Mallow

Mallow was enfranchised by a charter of 1613, 10 James I ,and had a further (unacknowledged) charter of 1689, 4 James II. It was a manor borough, the franchise being vested in the freeholders of the manor and the returning officer its seneschal. Mallow was probably the most famous spa town in Ireland. Until the 1780s it was almost entirely controlled by the Jephson family,125 who lived at Mallow Castle. Eight of the family sat in parliament during the century. The family were,however, poor and by the 1780s the Longfields (1263) were making inroads into the borough. In 1693 William Jephson had granted to John Longfield a perpetuity of lands in the manor of Mallow. This eventually led to Richard Longfield disputing the Jephson control over Mallow, and sometime in the 1780s Denham Jephson (1087) ceded one seat in return for £3,000 and allegedly Longfield obtained for him a government pension of £600. Denham Jephson and John Longfield (1260) were returned in 1790 and again in 1797. Mallow retained one seat at the Union and Longfield won the ensuing ballot, but the real post-Union influence appears to have lain with the Jephsons. Jephson retired in 1812 and died in 1813.