election	167	John Blennerhassett
12	Co. Kerry	1715	Election	537	Sir Maurice Crosbie
13	Co. Kerry	1727	Election	615	Arthur Denny
14	Co. Kerry	1727	Election	537	Sir Maurice Crosbie
15	Co. Kerry	1743	By Election	752	John (Petty) Fitzmaurice
16	Co. Kerry	1751	By Election	168	John Blennerhassett
17	Co. Kerry	1759	By Election	536	Lancelot Crosbie
18	Co. Kerry	1761	Election	1673	William Petty(-Fitzmaurice) (Lord Fitzmaurice)
19	Co. Kerry	1761	Election	167	John Blennerhassett
20	Co. Kerry	1762	By Election	168	John Blennerhassett
21	Co. Kerry	1763	By Election	754	Thomas Fitzmaurice
22	Co. Kerry	1768	Election	617	Sir Barry Denny
23	Co. Kerry	1768	Election	167	John Blennerhassett
24	Co. Kerry	1775	By Election	164	Arthur Blennerhassett
25	Co. Kerry	1776	Election	100	Rowland Bateman
26	Co. Kerry	1776	Election	164	Arthur Blennerhassett
27	Co. Kerry	1783	Election	617	Sir Barry Denny
28	Co. Kerry	1783	Election	1009	Richard Townsend Herbert
29	Co. Kerry	1790	Election	617	Sir Barry Denny
30	Co. Kerry	1790	Election	169	John Blennerhassett
31	Co. Kerry	1794	By Election	618	Sir Barry Denny (July–Oct. 1794)
32	Co. Kerry	1794	By Election	535	John Gustavus Crosbie
33	Co. Kerry	1795	By Election	739	Maurice Fitzgerald (Kt of Kerry)
34	Co. Kerry	1797	Election	739	Maurice Fitzgerald (Kt of Kerry)
35	Co. Kerry	1797	Election	533	James Crosbie
36	Co. Kerry	1801	UK	739	Maurice Fitzgerald (Kt of Kerry)
37	Co. Kerry	1801	UK	533	James Crosbie
38	Co. Kerry	1802	Election	739	Maurice Fitzgerald (Kt of Kerry)
39	Co. Kerry	1802	Election	533	James Crosbie

Co. Kerry - Boroughs

Ardfert was probably a borough by prescription. It had no charter on record, nor is any known to have existed. As early as 1711 Andrew Young of Dublin wrote to David Crosbie at Ardfert saying that he has searched in vain the charters of James I and Charles I and he concludes therefore that the borough exists by prescription. It did, however, return MPs in 1639. Its corporation comprised a portreeve, 12 burgesses and an unlimited number of freemen.

Both Ardfert and Tralee appear to have been almost bargaining counters between the major interests in Co. Kerry. The 1727 compact gives some indication of this, and in 1715 Lord Shelburne wrote to David Crosbie asking him to return Mr Pratt (1721) for ‘one of your boroughs’. This was the famous John Pratt, who produced the financial chaos in the national accounts that Luke Gardiner (0841) was brought in to resolve. Pratt sat for Dingle from 1713 to 1727.

The Crosbies, Earls of Glandore, were notoriously short of money. Furthermore, Lady Glandore (the daughter of Lord George Sackville (1835)) was fond of gambling, and in 1790 a political commentator wrote that:

Since the present noble Lord succeeded his father, it [Ardfert] has regularly been exposed to sale and, notwithstanding that his Lordship has lately been appointed to a considerable office [Joint Master of the Rolls] … it will most probably, still continue a merchantable commodity, ready for the purchasers of parliamentary importance. Peers sometimes want money and according to the present market price, the sale of a borough brings in a sure £500 p.a.

In 1787 Robert Day (0598) warned Crosbie that he must retrench and put his finances in order, so that he would be spared his present hand-to-mouth shifts like the sale of seats: ‘a resource which, by the bye, you are no longer to look to’. However, Crosbie returned Day from 1790 to 1798, when Day, a safe pair of hands, was elevated to the Bench. Glandore, an enthusiastic Unionist, received the £15,000 compensation for Ardfert’s disfranchisement at the Union.

