'The Tyrone election of 1835'

The Tyrone election of 1835 An examination of nineteenth-century elections can provide a useful insight into mob behaviour and the level of control exerted over the mob by the gentry figures who were the dominant members of society. This certainly holds true when carrying out a study of the County Tyrone election of 1835. The election took place in a period of great uncertainty for the Protestant population of Ulster and this uncertainty was apparent in elite circles as the gentry split into opposing camps, one of which was prepared to use the mob to further its aims, the other which was not. The aim of this paper is to trace the role of the mob in an election which was bitterly contested by two members of the highest elites of Tyrone. This election was to be the first contested election in the county in sixty eight years as the sitting M.P. Sir Hugh Stewart was stepping down and excitement was high. As the election drew near the High Sheriff, R. M. Moore, felt the need to ask Dublin Castle for 130 infantry police and a further twenty mounted police as well as requesting the help of a stipendiary magistrate. While J. G. Jones made his way to Omagh to perform this duty, a detachment of the 52nd regiment left Ballyshannon and arrived in the town on 11 January. The fears of the authorities were no doubt heightened by the fact that Lord Claude Hamilton intended to stand against Lord James Alexander, son of the earl of Caledon. Hamilton had the support of the Orange Order whilst Alexander, like his father, was contemptuous of the Order. The third candidate was the sitting M. P. , Henry Corry, the son of the earl of Belmore, and a certainty to retain his seat. As only two seats were available and as Corry was virtually guaranteed one of them, this left the contest for the second seat a straightforward battle between Hamilton and Alexander. Hamilton had managed to persuade Belmore to remain neutral in his public 1 views of who should accompany his son to Westminster which was highly significant as Belmore was a influential political figure in the county and was also a large landholder who had the power to influence his tenants on how they used their second vote. This action by Belmore ensured that each vote would be vigorously sought after by the candidates and this would inevitably lead to heightened tensions in the election build up. J. H. Whyte points out that prior to the 1830s ‘elections were still generally speaking, not about issues at all : they were contests between coalitions of local gentry for power and prestige’. The latter part of this assertion certainly holds true for Tyrone with a power struggle and personality clashes most certainly taking place. Among the supporters of Hamilton, who was the brother of the largest landholder in the county the Marquis of Abercorn, were Samuel Vesey, a Fintona magistrate and district master of the Orange Order in the Fintona area, Fintona landlord, magistrate and member of the powerful Eccles family Charles Eccles, James Sinclair magistrate and land agent to Abercorn, Dungannon magistrate and Grand Master of the Tyrone Orange Order Joseph Greer, J. C. Mountray an Augher magistrate and member of the Orange Order, Strabane magistrate Major John Humphries, and Sir J. J. Burgoyne national committee member of the Orange Order and Strabane District Master, whilst Alexander was supported by Andrew Stewart who was Deputy Lieutenant of the county, Tamlagh landlord and magistrate William Lenox Conygham, magistrate Edward Houston Caulfield, magistrate J. Y. Burgess, and Liberal M.P. for Londonderry Sir Robert Ferguson. Suzanne Kingon states that ‘electoral alliances were determined by local relationships and considerations’ and it is apparent that both parties had a strong network of influential figures and families as supporters. The majority of the gentry would appear to have been supporters of Hamilton, which led 2 the Strabane Morning Post to make the confident prediction that the canvass of Lord Claude Hamilton for the representation of this county, on the conservative interest, has been most successful. Promises of support from the gentry, clergy, and electors have put his return beyond doubt. However, this prediction was somewhat premature as the election result was far from being a foregone conclusion. Kingon stresses that although elections highlighted the power struggles taking place between leading aristocratic families, they had also evolved to include some of the national political issues of the day, something that had been previously lacking in local election contests. Brian Walker explains that at the beginning of the nineteenth century M. Ps did not belong to parties but simply either opposed or supported the government. By the 1830s most became identified with party groupings and most commonly with the Tories. It now became more important to align with a political party at Westminster as party labels became more commonplace and to openly support party views than it previously had. In this case, both candidates were conservative in their views which led to a situation of both declaring their self perceived superior conservative credentials over the other. Faced by a fellow conservative Protestant candidate, Hamilton did not have the sectarian card to play that he could have used against a candidate of O’Connell. Instead the use of bibles in schools and the new system of education which was considered to be detrimental to Protestant interests was used by Hamilton as a rallying cry to arouse the mob. Denying allegations that he supported the changes being imposed by the Liberal government, Alexander focused on more practical issues and promised to promote ‘the general, and more particularly, the AGRICULTURAL INTERESTS of this great county’. Any