1 ‘The Irish Landlords Have Become the Victims of a Revolution’: Before The Great War
1. Shane Leslie, The Irish Tangle for English Readers (London, n.d. [1946]), p. 146; the landed class’s revolutionary experience in the six counties of Northern Ireland has been comprehensively covered by Olwen Purdue in her seminal, The Big House in the North of Ireland: Land, Power and Social Elites (Dublin, 2009).
2. Elizabeth Bowen, Bowen’s Court (London, 1942), p. 338.
3. Quoted in Peter Somerville-Large, The Irish Country House: A Social History (London, 1995), p. 342.
4. Terence Dooley, The Decline of the Big House in Ireland (Dublin, 2001); Purdue, The Big House in the North of Ireland.
5. https://www.chg.gov.ie/about/special-initiatives/commemorations/decade-of-centenaries/ [Accessed 20 Oct. 2020].
6. K.T. Hoppen, Elections, Politics and Society, 1832–1885 (Oxford, 1984), pp. 147–48.
7. David Cannadine’s, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy (London and New Haven, 1990), pp. 16–17.
8. The definition of aristocracy used here borrows heavily from Cannadine’s, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy, pp. 8–15.
9. W.E. Vaughan, Landlords and Tenants in Mid-Victorian Ireland (Oxford, 1994), p. 218.
10. L.P. Curtis Jr, ‘Incumbered Wealth: Landed Indebtedness in Post-Famine Ireland’, The American Historical Review (Apr. 1980), 85:2, pp. 332–67.
11. S.J. Connolly, Contested Island: Ireland 1460–1630 (Oxford, 2007); Jane Ohlmeyer, Making Ireland English: The Irish Aristocracy in the Seventeenth Century (New Haven, 2012).
12. See Colm Lennon, Sixteenth-Century Ireland: The Incomplete Conquest (Dublin, 1994).
13. Toby Barnard, A New Anatomy of Ireland (New Haven and London, 2003); S. J. Connolly, Divided Kingdom: Ireland 1630–1800 (Oxford, 2008); L.M. Cullen, The Emergence of Modern Ireland (London, 1981); David Dickson, Old World Colony: Cork and South Munster 1630–1830 (Cork, 2005); Raymond Gillespie, The Transformation of the Irish Economy, 1550–1700 (Dundalk, Economic and Social History Society of Ireland, 1991); see also T.C. Barnard, ‘Further reading’ in Barnard, The Kingdom of Ireland, 1641–1760 (Basingstoke, 2004).
14. There were notable exceptions as shown in Emma Lyons, Morristown-Lattin, County Kildare, 1630–1800: The Estate and its Tenants (Dublin, 2020).
15. Rolf Loeber et al. (eds.), Art and Architecture of Ireland (Dublin, London, New Haven, 2014), p. 329.
16. Mark Bence-Jones, A Guide to Irish Country Houses (London, 1988 revd. edn), pp. xi–xxiv; on smaller houses, Maurice Craig, Classic Irish Houses of the Middle Size (London and New York, 1976); Terence Dooley and Christopher Ridgway (eds.), Country House Collections: Their Lives and Afterlives (Dublin, 2021).
17. Fergus Campbell, The Irish Establishment 1879–1914 (Oxford, 2009), p. 19.
18. See Christine Casey, Making Magnificence: Architects, Stuccatori and the Eighteenth-Century Interior (New Haven and London, 2017).
19. Catalogue of Paintings Sold by Trustees of Carton, 4 December 1902 (PRONI, Leinster papers, D3078/10/6/2); Alison FitzGerald, ‘Desiring to “Look Sprucish”: Objects in Context at Carton’, in Patrick Cosgrave et al. (eds), Aspects of Irish Aristocratic Life: Essays on the FitzGeralds and Carton House (Dublin, 2014), pp. 118–27.
20. Shane Leslie memoirs (NLI, Leslie papers, MS 22,885); Elizabeth Bowen, ‘The Big House’, in Hermione Lee, The Mulberry Tree: Writings of Elizabeth Bowen (London, 1986), p. 29.
21. Terence Dooley, The Decline and Fall of the Dukes of Leinster: Love, War, Debt and Madness (Dublin, 2014), p. 67.
22. R.F. Foster, Modern Ireland, 1600–1972 (London, 1988), p. 377; Virginia Crossman, Local Government in Nineteenth-Century Ireland (Belfast, 1994); W.L. Feingold, ‘Land League Power: The Tralee Poor Law Election of 1881’, in Samuel Clark and James S. Donnelly Jr (eds.), Irish Peasants: Violence and Critical Unrest 1780–1914 (Manchester, 1983), pp. 285–310.
23. Annie Tindley, Lord Dufferin, Ireland and the British Empire, c.1820–1900: Rule by the Best? (Abingdon, 2021), pp. 7–8; also, Olwen Purdue, The Big House in the North of Ireland, p. 233.
24. Tindley, Dufferin, p. 28.
25. He has been the subject of numerous biographies, see for example: R.F. Foster, Charles Stewart Parnell, the Man and his Family (London, 1976); F.S.L. Lyons, Charles Stewart Parnell (London and New York, 1977); Paul Bew, ‘Parnell’, ODNB.
26. R.F. Foster, Vivid Faces: The Revolutionary Generation in Ireland 1890–1923 (London, 2014), p. xvii.
27. Foster, Vivid Faces, p. xvi; for ‘pre-revolution studies’, see Senia Paseta, Before the Revolution: Nationalism, Social Change and Ireland’s Catholic Elite 1879–1922 (Cork, 1999); Patrick Maume, The Long Gestation: Irish Nationalist Life 1891–1918 (Dublin, 1999).
28. Lord Dufferin to Brinsley Sheridan, 25 Feb. 1881; quoted in Tindley, Lord Dufferin, p. 42.
29. Tom Garvin, Nationalist Revolutionaries in Ireland 1858–1928 (Oxford, 1987); Alvin Jackson, Ireland 1798–1998: Politics and War (London, 1988); Paul Bew, Land and the National Question in Ireland, 1858–82 (Dublin, 1979); Samuel Clark, Social Origins of the Irish Land War (Princeton, 1979); James S. Donnelly Jr, The Land and People of Nineteenth-Century Cork (London, 1975).
30. Dooley, Decline of the Big House, pp. 94–107; Purdue, The Big House in the North of Ireland, pp. 31–63.
31. Terence Dooley, ‘The Land Question in Ireland, 1870–1923’, Tom Bartlett (ed.), Cambridge History of Ireland, vol. iv, 1880–The Present (Cambridge, 2018), pp. 117–44.
32. Michael MacDonagh, ‘Are the Irish Landlords as Black as They are Painted?’, Fortnightly Review, 73:438 (June, 1903), p. 1030; Patrick Lavelle, The Irish Landlord Since the Revolution (Dublin, 1870), p. 259; Michael Davitt, The Fall of Feudalism in Ireland (New York, 1904), p. xvii. See also, Philip Bull, ‘Land and Politics, 1879–1903’, in D.G. Boyce (ed.), The Revolution in Ireland, 1879–1923 (Dublin, 1988), p. 27.
33. R.V. Comerford, ‘Foreword’, Terence Dooley and Christopher Ridgway (eds.) The Irish Country House: its Past, Present and Future (Dublin, 2011), p. 11.
34. Bowen, Bowen’s Court, pp. 25–27.
35. Connaught Telegraph, 30 Aug. 1879; see also Louis Paul-Dubois, Contemporary Ireland (Dublin, 1908), p. 289.
36. Tom Barry, Guerilla Days in Ireland (Dublin, 1991), p. 216.
37. R.V. Comerford, ‘The Land War and the Politics of Distress, 1877–82’, in W.E. Vaughan (ed.), A New History of Ireland. Vol 6: Ireland under the Union, pt. 2, 1870–1921 (Oxford, 1996), pp. 26–52; Cannadine, Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy, pp. 63–66; Dooley, Decline of the Big House, pp. 79–108; Purdue, The Big House in the North of Ireland, pp. 1–12; Tindley, Dufferin, p. 29.
38. Cannadine, Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy, p. 169.
39. W.L. Feingold, ‘The Tenants’ Movement to Capture the Irish Poor Law Boards, 1877–1886’, Albion vii (1975), pp. 222–24.
40. Quoted in Cannadine’s, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy, p. 65; Campbell, The Irish Establishment, pp. 36–40; Eugenio Biagini, Liberty, Retrenchment and Reform: Popular Liberalism in the Age of Gladstone, 1860–1880 (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 50–58.
41. Tindley, Dufferin, p. 29.
42. Curtis Jr, ‘Encumbered Wealth’, pp. 332–67; Dooley, Decline of the Big House, pp. 79–111; Purdue, The Big House in the North of Ireland, pp. 31–63.
43. Shane Leslie, Doomsland (London, 1923), pp. 361–62.
44. Dooley, Dukes of Leinster, pp. 70–71.
45. J.R. Mahon to G.C. Mahon, 25 Apr. 1887 (NLI, Mahon papers, MS 22,231).
46. Dooley, Decline of the Big House, p. 107.
47. Report of the Royal Commission on the Land Law (Ireland) Act, 1881, and the Purchase of Land (Ireland) Act, 1885 (Earl Cowper, chairman): Minutes of Evidence and Appendices [C4969], HC 1887, xxvi, p. 473.
48. Ibid., p. 647.
49. Maura Cronin, Agrarian Protest in Ireland 1750–1960 (Dundalk, 2012), p. 48.
50. Patrick Cosgrove, ‘The Wyndham Land Act 1903: The Final Solution to the Irish Land Question?’ (PhD thesis, NUI Maynooth, 2008), pp. 171, 183, 196, 198; Dooley, Decline of the Big House, p. 114.
51. Maurice FitzGerald [Kildare] to Evelyn de Vesci, 5 Apr. 1906 (Somerset Record Office, De Vesci papers, DD/DRU/90).
52. Somerville-Large, The Irish Country House, p. 352.
53. L.P. Curtis, Jr, ‘The Last Gasp of Southern Unionism: Lord Ashtown of Woodlawn’, Éire-Ireland, 40:3&4 (Fall/Winter, 2005), p. 175; idem., ‘Ireland in 1914’ in Vaughan (ed.), A New History of Ireland, p. 275.
54. Leslie, The Irish Tangle, p. 146.
55. Quoted in Somerville-Large, The Irish Country House, p. 347.
56. Seymour Leslie, Of Glaslough in the Kingdom of Oriel (privately published), p. 34; in the wider context Bielenberg contends that ‘the revolution in land ownership partially contributed to the relatively higher and rising levels of emigration among Protestants from the beginning of the twentieth century, more especially after the Wyndham Land Act of 1903, which dramatically accelerated land reform and the departure of the gentry and their Protestant retainers’; A. Bielenberg, ‘Exodus: The Emigration of Southern Irish Protestants during the Irish War of Independence and the Civil War’, Past and Present, no. 218 (2013), p. 204.
57. Quoted in Robert O’Byrne, The Last Knight: A Tribute to Desmond FitzGerald, 29th Knight of Glin (Dublin, 2013), pp. 98–99.
58. Cynthia O’Connor, ‘The Dispersal of the Country House Collections of Ireland’, Bulletin of the Irish Georgian Society, vol. xxxv, 1992–93, pp. 38–51.
59. Return of Untenanted Lands in Rural Districts, Distinguishing Demesnes on Which There is a Mansion, Showing . . ., HC, 1906, c.177.
60. The Nationalist, 3 Oct. 1903.
61. Mario Corrigan, ‘Carton House through the Pages of the Kildare Observer, 1880–1935’, http://www.kildare.ie/library/ehistory/2012/02/carton_house_through_the_pages.asp [15 Mar. 2012].
62. Kildare Observer, 7 Mar. 1908.
63. Ibid.
64. Carlow Sentinel, 7 Mar. 1908.
65. Quoted in William O’Brien, An Olive Branch in Ireland and its History (London, 1910), p. 478.
66. Tony McCarthy, ‘From Landlord to Rentier: The Wyndham Land Act 1903 and its Economic Consequences for Irish Landlords 1903–1933’ (NUI Maynooth, PhD thesis, 2017), p. 157.
67. Quoted in Cosgrave, ‘The Wyndham Land Act’, p. 217.
68. Alvin Jackson, Colonel Edward Saunderson: Land and Loyalty in Victorian Ireland (Oxford, 1995), p. 208.
69. Vaughan, Landlords and Tenants, p. 221.
70. Ibid., pp. 222–23.
71. Earl of Dunraven, The Crisis in Ireland: Account of the Present Condition of Ireland and Suggestions Toward Reform (Dublin, 1905), p. 21; also Earl of Dunraven, The Outlook in Ireland (Dublin, 1907), pp. 53–54.
