The magnificence, the
grandeur, the expansiveness and sheer beauty of the mansion and grounds at
Castleboro had, as the 19th century closed, become as a metaphorical
magnet drawing crowds from far and near, especially in the summer-time of the
year. The third Baron Bob Carew had come as a mere twenty-one year old into his
inheritance—on the death of his father in 1881—and it then seemed inevitable
that he would fulfil the prophecies of exaltation made at the time of his
birth. In a gesture that could serve as an analogy of the professed liberality
and liberalism of the House of Carew (according to a report in “The Wexford
Independent” in 18911) “the
grounds are open to the public” on Sundays and sometimes on Saints days with
“as many as two thousand visitors” scattered over them, most notably on June
the 29th then a Catholic feast day. The article continued:
“Then too the rhododendrons
are in bloom and well worth seeing, including as they do every kind of hybrid,
every shade of red and purple, toned down to heliotrope and pink. Last summer
there was a large concourse of people. Early in the afternoon the stream of
eager visitors began to pour in, some on foot and others, who came from
distances, in brakes or cars. The place was gay with picnic groups and music
supplied by a tambourine player and a fiddler quite in national style. In the
spacious yard places at their disposal dancing was kept up until it was time to
depart. The gardens are enclosed on one side by glass; there must be over
five-hundred feet of houses, containing amongst other things, exceedingly fine
orchids, of which the head gardener, who learned his trade at Blenheim, is not
unreasonably proud; and on the other side by masonry while large cast-iron
gates open onto one of the streams, the Killegney.” The article also told of “a
long vista of Pampas grasses brightened by a vivid glow of red-hot pokers which
flame among them, bordering a narrow path nearly half a mile in length that
runs straight through. At the back are six terraces all beautifully laid out
with shrubs and flowers, laid down to four artificial lakes. Built in the
beginning of this century by the same architect who designed Johnstown Castle
and Dromona, the Doric, Corinthian and Ionic styles are all represented in it.
In 1836 it was partly burned down and rebuilt while since then another wing has
been added, adding also to the confusion of architectural styles.”
On one detail, at least, the
article is mistaken: Castleboro was burned in 18402. A pen picture
is often deceptive and in this case—I think—deliberately so: anybody with an
elementary knowledge of horticulture knows that red hot pokers flame only for a
short time, an observation that could be made of most flowers. The images of a
profusion and semi-permanence of flowers is intended to imply a heavenly
completeness and perfection to Castleboro: the Carews as landlords perceived
themselves as primary inheritors of God’s creation—during the land wars the
spokesmen for the farmers inverted that principle and insisted that God had
created the land for the people.
The article then recounted
another of those tall tales or myths that abounded about the Carews:
“It was here (at
Auch-Na-Coppell) that an ancestor of the Carews met James 11 flying down from
the Battle of the Boyne and served him with refreshments. In memory of this
incident, the monarch afterwards presented him with a pair of sleeve links,
which remain in the family as an heir-loom3.” The Carews both in
England and Ireland would have supported the Stuart cause: the old English or
Norman-Irish did likewise and this coincidence meant that the Carews could
perceive themselves and be perceived as Irish patriots. As the nineteenth
century closed, however, the focus of Irish nationalism was on a separation of
Ireland from the Union with England and the establishment of a Catholic
commonwealth. The other difficulty that the Carews had in preserving the myth
of themselves as Irish and deeply rooted in Ireland is that they had English
connections to which they kept adding! At the celebrations, by the tenantry at
Castleboro on the 10th of October 1860 of the birth of the future
Third Baron Bob Carew the former newspaper editor and horticulturist the
Courtnacuddy born Ned Carroll spoke at length—as usual—on a tormenting issue:
the English wife of Lord Carew and mother of the newly born future third Baron
Bob Carew to be. He said he had been in The Woodstown mansion with Lord Carew’s
father (the first Baron) who addressing him as Mr Carroll (Ned Carroll basked
in the respect of the high breeds) declared that while his son’s wife was of
English birth she was Irish of the Irish4. The third Baron Bob Carew
as if to enhance the Englishness of the Carews married Julia the eldest
daughter of the late Mr Albert Lethbridge, who belonged to a very old Somerset
family and descended from Edward 15.
The third Baron Bob Carew,
like the child in one of Shakespeare’s sonnets, was ill starred and fated to
live in the wrong era: his nemeses were the land league and the momentum
towards a vague Catholic sovereignty, a matter not unrelated to the devotional
revolution. When Tom Furlong’s curate the fiery young Fr Denis Doyle of
Poulpeasty attacked the Carews over the eviction of Kinshelagh during the
election of 1852 it was a little ominous for the House of Carew; his attack on
the feted schoolmaster Hugh O’Neill, the pompously pedantic spin-doctor of that
imaginary dynasty was unprecedented. The Carews had always courted the Catholic
clergy in line with a benign imperial policy of integrating elites into the
system.
At a meeting of the
Cloughbawn and Poulpeasty branch of the National league (as it was called) on
the 6th of January 1886 Mr Martin Furlong of Clonleigh, after taking
the chair touched on themes that consistently come up in speeches made by
spokesmen of the movement. His opening remarks are surprisingly close to trade
union rhetoric:
“he meant unity of purpose
on the part of the industrious democracy and resistance to all species of
oppression, no matter from what quarter it came—be it landlord, priest or
prelate. They could all now understand what was a fair day’s work and what was
a fair day’s wages and they all meant to stick to their principles. Yet the
present outlook and stoppage of the payment of rent for land created by the
Almighty God was due to the landlord’s own avarice and stupidity. All knew well
how that functionary was playing the role of a usurer, especially charging an
interest for that species of property which he could not call his own or which
was never created by him, only that he has seized on what the Almighty God, the
mighty architect, has been pleased to make for all6.”
