https://docs.google.com/document/d/1shNGzYzomOmInrFl2gYT-XJSutgGh7fKsa133QOdR3M/edit

1886 Address from Some of Bantry Inhabitant to the Earl of Bantry, on His return from Abroad.  1885, House of Commons, London, A Lash of Tim Healy’s , MP,  Tongue, The Earl of Bantry Off Chasing Kangaroos in Australia instead of Sitting on Cork Lunacy Board

..

William Hedges Eyre, 4th Earl of Bantry (1801-1884), who until then lived at Macroom Castle, which he had inherited from his great-uncle, Robert Hedges Eyre. William (who became the 3rd Earl of Bantry in 1868) married Jane Herbert (1823-1898) of Muckross House, Killarney, Co. Kerry, and they had five daughters, Elizabeth, Olivia, Ina, Jane, and Mary, and an only son, William (1854-1891). In 1884 William became the 4th and last Earl of Bantry.  1885, House of Commons, London, A Lash of Tim Healy’s , MP,  Tongue, The Earl of Bantry Off Chasing Kangaroos in Australia instead of Sitting on Cork Lunacy Board

In 1886, William married Rosamond Petre (d. 1942). They had no children and on William’s death in 1891 the title of the Earls of Bantry became extinct. The estate passed through his eldest sister, Lady Elizabeth (1847-1880), the wife of Egerton Leigh of High Leigh, Cheshire, England, to their son, Edward Leigh (1876-1920). He assumed the additional name of White in 1897.

At the time of the address in 1886 politics  locally was fairly fraught with the Land War in the background multiple evictions.   The cabal who signed the address would  be the local conservative/loyalist section aligned to the Bantry Estate and its local agent Mr. Payne.  He unsuccessfully ran for election as an MP and James Gilhooly of the Irish Parliament Party, many times  jailed, was elected.