Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-29T03:00:37.108Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The wealth of the greater Irish landowners, 1750-1815

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2016

David Large
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

My prime concern in approaching this subject was to discover, if possible, some precise facts about the finances of the landowning class in what is generally accounted to have been their years of greatest affluence. This article is in effect a report on such sources of information as it was possible to explore together with tentative answers to some of the questions that appeared to need raising if the economic condition of the ascendancy landowners is to be understood. That a great deal of further investigation is required to attain this end was the plainest conclusion reached and if what follows in any way aids such inquiry, its purpose will have been fulfilled.

Type
Articles
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 15 , Issue 57 , March 1966 , pp. 21 - 47
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 1966

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Wakefield, E., An account of Ireland, Statistical and political (1812), 1. 245 Google Scholar; Wakefield did, however, indicate the revenues that he thought individuals drew from particular estates without trying to assess their incomes.

2 Some, perhaps many, collections remain in private hands both in Ireland and Britain. For instance, some material relating to estates in co. Waterford has recently come to light in thè papers of the Earls Fortescue at Castle Hill, Devonshire.

3 B.M., Add. MSS 46978–47014.

4 Annual Reg., 1797 [chronicle], p. 31.

5 Coollatin MSS, N.L.I., MS 6016.

6 Cullen, L.M., ‘The exchange business of the Irish banks in the eighteenth century’, in Economica, n.s., 25 326–38 (Nov. 1958).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Joslin, D.M., ‘London private bankers, 1720–1785’, in Econ. Hist. Rev., 2nd ser., 7 167–86 (1954)Google Scholar, and Joslin, D.M., ‘London bankers in wartime, 1739–1784’ in Pressnell, L.S. (ed.), Studies in the industrial revolution (1960), pp. 156–77.Google Scholar

8 Now in possession of the Munster and Leinster Bank Limited, to whom I am indebted for pennission to examine them. The La Touche MSS in the N.L.I. (MSS 2782–5, 3151–3 and 8222–5), though useful for the early eighteenth century, contain little on this period.

9 e.g. La Touche ledger, 1803–4, p. 107.

10 John, A.H., ‘Insurance investment and the London money market of the 18th century’ in Economica, n.s., 20 137–58 (May 1953)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dickson, P.M.G., The Sun Insurance Office, 1710–1960 (1960), pp. 244–63.Google Scholar

11 e.g. Spring, D., ‘A great agricultural estate Netherby under Sir James Graham, 1820–1845’, in Agricultural History, 29 (1955), p. 76.Google Scholar

12 Mortgage books of the Equitable Life Assurance Society at 19, Coleman St., London E.C.2; also the minutes of the summoned courts, 26 May 1834, and especially weekly minutes vol. 57, p. 258 (13 Mar. 1839) for Chichester’s application. I have to thank the society and M. E. Ogbourn, joint actuary, for permission to consult these records.

13 P. M. G. Dickson, op. cit., p. 249.

14 Clarendon to Lord Shannon, 12 Oct. 1847 (Bodl., Clarendon MSS, Letterbook 1, ff. 83–4.

15 The purpose of such acts was diverse : to allow sales of land in order to raise portions or pay off debts or to settle jointures, to give power to make leases or permit mortgages to be raised, and to partition or consolidate estates.

16 Available for inspection at the house of lords record office in the Victoria Tower.

17 It was by no means necessary to go as far as a private act for the purposes referred to in note 15. For instance, sales of land were possible without an act to break a strict settlement if parts of the estate were out of settlement, as was the case, for example, on the Egmont estate in co. Cork, where a survey of 1766 contains a set of maps carefully coloured to show areas that were settled and for what purpose and areas that were not. (B.M. Add. MS 47049.)

18 Index to local and personal acts, 1801–1947 (H.M.S.O., 1949).

19 Buckley, K., ‘The records of the Irish land commission as a source of historical evidence’, in I.U.S., 4, 33–4 (Mar. 1944).Google Scholar

20 Eustace, P.B. (ed.), Registry of Deeds, Dublin, abstracts of wills, 1 (1954)Google Scholar, introduction.

21 P.B. Eustace, ibid., ii (1956), p. 151 for the earl of Tyrone’s lands being charged in 1762 with almost £10,000 for portions for his two youngest daughters, and p. 335 for the lands bought by the earl of Mill-town down to 1783.

