Captain Rock: The Irish Agrarian Rebellion of 1821–1824

7. The Issue of Rents

217 Seven The Issue of Rents Complexities of the Land System Confronted with a punishing economic downturn in the early 1820s, the Rockites were as fully determined to lower rents and control the occupation of land as they were bent on reducing or abolishing tithes. This book began with the story of the violent campaign against the collection of the customary rents and huge arrears on the Courtenay estates around Newcastle West in County Limerick. That originating conflict had many special features, as we have seen, but so too did the much wider struggle that followed in its wake. A proper understanding of the innumerable conflicts about rent that punctuated the Rockite movement of 1821–24 must take into account the central complexities of the land system in prefamine Ireland. In between the proprietor of the land at the top of the rural social hierarchy and the occupying tenant or cottier near the bottom were typically a series of middlemen. It was not uncommon to find from three to five layers of landholders of some kind between the highest and lowest rungs of the tenurial ladder. These middlemen might be Protestant gentlemen, members of the minor gentry who, besides farming on some scale themselves, rented out considerable tracts to middling or extensive farmers or, more usually , to large numbers of small tenants; parts of their demesne lands, or the holdings that they farmed themselves, might be let in potato gardens to conacre tenants for the growing season. Thus, while owing rent to the proprietor or head landlord, these gentry middlemen needed to collect rent themselves from a variety of tenants below them. Many large farmers or graziers, usually Catholic in religion in the south of Ireland, occupied a somewhat parallel position in relation to the smaller tenants, cottiers, and bound laborers to whom they regularly rented or sublet land in differing quantities. In the a◊ermath of the French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, when the former agricultural boom gave way to something like a bust, landed proprietors in increasing numbers displayed a keen interest in eliminating middlemen and in pocketing the “profit rents” that the middlemen were in the habit of extracting from those to whom they had sublet most or all of their land. Where elimination seemed inadvisable for managerial or political reasons, then landowners or their agents might seek to clip the wings of gentry middlemen by reducing the extent of their holdings.1 Although the process of eliminating such middlemen was a gradual one in the prefamine decades, it was gathering momentum during the economic downturn of the early 1820s. The capacity of this development for generating social conflict mostly derived from its association with the removal of bankrupt subtenants or those who had allowed heavy arrears of rent to accumulate. Large Catholic farmers with subtenants , or with unbound laborers renting conacre plots, were o◊en inclined to be as harsh and unforgiving as any Protestant landowner or middleman when faced with heavy arrears of rent or demands for drastic abatements. The popular response to such farmers if they engaged in evictions or took over evicted holdings was frequently even more vengeful than the treatment meted out to members of the landed elite. Large Catholic farmers and minor Protestant gentlemen living in the midst of the perennially poor or the suddenly impoverished made relatively easy targets for the Rockites. Popular Outcry over Excessive Rents Many contemporary observers insisted that Irish landlords in general had been exceedingly slow to adjust their rents in the wake of the first postwar depression and the second that commenced in the years 1819–20. Criticizing the numerous proprietors who had clung to high rents despite the accumulation of huge arrears, the Dublin Evening Post predicted that the year 1820, which saw livestock and corn prices captain rock 218 steeply decline, “is destined to teach them a lesson which they can never forget.”2 But Irish landowners were apparently painfully slow learners.3 More than two years later, in November 1822, when the economic depression had taken a further downward plunge, one observer claimed that “the prices of cattle and grain are nearly at the standard of 1760, when land set at 7 to 15 shillings per acre.” Nevertheless, as he pointed out, rents of 40 or 50 shillings an acre were still quite common .4 This widespread lack of adjustment to economic realities greatly helped to...