The Act of Union
As a consequence of the rebellion and fearing the risk of another, the government at Westminster enacted the Act of Union on the 1st of January 1801. This abolished the parliament at Dublin which meant that the two M.P.s who represented Castlebar lost their seats. The 2nd Earl of Lucan, Richard Bingham, was compensated with £15,000 and a peerage in the House of Lords under the title Lord Lucan. After that, the new Lord had little interest in the town. He became an absentee landlord and the town started to decline in appearance and prosperity. Another movement had been growing in Ireland at this time led by Daniel O’ Connell. O’ Connell campaigned for and achieved Catholic Emancipation by 1829. His next campaign was the Repeal of the Act of Union. He organised monster rallies attended by thousands. One such rally was held in Castlebar in 1843 with a procession of ‘nearly 3 mile length’ (The Spectator, 1843). Here, O’ Connell berated the government for raising the voting qualification to £10 rental valuation, eliminating most of the Catholics of the town while they still had to pay 10% of their crops in taxes from which the Bingham lands were exempt. His campaign did not achieve its aims but lost impetus in the years of what was to become one of the most harrowing episodes of Irish history; an Gorta Mór, The Great Hunger. Click here for The Great Famine. |