Antrim, which had a population of over 300,000 by 1831, was a prosperous and mostly Protestant Ulster county on the north-east Ulster coast. There were several market towns, including the disfranchised boroughs of Antrim and Randalstown, and a number of ports, notably Ballycastle, Larne and Portrush, but Belfast was the economic epicentre of its flourishing cloth trades.1 Except in the lively politics of its biggest borough, not much attention was attracted by elections for the county, which took place at Carrickfergus. The handful of magnates who had electoral interests were all Tories and anti-Catholics with connections to the administration of Lord Liverpool, and despite their considerable jealousies there was no contest until 1830.2 Since the Union a sympathetic understanding had existed between two major landowners, who each returned one Member. The Irish joint-postmaster and representative peer Earl O’Neill of Shane’s Castle, one of the two governors and colonel of the Antrim militia, brought in his like-minded brother Colonel John O’Neill of Tullymore Lodge. He was said to have a ‘fine estate’, while £50,000 a year was the rental put on the ancestral Antrim properties owned by the 2nd marquess of Hertford of Ragley Hall, Warwickshire, and Sudbourne Hall, Suffolk, the lord chamberlain.3 In 1812 Hertford, the custos rotulorum, replaced his friend Edmond MacNaghten of Beardiville with his only son Lord Yarmouth*, and on his retirement in 1818 he put forward his nephew Lieutenant-Colonel Hugh Seymour, whose brother Horace Seymour* he soon returned for Lisburn, his Irish pocket borough. The patrons, who divided government patronage between them, were said by Oldfield to ‘kindly relieve the good people of this county from the trouble of providing themselves with representatives’.4 An important friend to this interest was the 3rd earl of Mountcashell of Gilgorm Castle (and Moore Park, county Cork), of whom Yarmouth (by then the 3rd marquess) wrote in 1823, when supporting his attempt to become a representative peer, that ‘while he supports Lord O’Neill and myself [his estates] enable us to defy the radicals of Belfast’.5 Other Tories were the 1st Viscount Templetown of Castle Upton, whose ministerialist sons sat for Bury St. Edmunds and Castle Rising, and Viscountess Massereene of Antrim Castle, whose husband Thomas Skeffington, Member for Drogheda and Louth on the Foster interest, became the 2nd Viscount Ferrard in 1824.

The main rival to the O’Neill and Hertford alliance was the other governor of Antrim, the 2nd marquess of Donegall of Ormeau, near Belfast, whose family were kinsmen of the O’Neills. His eldest son, Lord Belfast, had ambitions for the county, but had to settle for a seat on the family interest at Carrickfergus in 1818. Equally tenacious in her attempts to reassert the MacDonnells’ influence was the suo jure countess of Antrim of Glenarm Castle. Her first husband, Sir Henry Vane Tempest†, a rich and degraded Durham landowner, had been thought a possible candidate for Antrim in 1812. In 1817 she married ‘a man of no family’ called Edmund Phelps, a former chorister at St. Paul’s and captain of the Beefeaters, who changed his name to McDonnell and became ‘a well-bred, rich and much courted person’ and a potential county Member.6 Lady Antrim’s immediate pretensions were put on hold at the general election of 1820, when McDonnell served as sheriff. No challenge was initially offered to the sitting Members, but Belfast belatedly offered ‘with the desire of giving the independent interest of this great and populous county an opportunity of rescuing those privileges so long withheld’ from it. Other candidatures were rumoured, including that of MacNaghten (now a junior minister), who, however, returned to his retreat at Hertford’s borough of Orford when it became clear that there would be no opening for him; and Richard Gervas Ker† of Redhall, who was put up more or less in conjunction with Belfast, but in fact never went over from London because of illness.7 Lady Antrim and her husband had encouraged Ker and, according to Lord O’Neill, ‘Belfast, though himself anxious to decline the contest, is weak enough to be led by her and she has persuaded him to continue to disturb the county’.8 Lord O’Neill also complained to Hertford that ‘should the contest be protracted until my funds run out, we can do nothing but resign - on this I imagine the Belfast people calculate a good deal’; and that, the Ribbonmen being organized, ‘it will be difficult if not impossible to get a Roman Catholic to vote for any Member who has opposed their claims in Parliament’.9 In the end, the canvassing and increased registration served no purpose as O’Neill and Seymour were elected unopposed. Lord Belfast, who had already been returned for Belfast and had withdrawn from the county contest the day before, arrived on the hustings only after the chairing, but explained his position, declaring that ‘I oppose coalition and wish to break through combination’.10 Lord O’Neill reported to Hertford that ‘I am told many of his supporters are highly offended at the trouble they have been put to’, but he was expected to renew the attempt at a later date.11