72. Horace Plunkett, Noblesse Oblige: An Irish Rendering (Dublin, 1908), p. 26.
73. Purdue, The Big House in the North of Ireland, pp. 100–01.
74. Seanad Debates, vol. 3, 10 July 1924, 793.
75. Vaughan, Landlords and Tenants, p. 227.
76. Royal Commission on Congestion in Ireland, [Cd 4007], HC 1908, xliii, p. 177.
77. Emmet O’Connor, ‘Agrarian Unrest and the Labour Movement in County Waterford 1917–1923’, Saothar, vi (1980), p. 47.
78. Glascott Symes, Sir John Keane and Cappoquin House in Time of War and Revolution (Dublin, 2016).
79. McCarthy, ‘From Landlord to Rentier’, p. 237
80. See David Seth Jones, Graziers, Land Reform, and Political Conflict in Ireland (Washington DC, 1995).
81. Bull, ‘Land and Politics, 1879–1903’, p. 28.
82. Cronin, Agrarian Protest in Ireland, p. 48; for a useful local study, see Patrick Cosgrove, The Ranch War in Riverstown, Co. Sligo, 1908 (Dublin, 2012).
83. Quoted in Cosgrove, ‘The Wyndham Land Act’, p. 203.
84. Patrick J. Sammon, In the Land Commission: A Memoir 1933–1978 (Dublin, 1997), pp. 264–78.
85. Dooley, Decline of the Big House, pp. 171–207; idem., ‘The Burning of Irish Country Houses During the War of Independence’, John Crowley et al. (eds.), Atlas of the Irish Revolution (Cork, 2017), pp. 447–53.
86. Ciarán J. Reilly, ‘The Burning of Country Houses in Co. Offaly, 1920–23’, in Terence Dooley and Christopher Ridgway (eds.), The Irish Country House: Its Past, Present and Future (Dublin, 2011), pp. 110–33; James S. Donnelly, Jr, ‘Big House Burnings in County Cork During the Irish Revolution, 1920–21’, Éire-Ireland, 47:3&4 (Fall/Winter 2012), pp. 141–97; Gemma Clark, Everyday Violence in the Irish Civil War (Cambridge, 2014); Ann O’Riordan, East Galway Agrarian Agitation and the Burning of Ballydugan House, 1922 (Dublin, 2015); Glascott Symes, Sir John Keane and Cappoquin House in Time of War and Revolution (Dublin, 2016); Jean Young, ‘Changing Times: The Big House in County Louth, 1912–1923’; Donal Hall and Martin Maguire (eds.), County Louth and the Irish Revolution 1912–1923 (Newbridge, 2017), pp. 146–74.
87. Just some examples of books that take different chronological spans: Joost Augusteijn (ed.), The Irish Revolution, 1913–1923 (London, 2002); Marie Coleman, County Longford and the Irish Revolution 1910–1923 (Dublin, 2002); Francis Costello, The Irish Revolution and its Aftermath 1916–1923 (Dublin, 2003); Diarmaid Ferriter, A Nation and not a Rabble: The Irish Revolution 1913–1923 (London, 2015); Ronan Fanning, Fatal Path: British Government and Irish Revolution 1910–1922 (London, 2013). The Irish Revolution county series edited by Mary Ann Lyons and Dáithí Ó Corráin uses 1912–23. David Fitzpatrick used 1913–1921 in his seminal Politics and Irish Life: Provincial Experience of War and Revolution 1913–1921 (Dublin, 1977), while Peter Hart used 1916–23 in his The IRA and Its Enemies: Violence and Community in Cork 1916–1923 (Oxford, 1998).
88. Fitzpatrick, Politics and Irish Life, p. 66.
89. Ibid., p. 253.
90. Ibid., pp. 61, 62.
91. Peter Hart, ‘Defining the Irish Revolution’, in Joost Augusteijn (ed.), The Irish Revolution 1913–1923 (Basingstoke, 2002), p. 27.
92. https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/top-irish-economist-patrick-lynch-dies-26251868.html; Lawrence William White, ‘Lynch, Patrick (Paddy)’, Dictionary of Irish Biography (ed.) James McGuire, James Quinn (Cambridge, 2009) (http://dib.cambridge.org/viewReadPage.do?articleId=a4954).
93. Patrick Lynch, ‘The Revolution That Never Was’, in T. Desmond Williams (ed.), The Irish Struggle 1916–1926 (London, 1966), p. 41.
94. Ibid.
95. Bill Kissane, Explaining Irish Democracy (Dublin, 2002), p. 77; Tony Varley, ‘On the Road to Extinction: Agrarian Parties in Twentieth-Century Ireland’, Irish Political Studies, 25:4 (2010), pp. 581–601.
96. Fergus Campbell, ‘The Last Land War? Kevin O Shiel’s Memoir of the Irish Revolution (1916–21)’, Archivium Hibernicum, vol. 57 (2003), pp. 155–200, quotation on p. 170; see also Eda Sagarra, Kevin O’Shiel: Tyrone Nationalist and Irish State-Builder (Sallins, 2013).
97. Irish Times, 22 Nov. 1966.
98. L.P. Edwards, ‘Review, Brian O’Neill, The War for the Land in Ireland (London, 1933)’, in American Journal of Sociology, vol. 40, no. 3 (1934), pp. 397–98.
99. Fearghal McGarry, ‘O’Donnell, Peadar’, in James McGuire and James Quinn (eds), Dictionary of Irish Biography (Cambridge, 2012). (http://dib.cambridge.org/viewReadPage.do?articleId=a6700) (28 Mar. 2020).
100. On Ireland and the ‘red scare’, see Enda Delaney, ‘Anti-Communism in Mid-Twentieth-Century Ireland’, The English History Review, vol. 126, no. 521 (Aug. 2011), pp. 878–903; on Gralton’s deportation, see Ferriter, A Nation and Not a Rabble, p. 231.
101. Peadar O’Donnell, ‘Introduction’, in O’Neill, The War for the Land in Ireland, pp. 14–15; see chapter 9 for more on this.
102. David Gahan, ‘The Land Annuities Agitation in Ireland 1926–32’ (NUI Maynooth, PhD thesis, 2017).
103. Charles Townshend, Political Violence in Ireland: Government and Resistance since 1848 (Oxford, 1983), , p. 339.
104. Paul Bew, ‘Sinn Féin, Agrarian Radicalism, and the War of Independence 1919–21’, in D.G. Boyce (ed.), The Revolution in Ireland (London, 1988), p. 220.
105. Ibid., p. 223.
106. Campbell, Land and Revolution, p. 303.
107. Ibid., p. 304.
108. Ibid.
109. https://languages.oup.com/google-dictionary-en/; Terence Dooley, ‘Land and Politics in Independent Ireland, 1923–48: The Case for Reappraisal’, Irish Historical Studies, vol. 34, no. 134 (Nov. 2004), pp. 175–77.
110. Fergus Campbell, ‘Author’s Response’ to Patrick Cosgrove, ‘Reviews in History: Fergus Campbell, Land and Revolution: Nationalist Politics in the West of Ireland 1891–1921 (Oxford, 2005) at https://reviews.history.ac.uk/review/734.
111. O’Riordan, East Galway Agrarian Agitation ; see also chapter 5.
112. Patrick Cosgrove went on to complete a thesis entitled ‘The Wyndham Land Act 1903: The Final Solution to the Irish Land Question?’ (PhD thesis, NUI Maynooth, 2008). See also Terence Dooley and Tony McCarthy, ‘The 1923 Land Act: Some New Perspectives’, in Mel Farrell et al. (eds.), A Formative Decade: Ireland in the 1920s (Sallins, 2015), pp. 132–56.
113. Bew, ‘Sinn Féin and Agrarian Radicalism’, p. 222.
114. [George O’Callaghan Westropp] Notes on the Defence of Irish Country Houses (1912), p. 1. I would like to express my gratitude to Brian Fitzelle for making a copy in his possession available to me.
115. Ibid.
116. Ibid.
2 ‘The Un-Martialled Loyalists of the South’: The Great War, Part I
1. Tindley, Lord Dufferin, p. 167.
2. See Patrick Buckland, Irish Unionism I: The Anglo-Irish and the New Ireland 1885–1922 (Dublin, 1972).
3. Irish Unionist Alliance, Great Demonstration in Dublin (Dublin, 1911), p. 2.
4. Earl of Midleton, Records and Reactions, 1856–1939 (New York, 1939), pp. 226–27.
5. Patrick J. Buckland, ‘The Southern Irish Unionists, the Irish Question, and British Politics 1906–14’, Irish Historical Studies, vol. 15, no. 59 (Mar. 1967), pp. 228–55.
6. Purdue, The Big House in the North of Ireland, p. 179.
7. Ibid.
8. Quoted in A.T.Q. Stewart, The Ulster Crisis (London, 1967), p. 72.
9. Leslie, The Irish Tangle, pp. 24–25.
10. Belfast Newsletter, 22 Sept. 1913.
11. Raymond Gillespie, The Borderlands: Essays on the History of the Ulster–Leinster Border (Belfast, 1989).
12. Ibid., 6 July 1912.
13. Inspector General Confidential Monthly Report [IGCMR], June 1914 (Britain in Ireland series, TNA, CO 904).
14. Gerald Madden to Jack Madden, 25 June 1915 (PRONI, Madden papers, D3465/J/37/48).
15. Donal Hall, ‘The Bellingham Family of Castlebellingham, Co. Louth, 1914–24’, in Dooley and Ridgway, The Country House and the Great War, p. 100.
16. Irish Independent, 17 June 1914; quoted in ibid., p. 100.
17. Dundalk Democrat, 30 June 1914.
18. County Inspector Confidential Monthly Report [CICMR], Cavan, Mar. 1912 (TNA, CO 904).
19. CICMR, Cavan, June 1913.
20. Ibid., Mar. 1914.
21. CICMR, Donegal, Mar. 1914.
22. CICMR, Monaghan, Jan. 1914.
23. IGCMR, June 1914.
24. CICMR Monaghan, May 1914.
25. Dundalk Democrat, 2 May 1914.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid., 18 July 1914.
28. CICMR, Monaghan, June 1914.
29. Belfast Newsletter, 16 Apr. 1914.
30. CICMR, Donegal, June 1914.
31. Ibid.
32. Buckland, ‘The Southern Irish Unionists’, p. 234.
33. Quoted in Butler, John, ‘Lord Oranmore’s Journal’, Irish Historical Studies, vol. 29, no. 116 (November 1995), pp 553-59.
34. Ibid.
35. W.J. Reader, At Duty’s Call: A Study in Obsolete Patriotism (Manchester, 1988), p. 104.
36. Plunkett, Elizabeth, Countess of Fingall, Seventy Years Young: Memories of Elizabeth, Countess of Fingall (London, 1937),p. 358.
37. For a fuller description of the castle and its history see chapter 6; also R.D. King-Harman, The Kings, Earls of Kingston: An Account of the Family and Their Estates in Ireland between the Reigns of the Two Queen Elizabeths (Cambridge, 1959); Bill Power, White Knights, Dark Earls: The Rise and Fall of an Anglo-Irish Dynasty (Cork, 2000).
38. Daily columns of the Irish Times May–August 1914 act as a guide.
39. Bowen, Bowen’s Court, pp. 435–36.
40. Ian d’Alton, ‘Lay Spring Flowers on Our Boy’s Grave’: Norman Leslie’s Short War’, Dooley and Ridgway, The Country House and the Great War, p. 83.
41. Ian d’Alton, ‘Loyal to What? Identity and Motivation in the Southern Irish Protestant Involvement in Two World Wars’, Brian Hughes and Conor Morrissey (eds.), Southern Irish Loyalism 1912–1949 (Liverpool, 2020), p. 120.
42. Nicholas Perry, ‘The Irish Landed Class and the British Army, 1850–1950’, War in History, 18:3, 2011, p. 307; P.E. Razzell, ‘Social Origins of Officers in the Indian and British Home Army’, British Journal of Sociology, xiv (1963), pp. 248–60.
43. Perry, ‘The Irish Landed Class and the British Army’ p. 317; his eldest son was the future Major General Hugh Montgomery (1870–1955), whose younger brother was later Field Marshal Sir Archibald Montgomery-Massingberd (1871–1947).