thoughts that the public had regarding what they perhaps saw as 3 Alexander’s dubious religious ideals should have been offset by the fact that Alexander was a resident landlord in the county who provided his tenantry with the advantages that came with the residency of landlords on their estates. Both he and his father provided employment, paid for land improvements, donated to the needy, and generally improved the district. Hamilton, on the other hand, was an absentee landlord who showed little interest in his tenantry. The liberal Londonderry Journal was adamant that They are both conservatives, we grant; but there is this very palpable difference them, that the former [Alexander] well understands, for he has had ample opportunity of studying them, the true interests, wishes and wants of the country; while of such matters the other [Hamilton] must, of necessity, be entirely ignorant…We have no doubt that such tenants as have votes to give at the approaching election will, if not laid under restraint, beset one of them on Lord Alexander. Surely they cannot be so insensate as to hold good and bad landlords in equal esteem. Kingon states that residency was a crucial consideration in electoral politics and with this reasoning in mind one would suspect victory for Alexander. The answer as to why this did not happen may be seen in the election campaign itself. As Corry was a certainty to top the poll, the second preferences of the electors were desperately sought by the remaining two candidates. This desperation for votes was demonstrated in the canvassing of Hamilton. Whyte claims that it was unusual for candidates to canvass electors as a word with their landlord was normally sufficient to ensure that they voted in his favour. This would indicate that the tenants of a supporter of the opposing candidate would not be approached as the exercise would prove to be almost certainly pointless. For example, tenants on the estates of Lenox- 4 Coyngham would not be approached by Hamilton as their votes would have been given to Alexander in accordance with the wishes of the landlord. This fact did not deter Hamilton from entering the estates of Sir Robert Ferguson and Sir James Stronge, supporters of Alexander, in the Castlederg area. While the neutrality of Belmore allowed both candidates the opportunity to canvass his tenants, it was an entirely different matter to canvass the tenants of an opposition supporter. On their entry into the town of Castlederg itself, Hamilton was jeered and hooted at by the residents of the town. According to the Londonderry Journal 1,000 of ‘his [Hamilton’s] ragged adherents’ soon filled the town probably due to the fact that Castlederg is a relatively short distance from the Abercorn seat of power at Baronscourt. Hamilton requested that his supporters cheer him, an act that so irritated the town’s residents ‘that they rose in a body and drove the party and their followers out of the place’. No injuries resulted although a dinner organized by Hamilton was ‘left untested’. The fact that Hamilton had the audacity to enter and canvass in opposition territory serves to indicate his desperation for votes and also would appear to imply that the campaign was not being fought within the normal ‘rules’ of such an event. Proof of this can be seen in literature distributed which personally attacked Alexander. Alexander’s loyalty to the Church and the Protestant bible was questioned whilst his character and background was mocked whilst Hamilton’s election propaganda played on his loyalty to the Crown and invoked imagery of a final battle against Papists in which Protestantism would triumph. In contrast literature produced by the Caledon camp concentrated more so on the residency of Alexander and the fact that he was much more interested in his tenantry than the absentee Hamilton. Unfortunately for Alexander the hard-line message of Hamilton proved to be more stirring to the rabble who frequented the town of Omagh during the five day election 5 of January 1835. Until 1850 each county constituency had only one polling station, in the case of Tyrone this centre was in Omagh. Five days were allowed for voting, a lengthy period which naturally increased the scope for trouble. This trouble was not necessarily caused by the voters themselves as only 1,250 freeholders were entitled to vote, hardly a sufficient number to engage in any serious agitation. K. T. Hoppen makes the point that non-electors were just as important as electors because of their ‘persuasive’ means of influencing voters and this would certainly appear to be true when examining the Tyrone election of 1835. The trouble came from the voteless mobs who descended into Omagh intent on exerting their ‘influence’ on those qualified to vote. Hoppen also observed that ‘as polling invariably took place only in the larger towns, a high level of commitment and enthusiasm was required if rural rioters wished to attend the scenes of constitutional choice’. This commitment and enthusiasm was very much present within the mobs who travelled to Omagh in support of the champion of the Orange masses, Lord Claude Hamilton. According to the Londonderry Journal the town of Omagh, the scene of the action, was early crowded by all the rascallions of the Orange party who could be collected for thirty miles round, and ruffianly Catholics who were prevailed on to shout for Lord Claude. Much has been said of the ignorance and fanaticism of the southern mobs; but in the way of fanaticism and ruffianism, nothing could exceed the display at Omagh. The election process itself began with the opening of the court house doors at 9am and ‘in a few minutes the court house was filled to such a degree that the proposers and seconders of some of the candidates could not gain admission’. It was within