Informing Lady Antrim’s son-in-law Lord Stewart about a financial quarrel within the family, his half-brother Lord Castlereagh*, the foreign secretary, commented in April 1820:

I own I regretted to see at the close of one of your letters a flourish to McDonnell about coming into Parliament, first as seducing them from the retirement in which they seemed disposed to remain, and secondly as holding out expectations which I could not possibly realize. Where could money be found for such purposes, and if found, could it be worse applied?12

Her sister Charlotte also vehemently opposed her wishes, noting in October 1821 that ‘I am sure Mr. Phelps [as she always called him] will try for the county and that soon’. She and her husband, Lord Mark Robert Kerr of Holmwood, Oxfordshire, a naval officer and a younger son of the 5th marquess of Lothian, were suitably horrified when, after Seymour’s death in December, McDonnell put himself forward for the vacancy.13 McDonnell applied to Lord Londonderry (as Castlereagh had become) to intervene with Hertford, arguing that

the period cannot be far distant when a change will be attempted to be effected in the present leading interests of the county, and I presume to think that if Lord Hertford should incline to sanction my pretensions, with his powerful approbation, those interests might be consolidated, and I can have no hesitation in pledging myself both from inclination and my political bias to the support of the line of policy hitherto pursued by your Lordship.14

Hertford, however, was concerned to preserve his own interest, and his wife instructed Yarmouth to manage the election, if possible by coming to an amicable agreement with Belfast. Although she soon claimed that Hertford was ‘so very indifferent to politics’ that she believed relinquishing the seat ‘would not have caused him any uneasiness’, it was evidently considered essential to mollify the ailing peer by returning his grandson Lord Beauchamp.15 As Beauchamp, an idle young army officer, recounted to his mother:

Lord Y. has ordered me to go and that in two days. I have protested against it in every way, viz., that I was very unwell, which is not exactly the case, that I had arranged to go to Paris to see you, which is the case, etc., etc. Lord Y. says that I must go, that Lord H. would disinherit him of all in his power if I did not, so I must do it.

A few days later, as he was reluctantly setting out for Ireland, he wrote in exasperation that ‘I believe Lord Y. was so afraid of being obliged to give me any help or instructions that to my great surprise ... I found that he had bolted God knows where’.16 The Kerrs, who remained hostile, and several leading gentlemen threw in their lot with the heir, but for a while McDonnell was indiscreet enough to insist on canvassing and over 1,000 electors were added to the registers in expectation of a contest.17 However, in early January 1822 he declined, hoping for a more favourable opportunity, and Beauchamp was duly elected, albeit with what he termed ‘much more trouble than I had expected’.18 He, who was almost wholly inactive in the Commons, was styled Lord Yarmouth from June 1822, on his father’s succeeding to the marquessate. Although Lord O’Neill requested the office of custos rotulorum of Antrim for his brother, ministers considered that the new Lord Hertford merited it as he had the largest electoral interest.19