44. Gerald Gliddon, The Aristocracy and the Great War (Norwich, 2002), p. xix.
45. Hubert Gough, Soldiering On (London, 1954), p. 1.
46. Desmond FitzGerald open letter, 17 Nov. 1914 (private possession).
47. Irish Unionist Alliance, Irish Southern Loyalists, the War and After (Dublin, 1918), p. 1.
48. https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1914/aug/03/statement-by-sir-edward-grey#S5CV0065P0_19140803_HOC_71
49. https://www.rte.ie/centuryireland/index.php/articles/redmond-urges-irish-volunteers-to-join-the-british-army
50. Paul Bew, ‘Redmond, John Edward (1856–1918)’, ODNBhttps://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/35702
51. Quoted in Irish Times, 8 Aug. 1914.
52. Ibid., 12 Aug. 1914.
53. Ibid., 7 Aug. 1914.
54. Ibid., 7, 10 Aug. 1914.
55. Ibid., 10 Aug. 1914.
56. Ibid., 16 Aug. 1914.
57. Ibid., 7 Aug. 1914.
58. G. Taafe to Editor, 6 Aug. 1914; Irish Times, 7 Aug. 1914.
59. W.H. Mahon to Editor; Irish Times, 15 Aug. 1914.
60. Lady Inchiquin to Baron Inchiquin, 19 Sept. 1914 (NLI, Inchiquin papers, MS 45,504/8).
61. Alvin Jackson, Home Rule: An Irish History (London, 2003), p. 146; Thomas P. Dooley, Irishmen or English Soldiers? (Liverpool, 1995), pp. 191–92.
62. Jackson, Home Rule, p. 146.
63. Quoted in Keith Jeffery, Ireland and the Great War (Cambridge, 2000), p. 56.
64. Irish Times, 4 Aug. 1914.
65. Lord Erne’s manifesto to the Orangemen of Ireland, 9 Sept. 1914; quoted in Irish Times, 19 Sept. 1914.
66. Irish Times, 19 Sept. 1914.
67. On Co Clare, see Fitzpatrick, Politics and Irish Life, pp. 53–55.
68. Patrick Buckland, Irish Unionism I, p. 30; Dooley, The Decline of the Big House, p. 112; d’Alton, ‘Norman Leslie’s Short War’, p. 77.
69. Peter Martin, ‘Dulce et Decorum’: Irish Nobles and the Great War, 1914–19’, in Adrian Gregory and Senia Paseta, Ireland and the Great War: ‘A War to Unite us All?’ (Manchester, 2002), p. 30; see also Mark Amory, A Biography of Lord Dunsany (London, 1972), p. 26.
70. Arthur Maxwell, Baron Farnham, to Aileen, 31 Dec. 1916 (NLI, Farnham papers, MS 18,616).
71. T.R. Henn, Five Arches: A Sketch for an Autobiography (Gerrard’s Cross, 1980), p. 64.
72. Irish Times, 26 Aug. 1914; see Jean Young, ‘Changing Times: The Big House in County Louth, 1912–1923’, in Hall and Maguire (eds.), County Louth and the Irish Revolution, pp. 146–74.
73. A point with which Ian d’Alton agrees; d’Alton, ‘Loyal to What’, p. 117.
74. Ibid., p. 118.
75. Quoted in Shane Leslie memoirs (NLI, Leslie papers, MS 22,885).
76. d’Alton, ‘Loyal to what?’, p. 123.
77. Norman Leslie to John Leslie, [?] Aug. 1914 (private possession).
78. Charles Monck to J.E. McDermott, 8 Oct. 1914 (NLI, Monck papers, MS 28,867).
79. Ibid.
80. J.E. McDermott to Charles Monck, 19 Oct. 1914; ibid.
81. Patrick Buckland, Irish Unionism I, p. 32.
82. Fragment of Norman Leslie’s diary, 9–17 October 1914 (private possession).
83. Sir John Keane to Eleanor, Apr.1915 (private possession).
84. RG [Dick] Hely-Hutchinson to his mother, 3 Oct. 1914 (Fingal County Archives, 1/6/8).
85. RG [Dick] Hely-Hutchinson to Cissy, 6 Oct. 1914 (Fingal County Archives, 1/6/2).
86. See Kevin Myers’ essay on Robert Gregory of Coole Park in Kevin Myers, Ireland’s Great War (Dublin, 2016), p. 195.
87. Dick Hely-Hutchinson to his father, 11 Dec. 1914 (Fingal County Archives, 1/6/13).
88. Dick Hely-Hutchinson to his parents, 7 Mar. 1915 (Fingal County Archives, 1/6/14).
89. Ibid.; see also Colm McQuinn, ‘The Hely-Hutchinson Brothers of Seafield and the Great War: Two Sons, One Inheritance’, in Dooley and Ridgway, The Country House and the Great War, pp. 147–57.
90. Sir John Keane to Eleanor, Mar. 1915 (private possession).
91. Dick Hely-Hutchinson to Cissy, 9 Mar. 1915 (Fingal County Archives, 1/6/3).
92. Ibid., 8 Aug. 1916 (Fingal County Archives, 1/6/5).
93. Harper’s Journal, 21 Nov. 1914, p. 484.
94. Ibid.
95. Quoted in Symes, Sir John Keane, p. 26.
96. Dick Hely-Hutchinson to Cissy, 30 Mar. 1915 (Fingal County Archives, 1/6/4).
97. Open letter written by Desmond FitzGerald, 17 Nov. 1914 (private possession).
98. Edward, Prince of Wales, to Lady Cynthia Graham, 3 Mar. 1916 (private possession).
99. Capt Edward Woulfe Flanagan to Johnny Woulfe Flanagan, 11 Sept. 1914 (private possession).
100. Ibid., 2 Aug. 1916 (private possession).
101. Ibid.
102. Ibid.
103. Quoted in Martin, ‘Dulce et Decorum’, pp. 42–43.
104. Lord Castletown, Ego (London, 1923), p. 222.
105. Ibid.
106. Irish Times, 1 Dec. 1914; Niamh Gallagher, Ireland and the Great War: A Social and Political History (London and New York, 2020), p. 31; Eileen Reilly, ‘Women and Voluntary War Work’ in Gregory and Paseta (eds.), Ireland and the Great War, pp. 49–72; Catriona Clear, ‘Fewer Ladies: More Omen’, in John Horne (ed.), Our War: Ireland and the Great War (Dublin, 2008), pp. 157–80; Buckland, Irish Unionism I, pp. 29–35.
107. Donal Hall, ‘The Bellingham Family of Castlebellingham, Co Louth, 1914–24’ in Dooley and Ridgway (eds.), The Country House and the Great War, pp. 100–12.
108. T.S. Henry Prittie, 6th Baron Dunalley, ‘History of the Prittie family in Ireland 1649–1981’ (unpublished, private possession), p. 21.
109. Castletown, Ego, p. 221.
110. Circular from Marquess of Sligo, 15 June 1916 (NLI, Clonbrock papers, MS 35,776).
111. Maeve O’Riordan, Women of the Country House in Ireland (Liverpool, 2018); Fionnuala Walsh, Irish Women and the Great War (Cambridge, 2020), pp. 22–24.
112. Reilly, ‘Women and Voluntary War Work’, pp. 50–51; Jessica Gerard, Country House Life: Family and Servants, 1815–1914 (Oxford, 1994), pp. 63–64.
113. Freeman’s Journal, 21 Oct. 1915; Kildare Observer, 13 Feb. 1915.
114. The Times, 23 Feb. 1932.
115. ‘List of articles sent by Co Galway, 14 Aug.–18 Nov. 1918’ (NLI, Clonbrock papers, MS 35,797 (5)).
116. ‘Some War Work in County Galway, 1914–1919’ (NLI, Clonbrock papers, MS 35,796 (6)); see also Irish Times, 3 Dec. 1914; Fionnuala Walsh, ‘“The Future Welfare of the Empire Will Depend More Largely on our Women and Girls”: Southern Loyalist Women and the British War Effort in Ireland, 1914–1922’, in Brian Hughes and Conor Morrissey, Southern Irish Loyalism, 1912–1949 (Liverpool, 2020), pp. 141–44.
117. Martin, ‘Dulce et Decorum’, p. 34.
118. Quoted in ibid., p. 35.
119. Brett Irwin, ‘Lady Londonderry and the Great War: Women, Work and the Western Front’ in Dooley and Ridgway, The Country House and the Great War, p. 139.
120. Ibid., p. 138.
121. Kildare Observer, 3 Mar. 1916.
122. Irish Times, 23 Nov. 1914.
123. Ibid., 20 Nov. 1914.
124. Ronan Foley, ‘Augusta Bellingham and the Mount Stuart Hospital: Temporary Therapeutic Transformations’, Dooley and Ridgway (eds.), The Country House and the Great War, pp. 87–99.
125. Ibid., p. 90; see also Edward Bujak, English Landed Society in the Great War: Defending the Realm (London, 2019).
126. Irish Times, 5 Dec. 1914.
127. R.S. Churchill, Lord Derby, ‘King of Lancashire’ (London, 1959), p. 184.
128. Quoted in Pamela Horn, Country House Society: The Private Lives of England’s Upper Class after the First World War (Stroud, 2015), p. 18.
129. Irish Times, 30 Aug. 1914.
130. Ibid., 4 Sept. 1914.
131. Ibid., 5 Sept. 1914.
132. Martin, ‘Dulce et Decorum’, p. 33.
133. Mark Bence-Jones, Twilight of the Ascendancy (London, 1987), p. 166.
134. Frank O’Connor, Co Westmeath (BMH, WS 1,309), p. 21.
135. Quoted in Martin, ‘Dulce et Decorum’, p. 34.
136. J. Ormsby Lawder, Leitrim (TNA, CO 762/13/12).
137. Quoted in Patrick Buckland, Irish Unionism 1885–1923: A Documentary History (Belfast, 1973), p. 55.
138. Fitzpatrick, ‘Ireland and the Great War’, p. 231; for a discussion on the problems of recruitment figures, see d’Alton, ‘Loyal to What?’, pp. 118–19; Gallagher, Ireland and the Great War, p. 143.
139. Quoted in Martin, ‘Dulce et Decorum’, p. 33.
140. See chapter 3.
141. Return Showing to the Latest Year Available, for Ireland as a Whole, the Annual Average Prices for Each Year from 1881 . . . HC 1921, xli. 93.
142. Ibid.
143. Ibid.
144. Agricultural Statistics for Ireland with Detailed Report for the Year 1917 [Cmd 1316], HC 1921, lxi.135, p. xiii.
145. Kevin O’Shiel (BMH, WS 1770), p. 942; for his biography see, Eda Sagarra, Kevin O’Shiel: Tyrone Nationalist and Irish State-Builder (Sallins, 2013).
146. Martin, ‘Dulce et Decorum’, p. 31.
147. CICMR, Donegal, Nov. 1914, Mar. 1915.
148. [Newspaper clipping] William Hutcheson Poe to the editor of [?], 19 Aug 1914, (NLI, Clonbrock papers, MS 35,782 (10)).
149. Alvin Jackson, ‘Carson’, ODNB.
150. Michael Laffan, ‘Redmond’, DIB.
151. Quoted in William Redmond, Trench Pictures from France (Belfast, 2007), p. 44.
152. See, however, Buckland, Irish Unionism I, pp. 51–82.
153. Butler, ‘Lord Oranmore’s Journal’, pp. 564–65.
154. Letitia Overend to Minnie Overend, 30 Apr. 1916 (OMARC, Airfield papers, PP/AIR/261).
155. ‘Diary of Rebellion, May 1916’, Charles Hamilton (NLI, Hamilton papers, MS 49,155 (41)).
156. War Diary of Captain Anketell Moutray, 28 Mar. 1916–24 Dec. 1918 (PRONI, Moutray papers, D2023/7/2/30).
157. Rev Richard Butler to 15th Viscount Gormanston, 2 July 1916 (NLI, Gormanston papers, MS 44,425/8).
158. Letter from Jenico Preston, 15th Viscount to Ismay Crichton-Stuart, 8 May 1916 ((NLI, Gormanston papers, MS 44,426/7–8).
159. Letter from William Upton Tyrell to Elizabeth Tyrell, 30 April 1916 (OMARC, Ballindoolin papers).
160. Hall, ‘The Bellingham Family of Castlebellingham’, p. 106.
161. Diary of Vera Bellingham (private possession).
162. Ibid.
163. Sir John Leslie to Shane Leslie, 27 Oct. 1916 (PRONI, Leslie papers, MIC 606/3).
164. Letter from Jenico Preston, 15th Viscount, to Eileen Butler [his future wife], May 1916 (NLI, Gormanston papers, MS 44,427); a similar report on Markievicz’s surrender appeared in Irish Times, 2 May 1916.
165. Peter Martin, ‘Unionism: The Irish Nobility and Revolution, 1919–23’, in Joost Augusteijn (ed.), The Irish Revolution, 1913–1923 (London, 2002), p. 154.
166. Ibid., pp. 154–55.
167. Bence-Jones, Twilight, pp. 188, 193.
168. Carla King, ‘Barton, Robert Childers (1881–1975)’, ODNB, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/52523
169. Memoir of Frederick Beaumont-Nesbitt of Tubberdaly, King’s County (copy in author’s possession).
3 ‘All the Gentry Have Suffered’: The Great War, Part II
1. Patrick Maume, ‘Cooper, Bryan Ricco’, DIBhttps://dib.cambridge.org/viewFullScreen.do?filename=a2014
2. Burke’s Landed Gentry of Ireland (London, 1958), p. xviii; see also idem., Twilight of the Ascendancy (London, 1987), p. 187; for a similar conclusion, see Somerville-Large, The Irish Country House (London, 1995), p. 252.