this 6 melee that the nomination of the candidates commenced. Alexander was proposed by A. G. Stewart who declared that ‘it was true he [Alexander] was not an Orangeman, but he was a true conservative, and would never flinch from an honourable discharge of his duty’, and seconded by Richard Stewart who professed that it was his conviction ‘that Lord Alexander would attend to the interests of the county with as much honesty and incorruptible integrity as any other man’. This caused great uproar in the hall and cries rang out of ‘no Alexander’. Reverend Francis Gervais of Augher, another supporter of Alexander, attempted to speak but was drowned out by the mob before J. C. Mountray took to the stage to propose Hamilton. In seconding his nomination Edward Litton K.C. emphasised the trueness and loyalty of Hamilton’s lineage and family, an answer to the circulating rumours that the house of Abercorn had actually sided with King James at Derry in 1689. Hamilton himself ‘faithfully promised, that if the present Ministry introduced any measure calculated to injure the existing Protestant institutions, he would fearlessly resist them’. Alexander in his speech defended himself against allegations that he was a ‘bible burner’ and that he had deserted his religion declaring his attachment to church and state and his ‘utter dislike to any reform that may not be obviously necessary’ before finishing by reiterating that ‘I have been, and I trust I shall always be a true conservative’. Despite his defence, Alexander’s speech was continually interrupted and jeered. In contrast to this Hamilton was widely cheered by the mob who had assembled in the hall. It is not difficult to see which tone of rhetoric appealed to the mob and this was reflected in the voting as Hamilton defeated Alexander by over 100 votes. How Hamilton was able to poll higher than his rival is questionable. Bribery and impersonation were common occurrences at elections throughout the nineteenth century and Hoppen makes the point that ‘elections simply stood outside morality and people took bribes 7 as a “matter of course” and this was especially true where parties in competition were of an equal strength. The Londonderry Journal was in no doubt that corruption had occurred in this case- ‘That bribery was employed by some of his party to a frightful extent may be easily proved’. This allegation was never proven, in fact it was never even investigated, however the actions of Hamilton’s party as the election was well underway provides some indication that there was some panic among his camp in relation to a possible future investigation of their election tactics. Hamilton’s ally, Charles Eccles, was hurriedly proposed as a candidate mid way through the proceedings as it was feared that a petition calling for an investigation into the conduct of Hamilton’s supporters may be circulated. A petition had resulted in the unseating of H. R. Westenra in Monaghan the previous year so a local precedent for such an outcome was there and fresh in the minds of the Hamilton camp. Had Hamilton lost his seat upon appeal, it was hoped that Eccles would have filled the vacancy thereby keeping the seat in possession of the ultra conservatives and within the influence of the House of Abercorn. In any event this action was unnecessary as the petition never materialised but the fact that such worry swept the Hamilton camp would point to the fact that illegal activities had been carried out by members of their number. The aftermath of the election saw Hamilton being chaired through the town by the mob- ‘Lord Claude went through the ceremony with all the insignia of Orangeism about him. The chair was of purple and orange velvet’. His victorious return to Strabane was celebrated by several hundred Orangemen marching through the streets in military order although the night ultimately passed of peacefully. The following Tuesday Hamilton was chaired through the streets of Newtownstewart as he entered the town on his way to Baronscourt. Music and parades lasted the night with windows 8 being smashed on houses that were not illuminated. This aftermath was the continuation of a bitter election campaign which according to the Londonderry Journal appeared to us to be a struggle between sedate and determined conservativism during which Lord Claude evoked the fell spirit of party from its lowest depths, where it lay in a state of torpor, and let it loose upon the country. Unfortunately for the Orange mob, Hamilton did not serve his constituents well in parliament, making no contribution whatsoever in defence of the Orange Order the following year when it was under government investigation, an investigation which ultimately led to the dissolution of the Order. In the election of 1837 he was forced to withdraw from the contest having lost the backing of the gentry figures who had supported him in 1835 leaving the way clear for Alexander to take the seat which he held for one term until the death of his father elevated him to the earldom. In conclusion it has been shown that one candidate was prepared to use the mob, the other was not and paid the price with an election defeat. Even though many of Hamilton’s most influential supporters were magistrates whose job it was to maintain law and order, a blind eye was turned to the activities of the rabble and in fact they encouraged it for their own benefit. Despite Thompson’s assertion that the elite classes had a natural tendency ‘to regard taverns, fairs, any large congregations of people as a nuisance -sources of idleness, brawls, sedition or contagion’, Hamilton had fought the campaign willingly bringing the Orange mob on board in order to secure victory and had in doing so set a precedent which was to cause much trouble at future elections in County Tyrone. 9