This @HistParl post unfairly maligning #Swords :) https://mas.to/@HistParl/109664408722516474 mentions the Molesworth family who controlled at least one seat in the borough for much of the 18th century.

The featured image is of #RobertMolesworth who created the essential definition of an Old Whig, translated #Francogallia and wrote "An Account of Denmark", both historically useful account and extended attack on #PassiveObedience and clerical control in politics. Also patron of #FrancisHutcheson & #JohnToland

Re last mini-thread, reminded of the recent #hopwag episode (408) Constitutional Conventions: The Huguenots. https://historyofphilosophy.net/huguenots

The podcast mentions thr work Francogallia by François Hotman. It was translated into English by #RobertMolesworth. His preface was later published separately as "The Principles of a True Whig" which outlined his commitment to the "Gothic Constitution" which guaranteed liberty and ruled out absolutism.

https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/champion-an-account-of-denmark-with-francogallia-and-some-considerations-for-the-promoting-of-agriculture-and-employing-the-poor

#IrishPhilosophy and the #SouthSeaBubble

#JohnToland lost all his money. He'd been so broke he'd had to use his patron #RobertMolesworth's name as a guarantor to invest.
https://www.dib.ie/biography/toland-john-a8584

Perhaps this & his own losses (plus his Old Whig principles) led #RobertMolesworth to call for the "contrivers...of the villanous South-Sea scheme" to be treated as those who killed their fathers in Ancient Rome: "tied in like manner in sacks, and thrown into the Thames.”
https://www.econlib.org/book-chapters/chapter-ch-2-the-south-sea-bubble/

#Machiavelli in #IrishPhilosophy

Machiavelli's influence on British #PoliticalPhilosophy (see Pococks "Machiavellian Moment" https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/34715/chapter-abstract/296452995?redirectedFrom=fulltext ) fed into the idea of the Commonwealth, a state living up to republican ideals but with a constitutional monarch. This idea was espoused by the Whigs, notably #RobertMolesworth, a Dubliner who literally wrote the definition of an Old (or Real) Whig. He also criticised absolute monarchy in "An Account of Denmark".

https://oll.libertyfund.org/page/realwhig