THE story of land tenure in the years which led up to the passing of the Irish Land Acts is one of the saddest chapters in Ireland's history.
Of the more notorious Anglo-Irish landlords no name is held in more bitter memory than Hubert de Burgh, Marquess of Clanricarde (1832-1916) in Co Galway. This absentee landlord, who lived in London and never visited his Irish estate, seems to have taken an inhuman pleasure in gloating over the miseries of those unfortunate enough to be his tenants. On the flimsiest pretence and without compunction he would throw on the roadside all or any who would dare to question the harshness of his ways. Clanricarde was born in 1832. A handsome and well-educated man, he attended Harrow and after a decade in the British Diplomatic Corps, he became MP for Galway in 1867. The first sign of his harsh indifference to the sufferings of Irish tenants came when he resigned his seat as a protest against Gladstone's Irish Land Act of 1870. His family's lands comprised some 52,000 acres with a rental of £25,000 a year. In 1873 he succeeded his father to the estate and title. During the difficult times that followed a number of Irish landlords reduced their rents but Clanricarde remained a notorious exception. One after another of his tenants were evicted and, as conditions worsened and the unfortunate people strove to strike back, the almost inevitable bloodshed resulted. In 1882, one of his agents, Blake, who was blamed for instigating his 'No Reduction' attitude, was shot dead and when the man's widow threatened to produce letters proving his innocence, Clanricard obtained an injunction to prevent their publication.
Opposition, it would seem, only maddened this miserly old man of Mayfair. In the 1880s he carried out a series of wholesale evictions with the aid of a force of five hundred constables. Some 75 tenants who resisted were sent to prison for terms ranging from twelve to eighteen months.
Out of conditions such as these was born the Plan of Campaign of the Land League, launched in 1882. As Clanricarde's was the biggest estate, the Land League campaign there was met by more evictions and bloodshed.
The turn of the century came and even the Land Act of 1903 - enabling the tenants to buy out their holdings - found Lord Clanricarde as adamant as ever. In 1909 the Congested Districts Board, set up by the British Government, took advantage of its powers to acquire land and bought out the Clanricarde estate compulsorily. But the most notorious of landlords would not have it - and for six years he fought the Board in the courts before he had eventually to be content with £238,000 in exchange for the land to which he had held so tenaciously. One might wonder why he strenuously sought to keep his grip on the land. Certainly he did not use it on himself for he was reputedly the meanest man in the London of his day. The clothes he wore were so shabby that he was actually on occasions refused admissions to the House of Lords. His only weakness seemed to have been the acquisition of pictures and china. The title died with him in 1916 but he still casts a dark shadow over the history of the west of Ireland.
Edited by Eamon Phoenix e.phoenix@irishnews.com