The reform of the undertaker system: Anglo-Irish politics, 1750–67

Abstract

Thomas Bartlett, in his Ph.D. thesis of 1979 and subsequent articles, highlighted deficiencies in the accepted interpretation of the administration of Lord Townshend. Bartlett challenged the widely held view that the constant residency of the Irish lord lieutenant was imposed by order of the British government. He argued that the decision was taken by Townshend himself and that it was unconnected with the meeting of George Grenville’s cabinet in February 1765, when it was determined that constant residency should be imposed at the earliest possible opportunity. Moreover, Bartlett rejected the existence of a linear approach to policy-making by the British government. He contended that constant residency was the result of opportunism and not evolution of policy. The significance of the alteration to the lord lieutenant’s period of residence lay in the challenge it posed to the undertaker system. Constant residency promised centralisation of British authority and the erosion of the power wielded by the Irish magnates. The undertaker system was sustained by the effective distribution of patronage to a select few members of the higher echelons of the Irish gentry — men who transformed this patronage along with their own status and power at borough level into control over blocs of M.P.s in the Irish House of Commons. These blocs were transferred to the support of the lord lieutenant in order to facilitate the passing of government legislation. J. L. McCracken argued that this system emerged as the most suitable method of controlling parliament after the Wood’s Halfpence crisis of the early 1720s. However, subsequent research by David Hayton refuted this claim, arguing that a recognisable form of the undertaker system existed in Ireland before this episode.