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George II remained king, while the Irish administration changed hands. On 2 April William Cavendish, then Marquess of Hartington, was appointed lord lieutenant of Ireland. He was only in his mid-thirties and was a prominent British whig rather than an Irish political figure. In December, following his father’s death, he became the fourth duke of Devonshire while still holding the Irish viceroyalty. The appointment mattered because Dublin Castle was the channel through which crown patronage, military authority and the management of parliament were organised. It did not, however, signal a dramatic new Irish programme in 1755.
The background was Ireland’s constrained constitutional system. The parliament in Dublin had two houses and sat in a purpose-built parliament house on College Green, but it was not sovereign in the modern sense. Under Poynings’ Law, proposed Irish legislation had to pass through the Irish executive and the British Privy Council before it could be introduced in Dublin. The British parliament also claimed a right to legislate for Ireland. Moreover, political power was confined to a narrow Protestant governing class: Catholics had been disfranchised in 1728, while the established Church of Ireland enjoyed legal and institutional privilege.
