In 1680 John Vesey, archbishop of Tuam, wrote to Ormonde to present Alderman Thomas Cartwright, the newly elected mayor of Galway, "as a person very well qualified for that trust, on account of his conformity to the Church, and consequently his loyalty to the King."
"And indeed," added the archbishop, "I must needs say, with much comfort, for the few English Protestants there incorporated, that they seem to be very well principled, all very uniform in their public devotions, and manageable on any occasion readily for his Majesty's service."
The influence enjoyed by the bishops probably accounts for the abortive motion in the House of Commons in 1710, "that leave be given to bring in the heads of a bill to prevent the promotion of any spiritual person for reward."
A. P. W. Malcomson suggests that the appointment of cathedral clergy as burgesses of the corporations of Irishtown, Clogher, and Old Leighlin was a consequence of the scarcity of other resident members of the Church of Ireland; although the Newtown Act 1748 (21 Geo.
[1] Until 1783, the four boroughs belonging to the bishops, Irishtown, Clogher, Old Leighlin, and Armagh, had been regarded as Crown property, and as providing opportunities for bringing into the House of Commons men connected with the Government.
The Constitution of 1782 increased the independence of the Irish Parliament,[2] and at the general election of 1783, on the usual application being made to the bishops for the nominations for their boroughs, three of them answered the Lord Lieutenant that their seats were already disposed of.
Lord North, the British prime minister, replied: "The King [George III] is unwilling to interfere, but he agrees with your excellency, that it is extremely improper conduct."
The sum of £45,000 was handed over to the Commissioners of First-Fruits, subject to the condition that the interest accruing from it should be expended in such a way as would best promote residence of the clergy of the Established Church; a decision Porritt describes as "certainly equitable".
Hamilton further urged that by the Union he was to be deprived of "that influence and consequence which his predecessors always enjoyed, and from which they derived great advantage"; and therefore he considered himself entitled to claim any allowance which might be awarded for the extinction of Irishtown as a parliamentary borough.
As these clergymen naturally looked to the archbishop for preferment, it is improbable that there were many resignations under the last clause of the agreement; and a corporation so managed must have been as easy to control as through tenants who had taken an oath, and against whom, moreover, the agent had the additional lever of the "hanging gale" (rent arrears).
It was enfranchised by letters patent in the fifth year of Charles I, and by its constitution the corporation was to consist of a portreeve and twelve burgesses, and the first members were to be nominated by the then bishop of Clogher.
"We are unable," wrote the Municipal Commissioners who visited the borough in 1833, "to discover any trace of the existence of a corporation, beyond what may arise from the right to vote for members of Parliament having been attached by the bishops of Clogher to the grant of each stall in the cathedral, and the exercise of that right."
For some time the corporation apparently existed in this loose form, and the occupants of the stalls in the cathedral were the sole electors of the members from Clogher; but in the middle of the eighteenth century the freeholders of the manor tendered their votes at an election.