During this paper’s lifetime, there have been 42 general elections, and rather more changes of government. Here a Catholic historian charts the varied political sympathies of our editors, which have often been at odds with those of the readership Frederick lucas, the founder of  The Tablet, was intensely political, becoming a Member of Parliament for the Irish constituency of Meath in 1852. He was passionately committed both to Catholicism and to Home Rule for Ireland. The Whigs supported Irish Home Rule; the Tories did not, but it was Catholic Tories who formed the natural readership for Lucas’ paper. In the election of 1841, the first in The Tablet’s existence, Lucas vehemently attacked a Catholic landowner who had advised his tenants to vote for a Protestant Tor