Dingle was incorporated by a charter of 1607, 4 James I, and comprised a sovereign, 12 burgesses and an indefinite number of freemen. It also had, not mentioned in the charter, a recorder, town clerk, two serjeants-at-mace, weighmaster and poundkeeper. In 1731 John Perceval (1665) was elected for Dingle without opposition, although not yet of age.

The election involved £87 for ‘treating’, of which it was considered that Perceval should pay £37, as a ‘great deal more treating has been done than it is fair that he should pay for’. ‘Treating’ was synonymous with elections and the voters would probably have felt deprived had it been otherwise. Dingle belonged to the FitzGeralds, Knights of Kerry, although they were always watchful for any attack on it – the Mullins showed an unwelcome interest in it from time to time.

In 1783 the town was estimated to comprise 200 houses and there were 200 electors, but only two were resident in the town and ten in the county. Richard Boyle Townsend (2101) inherited it from his mother Elizabeth, the daughter and heiress of John Fitzgerald, Knight of Kerry (0737) and sister of Maurice Fitzgerald (0738), who died childless on 24 June 1779. Maurice was succeeded as Knight of Kerry by his uncle Robert (0744), but the borough of Dingle was inherited by his nephew Richard Townsend (2100), although in 1778 Robert Fitzgerald was incorrectly thought to have half of the borough. Richard Townsend received the £15,000 for its disfranchisement at the Union.

Tralee was incorporated by a charter of 1613, 10 Jas I, to comprise a provost, 12 free burgesses, two serjeants-at-mace and some freemen. Tralee, however, was a thriving port and other officers included a town clerk, marshall keeper and a weighmaster.

County and borough politics were further complicated by the fact that the various interests were all intermarried: for instance, on 11 November 1711 Thomas Crosbie wrote from Dublin to his brother William Crosbie in Co. Kerry that ‘I have some reason to be apprehensive that Jack [Blenner]Hassett (0167) designs privately to match himself with Jenny Denny’, the daughter of Edward Denny (0619), and in 1713 the marriage did take place.

In Tralee, as in Ardfert and Dingle, county and borough interest were traded one against the other. For instance, in May 1743 Sir Maurice Crosbie wrote to a friend that ‘What interests our country now is the desertion of Ned Herbert and his interest from Jack [Blenner]Hasset’s to Thomas Denny’s side, and that on a promise of Denny’s that Herbert or his son shall come in for Tralee the next vacancy that shall happen after the present one occasioned by the promotion of the Prime Serjeant [Arthur Blennerhassett, 0163] to the King’s Bench.’

There was a follow-up to this arrangement in 1760 when Herbert wrote to tell Sir Thomas Denny of the king’s death and remind him of his promise! In 1790 Tralee was described as follows:

This close Borough, whose electors consist of twelve Burgesses only, is the sole property of Sir Barry Denny, Baronet, who in fact nominates both the electors and the representatives. Sometimes it is sold and sometimes bartered, to secure its proprietor’s return for the County, as was the case at the last general election when Sir Barry Denny gave a seat for it to Sir William Godfrey (0855), for a thousand pounds, which Mr Richard Herbert (1009), the other County Member paid, in order to induce Sir William to resign his interest in their favour and by that means to secure their success.

But should Sir Barry be elevated to the Peerage, an elevation at which he has been eagerly aspiring ever since Lord Townshend’s Government, both seats will be given up to the nomination of the minister, for that is now the acknowledged price of being raised to the House of Lords.

Sir Barry Denny died in 1794 before his aspirations could be realised, and his son was killed shortly after in the fateful duel. At the Union Tralee retained one MP; Arthur Moore (1450), who purchased a seat in 1798, won the ballot and sat until the 1802 election, when George Canning purchased the return.

Constituencies and Elections

County Kerry

Co. Kerry - Constituency

Co. Kerry - Boroughs