For legal reasons the land
league sometimes constituted itself as a labour one but there was a genuine
element of reformist disposition in its agitation; it was in a continuum with
other social movements of the nineteenth century that sought to create an
egalitarian order. Martin Furlong’s assertion that God had created the land for
all struck at the most fundamental principle of the prevailing system: the
conviction of the Carews that it was providential patent that underlined the
axis of landlord and tenant (as enunciated by the future second Lord Carew at
his 21st birthday party on Robinson’s lawn in August 1839). The flaw
in Martin Furlong’s vision was that peasant proprietorship implied that God
created the land for the farmers as distinct from the labourers.
Furlong in his speech
referred to the present time as one of “distress approaching almost to famine”
and later to these days of “distress, famine and low prices.” References of
this kind are a staple of such speeches; they seem to defy the obvious reality
that living conditions were ostensibly improving but it is possible that
unprecedented market difficulties had arisen. At the meeting of the branch in
January of 1887 the chairman John Hendrick remarked on “the depressed state of
agriculture, the like of which was never known before7.” Furlong
homed in on the obvious irrationality of the Carew paradigm of social order:
“Must we rear them (our
children) like Hottentots, without education and give their earnings, their
bread to indulge Lord Carew’s vanity?”
When the branch met on the 7th
of January of 1886 Patrick Kavanagh of Donard took the chair and described the
year 1885-6 as one “when famine and low prices walked hand in hand throughout
the land.” He also depicted the land struggle in terms of democratic
solidarity:
“However the tenantry have
the Press and a most patriotic Press as their advocates; they have the
priesthood; they have the prelates; they have the artisans; they have the
labourers; they have the whole democracy on the side of the tenantry8.”
Actually they did not exactly have all the prelates on their side: the
local Curate, on another occasion, had to engage in mental and theological
gymnastics to prove that Archbishop Mc Cabe was really on their side!
These speakers are not, I
think, using the word democracy in its conventional meaning: they are warping
its meaning to signify the sovereignty of the Catholic people; this was not a
vision totally exclusive of the Protestant people but it diminished their
hitherto excessive role.
The speech made by John
Doyle of Meelgarrow, at the meeting of the branch in March 1886, although
muddled in the manner of its expression, is a good example of the fusion of
Catholic fervour and nationalism—it is a clear indication of the orientation of
the land movement:
“It is the spirit of Irish
nationality which makes life so dear to mankind.” I presume that he is referring
to the contemporary conviction that Ireland was intended by Providence to
establish a mighty spiritual empire. He added:
“When we find ourselves
possesses of that eternal and immovable spirit of Irish nationality we feel
ourselves enriched with riches more than earthly9.” The unspoken
sub-text of Doyle’s speech is that given the providential purpose ascribed to
the Irish Catholic community it should possess the land to enable it to fulfil
that destiny—a perfect dovetailing of self-interest and idealism.
Fr Tom Staples another
Curate at Poulpeasty became in the 1880ies the bane of the Carews: his eclectic
mix of ideals and philosophies and the bizarre convergences of divergent and
sometimes contradictory theories makes it difficult to determine exactly what
this forceful and eloquent priest stood for. We can divine what he stood
against: the House of Carew. His superior Fr John M. Furlong (connected by
blood to the old Fr Tom Furlong, the confidant of Bob Carew) disliked the
Carews as well. Tom Staples discerned a perfect identity of nationality with
love of God:
“It has always been a maxim
with us that next to love of God comes the love of country, they are
inseparable and can never be separated.” His history could be blatantly untrue
as in this instance:
“The war has been continued
from your grandfather’s time….it is a war of the masses against the classes or
rather it is a war of class on the masses.” The parents and grandparents of the
farmers of 1887 had by an overwhelming majority venerated the Carews, at least,
outwardly; the celebrations of the birth of the third Baron Bob Carew in 1860
and the 21st birthday party for the second Baron Bob Carew in 1839
were thronged with the tenantry of the Carews and were well within living
memory. He then waxed poetical:
“Freedom comes from God’s
right hand
And needs a godly train
And righteous men must make
our land
A nation once again
That of course is our great
ambition—our holy desire—that we should make our country a nation free and
glorious, from North to South and to West. We have no desire to crush or act
with an intolerant spirit towards anyone or any class. We won against
oppression and wrong, we won against cruelty, we won against land thievery and
landlord ascendancy10.”
The naiveté of Fr Staples is
astounding: freedom tends not to be won by the godly train but by the
psychopathic and crazy men that float to the surface in civil conflict. Fr
Staples is in contradiction of himself in regard to not showing an intolerant
spirit: his response to the taking down of the portrait of Lord Carew (the
second one) at the Board room of the Enniscorthy Union is utterly intolerant:
“In former times they saw
that the landlord’s likeness was placed at the head of the board room and now
it had been removed and in its stead they had the portrait of the leader of
democracy of the Irish Parliamentary Party. It was a hopeful and blissful
sign….Their duty to their native land was to serve her under all circumstances
and if called upon with their lives11.” The removal of Lord Carew’s
portrait was the type of petty act that the more fanatical nationalists of that
time gloried in. The mindset of those same nationalists allowed them to blind
themselves to the horror of war: they always envisaged the armed struggle as
that of Irishmen giving their lives as in a form of martyrdom (if called upon
with their lives) and not as those Irishmen shooting and killing other men—it
was an Irish solution to an Irish problem and a dream byte for a spin doctor.
The exponents of that
movement did not properly think through the implications of modern Irish
nationalism: it was assumed that Protestants would acquiesce, or positively
join, in the separatist push for an Ireland defined in Catholic terms. There
was not any crude intention to drive out the minority community and certainly
no hint of ethnic cleansing: the Protestant community were welcome to
flow with the nationalist momentum, indeed, to be integrated with it. Fr Tom
Staples rejoiced that young Charlie Parnell had taken his place at the helm of
the movement:
“The mantle of the great
O’Connell had fallen upon the young Protestant gentleman and he hoped that the
spirit of the leader would descend upon them and animate them in all their
exertions in the cause of their country12.” The outright idealists
in the nationalist movement like Fr Staples excluded—at the conscious level,
anyway—vengeful feelings towards the minority (a minority that may have
persecuted the Catholic community in the past) element but they failed to
appreciate that the Protestant community were both culturally different and
vulnerable to the effects of land reform and political separation: the most
useful key to their mindset is that Catholic community of the time believed, in
a matter of fact manner, that their faith represented the fundamental truth and
they may have sub-consciously anticipated that just at the Protestants would
under the guidance of Parnell would be integrated into an independent Ireland
they would also in God’s good time take the Roman road in religious matters.