22 How valuable the Fitzwilliam estate had become by the time the last viscount bequeathed it to the earl of Pembroke in 1816 is well indicated by a contemporary comment that it will ‘ultimately be no less than £20,000 a year…; nowhere could it have been more acceptable, as Lord Pembroke was on the point of breaking up and selling up to make a provision for his numerous family’ ( Leighton, R. (ed.), The correspondence of Charlotte Grenville, Lady Williams Wynn (1920), p. 187).Google Scholar For examples of owners of Dublin ground-rents in the late eighteenth century see Craig, M.J., Dublin, 1660–1860 (1952), passim.Google Scholar

23 E. Wakefield, op. cit., i. 246, noted that ‘many towns in Ireland are the property of individuals’, but it is doubtful whether urban property brought in appreciably higher rents than rural except in Dublin and and to a lesser extent in Cork and Belfast.

24 Some details of this estate can be gleaned from Accounts of slave compensation claims, p. 5 etc., HC. 1837–8 (215), xlviii, 338 etc.

25 These figures have been derived from the lists of Irish absentees drawn up during the Rockingham faction’s campaign against a proposed absentee tax in 1773 (Fitzwilliam MSS, in Sheffield City Library, MS R3-162-6; for permission to examine these I have to thank the Earl Fitzwilliam and the trustees of the Fitzwilliam settled estates) and Prior, T., A list of the absentees of Ireland (6th ed., Dublin, 1783).Google Scholar

26 Viscount Powerscourt, A description and history of Powerscourt (1903), p. 151 for the family’s regret that they had sold their English estate in 1857; for the marquess of Donegal’s building activities on his Staffordshire lands, Stroud, D., Capability Brown (1950), p. 91 Google Scholar, and Shaw, S., History and antiquities of Staffordshire (1798), 1. 368–71.Google Scholar

27 Campbell, T., A philosophical survey of the south of Ireland (Dublin, 1778), p. 107 Google Scholar, refers to the Wandesford family drawing £10,000 a year from the Castlecomer coal mines; MacLysaght, E. (ed.), The Ken-mare manuscripts (1942), p. 419 Google Scholar, shows the earl of Kenmare drawing some income from mines in the first decade of the nineteenth century, but by 1813 this had sunk to under £20 p.a.

28 N.L.I., Howard MS 1725; cf. the dowager Lady Erne’s list of ‘my Bond securitys’ (sic) in 1798 which totalled £11,250 (Erne MSS, N.L.I. MS 2178).

29 The calculation ignores noblemen who simply had the commissions they had bought.

30 Connell, K.H., ‘The land legislation and Irish social life’ in Econ. Hist. Rev., series 2, 11. 1 (1958).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 See Appendix.

32 Young, Arthur, A tour in Ireland, ed. Maxwell, Gonstantia (1925), p. 209.Google Scholar

33 E. Wakefield, op. cit., i. 305, estimated the total rental in 1812 as being £17,228,540; Newenham, T., A view of the natural, political and commercial circumstances of Ireland (1809), p. 232 Google Scholar, arrived at a total of £15,304,351.

34 Lyons, F.S.L. (ed.), ‘Vicissitudes of a middleman in county Leitrim, 1810–27; in I.H.S., 9. 300–18 (Mar. 1955).Google Scholar

35 Mingay, G.E., English landed society in the eighteenth century (1963), p. 52 Google Scholar; Thompson, F.M.L., English landed society in the nineteenth century (1963), p. 220.Google Scholar

36 Burke was well aware of the link between rent and improvement;— see his comment to Garret Nagle, 10 Sept. 1771 that ‘the new price of lands with you can never be paid, but by an impressed husbandry’ ( Sutherland, L. (ed.), The correspondence of Edmund Burke, 2 (1960), p. 234).Google Scholar

37 Coollatin MSS, N.L.I. MSS 6001–32 covering the years 1783–1815; and for further examples see the position on the Devonshire and Charle-mont estates later referred to.

