Voters 1831

Voters 1831 – 975 names – A Canvas Book of the Meath Election, 1831 – Edited by Henry McDowell – The Irish Genealogist Vol. 7. No. 1. June 1987 pp 278-288 The 1831 Meath Election Canvass Book, Meath, was prepared for Hon. Richard Thomas Rowley (1812-1887) the younger brother of Lord Langford of Summerhill, Co. Meath. At the general election of 1831, in which the key issue was the government’s proposed reform bill, he stood for one of the two seats in Meath County (the first contested election there since 1802). There were five candidates – four supporters of reform and one (Rowley) a well-known opponent of the bill. The government feared that the quarrelling of the reformers would split the vote and give the seat to Rowley. They need not have worried – Rowley withdrew at the end of the first day’s polling, having received only eight votes. However, he was more successful in later years, becoming M.P. for Harwich from 1860 to 1865. Sir Marcus Somerville and Arthur Plunkett, the son of Lord Fingal, were elected M.Ps in the general election of 1831. Both stood as Whig candidates. About 50% of the electorate voted. This document was sold by auctioneers Fonsie Mealy in 2020. The Parliamentary Elections (Ireland) Act 1829 increased the freeholder qualification from forty shillings (two pounds) to ten pounds, reducing the electorate of Meath by half as the 40s occupiers were removed from the register of voters. This change in electoral law was enacted at the same time as the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829, which allowed Catholics to sit in Parliament, as a quid-pro-quo to secure support from Protestants afraid of being overwhelmed by votes of less well-off Catholics.