'One Law, Many Justices: an Examination of the Magistracy In
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‘One Law, Many Justices: An Examination of the Magistracy in Pre- Famine Ireland, 1830-1846’ Robert Hartigan Department of History Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick Supervisor: Dr Maura Cronin External Examiner: Dr Richard McMahon Internal Examiner: Dr Úna Ní Bhroiméil Submitted to the University of Limerick in fulfillment of the thesis requirement for the degree of PhD in History 2016 1 Table of Contents Abstract ................................................................................................................................................... 3 Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................................. 5 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 6 Chapter 1: Defining the magistracy. ..................................................................................................... 21 Chapter 2: Patronage and Networking. ................................................................................................ 56 Chapter 3. Culture and identity. ........................................................................................................... 82 Chapter 4: Judicial Process: Petty Sessions courts and the character of the magistracy..................... 116 Chapter 5: Justice of the Peace vs. Stipendiary Magistrates ............................................................... 152 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................................... 195 Appendix. ............................................................................................................................................ 200 Bibliography ....................................................................................................................................... 204 2 Abstract This thesis examines the role of magistrates in pre-Famine Ireland, examining their relations with one another, with central government, and with local society. It considers the role of the magistracy in enforcing law and order and also examines precisely which members of the gentry controlled rural affairs through the office of magistrate. This thesis further assesses the effects of central government encroaching upon the local autonomy of the landed magistrates in the pre-Famine decades and explores the reaction of local magistrates to the incursion of Stipendiary Magistrates into their sphere of power. The sense of identity of landed magistrates is considered and questions raised as to its essentially local focus. Questions are also asked about the partisan nature of the enforcement of law and order locally and the effect the magistracy had on suppressing agrarian unrest. To address these question government reports, correspondence with the Chief Secretary’s Office, local newspapers and the personal papers and memoirs of individual magistrates are all used to place the local magistracy in the wider socio-economic context of the early nineteenth century. The study concludes that the landed gentry, using positions such as that of magistrate, redefined its identity and authority in rural Ireland during the pre-Famine period. In doing so some members of the gentry actually used the advances of central government (which were intended to reduce their power) to their own advantage, facilitating the re-establishment of their authority over local society. 3 Declaration I hereby declare that this thesis represents my own work and has not been submitted, in whole or in part, by me or any other person, for the purpose of obtaining any other qualification. Signed: _______________________________ Date: _______________________________ 4 Acknowledgements First off, I wish to thank the Department of History in Mary Immaculate College for their continued support and kind words throughout both my undergraduate and postgraduate studies. The deparment also part funded this project by providing me with an Assistantship for three years of my doctoral research, I particularly thank Liam Iriwin for this award. I would also like to thank my examiners, Dr Richard McMahon (TCD) and Dr Úna Ní Bhroméil (MIC) for their time and contribution to this work. However, I owe the greatest debt of gratitude to Dr Maura Cronin. Her kindness, guidance and patience have made this study possible and I thank her sincerely for all she has done. Dr Ciaran Reilly and Margaret Browne must also be thanked for their assistance in writing this thesis. I would like to pay special thanks to my class mates, particularly Paul O’Brien, David Loughnane, Ciaran Ryan, Ann-Marie Brosnan and Tom Keane. Most importantly, I would like to express my gratitiude to my friends and family for their support and encouragement. Special gratitude goes to my girlfriend, Amy. Her love, support and masked frustration played no small part throughout this entire process. And to my cat, Sadie, your indifference and late night company were at times my only sanity. 5 Introduction This thesis examines the role of magistrates as law officials, landlords and elites in pre- Famine Ireland. The nineteenth-century was a period of great social and political upheaval in Ireland, particularly the pre-Famine decades. The Act of Union (1801), which abolished the Irish parliament and combined it with the English house and further recognized the Anglican Church as the official church of Ireland, was the precedent that would produce a number of oppositional movements throughout the century. The campaign for emancipation in the 1820s under O’Connell, which saw monster meetings across the country, transferred to the repeal movement of the 1840s and awakened a political consciousness in the Catholic middle and poorer classes but for the most part were peaceful political movements. The tithe-war of the 1830s however, which was a protest by Catholics against levies placed on them to support the Anglican Church, was a much more violent protest which eventually led to this tax being retracted. However, by far the largest thorn in the side of the administration during the first half of the century was the issue of agrarian outrage, secret societies and the threat of a Catholic uprising similar to 1798. The historiography of agrarian crime and disorder in pre- Famine Ireland has predominately focused on the socio-economic conditions that drove the lower orders to commit offenses or on the legislation and tools used by the Irish administration to stop these outbreaks of violence. Lee argued for a recognizable moving frontier of collective disorder which corresponded with the growth of commercialized farming. 1 To support his claim he pointed to the fact that previous hotbeds of agrarian disturbances in the late eighteenth-century like Kilkenny and Queen’s County were now relatively quiet in the early nineteenth-century because commercialism had won and any protest from the tenants and cottier class would have been futile. In contrast, he pointed to areas like Roscommon and Leitrim, which were previously tranquil, were now becoming disturbed with the establishment of commercialized farming which threatened a customary way of life. Deeply involved in the suppression of agrarian disturbances were landlords and local elites who not only controlled their own estates and the lives of their tenantry but as county magistrates dominated local law and order also. While each outbreak of agrarian 1 Joe Lee, ‘Patterns of rural unrest in nineteenth century Ireland: a preliminary survey’ in L. M. Cullen and F. Furet (eds.)Ireland and France 17th-20th centuries: towards a comparative study of rural history (Paris, 1980). 6 unrest from the early decades of the nineteenth century onwards was predominately centred on land and the protection of agricultural employment, each subsequent outbreak saw the emergence of a new grievance, different objectives and new targets of retribution. 2 For instance, the Rockite movement in West Limerick in the early 1820s was directed against high potato prices, the displacement of labourers and small holders and animosity to the police and it also tapped into and played upon religious fears.3 In contrast, the Terry Alts in Clare a decade later were mostly motivated by grievances about the lack of potato ground, disturbances which resulted in many landlords and magistrates fleeing their estates. There are indications that grievances around the Limerick and Tipperary border in the earlier part of the nineteenth century centred on enclosure of common land; while further south in the Golden Vale the wage rates of labourers and the displacement of small holders seems to have been the most serious complaint while further west towards Castleconnell in Limerick and into O’Briens bridge and Killaloe in Clare, the loss of employment in turf collection in the 1830s caused major disorder, despite being home to a large concentration of magistrates. Meanwhile, in the northern portion of the country, Ribbonism, which was a Catholic confederacy incorporating Defender principles, carried some political and nationalist ideology. The need to contain these multiple forms of agrarian disorder was something that permeated state policy after the Union and right up to the famine years and beyond. To control disorder, government trusted the words of officials within Ireland but more specifically the words of magistrates were heavily relied on