Portarlington (Parliament of Ireland constituency)

Portarlington
Former constituency for the Irish House of Commons
Former constituency
Created	()
Abolished	1800
Replaced by	Portarlington

Portarlington was a parliamentary borough partly in King's County (in the twentieth century renamed County Offaly) but mostly in Queen's County (now County Laois). It returned two members to the Parliament of Ireland, from 1692 until the Union of Ireland and Great Britain on 1 January 1801.

Samuel Lewis (writing in 1837) described Portarlington as "a borough, market, and post-town, partly in the parish of Clonehorke, barony of Upper Philipstown, King's County, but chiefly in the parish of Lea, barony of Portnehinch, Queen's County, and province of Leinster, 9½ miles (N.E.) from Maryborough, and 34½ (W. S. W.) from Dublin; containing 3091 inhabitants. This place, anciently named Coltodry, or Cooletetoodra, corrupted into Cooletooder, as it is still sometimes called, derives its present appellation from Lord Arlington, to whom, with a large extent of country, it was granted in the reign of Chas. II.; and its prefix from a small landing-place on the river Barrow, on which it is situated. Its only claim to antiquity attaches to the decayed castle and village of Lea, in the neighbourhood, the town of Portarlington having arisen only since the grant above named, which included a charter of incorporation constituting it a borough, though then only in its infancy. Lord Arlington subsequently disposed of his interest in the town to Sir Patrick Trant, upon whose attainder, as a follower of Jas. II., the possessions became forfeited to the Crown and were granted by Wm. III. to Gen. Rouvigny, one of his companions in arms, whom he created Earl of Galway. The Earl settled here a colony of French and Flemish Protestant refugees, and though the estates were taken from him by the English act of resumption, yet the interest which the new settlers had acquired by lease was secured to them by act of parliament in 1702, and they were made partakers of the rights and privileges of the borough. The estates which had been sold to the London Hollow Sword Blade Company, passed from them to the Dawson family, now Earls of Portarlington, by purchase, since which time the town has attained a very considerable degree of prosperity. The French language continued to be spoken among the refugees for a considerable time, with services in French till the 1820s, but by 1837 the Huguenots were scarcely to be distinguished from the other inhabitants, except where their names afford evidence of their foreign extraction.

...
Wikipedia