The Brownes of Westport House: Aristocracy, Politics
and the Exercise of Power in County Mayo: 1780-1830
Kennedy, Gordon
(2010)
The Brownes of Westport House: Aristocracy, Politics
and the Exercise of Power in County Mayo: 1780-1830.
PhD thesis, Dublin City University.
This thesis examines the political development o f County Mayo during the years 1780-
1830, through the lens o f its leading political dynasty, the Browne family o f Westport.
The two central characters are John Denis Browne (1756-1809), third Lord Altamont and
first marquess o f Sligo, and his brother Denis Browne (1763-1828), long serving MP for
the county and leading magistrate. By unlocking the personal and political history o f the
Brownes, the most economically powerful and politically influential family in the region,
it is possible to identify and examine changing patterns o f governance in Ireland. The
public lives o f the Brownes coincided with a gradual shift away from the patrician and
paternalistic model o f local governance towards a more centralised pattern emanating
from Dublin and London.
Their political biographies cover pivotal stages in Irish history during the late eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries; the ongoing Catholic question, the suppression o f
radicalism in the 1790s, the Union and manifestations o f agrarian insurgency and poor
relief. Throughout this period, the Brownes were in constant contact with senior officials
in Dublin and this, often tense, relationship revealed a growing divergence between the
ruling elite o f Mayo and official government policy. The appointment o f Robert Peel as
C hief Secretary in 1813 intensified this divergence as the maintenance o f law and order,
for centuries the reserve o f local gentry figures, was brought further under the direct
control o f Dublin.
As county Mayo moved from being a domain, controlled by a hand full o f powerful
families (the Brownes, Binghams, Cuffes, Dillons), to a more accessible and provincial
part o f the wider United Kingdom, the Brownes’ political ambitions began to gradually
recede, their political hegemony and influence eventually being replaced by the state and
an emerging Catholic bourgeoisie in the wake o f Emancipation.