The anti-Catholic petition of the noblemen, gentlemen, freeholders and Protestant inhabitants, which had over 15,000 signatures, was presented to the Commons by O’Neill, 16 Apr. 1823.20 Following requisitions, county meetings were held to oppose the repeal of the duties on foreign linen, 10 Apr. 1823, and to support the continuation of linen bounties, 25 Mar. 1824, and the petition agreed at the latter was brought up by O’Neill, 11 May 1824.21 At a meeting held in Belfast, 4 Apr. 1826, an agricultural society covering Antrim and the neighbouring counties was established under the title of the North-East Society.22 In the autumn of the previous year, when a dissolution had been expected, Yarmouth had informed his father that he would stand down and Hertford had had to place his hopes in MacNaghten, without whom, he commented, ‘I must give up the county and sing Hallelujah at one care the less’.23 In May 1826 he despaired of his inability to provide for the freeholders, writing to his man of business, John Croker*, that ‘my father did so much for every Antrim voter that they tease me till I wish the seat at the Devil and next time it shall go there’. Yet the following month, as McDonnell stayed away and Belfast declined to offer because of the state of the registries (on which there were a total of 6,572 electors in April 1825), Hertford was delighted at the quiet election of the two Orangemen, O’Neill and MacNaghten.24 Despite fears that the organization of an anti-Catholic petition was badly conducted, the Protestant interests held a county meeting to agree an address of condolence to the king on the death of the duke of York, 6 Feb., and secured about 30,000 signatures to the petition, which was presented to the Commons by MacNaghten, 2 Mar. 1827.25 Petitions from the corn millers for the continued prohibition of foreign flour and from the spirit dealers for revision of the licensing laws were brought up, 26 Feb., 29 Mar., and Belfast presented the magistrates’ petition calling for the enforcement of the Irish Constabulary Act, 7 June 1827.26 Following a meeting of the Catholics, under the chairmanship of Dr. William Crolly, Catholic bishop of Down and Connor, on 10 Jan. 1828, their petition in favour of their claims was brought up in the Commons, 7 May, and in the Lords, 9 June, by Charles Brownlow, Member for county Armagh, and the 3rd marquess of Downshire (who presented another such petition, 12, 13 Mar. 1829).27 However, the predominant sentiment was still against Catholic relief, and O’Neill presented hostile petitions from the county and town of Antrim, 28 Apr.28 He and his brother Lord O’Neill, Mountcashell, Belfast and Sir Arthur Chichester, Member for Carrickfergus, were included in the list of vice-presidents of the Ulster Brunswick Club, which was established in Belfast, under Donegall’s leadership, on 10 Sept. 1828. Among other clubs formed were those at Ballymena (under the presidency of John O’Neill), Ballymoney (James Leslie of Leslie Hill), Edenduffcarrick (Lord O’Neill), and Kilconway (James Stewart Moore of Ballydivity).29

Late that year Hertford, who told the prime minister, the duke of Wellington, that he had refused to join the Brunswick Club in order not to be pledged as to his conduct in Parliament,30 commented to Croker:

Do you know that there’s such a storm risen against MacNaghten and me in the county of Antrim that ... were there to be now an election nine out of ten of my Protestant tenants would vote with Lord Ferrard or Lord Donegall’s nominee rather than with MacNaghten whom as well as myself they call renegado. Poor MacNaghten after 31 years damning the Pope and being a burning Protestant is quite melancholy at being suspected of being in love with the scarlet whore.31

Hertford, absent in Italy, gave his proxy for the concession of emancipation decided on by Wellington, who gave out that Antrim would be possibly the only Irish county not to return Catholic Association Members in the event of an immediate dissolution.32 But he doubted how far MacNaghten could, ‘without blowing up our power in Antrim’, support any concessions, and his nominee duly voted with the Ultras. Worried that the other Protestant interests - especially that belonging to Donegall, who (by proxy) voted against emancipation, as did Belfast - might combine against him, he hoped

to be saved by Lord O’Neill preferring to remain postmaster-general to voting against government. I hope the duke will, for my sake if not for his own, look to this as scrupulously as to poor MacNaghten and then I think that, as Lord O’Neill did not go out in Canning’s time, as many good Protestants did, he will join the duke now, which will be a ponté d’oro for MacNaghten and preserve me and my interest which, while as good as and joined to the O’Neill’s, is impregnable.33

Yet both O’Neills divided not only against emancipation, but also against the Irish franchise bill and thus incurred the wrath of the premier: Mrs. Arbuthnot recorded that she ‘wrote him word I thought he must forgive Lord O’Neill who is a personal sufferer (he loses his county by it) ... but I believe he will not’.34

A despondent Hertford likewise remarked to Croker that the higher freehold qualification in the county, where he was considered a ‘Popish rat’, ‘loses it for me. You have often heard me say how much injury my father did the estate by cutting down the tenures to make votes - I have scarce any of £10’.35 He was concerned about the new registry, on which only just over 2,000 electors were named by June that year, and noted that ‘Belfast must now overpower the country gentlemen, but perhaps will not itself be very manageable’. The radical Belfast newspaper the Northern Whig agreed that the representation had been ‘transferred from the serfs of the great landed proprietors to the merchants and traders of Belfast’, but warned that the peers were already on the alert and were evicting tenants in order to preserve their influence.36 In December 1829, when an agent rebutted criticisms in the Whig that the estates were managed solely on political grounds, Hertford described it as ‘a Donegall party scheme to break me and my tenantry, and ingeniously enough put into the liberal (Captain Rock) paper to disguise its source’.37 A county meeting was held at Carrickfergus, 10 June 1830, to agree petitions complaining of the increase in duties on spirits and stamps, but these were apparently not presented.38

