the city of cashel, county tipperary was a freeman borough, and in the early part of the eighteenth century it was as much a bishop's borough as armagh. evidence of the archbishop's political control of cashel is to be found in the journals for 1737. the methods of borough management there were then very similar to those at armagh. william palliser was archbishop of cashel from 1696 until 1726. he was a freeman of the borough; and was active in the election of mayor and aldermen, because by these officers the making of freemen was controlled. it was usual after an ordination at the st. john's cathedral to make the newly ordained clergymen freemen of the borough. dr burgess, a clergyman, was mayor; and, to quote from the evidence in the election case of 1737, "the archbishop had an ordination at cashel in dr burgess' mayoralty, when there were about eighteen or twenty young men ordained, and they were all admitted freemen of the corporation." the local clergymen at cashel were active among the resident freemen, lending them money and rendering them other services in the interest of the archbishop, who bestowed preferment on clergymen who aided him in his management and control of the borough. but although, in the early decades of the eighteenth century, dr palliser was in full control of cashel, it did not become, like irishtown, clogher, old leighlin, or armagh, permanently a bishop's borough; and for seventy years before the irish reform act 1832, cashel was in the possession of the pennefather family, who held it, not as dr palliser had done by making many freemen, but by restricting the number and electing none but members of the pennefather family into the corporation.