Swords (Parliament of Ireland constituency)

Swords
Former borough constituency for the Irish House of Commons
County	County Dublin
Borough	Swords
–1801 (1801)
Replaced by	Disfranchised

Swords was a borough constituency represented in the Irish House of Commons until its abolition in 1801. Elections for the borough were considered to "afford scenes of the greatest corruption". This was because the borough was not in the control of a single patron. ^[1] The borough was disfranchised by the Acts of Union 1800, with effect from 1 January 1801. Where in other disfranchised boroughs the former patron was given compensation of £15,000, in the case of Swords, it was vested "for such uses or purposes as shall appear to them to tend most to the advantage and improvement of the condition of the inhabitants of the said borough". ^[2]

Members of Parliament

• 1585 Walter Fitzsimons and Thomas Taylor ^[3]
• 1613–1615 William Blakeney and John Fitzsimons (died and replaced by Richard Carwell) ^[3]
• 1634–1635 Richard Barnewell and Lucas Netterville (expelled 1634 and replaced by Sir William Anderson) ^[3]
• 1639–1642 John Taylor ^[4] and George Blakeney (both expelled 1642)
• 1642 Charles Forster and Christopher Huetson ^[5]
• 1661–1666 John Povey and Sir William Tichborne ^[5]

1689–1801

Election	First member	Party		Second member	Party
1689	Francis Barnwall			Robert Russell
1692	Richard Forster			John Reading
1695	Thomas Ashe
1703	Robert Molesworth		Whig	James Peppard
1713				Plunket Plunket
1715	Richard Molesworth [a]
1727	Hon. Bysse Molesworth			Edward Bolton
1759				Thomas Cobbe
1761	Hamilton Gorges
1768	John Hatch			John Damer
1776	Thomas Cobbe			Charles King
1783	Charles Cobbe			John Hatch
1790	John Claudius Beresford			Eyre Massey
January 1798	Francis Synge			Charles Cobbe
1798				Marcus Beresford
1801	Constituency disfranchised

1. from 1716 Hon. Richard Molesworth

References

1. Forbes, Suzanne (19 January 2021). "'Always rowdy, violent and colourful'?: Eighteenth century elections in the borough of Swords, Co. Dublin". The History of Parliament .
2. Johnston-Liik, Edith Mary. "County Dublin". History of the Irish Parliament. Ulster Historical Foundation.
3. McGrath, Bríd (1998). A biographical dictionary of the membership of the Irish House of Commons 1640–1641. Department of History (PhD thesis). Trinity College Dublin. hdl:2262/77206.
4. "Chronicles of the County Wexford, being a record of memorable incidents, disasters, social occurrences, and crimes, also, biographies of eminent persons, &c., &c., brought down to the year 1877". Enniscorthy, printed at the "Watchman" office. 1890.
5. Parliamentary Papers, Volume 62, Part 2. p. 614.

Sources

• Leigh Rayment's historical List of Members of the Irish House of Commons . Cites: Johnston-Liik, Edith Mary (2002). The History of the Irish Parliament 1692-1800 (6 volumes). Ulster Historical Foundation.