3. Edward Bujak, English Landed Society in the Great War: Defending the Realm (London, 2019), p. 26.
4. I am very grateful to Dr Fidelma Byrne and other researchers who worked on compiling these statistics; see also d’Alton, ‘Loyal to what?’, p. 122; Perry, ‘Irish Landed Class’, p. 328. In an earlier case study by this author of 100 landed families, 79 were represented in the army or navy by a father, son, grandson or son-in-law during the war and just under 25 per cent were killed; Dooley, Decline of the Big House, pp. 122–27.
5. Martin, ‘Dulce et Decorum’, p. 40.
6. Cannadine, Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy, p. 83.
7. Desmond FitzGerald to Aunt Dolly, 16 Nov. 1914 (private possession).
8. Gliddon, The Aristocracy and the Great War, p. 461.
9. Ibid., p. xvii.
10. Purdue, The Big House in the North of Ireland, p. 218.
11. Their story is told in Fidelma Byrne, ‘“Not Another Son”: The Impact of the Great War on Two Irish Families’, in Dooley and Ridgway, The Country House and the Great War, pp. 53–61.
12. Duc de Stacpoole, Irish and Other Memories (London, 1922), p. 192.
13. Quoted in Lennox Robinson, Bryan Cooper (London, 1931), p. 80; statistics taken from d’Alton, ‘Loyal to What?’, p. 121.
14. Lt Col W.A. Robinson to Lady Ashtown [c.16 Nov. 1916], quoted in ‘Lieutenant The Rt. Hon. Frederick Sydney Trench (1894–1916)’ (MS copy kindly provided to me by Roderick Trench, Lord Ashtown).
15. Quoted in ibid.
16. See Joanna Bourke, ‘Shell-Shock, Psychiatry and the Irish Soldier during the First World War’, in Gregory and Paseta, Ireland and the Great War, pp. 156–68.
17. Quoted in Byrne, ‘“Not Another Son”’, p. 60.
18. Lady Cynthia Asquith, Diaries, 1915-18 (London, 1968) p. 92; Anita Leslie, Edwardians in Love (London, 1972), p. 265.
19. Quoted in Leslie, Edwardians in Love, p. 264.
20. Quoted in ibid., p. 271.
21. Fingall, Seventy Years Young, p. 386.
22. Quoted in d’Alton, ‘Norman Leslie’s Short War’, p. 86.
23. Anita Leslie, The Gilt and the Gingerbread: An Autobiography (London, 1931), p. 11.
24. On this aspect of the American Civil War, see Drew Gilpin, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (New York, 2008).
25. Ann Morrow, Picnic in a Foreign Land: The Eccentric Lives of the Anglo-Irish (London, 1989), p. 19.
26. Quoted in Richard Davenport-Hines, Ettie: The Intimate Life and Dauntless Spirit of Lady Desborough (London, 2008), p. 232.
27. Jane Leonard, ‘Getting Them at Last: The IRA and Ex-Servicemen’, in David Fitzpatrick (ed.), Revolution? Ireland 1917–23 (Dublin, 1990), pp. 118–29; Hart, The IRA and its Enemies, pp. 293–315; for alternative views see Hall, ‘The Bellingham family of Castlebellingham’, pp. 104–05; Paul Taylor, Heroes or Traitors: Experiences of Southern Irish Soldiers Returning from the Great War, 1919–39 (Liverpool, 2015).
28. His youngest brother was killed in 1918 and another lost a leg: https://www.greatwarforum.org/topic/219664-lieutenant-sir-richard-william-levinge-10th-bart-1st-life-guards/
29. Bence-Jones, Twilight of the Ascendancy, p. 168.
30. Dunne, ‘Westmeath Aristocracy’, p. 267.
31. Ibid., pp. 332–33.
32. Irish Times, 15 Aug. 1923.
33. Minutes of Kildare County Council, 29 May 1916; quoted in Thomas Nelson, ‘Lord Frederick FitzGerald, 1857–1924’ in Cosgrove et al. (eds.), Aspects of Irish Aristocratic Life, pp. 206–07.
34. Joseph Doran to Lord Frederick FitzGerald, n.d. [May 2016] (private possession).
35. Hall, ‘The Bellingham family of Castlebellingham’, pp. 104–05.
36. Ibid., p. 109.
37. Gallagher, Ireland and the Great War, pp. 177–83.
38. Quoted in Fergal Browne, ‘The Death of the Pallastown Heir: Lt Robert Heard, Pallastown Guards’, in Dooley and Ridgway (eds.) The Country House and the Great War, p. 22.
39. Ibid., p. 24.
40. Ibid., p. 27.
41. Ibid., p. 28.
42. New York Times, 12 Oct. 1913.
43. Cannadine, Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy, p. 48.
44. Ibid., p. 97; Purdue, The Big House in the North of Ireland, p. 111.
45. Byrne, ‘“Not Another Son”’, p. 57.
46. For the similar case of the Dufferins in Ulster, see Purdue, The Big House in the North of Ireland, p. 218.
47. Dooley, Decline of the Big House, p. 125; see also Emer Crooke, ‘White Elephants’: The Country House and the State in Independent Ireland, 1922–73 (Dublin, 2018).
48. Seymour Leslie, The Jerome Connexion (London, 1964), p. 49.
49. Ibid.
50. Ibid., p. 58.
51. Leslie, The Gilt and the Gingerbread, p. 11.
52. Buckland, Irish Unionism I, p. 35; C.F.G. Masterman, England after War: A Study (London, 1922), pp. 27–32.
53. Quoted in IUA, Irish Southern Loyalists, the War and After (1918), p. 1.
54. Fitzpatrick, Politics and Irish Life, p. 55.
55. IUA, Irish Southern Loyalists, pp, 1–2.
56. Quoted in Buckland, Irish Unionism I, p. 36.
57. Ibid.
58. Ibid., pp. 83ff; Alvin Jackson, Home Rule: An Irish History 1800–2000 (London, 2003).
59. Sir Henry Bellingham to Shane Leslie, n.d. (NLI, Leslie papers, MS 22,852).
60. Northern Standard, 17 June 1916.
61. Ulster Unionist Yearbook, 1917 (PRONI, D972/17).
62. ‘Report of Major Saunderson’, n.d. (PRONI, J.M. Wilson papers, D989/A/8/7/1).
63. Journal entry, 30 July 1916; Butler, ‘Lord Oranmore’s Journal’, p. 568.
64. On the conference, see Buckland, Irish Unionism I, pp. 83–128.
65. Journal entry, 21 July 1917 in Butler, ‘Lord Oranmore’s Journal’, p. 570.
66. Ibid., 20 Apr. 1918, p. 575.
67. Lord Midleton to Lord Courtown, 18 July 1918 (NLI, Midleton papers, MS 49,708/2).
68. Quoted in Northern Standard, 13 Mar. 1920.
69. Anglo-Celt, 17 Apr. 1920.
70. Quoted in Cherry, ‘Adaptive coexistence’, p. 300.
71. Quoted in ibid.
72. Lord Farnham to Hugh Montgomery, 13 Apr. 1920; quoted in Buckland, Documentary History, p. 419.
73. Saunderson, The Saundersons, p. 73.
74. Quoted in Cherry, ‘Adaptive Coexistence’, pp. 301–02.
75. Young, ‘The Big House in County Louth’, p. 152.
76. Diary of Vera Bellingham, Dunany House, Co Louth, 1916–19 (in private possession).My thanks to Jean Young for this reference.
77. Quoted in Fitzpatrick, Politics and Irish Life, p. 55.
78. http://www.turtlebunbury.com/history/history_family/hist_family_clements.html
79. J.M. Winter, ‘Britain’s “Lost Generation” of the First World War’, Population Studies, vol. 31, no. 3 (Nov. 1977), p. 465.
80. Earl of Dunraven [Windham Thomas Wyndham-Quin], Past Times and Pastimes (London, 1922), vol. 1. pp. 196, 198.
81. Butler, ‘Lord Oranmore’s Journal’, p. 582.
82. Bowen, ‘The Big House’, p. 29.
83. Dick Hely-Hutchinson to his mother, 2 Dec. 1914 (Fingal County Archives, 1/6/9).
84. J.B. Drought, A Sportsman Looks at Éire (London, n.d. [1949]), p. 10.
85. Quoted in Fitzpatrick, Politics and Irish Life, p. 79.
86. Lord Castletown, Ego: Random Records of Sport, Service and Travel in Many Lands (London, 1923), pp. 67–68.
87. Ibid., p. 68.
88. Fingall, Seventy Years Young, p. 169.
89. Dooley, Decline of the Big House, pp. 262–63; for the experience of the Earl of Fingall, see Fingall, Seventy Years Young, pp. 117, 186.
90. Quoted in Bujak, English Landed Society in the Great War, p. 83.
91. L.P. Curtis found that in 1881 practically every hunt in Ireland had been disrupted at some stage; L.P. Curtis Jr, ‘Stopping the Hunt: An Aspect of the Irish Land War’, in C.H.E. Philpin (ed.), Nationalism and Popular Protest in Ireland (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 349–402.
92. CICMR, Co Kildare, Jan. 1919.
93. William Murphy, ‘Sport in a Time of Revolution: Sinn Féin and the Hunt in Ireland’, Éire-Ireland, 48: 1–2 (2013), p. 113.
94. Ibid., pp. 120–21; Irish Field, 8 Mar. 1919.
95. IGCMR, Jan. 1919.
96. Buckland, Irish Unionism I, p. 203.
97. Quoted in Murphy, ‘Sport in a Time of Revolution’, p. 132.
98. P. Brady to Meath Chronicle, 15 Feb. 1919, in ibid.
99. Tuam Herald, 8 Feb. 1918.
100. Leinster Leader, 1 Mar. 1919.
101. Harris was probably referring to the notorious Clongorey evictions of 1883–92; Leinster Leader, 1 Mar. 1919; M.B. Ryan, ‘The Clongorey Evictions’ (MA thesis, NUI Maynooth, 1999).
102. Fergus D’Arcy, Horses, Lords and Racing Men: The Kildare Turf Club 1790–1990 (Kildare, 1991); Dooley, Decline of the Big House, pp. 264–67; in relation to Kildare, see Leinster Leader, 17 June 1922.
103. M.A.G. Ó Tuathaigh, ‘The Land Question, Politics and Irish Society, 1922–1960’, in P.J. Drudy (ed.), Ireland: Land, Politics and People (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 167–89; Paul Bew, ‘Sinn Féin, Agrarian Radicalism and the War of Independence 1919–1921’, in D.G. Boyce (ed.), The Revolution in Ireland, 1879–1923 (Basingstoke, 1988), pp. 217–34.
104. Report of the Proceedings of the Irish Convention [Cmd 9019], HC 1918, x, 697.
105. See chapter 5.
106. IGCMR, Jan. 1918.
107. Report of the Estates Commissioners for the Year from 1 April 1919 to 31 March 1920 and for the Period from 1 November 1903 to 31 March 1920, Cmd 1150, HC 1921, xiv.661, p. ix.
108. Ibid., p. xiv.
109. Labhras MacFhionnghail [Laurence Ginnell], The Land Question (Dublin, n.d. [1917]), p. 4.
110. For an excellent case study see Leigh Ann Coffey, The Planters of Luggacurran: The Experiences of a Protestant Community in Queen’s County, 1879–1927 (Dublin, 2006).
111. Agricultural Statistics for Ireland with Detailed Report for the Year 1917 [Cmd 1316], HC 1921, lxi.135, p. 14.
112. F.S.L. Lyons, Ireland Since the Famine (London, 1971), p. 603.
113. Ibid., p. 519.
114. Twenty-Seventh Report of the Congested District Board for Ireland for the Period from 1 Apr. 1918 to 31 Mar. 1919, Cmd 759, HC 1920, pp. 19–20.
115. IGCMR, Sept. 1916.
116. Dáil Éireann, ‘A Brief Survey of the Work Done by the Agricultural Department from April 1919 to August 1921’, p. 9.
117. Ibid., p. 196; Enda McKay, ‘The Housing of the Rural Labourer, 1883–1916’, Saothar, vol. 17 (1992), pp. 27–38; also D.G. Bradley, Farm Labourers: Irish Struggle, 1900–1976 (Belfast, 1988).
118. St Stephen’s Review, 31 July 1886.
119. Quoted in Cosgrave, ‘The Wyndham Land Act’, p. 230.
120. IGCMR, Mar. 1916.
121. Ibid., July 1916.
122. CICMR, Co Donegal, Sept. 1918.
123. Butler, ‘Lord Oranmore’s Journal’, p. 578.
124. CICMR, Cavan, Mar. 1919.
125. W.H. Mahon of Castlegar Diary, 1922 (NLI, Mahon papers, MS 19,991).
126. Ibid., 16 Apr. 1920.
127. Pauric J. Dempsey, Shaun Boylan, ‘Ginnell, Laurence’, in James McGuire and James Quinn (ed), DIB (Cambridge, 2009). (http://dib.cambridge.org/viewReadPage.do?articleId=a3488) [Accessed 25 May 2021].