This is at least a plausible explanation of the daft speeches made not only by
Tom Staples but also by also by his superior Fr. John M. Furlong in regard to
Parnell: this speech by the latter may have come back to haunt him at the time
of the Kitty O’Shea controversy—
“On Sunday last after Mass
on the grounds, outside the Chapel of Cloughbawn the Rev. John Furlong P.P.
delivered a powerful and telling address to his parishioners in favour of Barry
and Byrne in the county context. The Rev. Speaker dealt rather charitably with
O’Cleary, at the same time giving his hearers to understand that he (O’Cleary)
had not the ghost of a chance of re-election. He further referred to the vital
necessity, at the present time, more than ever, of sending reliable men to
represent their cause in Parliament, as the land laws were now paramount to all
other legislation. (He) regretted that some of his parishioners were under
notice of ejectment, a course he thought a wise and prudent landlord would not
pursue in a year of famine. At the conclusion of his address, he called on the
people, who heartily responded for a ringing cheer for Charles Stewart Parnell,
Barry and Byrne13.” O’Cleary was a member of Parnell’s party but
defied him and Parnell in the 1880 election had him replaced on the party
ticket for the Co. Wexford but O’Cleary contrary to Fr Furlong’s contemptuous
remarks got elected as an independent.
The implication of gathering
an entire congregation outside the Chapel is that Fr Furlong assumed that
parallel to the giving of spiritual guidance he could with equal authority and
certainty chart the political course for his flock as well. The indignity of
tenant farmers shouting down his cousin and predecessor as pastor of Cloughbawn
(actually Killegney) Fr. Tom Furlong at a meeting in Enniscorthy in May 1852
did not teach Fr John Furlong any lesson! Politics mimics the volatility and
madness of human life and it is impossible to have one priest and one voice (to
paraphrase somebody or other).
Revolutionary war—even a
metaphorical one like the land agitation—does not come in a context of total
consensus and a compliance with a infinity of theological stipulations. Fr Staples was scrupulous in following the
line taken by Rome on any controversial issue. In the Spring and early Summer
of 1885 he was (to his bemusement) involved in a controversy with the
Carrigbyrne branch of the land league after the Cloughbawn/ Poulpeasty branch
on Fr Staples instigation passed a resolution of sympathy on the death of Cardinal
Mc Cabe: the latter had supported a hardline Vatican initiative on the use of
violent tactics in the land struggle but in a letter to the Wexford People Tom
Staples awkwardly changed the issue:
“Cardinal Mc Cabe “was a
most bitter and persistent foe of Fenianism, secret societies bound by oath
with the object of destroying life or property at the direction of a
head-centre like James Carey14.”
The theoretical basis to the
Church’s hostility to secret societies was the fear that elements inimical to the
Church would under cover of secrecy achieve control but I think that Bishop Mc
Cabe and the Vatican would have been uneasy with the nasty mindset of the land
agitation, the threatening letters, the sporadic acts of violence and
ostracisation of people acting out of line with it. Some of the more headstrong
and younger priests clearly condoned violence and manly intimidation (as we
shall see) for the very idealistic reason that they envisaged a peasant
proprietorship as the basis of a splendid Catholic society in Ireland; the
farmers concerned were simply motivated by an instinct of self-survival and
possibly greed.
Fr Staples seemed to speak
the mythology of the island of saints and scholars; at a meeting of the
Cloughbawn and Poulpeasty branch in 1885 “on the feast of our National Saint St
Patrick” he likened the patriots of the present to “the Irish of olden times
when the sons of Erin preached the Gospel of light, truth, justice, public
morality, hand in hand with patriotism15.” He added that they were
“justly proud that the sons of Erin in the present century are the heralds and
pioneers of all that is good in religion, patriotism and nationality, in
Christian etiquette.” His use of the word Christian is ambiguous and in reality
he is referring to that segment of Christendom under the sway of Rome.
Nineteenth century eloquence and oratory was lubricated by a lack of semantic
exactitude.
One of the most spectacular
set-pieces of the land agitation in this locality was the assembly of tenants
at Colaught Cross on the 3rd of September 1885 where prior to a
march to Bob Carew’s mansion they were addressed by Fr Tom Staples who “called
their present action a constitutional movement” and went on to refer to “the
majesty of the people—a united democracy16.” One has to have doubts
that he fully understood the meaning of democracy; the meaning of the word has
to be warped to have it signify his collectivist Catholic vision. Fr. Staples
and Henry Hugh O’Neill were appointed as speakers for the group but when they knocked
on the door of the mansion at Castleboro the butler answered them initially and
afterwards Lord Carew sent the agent to the estate Francis Rutledge out to
them. The People in its report listed those who were absent from the march,
names that are self-explanatory as to their absence: Euseby Robinson, Laurence
Sweetman, Jim Tector, Mark Casson, Alfred Whitney, Richard Whitney, John
Fairweather, Thomas Elder, Edmond Fairweather, Mrs Robinson, John Whitney
–Poole etc. The report then most disingenuously asserts:
“These are the grabbers on
the estate. They first grabbed all the poor man’s land which fell from time to
time though landlord exaction17.” That is The People for ye! With
the exception of Laurence Sweetman all the names on the list are Protestants
bound by a loyalty to Carew and naturally apprehensive that if the Carews were
vanquished the minority might lose out in a new order. They were not part of
the majesty of Tom Staples’ people—they were merely an imperilled minority: the
irony of the land agitation and the eventual legislative response to it is that
they came to benefit from it. The demise of landlordism—and in this sense Tom
Staples was correct—represented genuine social and economic progress.
