MALCOMSON, Robert. The Carlow Parliamentary Roll: Comprising Lists of the Knights of the Shire, and Members for the Borough of Carlow, from the earliest times to the introduction of the Ballot, and of the representatives for Old Leighlin to the period of the Union. With genealogical notes and illustrative extracts.

Dublin: Printed at the University Press, by M.H. Gill, 1872. First edition. Royal octavo. pp. xvii, 132. Occasional mild foxing. A very good copy. Extremely rare.
COPAC with 3 locations only.
It was reliably reported in 1812 that although Carlow was geographically small, ‘destitute of manufacturers’ and lacking ‘a resident temporal or spiritual peer’, it was ‘tenanted by more wealthy people than almost any other Irish county’. It is certainly true that a number of gentry drew sizeable incomes from their estates in the county and that many of them possessed influential electoral interests. The most important belonged to the Kavanaghs of Borris, a Catholic family descended from the ancient kings of Leinster whose head was evidently referred to in Carlow as the ‘monarch’. Others with influence were the Bruens of Oak Park, the Latouches of Upton, the Butlers of Garryhunden and Walter Bagenal, who, since a substantial proportion of the family estates had been sold to the Latouches in the 1780s and the remainder left to his sister, lived in England and was regarded as having only an ‘hereditary’ interest. The electorate was probably largely Catholic in persuasion, for on at least one occasion in the period Catholic opinion was of some account in determining the course of an election.

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