Select document: the division in the Irish House of Commons on the ‘tithe of agistment’, 18 Mar. 1736, and Swift's ‘Character … of the Legion Club’

Abstract

Historians studying the Irish parliament in the first half of the eighteenth century generally have to make do with sources that are far less rich than those available at Westminster. In particular, division-lists, a staple of British parliamentary history, remain a relatively rare delicacy in Ireland. Only a dozen or so are known from the period 1692–1760, and hitherto none at all between the divisions on the disputed by-elections for Westmeath in 1723 and Dublin city in 1749. The discovery of another list, from the session of 1735–6, is thus particularly welcome, and would be so whatever its subject matter. But what makes this new list even more valuable is that it relates to a highly controversial division, closely associated with the production of Swift's notorious satire on the Irish House of Commons, ‘A character, panegyric and description of the Legion Club’, and also provides crucial evidence for the dating of that poem.