38 12 and 13 Geo. Ill, c. 12 provided for the vesting of lands etc. in counties Limerick, Cork, Westmeath and King’s County, the estate of George Stepney, in trustees in order that the name, or a competent part thereof, may be sold for payment of debts and incumbrances.

39 Gloncurry MSS, N.L.I. MS 5659 (a detailed account-book covering the years 1772–97), and MS 8183 for purchase price of manor of Gloncurry.

40 T. Newenham, op. cit., p. 77.

41 Connell, K.H., The population of Ireland, 1750–1845 (1950),Google Scholar especially ch. IV ; Salpin, W.F., The grain supply of England during the Napoleonic period (New York, 1925),Google Scholar passim.

42 N.L.I. MS 4168, Dublin cornmarket prices, 1785–1839. Prices are in Irish currency.

43 Coollatin MSS, N.L.I. MS 6006. Amounts are given to the nearest pound.

44 Coollatin MSS, N.L.I. MSS 6007–6050, which constitute a fine set of rentals. There are other instances which suggest that rents asked for rose slowly between 1815 and the great famine; e.g. Drogheda MSS, N.L.I. MS 5190, which shows that the rent demanded in 1811 was £9,482 and in 1840 from the same acreage £12,487, and Cremorne MSS, N.L.I. MSS 3186 and 1698, which show £7,082 being asked for in 1808 and from the same acreage, in 1841, £11,967.

45 Dawson MSS, N.L.I. MS 3187, f. 219, and MS 4851. Other examples of estates experiencing heavy arrears in the post–1815 period are to be found in Clanmorris MSS, N.L.I. MSS 3279, which shows arrears of £5,184 on a rental for one and a half years, ending 1 Nov. 183, of £13,073; Bantry MSS, N.L.I. MSS 3273-4, and Arden MSS, N.L.I. MS 8652, which show arrears almost equal to a year’s rent in 1824.

46 Clanricarde MSS, N.L.I. MS 2119; cf. Alger, J.G., ‘An Irish absentee and his tenants, 1768–1792’, in E.H.R., 10. 668 (1895)Google Scholar f°r heavy arrears on the earl of Kerry’s estate.

47 This was a point emphasised by one of de Tocqueville’s informants ( de Tocqueville, A., Journeys to England and Ireland, ed. Mayer, J.P. (1958), p. 176).Google Scholar

48 Tighe, W., Statistical observations relative to the county of Kilkenny (Dublin, 1802), p. 587,Google Scholar refers to Lord Garrick as’ the only constantly resident nobleman in the country’.

49 Carrick MSS, N.L.I. MS 8540. Even if Irish landlords were prepared to pay dearly for loans, they might fail to get them, for, as the lord lieutenant, Clarendon, observed in 1847, ‘the high interest paid for money to meet railway calls and its profitable investment in railway debentures render English capitalists indifferent to interest they usually obtain upon Irish security’ (Clarendon to Lord Shannon, 12 Oct. 184,. Bodl., Clarendon MSS, Letter book 1, ff. 83–4).

50 A. de Tocqueville, op. cit., p. 142.

51 Coollatin MSS, N.L.I. MS 6006. Arrears on either side of the account have been ignored and figures are to the nearest £.

52 Lismore MSS, N.L.I. MS 6913; a similar situation obtained on this estate in 1798 (ibid., N.L.I. 6914).

53 Charlemont MSS, N.L.I. MS 2702.

54 Irish landed property, of course, did not at this time carry the burden of poor rates, land tax, county rates and so forth, as was the case in England.

55 Ainsworth reports (typescript) N.L.I., vi. 1439; in 1750 the earl of Egmont was paying his agent in Ireland £100 a year (Egmont MSS, B.M. Add. MS 47014).

56 Anal. Hib., no. 20, p. 270.

57 For useful comparative figures see McDowell, R.B., The Irish administration, 1801–1914 (1964), pp. 11–12.Google Scholar

58 e.g. Gurwen, J.G., Observations on the state of Ireland (London, 1818), 2. 134 Google Scholar, notes that ‘latterly the agency business of landed property has been undertaken by men of talent and character’.