The famous plan of campaign differentiated
this phase of land agitation from all previous agrarian troubles: the farmers
themselves determined the appropriate amount of rent to pay; this was
inevitably lower than the landlords demand and also of the judicial rent struck
by the land courts where appropriate. An outright impasse was inevitable as the
proprietors rejected this procedure and proceeded to the courts for decrees to
evict on an unprecedented scale.
Bob Carew the heir to the
estate was a mere twenty-one years of age when the second Lord Carew died: as
first son he automatically succeeded as a tenant for life (as his predecessors
had been). In late June of 1882 he addresses this circular to his tenants:
“Probate to my father’s will
having now been granted in the court, both of England and Ireland, I am (by the
wish of my mother-the sole Executrix), in a position to deal as I may desire
with the rents due to September 1881. I should regret very much that the
settlement of these rents be not closed in an amicable spirit. In order to help
those tenants, who have not already done so, to pay their rents without further
delay, I have authorised Mr. Ruttledge to abate 15% from all 1881 rents paid to
him before the 31st July next. To those tenants who have already
paid without reduction the full year’s rent accruing due to 29th
September 1881, 20% will be allowed on payment of the two next succeeding
half-yearly payment of rents”18. The young Lord Carew’s gesture was
not at all unique as other landlords notably Harman of Palace and Ricards of
Rathnure had made a similar kind of partial capitulation; this was without
precedent and I am reluctant to accept that they did so merely to ease the
difficulties of their tenants at a time of uncertain markets: the probability
is that they made the calculated risk that this serious reduction of rents
(sufficient to endanger the solvency of their estates) would keep the more
fundamental menace posed by the land agitation at bay. The land agitation of
the closing decades of the nineteenth century represented a radical departure
in both the mindset and intentions of the tenantry: they now not only sought to
subvert the system but were also adept at generating powerful propaganda to
boost their cause; that cause had attracted the favour of the British
legislators who responded by a series of land Acts and Land Commission Courts
to determine judicial rents—these were, usually, a reduction of the existing
ones.
The response of the tenantry
to Carew’s offer was the standard Land League one of an beal bocht, the plea of
no money:
“The tenants upon receiving
this circular resolved to call a meeting but as the notice which was given of
it was very short, it was not well attended. The general opinion of the
meeting, as well as that of the absentees, was that the reduction was insufficient
as there are great numbers of them who have hardly the means sustenation for
themselves and their families, without paying a rack-ren19.”
In March of 1884 the Land
Commission courts reduced the rents on two of Lord Carew’s tenants: on Pat
Sinnott’s farm at Coolroe the rent was reduced from £45 19s and 6d to £40 and
on Hugh O’Neill’s fields at Clonroche from £6 12s and 3d to £4 0s 0d20.
O’Neill’s tangential and erratic line of argumentation had bemused and amused
the court who nevertheless complimented him on his intelligence. The appellants
at these courts invariably told all kinds of bizarre, fictional and comical
stories. In September of 1884 the court did not alter the rent on Henry
Gorman’s farm at Coolroe and it struck a rent of £43 for (presumably) a new
lease of John Mahon of Chapel (I presume) from Lord Carew21. Landlords could and did use this legislation
to ask the courts to raise rents, usually a forlorn endeavour. There was little
possibility of the bulk of the tenantry paying these rents.
Fr. Tom Staples revelled in
the role of a larger than life figure marshalling the tenantry to a concerted
defiance of young Lord Bob Carew: he undoubtedly calculated that by so doing he
was asserting the hegemony of the Catholic Church in the locality—the generally
peaceful and non-violent (if unpleasant) character of this struggle enabled him
and other such priests to posture in a purely heroic mode. The rebel priests of
1798 were engaged in a violent endeavour although now finally accepted
as icons and martyrs in the Catholic community.
In September of 1885 Tom
Staples addresses an assembly of the tenants of Lord Carew near the Bridge at
Enniscorthy “on the advisability of the demand they were now about to make”.
They then proceeded to the rent office situated in Court Street where a
selected deputation entered the office and engaged in a long discussion with
Frank Ruttledge, the agent to the estate. The purport of the conversation that
took place was that Ruttledge offered a reduction of from 10 to 20 per cent to
any tenants thought to be in need of it “but that nothing would be allowed to
tenants who had a judicial rent settled.” Frank Ruttledge tended to an
abruptness and plain speaking in negotiation. The tenantry demanded a reduction
of 25% of all rents and when they “returned to the Abbey ground” Fr. Staples
again addressed them22. Tom Staples was never happier than when
making speeches; like most of the clerics of his era he was a master of the
English language and his eloquence was untrammelled by the scruples of modern
scholarship. In the mindset of the era land was deemed the centrality of God’s
natural creation (and second only to human life itself): the control and
eventual possession of the land by the Catholic community would seem essential to
the perceived providential purpose of Ireland as a great spiritual and
missionary nation.
The dilemma for the
proprietors was that reductions on that scale were likely to imperil the
financial stability of their estates but the resort to seeking decrees to evict
placed them in outright and costly confrontation with the bulk of their
tenantry. The local media of the time carried several reports of the various
proprietors obtaining decrees to evict tenants. In June of 1885 one of the
papers reported that young Lord Bob Carew had made twenty-five applications to
eject tenants; some of them were refused by the courts23. The M.P.
Willie Redmond told a meeting at Enniscorthy in early 1887 that Bob Carew “has
sent a new year’s gift in the shape of 46 eviction notices served in the union
during the past month. If Lord Carew thinks he is going to evict 46 tenants I
can only say he must be wool-gathering24.” Willie Redmond was not
fully correct as Lord Carew did succeed in evicting some of his tenants and
thereby incurred an enduring hostility. The general procedure was for Carew and
other proprietors to obtain decrees to evict and then have Sheriff’s sales in
which the landlord would instruct a man to bid for the farms; the tenant of the
farm (technically evicted) would bid against him until the bidding reaching a
sum equal to the arrears of rent and (if the landlord was lucky) the legal
costs. These sales became a form of circus and raucous humour.