MacNaghten left the government and retired from the House at the dissolution in July 1830, claiming poor health, while O’Neill stood again and Belfast offered on the basis of the Donegall connection, securing support from magnates like Ferrard and from his friends in Belfast borough.39 Earlier that year Lord O’Neill had claimed that there was ‘not one word of truth in a report of a split between Lord Hertford and us’, but a separation soon occurred when, with no plausible candidate standing on the Hertford interest, he broke with his former associate in order to join forces with the anti-Catholic Lord Belfast and the influential Donegall, whose Belfast estates now assumed greater importance.40 Hertford narrated the complicated affair in a long letter, apparently sent to Sir Francis Workman MacNaghten, the Member’s brother. He described how MacNaghten, for whom Hertford had secured ministerial permission for long absences in Ireland, had at first been persuaded to postpone his threatened departure, especially as ‘I could not reconcile his loss to my feelings, and seeing him so apparently well, I own I always thought health was but the plea and some combinations founded on Orange feelings the real reason’. So although Hertford had been ready to consult the other interests, he was wholly unprepared when, after George IV’s death, MacNaghten ‘peremptorily’ declined, and he complained that

I had exhausted all my powers of persuasion, I had offered support in money without limit and to deposit £20,000 anywhere for a commencement of canvass and my word of honour, never once in the Parliament, to press him to attend one hour in the House of Commons.

Afterwards, Lady Antrim called on him to suggest her husband’s name and, as Yarmouth and Kerr both refused to stand, Hertford agreed to support McDonnell provided that they retained the connection with the O’Neills. However, Lord O’Neill replied by dissolving their alliance because ‘with the strong Protestant feelings I possess ... and in the conviction in my mind that the vigilant care of that interest is now more than ever necessary’, he could not countenance any candidate who would have voted differently from his brother on the Catholic question. Hertford explained that ‘I grieve to lose the O’Neill connection, but I never would have held it one hour but as an independent reciprocal support without reference to the political sentiments of our respective friends’, and he vindicated his conduct in backing McDonnell by stating that

my main wish was to show to some of the resident interest, my gratitude in kind - support for support - and not to endeavour to press upon the county any distant non-resident member of my family, who, without any present or reversionary interest in its prosperity, would not be expected to understand or to learn its interests and its wishes.41

A fierce contest was therefore expected at the general election of 1830, when Belfast and, after a curious delay, O’Neill endorsed each other, and McDonnell, who was not without his sympathizers, ran as the candidate who could now (rather than Belfast) justly claim to represent the cause of independence. Ministers, repaying Hertford’s loyalty to them, gave their support to McDonnell, as well as to Belfast, who was made vice-chamberlain of the household that month, one of the reasons why he was detained so long in London.42 However, annoyed by their continued opposition to government, the prime minister removed Lord O’Neill from his sinecure office and his brother was only suffered to retain his position as constable of Dublin Castle under a pledge of good behaviour for the future. In an example of ministerial pressure, Wellington, who doubted that Belfast would succeed, persuaded his brother-in-law Colonel Hercules Robert Pakenham* of Langford Lodge to abandon O’Neill.43 On the hustings, 10 Aug. 1830, O’Neill was proposed by two respected country gentlemen, Richard Dobbs of Castle Dobbs and George Macartney of Lissanoure Castle; Belfast was nominated by William Wallace Legge of Malone House and the Belfast banker William Tennent; McDonnell was introduced by Pakenham and Edward Jones Agnew of Kilwaughter; and George Hutchinson of Ballymoney put up the absent and unwitting Kerr, who subsequently withdrew by letter. Little animosity was displayed by the candidates, who all agreed in opposing higher taxes, but the mob were ‘very personal’ to McDonnell and ‘called on him frequently for a song’. O’Neill led from the beginning of the three-day poll and Belfast overturned the deficit against him on the first day to be elected in second place after McDonnell had resigned, ‘dead beat’ as Hertford put it. Most of McDonnell’s voters plumped for him, and almost all the rest of the 1,235 electors polled must have split for the winning candidates.44 Donegall’s success was tempered by the fact that he lost Carrickfergus to Downshire, who regretted McDonnell’s defeat, but Chichester replaced his kinsman at Belfast. Dinners were held there on 14 Sept. and 12 Oct. 1830 in honour of John O’Neill and Belfast, who both acknowledged the importance of the support they had received from the well-to-do inhabitants of the borough.45 This became a constant theme in succeeding elections, so it was with some prescience, as well as asperity, that MacNaghten had commented before the contest that ‘I cannot think Lord Donegall can be so ill-advised as to give the town of Belfast the return of a Member’ for the county.46