128. MacFhionnghail, The Land Question, pp. 4–5.
129. Ibid., p. 15.
130. Ibid., p. 7.
131. IGCMR, Feb. 1918.
132. Ibid.
133. Thomas Lavin, BMH witness statement, WS 1001, pp. 2–3.
134. P.J. McElligott, BMH witness statement, WS 1013, p. 6.
135. Andrew O’Donohoe, BMH witness statement, WS 1326, pp. 13–14.
136. IGCMR, Nov. 1918.
137. CICMR, Galway East Riding, Feb. 1918.
138. Irish Times, 4 June 1918.
139. Ibid.
140. Irish Land (Provision for Soldiers and Sailors) Act 1919 [9 & 10 Geo. V, ch. 82] (23 Dec. 1919); for a more complete study see Edward Tynan, ‘War Veterans, Land Distribution and Revolution in Ireland, 1919–23’ (PhD thesis, NUI Maynooth, 2012).
141. Peter Hart, The IRA and Its Enemies, pp. 171–73.
142. Terence Dooley, ‘The Land for the People’: The Land Question in Independent Ireland (Dublin, 2004), pp. 35–37.
143. Barry, Guerilla Days in Ireland, p. 117; L.P. Curtis, Jr, ‘The Last Gasp of Southern Unionism: Lord Ashtown of Woodlawn’, Éire-Ireland, 40: 3&4 (Fall/Winter, 2005), p. 180.
144. Quoted in Michael Hopkinson, Green Against Green: The Irish Civil War (Dublin, 1988, p. 45.
145. Joseph Barratt, BMH, WS 1324, p. 2.
146. Ernie O’Malley, On Another Man’s Wound (Dublin, 1979 edn [1st edn London, 1936]), p. 85.
147. Ibid. p. 96.
148. Townshend, Political Violence in Ireland, p. 339; Bew, ‘Sinn Féin, Agrarian Radicalism and the War of Independence’, in Boyce (ed.), The Revolution in Ireland, pp. 217–34; Dooley, ‘The Land for the People’, pp. 16–20, 26–56.
4 ‘Castles, Mansions and Residences Were Sent Up in Flames’
1. Westminster Gazette, 23 Jan. 1909.
2. R.B. MacDowell, Crisis and Decline: The Fate of the Southern Unionists (Dublin, 1997), p. vii; on the loyalist experience in New York during the American Revolution see Howard Pashman, Building a Revolutionary State: The Legal Transformation of New York, 1776–1783 (Chicago, 2018).
3. Cannadine, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy, p. 487.
4. Evening Herald, 31 Jan. 1918.
5. Major Blennerhassett, Ballyseedy, Co Kerry, TNA CO 762/55/18.
6. Don Johnson, ‘Post-Famine Landlords of the Flurry Valley’, Journal of the County Louth Archaeological and Historical Society, vol. 27, no. 3 (2011), p. 419.
7. CICMR, Roscommon, Sept. 1919.
8. Michael Reilly, Galway, BMH, WS 1358, p. 4.
9. Irish Times, 9 Jan. 1920.
10. Ibid., 20 Feb. 1920.
11. Ibid., 8 Sept. 1920.
12. Arthur Mitchell, Revolutionary Government in Ireland: Dáil Éireann 1919–22 (Dublin, 1995), pp. 128–29.
13. Thomas Costello, BMH, WS 1296, p. 6.
14. Lennox Robinson, Tom Robinson, Nora Dorman, Three Homes (London, 1938), p. 242.
15. Quoted in Dunraven, Past Times and Pastimes, Vol. 2, p. 202.
16. R.E. Longfield to Hugh de Fellenberg Montgomery, 16 Mar. 1920; quoted in Patrick Buckland, Irish Unionism 1885–1923: A Documentary History (Belfast, 1973), p. 381.
17. J. Ormsby Lawder, Leitrim, TNA, CO 762/13/12.
18. Barry, Guerilla Days in Ireland, p. 6.
19. Liam Deasy, Towards Ireland Free: The West Cork Brigade in the War of Independence (Cork, 1973), p. 2.
20. Dan Breen, My Fight for Irish Freedom (Dublin, 1981 edn [1st edn 1924]), p. 9.
21. Ibid., p. 100.
22. Ibid., pp. 21–22; for wider context on defying the IRA at this time, see Brian Hughes, Defying the IRA: Intimidation, Coercion and Communities During the Irish Revolution (Liverpool, 2017).
23. Thomas Ryan, BMH, WS 0783, p. 106.
24. Tipperary Star, 2 July 1921.
25. My thanks to Aidan Gilsenan for providing this information.
26. IGCMR, Jan., July 1920.
27. Quoted in James S. Donnelly Jr, The Great Irish Potato Famine (Stroud, 2001), p. 141.
28. Quoted in Oliver McDonagh, ‘Irish Emigration to the United States of America and the British Colonies during the Famine’, in R.D. Edwards, T.D. Williams (eds.), The Great Famine: Studies in Irish History 1845–52 (Dublin, 1956), p. 474.
29. Freeman’s Journal, 25 Apr. 1849; Tipperary Vindicator, 11 Apr. 1849.
30. Pashman, Building a Revolutionary State, p. 79.
31. Barry, Guerilla Days, p. 116.
32. Ibid., p. 214.
33. Ibid., p. 116.
34. Ibid., p. 117.
35. Quotes taken from Ciarán J. Reilly, ‘The Burning of Country Houses in Co Offaly, 1920–23’, in Dooley and Ridgway (eds.), The Irish Country House, p. 126.
36. Ibid., p. 146.
37. Irish Times, 31 May 1920.
38. Ibid., 22 May 1920.
39. Bence-Jones, Twilight of the Ascendancy, p. 195.
40. Donnelly, Jr, ‘Big House Burnings in Cork’, pp. 150–51.
41. Nenagh Guardian, 25 June 1921.
42. Irish Times, 7, 11, 14 May 1920.
43. CICMR, Galway ER, June 1921.
44. Irish Times, 25, 27 May, 17 June 1920, 9 Feb. 1921.
45. The Georgian Society Records of Eighteenth-Century Domestic Architecture and Decoration in Ireland (Dublin, 1913), p. 55.
46. Ibid., p. 57; https://theirishaesthete.com/tag/summerhill/
47. C.R. Cockerell quoted in https://theirishaesthete.com/tag/summerhill/
48. The Georgian Society Records, p. 57.
49. Quoted in https://theirishaesthete.com/tag/summerhill/
50. Fingall, Seventy Years Young, p. 435.
51. Quoted in Oliver Coogan, Politics and War in Meath, 1913–23 (Dublin, 1983), pp. 150–51.
52. Seamus Finn, BMH, WS 1060, pp. 19–20.
53. Seán Boylan, BMH, WS 1715, p. 33.
54. Irish Times, 7 Feb. 1920.
55. Ibid.
56. Ibid.
57. Quoted in https://theirishaesthete.com/tag/summerhill/
58. Marquess of Sligo to Chief Secretary, 31 Mar. 1919 (NLI, Westport papers, MS 41,099/16).
59. Lydican Castle Galway, TNA CO762/112/3; Greated also admitted that the burning was ‘partly due to agrarian trouble owing to the fact that the RIC had left and no police formed to replace them’.
60. Donnelly, Jr, ‘Big House Burnings in Cork’, p. 145.
61. Irish Times, 6 Apr. 1921.
62. Limerick Chronicle, 30 Sept. 1920.
63. Matthew Finucane, BMH, WS, 975, p. 4.
64. P.J. McElligott, BMH, WS 1013, p. 14.
65. Ibid. [including supplementary statement] p.15, p. 1 of supplementary statement.
66. Michael Murphy, BMH, WS 1081, p. 2.
67. Donnelly, Jr, ‘Big House Burnings in Cork’, p. 159.
68. As recounted in ibid., pp. 159–60.
69. Quoted in ibid., p. 160.
70. Cannadine, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy, p. 487.
71. Peter Hart, ‘The Geography of Revolution in Ireland 1917–23’, Past & Present, 155, May 1997, pp. 142–76.
72. Erhardt Rumpf and A.C. Hepburn, Nationalism and Socialism in Twentieth-Century Ireland (Liverpool, 1977), pp. 39–40.
73. These figures have been adjusted from those presented in Decline of the Big House to take into account all the additional houses found since then to have been burned. The full list of Big Houses burned between 1920 and 1923 can be found at https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/centre-study-historic-irish-houses-and-estates.
74. Donnelly, ‘Big House Burnings’, p. 145.
75. IGCMR, May 1921.
76. CICMR, Cork East, May 1921.
77. Ibid., June 1921.
78. Ibid., Tipperary, June 1921.
79. Donnelly, Jr, ‘Big House Burnings in Cork’, pp. 163–64.
80. Barry, Guerilla Days, pp. 214, 218.
81. Irish Times, 30 June, 8 July 1921.
82. Ibid., 29 Oct. 1921.
83. Quoted in Donnelly, Jr, ‘Big House Burnings in Cork’, p. 166.
84. Eugene Dunne, ‘The Experiences of the Aristocracy in County Westmeath during the Period 1879 to 1923’ (PhD thesis, NUIM, 2016), pp. 15, 20.
85. Return of Untenanted Lands, p. 183.
86. IGCMR, June 1921; CICMR, June 1921.
87. Westmeath Guardian, 24 June 1921; The Times, 21 June 1921.
88. Irish Times, 23 June 1921.
89. Quoted in Westmeath Guardian, 1 July 1921.
90. Irish Independent, 22 June 1921; Westmeath Examiner, 9 July 1921; Dunne, ‘Westmeath aristocracy’, p. 307.
91. Westmeath Examiner, 9 July 1921.
92. Bence-Jones, Twilight of the Ascendancy, pp. 195, 199.
93. Thomas Costello, BMH, WS 1296.
94. Henry O’Brien, BMH, WS 1308.
95. Frank O’Connor, BMH, WS 1309.
96. Dunne, ‘Westmeath aristocracy’, p. 247
97. Thomas Costello, BMH, WS 1296; Henry O’Brien, BMH, WS 1308; Frank O’Connor, BMH, WS 1309; Westmeath Examiner, 9 July 1921.
98. Frank O’Connor, BMH, WS 1309, p. 21.
99. Ibid.
100. Richard Coplen, ‘Moydrum Castle’, Westmeath Independent, 14 Jan. 2006.
101. Thomas Costello, BMH, WS 1296, p. 21.
102. Irish Times, 9 Sept. 1920.
103. Westmeath Examiner, 9 July 1921.
104. Frank O’Connor, BMH, WS 1309, p. 21; Henry O’Brien, BMH, WS 1308, p. 16.
105. Henry O’Brien, BMH, WS 1308, pp. 16–17.
106. J.W. Garvey to F.H. Crawford, 21 Aug. 1921, quoted in Buckland, Unionism: A Documentary History, p. 383.
107. Olwen Purdue, ‘“Ascendancy’s . . . Last Jamboree”: Big House Society in Northern Ireland, 1921–69’, in Dooley and Ridgway, The Irish Country House, p. 135.
108. Robinson (ed.), Lady Gregory’s Journals, pp. 13–14.
109. Martin, ‘Unionism: The Irish Nobility, p. 73.
110. Gemma Clark, Everyday Violence in the Irish Civil War (Cambridge, 2014) p. 74.
111. Diary of Lady Alice Howard, 31 Dec. 1921 (NLI, Diaries of Lady Alice Howard, MS 3,625).
112. Butler, ‘Lord Oranmore’s Journal, 1913–27’, p. 588.
113. Quoted in Irish Times, 6 Mar. 1922.
114. Bowen, Bowen’s Court, pp. 10–11.
115. de Stacpoole, Irish and Other Memories, p. v.
116. Lord Midleton [John Broderick], Records and Reactions, 1856–1939 (London, 1939), p. 263; Martin, ‘Unionism: The Irish Nobility’, pp. 161–62; Buckland, Irish Unionism I, p. 246.