The Sheriff’s sale at the
Co. Co. Courthouse on the 12th of February 1886 while hilarious must
have been intimidating to the proprietors as the law became an ass. The
courthouse was packed with tenants and their friends and several deputations of
the National League headed by Fr. Tom Staples of Donard
The first sale was that of
Pat Sinnott’s farm at Coolroe; the tenant was both witty and mentally sharp
especially for official blunders When the Sheriff stated that the amount due
was for the rent was £43 19s 9d Pat Sinnott immediately queried the figure.
Henry Hugh O’Neill made an impish remark to the effect (the newspaper accounts
differ slightly25) that Lord Carew may have raised the rent “this
good year.” Pat Sinnott added in a bit of withering sarcasm that he supposed
that he had done so because of the good price for barley—11s a barrel. O’Neill
then suggested that because Sinnott spent in time in custody for alleged land
agitation crimes he was been victimised by Lord Carew. It was meant as a
humorous aside but the precedent on the Carew estate had been not to sue until several
years arrears had built up. The less individualistic explanation may be that
the Carew estate faced financial catastrophe as tenants defaulted en masse thus
requiring resort to the courts in all cases of arrears. Fr. Tom Staples
intervened to rightly insist that the judicial rent of Sinnott’s farm was £43
to which the Sheriff suggested that Pat Sinnott could take an action against
Lord Carew; Henry Hugh O’Neill rejoined that they would have to wait until the
Devil on the Day of Judgement came to try Frank Ruttledge the estate agent! The
Land Leaguers were using a vitriolic wit to psyche out their opponents (as the
Tenant Right did in the election of 1852). The sale was adjourned for a very
short time as it turned out.
The next farm put up for
sale was that of Henry Gorman of Coolroe, the father-in-law of Henry Hugh
O’Neill and inevitably the latter, always a loquacious and opinionated (if
eccentrically so) man waxed lyrically. He stated that Gorman had gone into the
land courts and failed to get a reduction and added that the family of Henry
Gorman had been living there for three hundred years. (Gorman had once taken
O’Neill to the petty court at Clonroche for trying to break in his door late at
night).
The emergency man, a Mr.
Powell, —authorised by Frank Ruttledge to bid on his behalf and that of Bob
Carew—then bid £5 and a bout of raucous comedy followed:
“Mr. O’Neill-Powell, you’re
a bowld man, (laughter)
Mr. David
Doran—And a good looking man, too. (Laughter).
Father Staples
said that he hoped it would not be any harm to ask that Mr. Powel would either
produce his money or give good security for it.
A voice-I don’t
think he got his breakfast yet, he is so hungry looking” This wit was a mild
form of intimidation and possibly denoted a burgeoning confidence on the part
of the land agitators.
The strategy of
the emergency man’s bidding was to force the tenant to bid an amount equivalent
to the arrears of rent plus the cost of the writ and Sheriff’s expenses. That
is how it worked out in Gorman’s case. When the emergency man started the
bidding for the farm of David Doran of Tominearly at £5 Henry Hugh O’Neill in
one of his more feeble essays at humour shouted out that he had bid too high as
the place would not graze a gander. Despite his protestations to the contrary
Doran, a long time member of the Board of Guardians of the Enniscorthy Union,
was in good circumstances. Or at least the record of his marriage in the civil
register said that anyway.
Lord Carew was
not the proprietor of all the land in the modern parish of Cloughbawn and at
this Sheriff’s sale Arthur Mac Murrough Kavanagh auctioned a number of his
tenancies in the Poulpeasty area. His emergency man became the focus of
courtroom wit, as one might expect:
“Mr. O’Neill (to
Buchanan)-Have you not a great big whisker?
Mr. Doran-If you
met him outside you would put your hand to your hat for him.” Later on the
humour became a trifle ugly:
“Mr. O’Neill-I
hope you will be in good health, Mr. Wilkinson, to auction the landlords.
Mr. Wilkinson-I
will try. A voice-You would not get anything for Kavanagh anyhow. Buchanan was
now about going and Mr. O’Neill said, “Don’t go until you bid us good evening.”
A voice-That it may be your last voyage. Mr. O’Neill-Begor, if we had Home Rule
we would return you Member of Parliament.
Buchanan was then
escorted outside the courthouse by Head-Constable Murray.”
Pat Sinnott then
proceeded to bid £1 for his farm and O’Neill and Doran followed with impish
offers of £2 and £3 respectively. Fr. Staples directed Sinnott to offer £8 18s,
the amount of the costs as distinct from the rent. The dialogue as reported in
the People seems to indicate that the Sheriff faced with the imperious manner
of Fr. Staples succumbed to what he had previously resisted doing: accepting a
bid equal only to the legal costs involved, the cost of the writ plus the
Sheriff’s fees:
“The
Sub-Sheriff-We will leave it open for half an hour. Father Staples-You will
not. The bid is bona fide and we are engaged elsewhere. We have to go to the
bank to get our money and we can’t wait. You will declare the purchaser, Mr.
Wilkinson. The Sub-Sheriff-No I won’t. Father Staples (emphatically)-The sale
must be declared.
The farm was now
again put up by the deputy Sheriff and knocked down amidst applause to the
tenant for £8 18s.”
Along the
mountainside and especially above Rathnure the land agitation was marked by
gruesome acts of violence; these areas tended traditionally to be more
distressed than the area comprising the modern parish of Cloughbawn. The farmers had an obvious need of guns to
protect their crops from the ravages of crows and rabbits but a license to hold
a gun had to be obtained from the magistrates at the Petty Sessions at
Clonroche. On the 21st of December 1880 a large number of farmers
attended at the court to obtain those licenses. The court was cleared and after
the magistrates had deliberated for several hours the people were admitted and
informed that the licenses would not be issued until the next Thursday. The
farmers turned up on the appointed day and were astonished to find that out of
somewhat less than two hundred applications only ninety were granted; the
author of the complaining letter to the newspaper gives a fine description of
the user friendly manner of the famous and feared Constable Mc Hugh:
“No one there
seemed to know anything of the matter but the amiable Mr. Hugh (sic), constable
of the station, who usually contrived to be uncivil, and impart his knowledge
to those applicants to whom no licenses were to be given in a rude authoritative
tone26.”
