6 - The ‘Great Man of the North’: Conolly’s Electoral Interest in North-West Ulster

Summary

In 1692 Conolly had been elected to parliament for the first time, for Donegal borough, a closed constituency under the control of the Gore family. Just over twenty years later, in 1713, he was elected for County Londonderry at the head of a personal ‘whig nexus’ which included MPs elected for five boroughs in counties Donegal and Londonderry. Conolly concentrated his electoral ambitions in his native north-west despite accumulating extensive estates elsewhere. This strategy made sense. He had first made his name as an attorney on the north-west circuit and had increased his local reputation through legal work for Derry corporation and the Irish Society. Meanwhile his marriage to Katherine Conyngham in 1694 had connected him to many of the leading families in Donegal, including the Gores, Hamiltons, Knoxes and Montgomerys. Members of these interconnected families were amongst the coterie of Ulstermen, identified by Toby Barnard, who came to the fore in the aftermath of the Williamite revolution, and who emerged as leading players in the Dublin administration in the early years of the eighteenth century (although, as he acknowledges, the extent of their influence remains to be established). In Barnard’s analysis, Conolly emerges as the most ostentatious success story. This electoral interest was central to his rising political power, and played an important role in management of the house of commons after 1715. This chapter traces the evolution of these political interests in Counties Donegal and Londonderry and the different factors and forces which led to the establishment of an enduring power-base in the two counties.

Politically, the two counties were quite different. Donegal was dominated by a small interconnected Whig-leaning elite whose families had established themselves in the seventeenth century. These families, the Conynghams, Creightons, Folliotts, Gores, Montgomerys, and various Hamiltons, divided the representation of the county and its five boroughs between them. By the 1690s the heirs of the plantation grantees, the Chichesters in Inishowen, the Folliotts of Ballyshannon and the Kingsmills of Castlefin, were in eclipse and newer interests were on the rise. Sir Albert Conyngham, Gustavus Hamilton and David Creighton all distinguished themselves in the Jacobite war, both locally and nationally, and were able to reap the rewards of their service.