Landlord responses to the Irish land war, 1879-87

Eire-Ireland

Volumn 38, Issue 3-4, 2003, Pages 134-158

  Curtis Jr , L Perky ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 60949866890     PISSN: 00132683     EISSN: 15505162     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/eir.2003.0007     Document Type: Review

References (109)

1. All the quoted passages come from W.E. Vaughan, Landlords and Tenants in Mid-Victorian Ireland (hereafter, LTMVI) (Oxford, 1994), v-x, 168, 215-22. For his estimates of expenditures on estate improvements, see 122-23, 277-78. Special thanks for critical comments on an earlier draft of this essay go to Dr. Richard Hawkins of the Royal Irish Academy. In addition, Kevin Browne of the National Library of Ireland and Peter Harrington of the John Hay Library, Brown University, helped me to find the illustrations for this essay
2. M.G.R. O'Brien, Book Review, English Historical Review III (Summer 1996), 1006-07
3. Times, 14, 22 Oct. 1880
4. Margaret O'Callaghan, British High Politics and a Nationalist Ireland (Cork, 1994), 9
5. See the special correspondent's article, "Tenure and Tenants in North-West Mayo," Times, 11 April 1881
6. For the Mayo clearances during the famine, see James S. Donnelly, Jr., The Great Irish Potato Famine (Stroud, 2001), 156-59
7. Fergus Campbell, "The Hidden History of the Irish Land War: A Guide to Local Sources," in Carla King, ed., Famine, Land, and Culture in Ireland (Dublin, 2000), 140. Terence Dooley's chapter in this same volume, entitled "The Landlords and the Land Question, 1879-1909," 116-39, ignores the landlords' counter-offensive against the Land League
8. and T. Jones Hughes, "The Estate System of Landholding in Nineteenth-Century Ireland," in William Nolan, ed., The Shaping of IreLand: The Geographical Perspective (Dublin, 1986), esp. 138-40
9. Vaughan, LTMVI, 3-4, 11
10. A thorough account of the strict family settlement may be found in John Habakkuk, Marriage, Debt, and the Estates System: English Landownership, 1650-1950 (Oxford, 1994), 1-240
11. See also David Spring, The English Landed Estate in the Nineteenth Century: Its Administration (Baltimore, 1963), 141-43, 175-77
12. F.M.L. Thompson, English Landed Society in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1963), 64-71, 98-103
13. J.S. Donnelly, Jr., provides a lucid account of the struggles on this estate during the land war in The Land and the People of Nineteenth-Century Cork: The Rural Economy and the Land Question (London and Boston, 1975), 278-82, 321, 377-78 (hereafter cited as Cork)
14. See also L.P. Curtis, Jr., "Incumbered Wealth: Landed Indebtedness in Post-Famine Ireland," American Historical Review 85:2 (April 1980), 348-49
15. Mark Bence-Jones, Life in an Irish Country House (London, 1996), 189-90
16. Wentworth Erck, Note on the Reduction of the Rate of Interest since 1870, with Some Remarks as to the Probable Amount of Encumbrances on Irish Land (Dublin: Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, 21 May 1889), 18 (available among Joly Pamphlets, National Library of Ireland [NLI])
17. Castle Coole was buil: in the 1790s at a cost of more than £54,000. The 3rd earl of Belmore spent almost £30,000 on lavish furnishings. See Gervase Jackson-Stops, "A Temple Made Tasteful," Country Life 179:4625 (10 April 1986), 918
18. For the origins and working of the Incumbered Estates Court, see Padraic G. Lane, "The General Impact of the Encumbered Estates Art of 1849 on Counties Galway and Mayo," Journal of the Galway Archaeological Society 33 (1972-73), 45-51
19. Donnelly, Great Irish Potato Famine, 164-68
20. Sullivan, New Ireland, 134-43
21. Making good use of the Kenmare estate papers, Donnelly has analyzed the fluctuation of rents and arrears in "The Kenmare Estates in the Nineteenth Century, Part II," Journal of the Kerry Archaeological and Historical Society 22 (1989), esp. 68 (hereafter cited as JKAHS)