The writer of the
letter is less than reasonable: the society policed by Pat Mac Hugh was at the
best of times volatile with a tendency of neighbours to quarrel with each.
Organised agrarian agitation would of necessity invite violence fusing as it
did sectarian, agrarian and political tensions. The astounding aspect of the
land wars is the low incidence of violence: in this immediate locality there
was—as far as I can make out—only one. Philip Kelly of Palace took an evicted
farm from Kavanagh of Borris and when he resisted persuasion to leave it three
young men named James Lyng, Michael Reilly and Philip Murray seriously
assaulted him and were sentenced to a month in Wexford prison. The response,
however, of the local community to them and their violence is instructive as to
the ambiguity about such matters:
“The train with
the released prisoners reached Palace station at 6p.m. and was met by one
thousand persons with Fathers Walsh and Kavanagh among the numbers27.”
The Ballywilliam and Poulpeasty Brass Band played there. The only possible
deduction to be drawn is that the use of violence in appropriate situations was
generally approved of; the other message must have been that other land
grabbers might expect rough treatment as well. The threat of violence—seldom
openly expressed—was there as a deterrent of last resort to control those who
did not concur with the peaceful entreaties of the land league. The willingness
of young priests to stand with men of violence was as alarming as it was unsavoury.
The Poulpeasty end of the modern parish of Cloughbawn may have suffered more
than the Clonroche area in that period: at a meeting of the local branch in
March of 1886 it was reported that acute distress was commencing to be felt
“especially in Rathurtin, Donard, Rathfarden, Poulpeasty, Killegney, etc28.”
There is no doubt
that ostracisation was used as metaphorical weapon in the land struggle even in
this locality. Fr. Tom Staples once spoke wryly of the Poulpeasty branch of the
land league “meeting on the roadside under the shadow of a gable end of a house29”
but that did not detract from the sententiousness and solemnity of their
proceedings and rigid adherence to proper etiquette of procedure especially
when they pronounced on matters of supreme importance:
“That in future
no person be socially ostracised unless by the unanimous vote of the whole
committee or that no person be insulted or held up to odium unless at the
bidding of the whole committee of the National League after due notice30.” I presume that Tom Staples concocted this
silly formula although there is no specification as to the etiquette to be used
to sanction assaults on land grabbers.
The land
agitation strategy would be fatally undermined if men came forward to take
evicted lands. The most obvious candidates to take evicted lands were members
of the Protestant community and the Cloughbawn and Poulpeasty branch did not
spare the most high profile dignitaries in that community from their blasting
sarcasm:
“The committee
further compliment Dr. Macbeth LL.D. and Mr. James Tector (both gentlemen
residing at Clonroche) for the fine quality of the beef and mutton they expect
to produce from the farm at Poulpeasty which Mr. Thomas Dunne was lately
evicted from31.” Nothing could be more unfortunate for these men and
their community than that they should have gone to Dunne’s farm; the eviction
of this elderly man, his aged wife and his family—reputed to be there for
centuries—enraged the local community and probably sealed the fate of the Carews.
The evidence does
not permit a scenario of total denominational divide in regard to the land
issue, however. The Carews did proceed to the courts against Protestant tenants
including the Fairweathers and Clarke of Tomfarney and a meeting of the local
branch of the land league in July of 1891 referred to two local farmers having
ceased to graze or trespass on “Mrs Cooke’s farm at Poulpeasty”; one presumes
that she was evicted or in serious dispute with Carew. The same meeting did
however condemn a local Protestant farmer for bringing his son-in-law “to
partake of the grabbed grass of Dunne’s land at Poulpeasty32.” The
real battle of the land agitation was with tradition: it was
unprecedented for farmers not to take land that neighbours or even relatives
and family members had been evicted from; the few instances of Catholic farmers
breaching the new restraint (should I say taboo) on taking evicted land is
testimony to the powerful spirit of solidarity forged by the movement.
The third Baron
Bob Carew was utterly insensitive to the dilemma of his labourers caught up in
these controversies through no fault of their own. According to a report in the
People in 1888 a number of labourers belonging to Lord Carew were ordered to
work on Dunne’s evicted farm at Poulpeasty “when one of them, Cannon, who had
been 34 year’s in Lord Carew’s employment, point blank refused, stating he
would not go against the people. He threw up 15s a week and not only that but
having held a house and half an acre from Lord Carew he was turned out of this
also. The branches would do all they could for him33.” What they did
for him was to give him an appalling house at Boolabawn that as Dr Keating
reported a man would not put a valuable animal in. The farmers were genuinely
concerned about James Canning and his family but their resources were stretched
badly.
The occasional
allegation of oppressive treatment of their workers by the Carews is difficult
to verify at this remove: the story of Moses Kavanagh of Killanne, is of that
genre. He had worked at Lord Carew’s for thirteen years and occupied one of his
houses without he claimed any complaint against himself or his family until in
late 1883 “the land steward came to me and accused one of my children of taking
sheaves of corn out of one of his Lordship’s fields telling me at the same time
that he was told so by a certain person.” The steward refused to name his
source or go into Kavanagh’s cabin to see if there was any straw there;
Kavanagh’s claim for an inquiry was also scorned. It is clear that in not
allowing Kavanagh to defend the honesty of his child that the Carews and their
steward denied him natural justice; it is conversely possible that Kavanagh’s
child was guilty of wrongdoing and that his father was going through an
elaborate charade to obscure the truth. The flaw in his case is that he seems
to have precipitated his own catastrophe as he then left the employment but
continued to occupy the house “until about a month ago I was summoned to
Clonroche Petty Sessions and decreed for possession.” Kavanagh went to plead
his case to Laurence Sweetman the magistrate at Ballymackessy and Frank
Ruttledge the agent to the Carew estate as if such men would favour a labourer
against his Lord! In October of 1884 Kavanagh and his family numbering nine
persons, youngest child aged three years was thrown on the roadside by the
sheriff, assisted by a number of the Royal Irish Constabulary without a shelter
but the canopy of Heaven34.”
