People, Place and Power – The Grand Jury System in Ireland

13 The order of appointment to the grand jury indicated one’s position in the county’s social hierarchy. Prominent locals could feel slighted if their name did not appear near the top of the list. At the Galway summer assizes in 1823, Valentine Blake had been excluded from the grand jury. He protested that: ‘as the eldest son of a Baronet he was entitled to place, and a high one, on the county pannel [the grand jury]. This was he said, one of the privileges of the patent [for his baronetage]: and he therefore moved that his name should be inserted…Mr Blake’s motion was granted by the Court, and his name was inserted second [on the list of grand jurors]’. 4 Eligibility for membership of the grand jury varied over time and, as Neal Garnham observes, was ‘governed as much by precedent as by law’. Panellists had to have a freeholding in the county, but religion, sex, local politics and even local petty jealousies, all played their parts. 5 Catholics were excluded from grand jury service after 1707 when a Statute (6 Anne, chapter VI) declared that, because the ‘security of the Protestant interest’ was threatened ‘by papists being returned to serve on grand juries’, henceforth ‘no Papist shall serve on, or be returned to serve on, any grand jury … unless it shall appear … that a sufficient number of Protestants cannot be then had for that service.’ 6 This religious bar remained in place until 1793, although Francis Lynch, a Catholic, served as a grand juror in 1768 for the Town of Galway. There may have been other Catholic jurors between 1707 and 1793, but it is doubtful that there can have been many. 7 Even after the law was changed Catholics were rarely called upon to serve as grand jurors. No woman ever served as a grand juror in Ireland. Women were not permitted to serve as jurors in law courts until the passage of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act in 1919, but by then the grand jury system had been confined to history. Property ownership rather than residency determined eligibility for grand jury service. Jurors could serve on bodies in different counties if they held land there. The grand jurors lists for spring 1828 for Roscommon and Leitrim (Fig. 3) show Captain Thomas Tennison of Castle Tennison (Kilronan Castle) appearing as a juror on both lists. Tennison was a notable figure in the area, and had been MP for Boyle between 1792 and 1797. 8 His importance in both counties can be judged from his high position within the grand jury listings – listed fourth for the Roscommon jury and sixth for Leitrim. 9 County Roscommon’s Grand Panel, 1828–30 Some grand panel listings have survived, including for Roscommon for spring 1828, spring 1829, and spring 1830. 10 Out of these lists Roscommon’s Grand Juries were appointed by high sheriffs, Robert Henry French (1828), Thomas Johnston Barton (1829) and Oliver Grace (1830). Roscommon’s listings suggest that a county’s grand panel was updated each year, and the list was then used for both the spring and summer assizes (Table 2). An examination of the three listings casts