117. Midleton, Records and Reactions, p. 264.
118. Quoted in Martin, ‘Unionism: The Irish Nobility’, p. 162.
119. Irish Times, 16 Jan. 1920, 15 Apr. 1921.
120. Ibid., 11 Aug. 1920.
121. Quoted in Symes, Sir John Keane, p. 35.
122. John Garvey to Major C.K. O’Hara, 10 Nov. 1922 (NLI, O’Hara papers, MS 36440/7).
123. J.W. Garvey to F.H. Crawford, 21 Aug. 1921; quoted in Buckland, Unionism: A Documentary History, p. 384.
124. John Garvey to Major C.K. O’Hara, 24 Feb. 1923; ibid.
125. Anonymous letter sent to John Garvey [1924]; ibid.
126. Mel Farrell, Party Politics in a New Democracy: The Irish Free State, 1922–1938 (London, 2017), p. 77.
127. Terence Dooley, ‘IRA Activity in County Kildare During the War of Independence’, in William Nolan and Thomas McGrath (eds), Kildare: History and Society (Dublin, 2006), pp. 625–56
128. Seamus Cullen, ‘Loyalists in a Garrison County: Kildare, 1912–1923’, in Hughes and Morrissey (eds.), Southern Irish Loyalism, p. 265.
129. Irish Claims Compensation Association, The Campaign of Fire: A Record of Some Mansions and Houses Destroyed (London, 1924), p. 2.
130. Quoted in Hopkinson, Green against Green, p. 90; see also Lord Castletown, Ego (London, 1923), p. 220.
131. Quoted in Hopkinson, Green against Green, p. 92.
132. ‘Notes by Ernie O’Malley . . . on interviews with officers from the 1st Midland Division’ 31 Aug. 1922; quoted in C.K.H. O’Malley and Anne Dolan (eds.), No Surrender Here! The Civil War Papers of Ernie O’Malley (Dublin, 2007), p. 141 and fn336, p. 593).
, ‘Protestant Depopulation in County Longford during the Irish Revolution, 1911–1926’, 133. Marie ColemanEnglish Historical Review, cxxxv, no. 575 (Aug. 2020), pp. 967–68.
134. Eoin O’Duffy to Minister for Home Affairs, 15 Nov. 1922 (NAI, Dept. Justice files, H5/538).
135. Breen, My Fight for Irish Freedom, p. 178.
136. William Tenison to [?], n.d.; my thanks to William Tenison, Lough Bawn, for sharing this with me.
137. Report on drilling in Carlow, 8 Sept. 1921 (CO 904, Breaches of the Truce Reports).
138. DI to CI Co Carlow, 2 Oct. 1921; ibid.
139. CI report on ‘IRA Rebel Camp at Harristown House, Kildare’, n.d.; ibid.
140. IGCMR, Sept. 1921.
141. D.H. Doyne malicious injury claim, n.d. (NLI, Doyne papers, MS 29,770/238).
142. Henry Bourke Jourdan, Thornhill, Co Mayo, TNA, CO 762/62/16.
143. Irish Times, 17 July 1922.
144. Macroom Castle compensation file, NAI, FIN/COMP/2/4/1/.
145. See chapter 6.
146. Hopkinson, Green against Green, p. 221.
147. Clark, Everyday Violence in the Irish Civil War, pp. 54–97.
148. Irish Times, 9 Jan. 1923.
149. Col. Loftus Bryan, Upton, Wexford, TNA, CO 762/61/6.
150. Breen T. Murphy, ‘The Government’s Execution Policy During the Irish Civil War 1922–1923’ (PhD thesis, Maynooth University, 2010), p. 16; Gavin Foster, The Irish Civil War and Society: Politics, Class and Conflict (London, 2015), pp. 155–56.
151. Ibid., p. 3.
152. In total, over a six-month period, eighty-one men were executed by the Provisional (January–December 1922)/Free State governments; ibid., p. 17.
153. ‘Operation Order No. 16: Senators’, in O’Malley and Dolan (eds.), No Surrender Here!, pp. 533–34.
154. Quoted in Weekly Telegraph, 10 Feb. 1923.
155. Mark Bence-Jones, Burke’s Guide to Country Houses. Volume I, Ireland (London, 1978), p. 230; www.dia.ie; https://theirishaesthete.com/2018/11/14/built-by-his-friends-and-countrymen/
156. Quoted in Brian McCabe, ‘Palmerstown and its Owners’, http://kildarelocalhistory.ie/articles/palmerstown-and-its-owners/
157. Leinster Leader, 12 Dec. 1925.
158. Ibid.
159. Kildare Observer, 3 Feb. 1923; also Leinster Leader, 3 Feb. 1923.
160. Ibid., 24 Feb. 1923.
161. Ibid.
162. Ibid.
163. Irish Times, 10 Jan. 1923.
164. Clark, Everyday Violence in the Irish Civil War, p. 79.
165. Ibid., 2 March 1923; Leinster Leader, 3 Feb. 1923.
166. Clark, Everyday Violence in the Irish Civil War, p. 42.
167. Power, White Knights, p. 226.
168. Macroom Castle, NAI FIN/COMP/2/4/1.
169. Clark, Everyday Violence in the Irish Civil War, p. 202; Stathis Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (Cambridge, 2012), pp. 55–61.
170. Donnelly, ‘Big House Burnings in Cork, pp. 142, 195.
171. Irish Times, 31 Jan. 1923.
172. Terence Dooley, The Irish Revolution, 1912–23: Monaghan (Dublin, 2017), pp. 111–22.
173. Hughes, Defying the IRA, p. 206; Coleman, ‘Protestant Depopulation in Longford’, p. 970.
174. Clark, Everyday Violence in the Irish Civil War, p. 198.
175. Ibid., pp. 126–27; Coffey, The Planters of Luggacurran, p. 9; see also Michael Farry, The Aftermath of Revolution: Sligo 1921–23 (Dublin, 2000).
176. Toler Garvey to Geoffrey Parsons, 22 July 1922 (Birr Castle Archive [BCA], T/31); my thanks to Ciarán Reilly and Lisa Shortall for sharing these sources.
177. Garvey letter book (49–50), 5 Dec. 1922 (BCA, Q/360).
178. Ibid., 7, 12, 15, 30 Dec. 1922, 28 Feb. 1923 (BCA, Q/360).
179. Ibid., 5 June 1923.
180. Ibid., 27 June 1923.
181. See Philip McConway, ‘Offaly and the Civil War Executions’ in Offaly Heritage, Vol 5 (2008), pp. 251–74.
182. Garvey letter book (49), 26 Jan. 1923 (BCA, Q/360).
183. Ibid., 26 Jan. 1923.
184. Ibid., 27 Jan. 1923.
185. Ibid., (50), 3 Jan. 1924 (BCA, Q/361).
186. Purdue, The Big House in the North of Ireland, p. 146.
187. Quoted in ibid., p. 148.
188. Paul Bew, Ireland: The Politics of Enmity 1789–2006 (Oxford, 2007), pp. 423–43.
189. Fearghal McGarry, O’Duffy, p.100.
190. Bew, Ireland, p. 434.
191. The eight houses burned were Crebilly, Garron Tower, Shane’s Castle, Antrim Castle, Strangford, Old Court, Glenmona, and Drumnasole.
192. Irish Times, 27 May 1922.
193. Purdue, Big House in the North of Ireland, p. 147.
194. Belfast News-Letter, 24 May 1922.
195. Ibid.
196. Irish Times, 22 May 1922.
197. Ballymena Observer, 26 May 1922.
198. Irish Times, 27 May 1922; Purdue, The Big Houses in the North of Ireland, p. 149.
199. Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence, p. 380; Clark, Everyday Violence in the Irish Civil War, pp. 4–5.
200. Irish Times, 21 Apr. 1922.
201. https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/dail/1924-11-18/23/?highlight%5B0%5D=castle&highlight%5B1%5D=fogarty
5 ‘I Think the Greed of Land is at the Root of this Class of Crime’
1. Clark, Everyday Violence in the Irish Civil War, p. 97; Donnelly, ‘Big House Burnings in Cork’, p. 145.
2. Dooley, Decline of the Big House, ch.7.
3. Reilly, ‘The Burning of Country Houses in Co Offaly’, p. 118.
4. CICMR, Galway ER, Feb. 1920.
5. Kevin O’Shiel, BMH, WS 1770, p. 933.
6. Irish Times, 26 Apr. 1920, 22 May 1920.
7. Ibid., 16 Apr. 1920.
8. Quoted in Campbell, Land and Revolution, p. 302.
9. Connaught Tribune, 28 May 1910; quoted in Ann O’Riordan, East Galway Agrarian Agitation and the Burning of Ballydugan House, 1922 (Dublin, 2015), p. 26.
10. O’Riordan, East Galway Agrarian Agitation, p. 31.
11. Quoted in ibid., p. 42.
12. Ibid., pp. 31, 32.
13. Ibid., pp. 30, 33.
14. Dáil Éireann, ‘A Brief Survey of the Work Done by the Agricultural Department from April 1919 to August 1921’, p. 9.
15. Irish Times, 3 May 1920.
16. Ibid., 15 May 1920.
17. Ibid., 18 May 1920.
18. Ibid., 31 May 1920.
19. Ibid., 12 Apr. 1920.
20. Ibid., 10 May 1920.
21. Ibid., 2 June 1920.
22. Cork Examiner, 7 May 1920.
23. R.A. Corr to Roscommon Journal, 29 May 1920.
24. Kevin O’Shiel, BMH, WS 1770, p. 934.
25. Sligo Champion, 1 July 1901.
26. Quoted in Einion Thomas, ‘From Sligo to Wales: The Flight of Sir Charles Phibbs’, History Ireland, Spring 2004, p.10.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid.
29. Dáil Éireann Debates, vol. 40, 4 Nov. 1931, 800–801.
30. O’Connor, ‘Agrarian Unrest’, Saothar, vi (1980), pp. 54–55; Emmet O’Connor, Reds and the Green: Ireland, Russia and the Communist Internationals 1919–43 (Dublin, 2004); for a contemporary socialist view see Aodh De Blacam in Foreword to Selina Sigerson, Sinn Féin and Socialism (Dublin, n.d.), p. 4; see also the report, ‘Agrarian Bolshevism’ in Irish Times, 29 Apr. 1920.
31. O’Connor, ‘Agrarian Unrest’, p. 42.
32. Butler, ‘Lord Oranmore’s Journal’, p. 580.
33. Newspapers clippings, untitled and undated (Lucas-Scudamore papers, private possession).
34. Bew, ‘Sinn Féin and Agrarian Radicalism’, p. 229.
35. Boyce, ‘Introduction’, p. 18; see also Laffan, The Resurrection of Ireland, p. 258; Fearghal McGarry, ‘Revolution, 1916–1923’, in Thomas Bartlett (ed.), The Cambridge History of Ireland, Vol. iv, (Cambridge, 2018), p. 273.
36. [Erskine Childers], The Constructive Work of Dáil Éireann, No. 1 (1921), p. 18.
37. Ibid., p. 18; Mary Kotsonouris, Retreat from Revolution: The Dáil Courts 1920–24 (Dublin, 1994); Arthur Mitchell, Revolutionary Government in Ireland: Dáil Éireann 1919–22 (Dublin, 1995), pp. 137–46.
38. Bew, ‘Sinn Féin and Agrarian Radicalism’, p. 234.
39. Westmeath Independent, 1 May 1920.
40. Ibid.
41. Thomas Costello, BMH, WS 1296, p. 13.
42. Ibid., p. 5.
43. Dunne, ‘Westmeath Aristocracy’, pp. 307–08.
44. Thomas Costello, BMH, WS 1296, p. 22.
45. Henry O’Brien, BMH, WS 1308, p. 20.
46. Dunne, ‘Westmeath Aristocracy’, p. 310.
47. Ibid., pp. 310–11.
48. Ibid., p. 311.
49. Ibid., p. 312.
50. Dáil Debates, 30 Jan. 1924, vol. 6, no. 10; https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/dail/1924-01-30/5/?highlight%5B0%5D=moydrum
51. Bew, ‘Sinn Féin and Agrarian Radicalism’, p. 225.
52. Meath Chronicle, 3 Feb. 1923.
53. Michael Murphy, BMH, WS 1081, pp. 2–3.
54. IGCMR, Apr. 1921.
55. CICMR Kerry, May 1921.
56. Michael Keane, 15 Dec. 1937, as told to Thomas Flavin; https://www.duchas.ie/en/cbes/4613712/4611359
57. Jean Young, ‘The Big House in Co Louth, 1912–1923’, in Donal Hall and Martin Maguire (eds.), County Louth and the Irish Revolution 1912–1923 (Newbridge, 2017), pp. 157–66.
58. Ibid., p. 155.
59. Ibid., p. 156.
60. Ibid.
61. Johnston, ‘Post-Famine Landlords of the Flurry Valley’, p. 420.
62. Dundalk Democrat, 12 July 1924, 1 Oct. 1932; Johnston, ‘Post-Famine Landlords of the Flurry Valley’, p. 420.
63. https://www.dia.ie/works/view/61048/building/CO.+MONAGHAN,+GOLA+HOUSE
64. Report on IRA activity 1 April 1920 to 31 March 1921 (Monaghan County Museum, Thomas Brennan papers, uncatalogued); Dundalk Democrat, 5 March 1921.