The act of
evicting a family with a child of three years onto the roadside obviously cried
to heaven for vengeance and it clearly makes a hideous mockery of the myth of
the House of Carew as the friends of the people. In the context of that time
the eviction of a labourer, at the cessation of his employment, from the house
rented by him from his employer was quite common. Hitherto evictions were
routine, a grim necessity to maintain the proprietor/tenant system: the land
league in making controversies out of evictions set its face against the tradition
and conventions of Irish society. Catholic proprietors, farmers and owners
of houses were as ruthless as their Protestant counterparts in seeking decrees
to evict. Jim Downes of Rathturtin who railed against Protestant ascendancy had
no qualms about evicting defaulting tenants of his own. He is only one example.
The astounding success of the land agitators in overturning these conventions
is explicable in part by reference to the changed sensibilities within the
upper echelons of British society, a matter reflected in legislative and
administrative dispositions. The simplest indication of this was the
requirement after circa 1861 that the proprietor notify the Board of Guardians
of the relevant union of impending evictions to enable the workhouse to make
provision for the evicted people. The offered option was grim indeed but the
underlying principle was positive: it was deeded unacceptable to throw people
out on the road and leave them there to starve and even die. The series of Land
Acts that followed from the land agitation also indicate a legislative
disposition to reduce and end the powers of the landed proprietors.
The other part of
the explanation of the success of the land agitation is that in a muddled way
they appreciated that collective strength transcended the short-term benefit of
grabbing evicted land; the summary of the discussion at a meeting of the local
branch in 1888 is an example of the torturous logic used by the men of that
time to reach that conclusion; their minds could not generate succinct
analysis:
“Touching the
question of grabbing it was considered that land grabbing and grass grabbing,
if continued would destroy any little vestige of good that the Land Act
contains. That it was clearly understood since the conception of the League by
all its members that land grabbing and grass grabbing were not to be indulged
in even to the smallest extent by any of its members. That grabbers induced the
landlords to evict whereas if there were no grabbers the landlords would in
nine times out of ten settle reasonably with the tenants. Take the case of a
tenant who in these depressed times is unable to meet his year’s rent, although
previously paid fairly well. He is writted by the landlord and the landlord
buys in a nominal sum, as he never exceeds the amount of rent due. The upshot
is that the landlord becomes legally possessed by this process of law of all
the life long work of the tenant and his predecessors, houses, drainage,
fences, reclamations, in fact all the tenant ever had, even though the tenant
owed but one year’s rent. The man who would take that land or the grass of it,
grabber would not be too ugly a term to use to him. The emergency man is a
saint compared to the grabber and no grabber will be tolerated for a moment to
remain a member of our branch35. ”
It is clear from
various court hearings, especially the courts enacted to determine a judicial
rent, that farmers had been improving their farms but the terminology used is
perhaps fanciful: drainage might mean digging shallow shores; building might
mean erecting a mud walled house with a thatched roof and fencing might mean
piling bushwood onto a gap in the ditch. The above analysis is substantially
disingenuous as the landlords during the land agitation did not seek to buy the
farms put on auction; the usual procedure was for a representative of the
landlord to force up the bidding to a level equivalent to the arrears of rent
plus expenses at which price the tenant bought it back.
The monthly
meetings of each branch were reported in the media thus enabling it to
highlight instances of land, grass and cattle grabbing. For example the
Cloughbawn and Poulpeasty branch in August of 1885 derided Dick Furlong of
Ballymackessy for grass grabbing at Carrigbyrne36. In July of 1885
it condemned a Tom Ryan of Clonleigh for working for Philip Kelly of Clonleigh,
an evicted farm37. A meeting of the branch in late 1890 referred to
a man from Colaught buying boycotted stock at Newtownbarry38. It is
retrospectively easy to condemn these men but they lived in times of desperate
need and did not have the benefit of hindsight that the land agitation would be
successful. The newly created taboos of the land League could not totally
eradicate the older mindset both of acquiring land at every opportunity and
looking up to the Carews.
The astounding
thing is that the newly minted taboos did generally apply. It was reported that
the people would not touch evicted farms at Donard and Ballygalvert “with a
forty foot pole39.” The absence of bids by the farmers at the
numerous Sheriff’s auctions that took place then is clear proof that they were
either convinced that it was wrong to do so or they feared retaliation if they
did so.
The obvious query
to address is the nature of the persuasion used by the Land League: the apparent
indications are that the odium of social ostracisation, in closely knit and
small communities would seem to have sufficed to deter land grabbing, in this
locality at least. As one proceeds towards and up the mountainside one
encounters very violent incidents. I think that the threat of violence was
always discreetly present but conversely I would also say that the land
agitation did not proceed in a Parnellian mode of brazenly indicating that
violence was the immediate alternative to the peaceful methods.
The principal business at the meeting of the
local branch in January of 1888 was to consider “what protection could be
afforded against cattle trespassing on landlords grass40.” The report named a man from Coolnacun as
trespassing on the Carnagh grass where the evicted tenant was unable to pay the
rack rent. At the meeting on the following month this man “said he would no
longer trespass on the Carnagh grass; that it was the example set him by others
that induced him to do so.” One wonders! The most spectacular and puzzling
change of heart was that of Jim Tector the clerk to the Clonroche Petty
Sessions, farmer, insurance agent and agent of some sort to Lord Monck. As
already noted the local branch made a witheringly sarcastic observation about
his grazing of the land of the evicted Tom Dunne at Poulpeasty.
At the meeting of
the local branch in January of 1890 Jim Tector applied for membership but the
meeting wished to be clear as to his intentions “regarding the grazing of
evicted land” but it was added that they were prepared to meet him on fair
terms41.” In a letter read at the February meeting Jim Tector
expressed his approval of the League and sought enrolment as a member but his
letter was not considered fully satisfactory and the matter was adjourned42.