22. W.A. Maguire, The Downshire Estates in Ireland, 1801-1845 (Oxford, 1972), esp. 83
23. Lucan Estate, Final Schedule of Incumbrances, EC 160, 656 and CDB 1146 (Irish Land Commission, Dublin)
24. Quoted in Terence Dooley, The Decline of the Big House in Ireland (Dublin, 2001), 101
25. Donnelly, Cork, 304
26. 3 in the mortgage-loan records of the Representative Body of the Church of Ireland (hereafter cited as RCB), Church House, Rathmines, Dublin. These volumes list thirty-four borrowers whose estates were valued at less than £1,000, and also twelve magnates with properties valued at over £15,000. See Curtis, "Incumbered Wealth," Table 1, 344
27. See also Peter Somerville-Large, The Irish Country House: A Social History (London, 1995), 287-88 (hereafter cited as ICH)
28. Roben W. Kirkpatrick, "Landed Estates in Mid-Ulster and the Irish Land War" (Ph.D. Thesis, Trinity College, Dublin, 1976), 60-70
29. W.E.Vaughan, "An Assessment of the Economic Performance of Irish landlords, 1851-81," in F.S.L. Lyons and R.A.J. Hawkins, eds., Ireland under the Union: Varieties of Tension: Essays in Honour of T.W. Moody (Oxford, 1980), 191
30. Donnelly, "Kenmare Estates, II," JKAHS, 79
31. Times, 10 Dec. 1884
32. See Freeman's Journal, 11, 15-18 Nov. 1881
33. C.C. O'Brien, Parnell and His Party, 1880-90 (Oxford, 1957), 13-18, 150-53
34. F.S.L. Lyons, The Irish Parliamentary Party, 1890-1910 (London, 1951), 130-34
35. K.T. Hoppen, Elections, Politics, and Society in Ireland, 1832-1885 (Oxford, 1984), 336-39
36. Brian M. Walker, ed., Parliamentary Election Results in Ireland, 1801-1922 (Dublin, 1978)
37. See also Patrick Buckland, Irish Unionism, One: The Anglo-Irish and the New Ireland, 1885-1922 (Dublin, 1972), 5
38. Donal McCartney, W.E.H. Lecky: Historian and Politician, 1838-1903 (Dublin, 1994), 162-75
39. Hoppen, Elections, Politics, and Society, 170
40. Trenchant studies of the land war may be found in Donnelly, Cork, 251-376
41. Samuel Clark, Social Origins of the Irish Land War (Princeton, 1979), 246-326
42. Paul Bew, Land and the National Question in Ireland, 1858-82 (Dublin, 1978), 69-97
43. Sally Warwick-Haller, William O'Brien and the Irish Land War (Dublin, 1990), passim
44. Moody, Davitt, 271-265
45. Donald Jordan, Land and Popular Politics in Ireland: County Mayo from the Plantation to the Land War (Cambridge, 1994), 157-96, 244-56
46. and J.W.H. Carter, The Land War and Its Leaders in Queen's County, 1879-82 (Portlaoise, 1994), passim
47. See William O'Brien's lecture, "The Lost Opportunities of the Irish Gentry," 8 Sept. 1887, 19 (NLI, O'Brien Papers)
48. Dooley, "Landlords," in King, Famine, 120-21
49. Donnelly, Cork, 255-56, 263-64
50. Kirkpatrick, "Landed Estates," 29-72, 105-09, 197-99
51. See also Carter, Land War, 86
52. For Hussey's management practices, see Dun, Landlords and Tenants, 65-78
53. L. Fogarty, James Fintan Lalor-Patriot and Political Essayist (Dublin, 1919), 75-77
54. Vaughan, LTMVI, 210
55. See Kirkpatrick, "Landed Estates," passim
56. Dooley, "Landlords," in King, Famine, 121
57. Bew, Land and National Question, 121-26, 156-61, 170-83, 188-90, 217-25
58. For Davitt's role in launching the New Departure and transforming the Land League of Mayo into the Irish National Land League, see Moody, Davitt, 243-67, 271-381
59. Times, 19 Jan. 1882
60. For Dillon's speeches, see Times, 18, 25 Jan. 1881
61. F.S.L. Lyons, John Dillon: A Biography (London, 1968), 43-44
62. Diary of Edward Gibson, 1st Baron Ashbourne, 3 Jan. 1881 (PRONI, Ashbourne MSS, A. 1/1)
63. Clark alludes to League courts in Land War, 313-16
64. Times, 1, 3, 6, 7 Dec. 1881
65. For the disruption of fox-hunting in the early 1880s, see L.P. Curtis, Jr., "Stopping the Hunt, 1881-2: An Aspect of the Irish Land War," in C.H.E. Philpin, ed., Nationalism and Popular Protest in Ireland (Cambridge, 1987), 349-401
66. Quoted in Times, 22 Aug. 1887
67. See also Samuel M. Hussey, The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent (London, 1904), 220