65. Robert Devine email to this author, 8 Feb. 2016.
66. Ibid., 8 Dec. 2015.
67. Notebook Scotstown SF Club: entry for 11 Sept 1921 (Monaghan County Museum, Brennan papers, uncatalogued),
68. Patrick J. Duffy, ‘Population and Landholding in County Monaghan’ (PhD thesis, UCD, 1976), p. 416.
69. Weekly Irish Times, 24 June 1922.
70. Anglo-Celt, 2 Feb. 1924; Robert Devine to the author, 8 Feb. 2016.
71. IGCMR, Sept. 1916.
72. Cork Constitution, 11 July 1920.
73. Donnelly, Jr, ‘Big House Burnings in Cork’, p. 147.
74. Ibid., p. 146.
75. Irish Times, 5 Nov. 1921.
76. Compensation claim Macroom Castle (NAI, Dept. of Finance Compensation files, 2/4/1/).
77. Clark, Everyday Violence in the Irish Civil War, p. 3, drawing on Peter Hart, The IRA at War, 1916–1923 (Oxford, 2003), p. 41.
78. Foster, The Irish Civil War, p. 14.
79. J.C. Davies, ‘Towards a Theory of Revolution’, American Sociological Review, 27 (1962), p. 5.
80. Donnelly, Land and People of Nineteenth-Century Cork, pp. 249–50.
81. Report of Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction for Ireland 1922–23, p. 1.
82. Ibid., pp. 2–3.
83. T.K. Daniel, ‘Griffith on his Noble Head: The Determinants of Cumann na nGaedheal Economic Policy, 1922–32’, Irish Economic & Social History, iii (1976), p. 56.
84. Provisional Government, Minutes of Meeting, 5 Apr. 1922 (NAI, G1/2).
85. David Seth Jones, ‘Land Reform Legislation and Security of Tenure in Ireland after Independence’, Éire-Ireland, xxxii–xxxiii (1997–98), p. 117.
86. Maurice Moore to Minister for Defence, 9 May 1923 (Military Archives, A/3126).
87. Marie Coleman, William Murphy, ‘Mellows, William Joseph (Liam)’, in James McGuire and James Quinn (eds), Dictionary of Irish Biography. (Cambridge, 2009). (http://dib.cambridge.org/viewReadPage.do?articleId=a5795)
88. Irish Claims Compensation Association, The Irish Free State: The Campaign of Fire (London, 1923), pp. 9–10.
89. Tom Garvin, 1922: The Birth of Irish Democracy (Dublin, 1996), pp. 44–45; also Henry Patterson, The Politics of Illusion: Republicanism and Socialism in Modern Ireland (London, 1989), p. 24.
90. Richard English, Radicals and the Republic: Socialists Republicanism in the Irish Free State 1925–1937 (Oxford, 1994), p. 31.
91. Witness Statement, Tom Carragher (Monaghan County Museum, Marron papers).
92. Tipperary Star, 4 Mar. 1922.
93. CICMR, Tipperary, Aug. 1921 (CO904/116).
94. Inventory of goods stolen from Kilboy, 13 Nov. 1921 (NLI, Dunalley papers, MS 29,810 (17)).
95. Samuel Doupe to Lord Dunalley, 23 Apr. 1922, 10 July 1922, 15 July 1922, ibid.; William Harkness to Lord Dunalley, 12 Aug. 1922, ibid.
96. Tipperary Star, 3 June 1922.
97. Teresa Byrne, ‘The Burning of Kilboy House, Nenagh, County Tipperary, 2 August 1922’ (MA thesis, NUI Maynooth, 2006), p. 26.
98. Prittie, ‘History of the Prittie Family in Ireland’ (unpublished, private possession), pp. 22–23.
99. Irish Times, 15 July, 12 Aug. 1922.
100. Howard Dudley to Lord Dunalley, 19 July 1922 (NLI, Dunalley papers, MS 29,810 (17)).
101. Samuel Doupe to Lord Dunalley, 9 Aug. 1922, ibid.
102. Howard Dudley to Lord Dunalley, 20 Aug. 1922, ibid.
103. Paddy Ryan, ‘A Hot August Night 1922’, in Silvermines Historical Society, Mourning the Past: The History, People and Places of Silvermines District (2020), p. 5.
104. Howard Dudley to Lord Dunalley, 1 May 1923 (NLI, Dunalley papers, MS 29,810).
105. J.H. Dudley to Dunalley, 18 May 1923, ibid.
106. J.H. Dudley to C.H. Maude [agent], 1 May 1923, ibid.
107. Ibid.
108. Ibid.
109. Quoted in Byrne, ‘The Burning of Kilboy’, pp. 66–67.
110. Irish Land Commission to Lord Dunalley, 27 Dec. 1924 (NLI, Dunalley papers, MS 29,810 (20)).
111. Hopkinson, Green against Green, p. 165.
112. Gerard Lyne, The Lansdowne Estate in Kerry Under W.S. Trench, 1849–72 (Dublin, 2001).
113. Patrick M. Geoghegan, ‘Fitzmaurice, Henry Charles Keith Petty 5th Marquess of Lansdowne’, in James McGuire and James Quinn (eds), Dictionary of Irish Biography, (Cambridge, 2009). (http://dib.cambridge.org/viewReadPage.do?articleId=a3224)
114. Irish Times, 3 Oct. 1922.
115. Rev. Almoner to Minister for Home Affairs, 22 Oct. 1923; (NAI, Dept. of Justice files, H5/135).
116. John Keane, diary 1, 6 June 1922; quoted in Symes, Sir John Keane, p. 12.
117. Quoted in ibid., p. 37.
118. Quoted in ibid., p. 38.
119. Quoted in ibid., p. 42.
120. Quoted in ibid., p. 33.
121. Ibid., p. 32.
122. Irish Independent, 23 June 1923; Anthony Kinsella, ‘The Special Infantry Force’, The Irish Sword, vol. xx, no. 82 (1997), pp. 331–47.
123. Quoted in Symes, Sir John Keane, p. 42.
124. Dáil Debates, vol. 2, no. 35, 1 Mar. 1923, 1857.
125. Irish Times, 18 Apr. 1922.
126. Ibid., 19 Apr. 1922.
127. Ibid.
128. Patrick Hogan to W.T. Cosgrave, 18 Apr. 1923: Memo on Terms of Proposed Land Bill (NAI, Dept. of Taoiseach files, S3192); Memo by Patrick Hogan on 1920 Land Bill, 14 Dec. 1922 (NAI, Dept. of Taoiseach files, S1995).
129. An Act to Amend the Law Relating to the Occupation and Ownership of Land and for Other Purposes Relating Thereto [no. 42, 9 Aug. 1923]; An Act to Provide for the Preservation of Public Safety and the Protection of Person and Property and for Matters Connected Therewith or Arising out of the Present Emergency [no. 28, 1 Aug. 1923]; An Act to Alter the Law Relating to Compensation for Criminal Injuries [no. 15, 12 May 1923].
130. Heather Crawford, Outside the Glow: Protestantism and Irishness in Independent Ireland (Dublin, 2010), p. 16.
131. Jones, ‘Land Reform Legislation’, pp. 116–19.
132. Quoted in Clark, Everyday Violence in the Irish Civil War, p. 127.
6 ‘Grass Grows Where the Saloons Were’: A Case Study of Mitchelstown Castle
1. Irish Examiner, 29 Apr. 1926; see also Bill Power, White Knights, Dark Earls: The Rise and Fall of an Anglo-Irish Dynasty (Cork, 2000).
2. Quoted in King-Harman, The Kings, Earls of Kingston, p. 258; there are scraps of detail in the compensation claim file, Mitchelstown Castle (NAI, DIN/COMP/2/4/2191).
3. Quoted in Power, White Knights, p. 226.
4. https://archiseek.com/2012/1823-mitchelstown-castle-mitchelstown-co-cork/
5. Samuel Lewis, A Topographical Dictionary (London, 1937) https://www.libraryireland.com/topog/M/Mitchelstown-Clongibbons-Cork.php
6. King-Harman, The Kings, Earls of Kingston, pp. 81–82.
7. Col W.A. King-Harman of Mitchelstown, Co Cork (TNA, CO 762/29/1).
8. King-Harman, The Kings, pp. 246–48.
9. Londonderry Sentinel, 8 Aug. 1922.
10. Power, White Knights, p. 224.
11. Patrick J. Luddy, BMH, WS 1,151, p. 1.
12. Ibid., pp. 1–3.
13. Ibid., p. 1.
14. Raymond Gillespie, ‘Foreword’, in O’Riordan, East Galway Agrarian Agitation, p. 2.
15. Donnelly, Land and People of Nineteenth-Century Cork, pp. 278–82, 335–47.
16. Ibid., p. 278.
17. For a comprehensive description of the Land War era on the estate see Power, White Knights, pp. 150ff.
18. King-Harman, The Kings, Earls of Kingston, p. 238.
19. Donnelly, Land and People of Nineteenth-Century Cork, p. 282.
20. King-Harman, The Kings, Earls of Kingston, p. 243.
21. Arthur O’Connor to Kingston tenants in January 1887; quoted in Donnelly, Land and People of Nineteenth-Century Cork, p. 342.
22. Andrew Gailey, ‘Failure and the Making of the New Ireland’, in Boyce (ed.), The Revolution in Ireland, p. 54.
23. Donnelly, Land and People of Nineteenth-Century Cork, pp. 341–45; Power, White Knights, pp. 164–88.
24. R.V. Comerford, Foreword, in Dooley and Ridgway (eds.), The Irish Country House, p. 11.
25. Power, White Knights¸ p. 206.
26. Quoted in ibid., p. 188.
27. Cork Constitution, 4 Nov. 1909.
28. Bowen, Bowen’s Court, p. 324; see also, Nora Robertson, Crowned Harp: Memories of the Last Years of the Crown in Ireland (Dublin, 1960), p. 88.
29. Power, White Knights, p. 217.
30. Proinnsias Breathnach, ‘Creamery Attacks’, in Crowley et al. (eds.), Atlas of the Irish Revolution, pp. 555–57.
31. Power, White Knights, p. 218.
32. Patrick J. Luddy, BMH, WS 1151.
33. Bowen, Bowen’s Court, p. 324.
34. Irish Times, 29 Apr. 1926.
35. Quoted in Power, White Knights, p. 222.
36. Cornelia Adair to Mr Roberts, 2 Aug. 1920 (on public display, Glenveagh Castle).
37. Power, White Knights, p. 222.
38. Cork Examiner, 23 Aug. 1922; Hopkinson, Green against Green, p. 164.
39. Irish Times, 29 Apr. 1926.
40. Ibid.
41. Weekly Freeman’s Journal, 5 Nov. 1910.
42. Comerford, ‘Foreword’, p. 11.
43. Quoted in ibid., p. 247.
44. Col W.A. King-Harman (TNA, CO 762/29/1).
45. Power, White Knights, p. 225.
46. Ibid., pp. 225–26
47. Quoted in Irish Times, June 2000.
48. Sligo Champion, 23 Feb. 1924.
49. Dooley, Decline of the Big House, pp. 197–207; Clark, Everyday Violence in the Irish Civil War, especially pp. 18–53; McDowell, Crisis & Decline, pp. 137–62; Niamh Brennan, ‘A Political Minefield: Southern Loyalists, the Irish Grants Committee and the British Government, 1922–31’, Irish Historical Studies, vol. 30, no. 119 (May, 1997), pp. 406–19.
50. Report by J.J. Butler for Board of Works, 10 June 1924, Damage to Property Compensation Act 1923, claim of Arthur Webber, Mitchelstown Castle, Co Cork, Dec. 1925 (NAI, Board of Works files, 2D/62/73, no. 1157/m); quoted in Power, White Knights, p. 237 [this file could not be located by this author in the NAI].
