The 1713 Irish general election returned members to serve in the

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. ...

. The election took place during a high-point for party politics in Ireland, and saw heavy losses for the Tories and the emergence of a Whiggish majority in the commons.

Election

Since 1703 Irish politics had taken on a far more confrontational hue, with clear party dividing lines being drawn alone Tory-Whig lines, mirroring the division in

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

(and later Great Britain). Simultaneously Irish politics, like British politics, had come to focus on questions of religion, with the ruling Anglican elite fearing subversion from both the majority Catholic population, and the growing, and equally hostile, Presbyterian population in Ulster. Irish Whigs advocated protestant unity, seeing Catholics as the greatest threat, and thereby advocated further penal laws. In contrast the Tories regarded Ireland's Catholics as a spent force, and focused their efforts on dealing with Ireland's growing Presbyterian population. The Tories therefore advocated retaining the Sacramental Test clause of the 1704

Popery Act An Act to prevent the further Growth of Popery, commonly known as the Popery Act or the Gavelkind Act,Andrew Lyall; Land Law in Ireland; was an Act of the Parliament of Ireland that was passed in 1703 and amended in 1709. One of a series of P ...

, which excluded from public office those who refused to receive the sacrament in the manners according to the established church, which in Ireland's case was the Anglican

Church of Ireland The Church of Ireland ( ga, Eaglais na hÉireann, ; sco, label= Ulster-Scots, Kirk o Airlann, ) is a Christian church in Ireland and an autonomous province of the Anglican Communion. It is organised on an all-Ireland basis and is the second ...

. Whilst the Tories could rely on support for their views on the Test clause, they were vulnerable on issues relating to succession. Irish public opinion, fearful of a return of the Jacobites, rallied behind the Whigs, ushering in a pro-Hanoverian and anti-ministerial majority in the commons. The Irish Whigs used the popular cry "

No peace without Spain No Peace Without Spain was a popular British political slogan of the early eighteenth century. It referred to the ongoing War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714) in which Britain was a leading participant. It implied that no peace treaty cou ...

" as an electoral slogan. The voting for the Dublin City constituency was hotly disputed, leading to the

Dublin election riot The Dublin election riot occurred during the hotly contested 1713 Irish general election, Irish General Election of 1713. It concerned the Dublin City (Parliament of Ireland constituency), Dublin City constituency, which returned two members to th ...

Dates of election

At this period elections did not take place at the same time in every constituency. The returning officer in each county or

parliamentary borough A borough is an administrative division in various English-speaking countries. In principle, the term ''borough'' designates a self-governing walled town, although in practice, official use of the term varies widely. History In the Middle Ag ...

fixed the precise date (see

hustings A husting originally referred to a native Germanic governing assembly, the thing. By metonymy, the term may now refer to any event (such as debates or speeches) during an election campaign where one or more of the candidates are present. Devel ...

for details of the conduct of the elections).

References

{{Irish (Pre-1801) elections

General election A general election is a political voting election where generally all or most members of a given political body are chosen. These are usually held for a nation, state, or territory's primary legislative body, and are different from by-elections ( ...

1713 in politics 18th-century elections in Ireland Elections in the Kingdom of Ireland

Election

Dates of election

See also

References