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The Newtown Act was an amendment to Irish electoral and municipal law, formally entitled an act for better regulating parliamentary elections and for securing the rights of aldermen and burgesses in corporations. Its name came from Newtownards, County Down, where a dispute over control of the borough had brought wider questions of corporate membership into focus. The provision for which the statute became known dealt with non-resident burgesses: men who held office in a corporation despite not living within its precincts.
The firmly dated turning-point came on 16 June 1722. George I directed that an indenture be prepared granting William Wood an exclusive fourteen-year licence to coin copper halfpence and farthings for use in Ireland. The proposed maximum was 360 tons of copper, conventionally valued at £100,800. Wood was a Wolverhampton ironmaster and manufacturer, not an Irish merchant or official; the coins were to be made in London rather than at an Irish mint.