59 See e.g. the series for 1776 in the earl of Upper Ossory MSS, N.L.I. MSS 1568–71, by Bernard Scale, and another by the same English surveyor in Darnley MSS, N.L.I. MS 5485.

60 Mahaffy, J.P., introduction to The Georgian society: records of eighteenth century domestic architecture in Ireland (1913), 5. 12.Google Scholar

61 Unhappily, half a dozen years later he was divorcing her after winning a crim. con. suit against her lover.

62 Gloncurry MSS, N.L.I. MSS 5693, 5660, 8492.

63 Gloncurry MSS, N.L.I. MS 5694, particularly an enclosed sheet giving an estimate of what the second Lord Gloncurry is worth.

64 See note 26 and Benn, G., A history of the town of Belfast (1877), 1. 611–13Google Scholar; Golvin, H.M., A biographical dictionary of English architects, 1669–1840 (1954),Google Scholar s.v. Lancelot Brown.

65 E. Wakefield, op. cit. i. 245.

66 Turberville, A.S., A history of the owners of Welbeck Abbey (1939), 2. 60.Google Scholar

67 This was the whole Irish peerage at this time excluding first generation peers. A similar analysis for the peerage as it was in 1801 produced very much the same figures. The classic Irish example of a dowager burdening an estate appears to be the case of the widow of the ist earl of Milltown, who survived his death in 1783 for 58 years.

68 Phillipps MS 35673, T.G.D.

69 The Farington diary, ed. Greig, J. (1923–4), 1. 103,Google Scholar ii. 149.

70 Ainsworth reports (typescript), N.L.I., ii. 500.

71 Phillipss MS 35673, T.C.D.

72 Erne MSS, N.L.I. MS 2178.

73 John Grosbie to earl of Glandore, 3 June 1777, Crosbie MSS, N.L.I. MS 2054.

74 Phillipps MS 35,673, T.C.D., petition of John, earl of Glandore.

75 Valentine, A., Lord George Germain (1962), p. 475.Google Scholar

76 Proby MSS (by courtesy of Sir Richard Proby of Elton Hall, Hunts.), miscellaneous correspondence, i. 151, shortened version of the marriage settlement; cf. O’Neil Segrave’s wife who brought £8,000 with her on their marriage in 1790 in return for a jointure of £300 p.a. and £5,000 to be raised for the younger children ( Segrave, G.W. and Sadleir, T.U., The Segrave family, 1066–1935 (1936).Google Scholar

77 Habakkuk, H.J., ‘Marriage settlement in the eighteenth century’, in R. Hist. Soc, Trans., series 4, 32. 15–30 (1950).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

78 5 Geo. II, c. 7, reduced it from 7 to 6 per cent. ‘where it still remains; as Gilbart, J.W. observed in his History of banking in Ireland (1836), p. 8.Google Scholar

79 Hecht, J., The domestic servant class in eighteenth century England (1956), pp. 5–6 Google Scholar and eh. vi for wage rates and categories of servants from which the above estimate has been derived.

80 Erne MSS, N.L.I. MS 2178.

81 Howard MSS, N.L.I. MS 1725.

82 Johnston, E.M., Great Britain and Ireland, 1760–1800 (1963), p. 42.Google Scholar

83 Sherborne MSS, Gloucestershire G.R.O., MS 96F.

84 A. de Tocqueville, op. cit., p. 176.

85 Ely MSS, N.L.I. MS. 3144.

86 Burn, W.L., ‘Free trade in land : an aspect of the Irish question’, in T.R.H.S., series 4, 31, 69 (1949).Google Scholar A ‘judgment debtor’ is’a person against whom a judgment ordering him to pay a sum of money stands unsatisfied, and who is liable therefore to have his property taken in execution under the judgment’ ( Saunders, J.B. (ed.), Moxley and Whiteley’s law dictionary, 7th ed., 1962, p. 192.Google Scholar

87 Lynch, P. and Vaizey, J., Guinnesses brewery in the Irish economy, 1759–1876 (1960), p. 30,Google Scholar Fetter, F.W., The Irish pound, 1797–1826 (1955), pp. 19–26, 46.Google Scholar