It must have been unsatisfactory to the officers of the branch as a second
letter from Tector was read at the meeting, a most obsequious document:
“Gentlemen-I beg
to say that I am sorry for the way I wound up my letter to you on the last
time. I should have said that I would not take objectionable grass anymore. I
now promise that I will not take objectionable grass anymore and I am sorry for
my past folly in doing so.”
Tector would
undoubtedly have rehearsed his letter with the branch officials before
despatching it but the word folly attests to a more sophisticated perception on
his part of the import of the land agitation: the movement—for the greater
part—sought the expropriation of the landed proprietors but it did not
prescribe that occupiers of the other faith should be driven out or have
any portion of their holdings taken from them. It was not a jihad such as that
of 1798: the relative tolerance of the land League in this locality anyway was
a continuum of the quasi-ecumenism and inter-denominational amity fostered by
the Carews. The significant aspect of the Jim Tector saga is the acceptance of
his apology and admission to the branch; one speaker at the March 1890 meeting
spoke scathingly of Jim Tector having caved in but a Mr. M. Murphy said that he
had “made an ample apology and was now on the side of the people.” A Mr.
Kennedy presumably of Tomfarney “said he was glad to say that was so43.”
It was not
completely clear that the all the people involved in the agitation actually
envisaged a demise of landlordism; there was a juxtaposition of radicals and
more conservative minded farmers in the movement. The speech given by a John
Hendrick at a meeting in January of 1887 is remarkably restrained:
“However where
the landlord shows an inclination to treat his tenantry leniently and justly
the tenantry in like manner ought to endeavour to meet him in a generous way by
paying all they could reasonably spare after keeping sufficient to sew their
land and support their families until another harvest44.”
The people who
lived on or close to the Carew demesne at Castleboro were bonded to the Carews
by persistent economic affinities; as late as 1885 the local branch was
denouncing “the offence of conveying and drawing coals for the landlord Carew
from Chapel Station to his residence in Tinnock (archaism for Castleboro)
45.” Every farmer in Tominearly and Ballyboro were so employed as they
had been from time immemorial; Laurence Bowe who won fame when jailed as a
suspect for land League crimes was one of those drawing coal to Tinnock.
In 1806 the
father of the first Baron Bob Carew succinctly defined the mission of the
Carews: “to conciliate all classes of men as the best means of supporting the
best constitution any country had ever been blessed with46.” The
hostility to the drawers of coal to Tinnock is clear proof that the great Carew
project had wilted. The invective coming from the meetings of the local branch
left little room for doubt in that matter. John Williams of the Forrestalstown
family that gave many of its sons and daughters to the Church had this to say
about the Carews in 1885:
“that the bashaw
of Tinnock was still at his work—namely serving writs of summons for that
immoral tax on their industry called rent. Both in Poulpeasty and Knockstown
they felt the pressure of the screw. Yet he believed there was no relief for
these people but submission to the inevitable or go to the roadside or the
workhouse—all for the insolent and extravagant vanity of the boss of Tinnock
and Castleboro47.” At another meeting in 1885 a speaker spoke of six
writs on the Carew estate “making altogether thirty-eight individuals about to
be thrown on the roadside to bring more luxury and plunder to the Squaw of
Tinnock commonly called Lady Carew48.” These speeches like all the
speeches made at such meetings seem as if taken from a template: they in a most
deliberate manner strike at the most vulnerable aspects of the landlord ethos.
.
.
1.
The Wexford independent the 28th of
February 1891.
2.
The Outrage Papers 1840. The National Archives Dublin
Also the Wexford Independent the 7th of February 1840.
3.
Ibid 1.
4.
The Wexford Independent the 13th of
October of 1860 referred to Carroll’s speech but did not carry it until the
following issue.
5.
Ibid 1.
6.
The People the 13th of January 1886.
7.
The People 1887, one of the issues before the 19th
of January.
8.
The People the 10th of February 1886.
9.
The People the 17th of March 1886.
10. The People the 19th
of January 1887.
11. The People the 26th of September
1885.
12. The People the 26th of September
1885
13. The People the 7th of April 1880.
14. The People the 16th of May 1885.
15. The People the 25th of March 1885.
16. The People the 9th of September
1885.
17. The People the 9th of September
1885.
18. The People the 1st of July 1882.
19. The People the 1st of July 1882.
20. The People the 8th of March 1884
21. The Watchman the 27th of September
1884.
22. . The Watchman
the third of June 1886.
23. The People the 19th
of January 1887. The National Library Dublin.
24. The People the 19th of January
1887. The National Library Dublin.
25. The People the 13th of February
1886 and The Watchman the 20th of February 1886.
26. The People the 4th of February
1881.
27. The People the 23rd
of July 1887. The National Library Dublin.
28. The People the 24th of March 1886
in the National Library Dublin.
29. The People the 16th
of May 1885. The National Library Dublin.
30. The People the 24th of March 1886.
The National Library Dublin.
31. The People the 16th
of May 1885.
32. The People the 26th of July 1891.
The National Library Dublin.
33. The People the 7th of March 1888.
34. The Watchman the 18th of October
1884.
35. The People the 18th of January
1888.
36. The People the 12th of August 1885.
The National Library Dublin.
37. The People the 20th
of July 1885. The National Library Dublin.
38. The People the 6th of December
1890. The National Library Dublin.
39.
40. The People the 18th of January
1888.
41. The People the 22nd of January
1890. The National Library Dublin.
42. The People the 8th of February
1890. The National Library Dublin.
43. The People the 5th of March 1890.
The National Library Dublin.
44. The People the 12th of January
1887. The National Library Dublin.
45. The People the 12th of August 1885.
The National Library Dublin.
46. The Wexford Herald the 17th of
November 1806. The National Library Dublin and Wexford Library.
47. The People the 29th of April 1885.
The National Library Dublin.
48. The People the 30th of May 1885.
The National Library Dublin.
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