68. For the murder of William, 5th Viscount Mountmorres, see Times and Freeman's Journal, 27-30 Sept., 1-5, 13, 19 Oct., 31 Dec. 1880, and 18 Jan., 29 March 1881. Years later, Lady Mountmorres testified at the Parnell commission about her persecution following her husband's murder
69. See also Dudley W. Bahlman, ed., The Diary of Sir Edward Hamilton (Oxford, 1972), Vol. I, 246
70. For a probing account of the turmoil on the Kenmare estate, see Donnelly, "Kenmare Estates, II," JKAHS, 22, esp. 72-73
71. Times, 30 July, 29 Oct. 1880
72. Graphic 23 (1 Jan. 1881), 1
73. Graphic 26 (8 July 1882), 25
74. Hussey, Reminiscences, 212-55
75. Times, 20 Feb. 1882, 30 July, 27 Oct. 1883. Evictions on Lord Cloncurry's Limerick estate caused much bitterness, especially after the Property Defence Association bought or took control of twenty-eight evicted holdings
76. Dictionary of National Biography: Supplement, Vol. I (New York, 1901), 243-44
77. Graphic 34 (23 Oct. 1886), 428
78. Freeman's Journal, 31 Oct. 1881
79. Norman D. Palmer, Chap. 11, "The Landlords' Defense," The Irish Land League Crisis (New Haven, 1940), 218-31. Palmer devoted twice as many pages to the Land Act of 1881 as to the landlords' combinations
80. Clark, Land War, 307-8
81. The Cork Defence Union was founded in September 1885. See Donnelly, Cork, 275-76, 325, 329-30
82. Carter, Land War, 119-22, 132, 199-202
83. Palmer, Land League Crisis, 226-28
84. A brief sketch of the OEC's operations may be found in Athol Dudgeon's report (4 Nov. 1882) contained in the Annual Report of the Property Defence Association (1881), 15-24 (available in the NLI)
85. See also Irish Times, 18 July 1881
86. and Michael Davitt's The Fall of Feudalism in Ireland, or the Story of the Land League Revolution (London, 1904), 266-79
87. These figures derive from an analysis of the membership of the General Committee. See Annual Reports of the Property Defence Association, 1881-88 (NLI)
88. PDA, Annual Reports, 1881-88 (NLI)
89. For the landlords' inability to mobilize quickly against the League, see E. Cant-Wall, Ireland under the Land Act (London, 1882), 17-20, 48
90. See Sarah L. Steele, Arthur Macmorrough Kavanagh: A Biography (London, 1891)
91. Donald McCormick, The Incredible Mr. Kavanagh (London, 1960)
92. William H. Hurlbert, Ireland under Coercion: The Diary of an American (Boston, 1888), 301-4, 307-12, 318
93. PDA, Annual Report for the year ending 31 Dec. 1887 (NLI)
94. Irish Defence Union, In Aid of Persons Sufferingfrom Illegal Coercion in Ireland (n.d.), available in Bodleian Library, John Johnson Collection, Box 2, Ireland
95. See also Steele, Kavanagh, 220
96. L.P. Curtis, Jr., Coercion and Conciliation in Ireland, 1880-1892: A Study in Conservative Unionism (Princeton, 1963), 56-57
97. Times, 4, 25 June 1888
98. According to Ian d'Alton, the CDU was "the most efficient landlord combination" in Ireland during the 1880s. He overlooks the PDA's activities, however. See "Keeping Faith: An Evocation of the Cork Protestant Character, 1820-1920," in Patrick O'Flanagan and Cornelius Buttimer, eds., Cork: History and Society (Dublin, 1993), 771-75
99. Geary, Plan of Campaign, 102-3
100. Patrick Buckland, Irish Unionism, One, 1-3, 10-26
101. Irish Times, 16 Oct. 1885, 9 Jan. 1886
102. Times, 16 Jan. 1888
103. Leon Ó Broin, The Prime Informer: A Suppressed Scandal (London, 1971), 50-95
104. Frank Callanan, T.M. Healy (Cork, 1996), 207, 242
105. Curtis, Coercion and Conciliation, 286-87
106. For the ILPU, see Dooley, Decline, 217-20
107. Buckland, Irish Unionism, 1-4, 9, 12-16, 302-8
108. Captain Cosby used these words in a letter addressed to two Dublin newspapers on 28 Aug. 1887. For the quotation, see J.W.H. Carter, "The Land War of 1879-82 in Queen's County," in Padraig G. Lane and William Nolan, eds., Laois: History and Society (Dublin, 1999), 560
109. Habakkuk, Marriage, Debt, and Estates System, 358