Several local reform meetings were held early the next year and on 24 Jan. 1831 the Northern Reform Club was established in Belfast. A non-contentious county meeting was held on 19 Feb. to address the lord lieutenant against repeal of the Union, but the new sheriff, Macartney, refused to accede to a requisition for another on parliamentary reform.47 The subsequent unofficial gathering at Carrickfergus under Agnew’s chairmanship, 23 Mar., was largely got up by the Belfast reformers, among whom James Emerson, the future Belfast Member, was a prominent figure. The ensuing address to the king was presented by Lord Grey, the prime minister, who may have brought up the petition in the Lords, 21 Apr. It is not clear if it was presented to the Commons, but other reform petitions from the inhabitants were brought up there, 29 Mar., 15 Apr. Both Members, bowing to the popularity of reform, expressed their approval of these proceedings and voted for the reform bill.48 They offered again at the ensuing general election, though O’Neill was delayed by an attack of gout en route to Ireland and Belfast was too ill even to set out. Nothing came of rumours that Yarmouth or Henry Meynell, Member for Lisburn, would enter, but McDonnell, despite being a lukewarm advocate of reform, eventually stood as an ‘independent’ with the backing of Hertford, who had otherwise considered Workman MacNaghten.49 Wellington supported McDonnell, but Pakenham refused to sponsor him in so futile a cause. The 3rd marquess of Londonderry (formerly Lord Stewart), who wanted to create a distraction from the contest in Down, unsuccessfully urged the Tories’ central committee to put up the £2,000 that he thought was necessary to ensure his return.50 Downshire’s relative, the 2nd Viscount Dungannon, was among the Tory landlords giving their assistance to Hertford’s candidate.51 The Belfast reformers were again active on behalf of the sitting Members, and, conceding that his friends had already pledged themselves to his opponents, McDonnell withdrew on the eve of the contest. O’Neill, looking very poorly, and Belfast, represented by his brother, the Rev. Edward Chichester, were duly returned unopposed.52

Hertford voted against the reform bill in the House of Lords, 7 Oct. 1831, when Lord O’Neill, who despite his wayward attitude to ministers was made lord lieutenant of Antrim that autumn, abstained. However, Donegall, notwithstanding his anger at being passed over for this (he was given the lord lieutenancy of Donegal instead) and, like O’Neill, at being refused a step up in the peerage, divided with ministers (as he did again, 7 May 1832).53 Despairing of his influence, Hertford commented to Croker in February that ‘if there’s an Antrim vacancy and that McDonnell won’t stand, I prefer an O’Connellite to a subservient mute of the present administration as less generally hurtful’, and in April, grieving over MacNaghten’s death, he observed that ‘as to my political loss in his interest, I feel little now’.54 As for Lord O’Neill, who was alarmed by the potential threat of religious and social unrest in the north of Ireland, ministers doubted if he would put forward his brother again, as both had lent their support only in the now disappointed hopes of receiving patronage.55 Yet at the general election in December 1832, when there were 3,487 registered electors, John O’Neill did stand and was returned with Belfast, the popular candidate, after a contest against two Conservatives, McDonnell and John Cromie of Portstewart, county Londonderry, the result being much to the regret of Hertford and Londonderry.56 Belfast sat as a Liberal until 1837, when he returned to but was soon unseated from Belfast borough, yet O’Neill, who succeeded to his brother’s peerage in 1841, reverted to the Conservatives, and thereafter Antrim was almost invariably represented by them, including members of the O’Neill, Pakenham and Seymour families.