|
A bishop's borough or bishop borough was a pocket borough in the Irish House of Commons where the patron who controlled the borough was the bishop for the time being of the diocese of the Church of Ireland whose cathedral was within the borough. All bishops were themselves ''ex officio'' members of the Irish House of Lords. Three bishop's boroughs (Old Leighlin, Clogher, and St Canice or Irishtown) were disenfranchised by the Acts of Union 1800, and their bishops at the time applied for the standard £15,000 compensation due to patrons of disenfranchised boroughs; however, the Commissioners rejected these claims, and awarded the money to the Board of First Fruits. Armagh City, the Archbishop of Armagh's borough, remained enfranchised at Westminster and under the archbishop's control until the Irish Reform Act 1832. Although Cashel and Tuam were originally archbishops' boroughs, they passed to lay patrons in the eighteenth century. ==History == Even before seats in the House of Commons were greatly valued, the Irish bishops had interested themselves in the municipal corporations and in municipal politics. 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." After the 1688–91 Revolution the bishops continued their interest in municipal politics with a view to Parliamentary influence; and in the eighteenth century bishops were frequently of the great borough-owning families, and were often borough managers on their own account. The method of securing borough control through dependents was one which was sometimes acted upon by the bishops who were in control of boroughs. It was chiefly through the clergy, as freemen in Irishtown and Cashel, as members of the corporation in Clogher and Armagh, and as freeholders at Old Leighlin, that the Irish bishops were able to maintain an easy hold on their boroughs, and, with the boroughs thus in their possession, to use the power of nomination to the House of Commons to their own advantage in the Church. 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 of 1748 allowed non-resident burgesses, this did not apply to "cities", a class which arguably included all cathedral towns. 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 idea that these boroughs were the property of the bishops, to be used as other borough proprietors used their boroughs, dated from Lord Northington's administration. The Constitution of 1782 increased the independence of the Irish Parliament,〔 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. Northington wrote for instructions from London in this emergency. "Was he," he asked, " to signify to these prelates his Majesty's disapprobation of their conduct?" 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." Walter Cope, who as bishop of Ferns and Leighlin controlled the borough of Old Leighlin, was the only bishop who at this general election gave his two seats to the Government. Cope was rewarded by the promotion of his brother-in-law Archibald Acheson from Baron to Viscount Gosford. At the Union fifteen thousand pounds were allowed as compensation in respect of each of the three bishop boroughs, Irishtown, Clogher, and Old Leighlin. The compensation, however, did not go to the bishops, each of whom had put in an individual claim. The sum of forty-five thousand pounds 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". The claim which the bishop of Ossory made for personal compensation at the Union contains a statement which is of value in the representative history of Ireland. It puts beyond question the reasons which induced the bishops to trouble themselves with borough management. After advancing five statements in support of his case that the borough of Irishtown had long been under the individual control of successive bishops of Ossory, Dr Hamilton affirmed that the control so exercised by himself and his predecessors had "given the bishops of Ossory so much additional consequence, and obtained for them so much attention from Government, that the bishops of that see, with the exception of only two bishops, who died soon after their appointment, for above a century past have been all translated to much more eligible bishoprics." Dr 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. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Bishop’s borough」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|