51. Ibid.
52. Power, White Knights, p. 227.
53. Irish Examiner, 29 Apr. 1926.
54. Quoted in Power, White Knights, p. 227.
55. Irish Examiner, 29 Apr. 1926.
56. Power, White Knights, p. 249.
57. Report by J.J. Butler for Board of Works, 10 June 1924.
58. Quoted in Power, White Knights, p. 239.
59. Hampshire Telegraph, 16 July 1926.
60. Power, White Knights, p. 227.
61. Ibid., p. 240.
62. Col W.A. King-Harman (CO, TNA 762/29/1; the compensation process is dealt with in the next chapter.
63. Quoted in King-Harman, The Kings, Earls of Kingston, p. 258.
64. Col W.A. King-Harman (TNA, CO 762/29/1.
65. Ibid.
66. King-Harman, The Kings, Earls of Kingston, p. 248.
67. Col. W.A. King-Harman (TNA, CO 762/29/1; King-Harman, The Kings, Earls of Kingston, p. 81.
68. Col W.A. King-Harman (TNA, CO 762/29/1).
69. Ibid.
70. Quoted in King-Harman, The Kings, Earls of Kingston, pp. 265–66.
71. Col W.A. King-Harman (TNA, CO 762/29/1).
72. Ibid.
73. Ibid.
74. Power, White Knights, p. 244.
75. Ibid., p. 244.
76. Ibid., p. 246.
77. Ibid.
78. Ibid., p. 245.
79. Dooley, ‘The Land for the People’, pp. 99–131.
80. Power, White Knights, p. 245.
7 ‘There Were Hens Roosting on Valuable Oil Paintings’: Destruction and Looting, 1920–23
1. Irish Times, 5 Nov. 1921.
2. The latter figure according to O’Riordan, East Galway Agrarian Agitation, p. 33.
3. Irish Times, 3 June 1921.
4. Frank O’Connor, BMH, WS 1309, p. 22.
5. Cork Constitution, 27 May 1920.
6. The burnings of 1920 form the backdrop to Elizabeth Bowen’s, The Last September (London, 1929).
7. Fingall, Seventy Years Young, pp. 434–35.
8. Ibid., p. 439.
9. Quoted in Philip Bull, Monksgrange: Portrait of an Irish House and Family, 1769–1969 (Dublin, 2019), p. 202.
10. Quoted in ibid., p. 206.
11. Thomas Costello, BMH, WS 1296, p. 21.
12. Cork Constitution, 6 Apr. 1921.
13. Donnelly, ‘Big House Burnings in Cork’, pp. 160–61.
14. Ibid., p. 161.
15. Irish Times, 9 July 1921.
16. Ibid.
17. Mary Waller-Sawyer to J.E. Duggan, 27 Jan. 1922 (NAI, Dept. of Justice files, H5/35).
18. Ibid.
19. Irish Times, 7, 21 Oct. 1922.
20. Clermont Park, Louth, TNA 62/112/3.
21. Ann Dolan, ‘Killing in “the Good Old Irish Fashion”? Irish Revolutionary Violence in Context’, Irish Historical Studies, (2020), 44 (165), p. 24; Fearghal McGarry, ‘Revolution, 1916–1923’ in Thomas Bartlett (ed.), The Cambridge History of Ireland, IV: 1880 to the Present (Cambridge, 2018), p. 258.
22. Kildare Observer, 3 Feb. 1923.
23. Clark, Everyday Violence in the Irish Civil War, p. 191.
24. Ibid.
25. Smith, Former People, pp. 79–80.
26. Jaap Scholten, Comrade Baron: A Journey Through the Vanishing World of the Transylvanian Aristocracy (St Helena CA, 2016), pp. 96, 151–52, 231, 248.
27. Ibid., p. 218.
28. Quoted in ibid., p. 5.
29. Quoted in Smith, Former People, p. 165.
30. Irish Times, 7 Feb. 1920.
31. Cork Constitution, 21 Sept. 1920.
32. Northern Standard, 21 Feb. 1920.
33. Ibid.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid.
36. Quoted in Bence-Jones, Twilight of the Ascendancy, p. 211.
37. Quoted in Hone, The Moores of Moore Hall, p. 264.
38. Fingall, Seventy Years Young, p. 414.
39. Irish Times, 21 July 1921.
40. Ibid., 7 July 1921.
41. A.F. McEntee, Memories of a Lifetime in Journalism in Cavan (Cavan, n.d.), pp. 173–74. My thanks to P.J. Dunne of Cavan for bringing this to my attention.
42. Desart Court (NAI, FIN/COMP/2/10/104).
43. Irish Times, 21 Oct. 1921.
44. Ibid., 5 Sept. 1922.
45. Leinster Leader, 3 Feb. 1923.
46. Earl of Ossory, ‘The Attack on Kilkenny Castle’, Journal of the Butler Society, vol. I, no. 4 (1972), p. 261.
47. Ibid., p. 273.
48. Ibid., pp. 262–65, 273.
49. K.M. Lanigan, Kilkenny Castle (n.d.), p. 15.
50. Earl of Ossory, ‘The Attack on Kilkenny Castle’, p. 273.
51. Irish Times, 8 Oct. 1921.
52. Lady Wallscourt, Ardfry, Co Galway (TNA, CO 762/115/12).
53. M.J. Crotty to Secretary of Board of Works, 14 Jan. 1925 (NAI, FIN Comp/210/44).
54. James Mackay Wilson, Currygrane, Co Longford (NAI, OPW/1/18/2/43). My thanks to Dr Marie Coleman for sharing this source with me.
55. Irish Times, 12 Nov. 1921.
56. Quoted in Freeman’s Journal, 12 Mar. 1923.
57. Sir Thomas Esmonde to Lord Eversley, 20 June 1923 (NAI, Esmonde papers, 981/4/8/2).
58. Sir Thomas Esmonde to President W.T. Cosgrave, 8 May 1925 (NAI, Esmonde papers, 981/4/8/5).
59. Paula Hornstein to Sir Thomas Esmonde, 21 May 1923; (NAI, Esmonde papers, 981/4/8/1).
60. Howard Dudley to Lord Dunalley, 12 Aug. 1922 (NLI, Dunalley papers, MS 29,810 (17)).
61. Jack Lucas-Scudmore to Sybil Lucas-Scudamore, 17 Mar. 1920 (private possession).
62. Gill Lucas-Scudamore to Sybil Lucas-Scudamore, n.d. (private possession).
63. Connaught Tribune, 5 May 1923.
64. Irish Times, 12 Aug. 1922.
65. Robert Bevan, The Destruction of Memory: Architecture at War (London, 2006), p. 84.
66. David Lloyd George to Hamar Greenwood, 25 Feb. 1921 (House of Lords Record Office, Lloyd George papers, F/19/3/4); quoted at https://www.theauxiliaries.com/
67. Stathis N. Kalyvas, ‘The Ontology of “Political Violence”: Action and Identity in Civil Wars’, Perspectives on Politics, vol. 1, no. 3 (Sept. 2003), p. 475; idem., ‘“New” and “Old” Civil Wars: A Valid Distinction’, World Politics, 54, no.1 (Oct. 2001), p. 106.
68. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian Wars (Rex Warner trans, London, 1972); F.W. Rafferty (ed.), ‘Peace and War: The Maxims and Reflections of Burke’; https://www.ourcivilisation.com/smartboard/shop/burkee/maxims/chap17.htm
69. Weekly Irish Times, 17 Mar. 1923.
70. Ibid., 28 Apr. 1923.
71. Westmeath Guardian, 8 July, 5 Aug. 1921; Irish Times, 4 Aug. 1921.
72. Eleanor Flegg, ‘Treasures: Losing the Family Silver’, Independent.ie, 13 Apr 2018. https://www.independent.ie/life/home-garden/treasures-losing-the-family-silver-36801180.html [Accessed 13 Apr. 2020].
73. Ibid.
74. S. Douglas to Lord Dunalley, n.d.; J.H. Dudley to Lord Dunalley, 7 August 1922; W. Harkness to Lord Dunalley, 12 August 1922 (NLI, Dunalley papers, MS 29,810 (17)).
75. Irish Times, 30 Aug. 1922.
76. Report of Garda A.J.P. Stapleton (NAI, FIN Comp 2/10/104).
77. Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence, p. 46.
78. Quoted in Joe Power, Clare and the Civil War (Dublin, 2020), p. 88.
79. My thanks to Prof Chris Ridgway for his many insights on this subject.
80. Claim of J. Lee and J.C. Dixon for damage to Glenfarne Hall, Co Leitrim, 8 May 1923 (NAI, OPW files, 2D/62/76).
81. Samuel Doupe to Lord Dunalley, 6 Aug. 1922 (NLI, Dunalley papers, MS 29,810 (17)).
82. Marigold Freeman-Atwood, Leap: A Place and its People (London, 2001), pp. 140–41.
83. Henry Saunderson, The Saundersons of Castlesaunderson (London, 1936), p. 73.
84. Sligo Champion, 23 Feb. 1924; my thanks to Dr Donal Hall for sharing this information with me.
85. Lord Ashtown, Woodlawn, Co Galway, TNA, 762/15/10.
86. Irish Times, 18 Aug. 1922.
87. Warrenscourt, Co Cork, TNA, 762/101/2.
88. S. Simpson to Sybil Lucas-Scudamore, 19 Mar. 1921 (private possession).
89. Macroom Castle, Co Cork (NAI, FIN/COMP/ 2/4/1).
90. Mount Uniacke, Co Cork (NAI, FIN/COMP/2/4/127).
91. Tuam Herald, 2 Feb. 1923.
92. Derreen, Co Kerry (TNA, CO 762/63/1).
93. Winston Churchill to W.T. Cosgrove, 22 Sept. 1922 (NAI, Dept. of Taoiseach files, S1940).
94. Derreen, Co Kerry (TNA CO 762/63/1).
95. Extracts of Lord Lansdowne’s agent’s report enclosed in Lord Lansdowne to Winston Churchill, 20 Sept. 1922 (NA, Dept. of Taoiseach files, S1940).
96. Ibid.
97. Derreen, Co Kerry (TNA CO 762/63/1).
98. Copy W.T. Cosgrave to Winston Churchill, 23 Oct. 1922; ibid.
99. Military Courts – General Regulations as to Trials of Civilians, 2 Oct. 1922; http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/1922/sro/905/made/en/print
100. Dáil Debates, vol. 3, no. 38, 7 Mar. 1923, https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/dail/1923-03-07/10/; Weekly Freeman’s Journal, 17 Mar. 1923.
101. Dáil Debates, vol. 4, no. 10, 16 July 1923, https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/dail/1923-07-16/9/
102. Foster, The Irish Civil War, p. 39.
103. Ibid.
104. Power, White Knights, p. 227.
105. Mealy’s and Christie’s, The Murnaghan Collection Auction Catalogue (14 Oct. 1999).
106. Ibid.
107. Irish Times, 6 Mar. 2019 [online version].
108. Robinson, Bryan Cooper, p. 139.
109. Co Offaly, Durrow Abbey, Dictionary of Irish Architects 1720–1940. http://www.dia.ie/works/view/2899/building; my thanks to Dr Ciaran Reilly for this reference.
110. Irish Times, 27 Jan. 1999.
111. J.H. Dudley to Lord Dunalley, 20, 26 Oct. 1925 (NLI, Dunalley papers, MS 29,810).
112. Ibid.
113. Public Safety (Emergency Powers) (no. 2) Act, no. 23, 3 Aug. 1923.
114. Irish Times, 21 Apr. 1922.
115. Ibid.
116. Bowen, Bowen’s Court, p. 327.
117. Quoted in Somerville-Large, The Irish Country House, p. 356.
118. Quoted in O’Byrne, The Last Knight, p. 97.
119. Irish Examiner, 29 Apr. 1926.
120. See O’Byrne, The Last Knight.
121. Dooley, Decline of the Big House, pp. 138–39.
122. Irish Times, 13 Sept. 1921.
123. Ibid., 6 Aug. 1921.
124. Ibid., 13 Aug. 1921.
125. Ibid., 24 Dec. 1921.
126. McCarthy, ‘From Landlord to Rentier’.
127. Terence Dooley, The Decline and Fall of the Dukes of Leinster: Love, War, Debt and Madness (Dublin, 2014).
128. G. Crutchley to Charles Hamilton, 15 Feb. 1922 (Hamilton papers, private possession).
129. Terence Dooley, ‘Carton House and its Contents: Collection and Dispersal in Context, 1729–1949’, in Terence Dooley and Christopher Ridgway (eds.), Country House Collections: Their Lives and Afterlives (Dublin, 2021), pp. 45–80.
130. Annotated copy of Catalogue of Auction at Killua Castle, 2 June 1920 (National Gallery of Ireland); Dunne, ‘Aristocracy in County Westmeath’, p. 28.
131. Dooley, Decline of the Big House, p. 140.
132. For example, Cynthia Saltzman, Old Masters, New World: America’s Raid on Europe’s Great Pictures (New York, 2009).
133. My thanks to Cora McDonagh for this information.
8 ‘Sermons in Stones’: Compensating Country House Owners
1. Sligo Champion, 23 Feb. 1924 (taken from Irish Statesman).
2. Ibid.; Clark, Everyday Violence in the Irish Civil War, pp. 18–53.
3. Ronan Fanning, The Irish Department of Finance, 1922–58 (Dublin, 1978), p. 139.
4. Howard Dudley to Lord Dunalley, 8 Nov. 1922, 14 May 1923 (NLI, Dunalley papers, MS 29,810).
5. R. Walker to Lord Dunalley, 20 May 1924; ibid.
6. Mount Uniacke, Co Cork (NAI, Fin/Comp/2/4/127).
7. Castleboro, Co Wexford (TNA CO762/82/3).
8. Insurance policy for Doneraile Park (NLI, Doneraile papers, MS 34,108/3).
9. An Act for Amending the Law Relating to Local Government in Ireland and for Other Purposes Connected Therewith (61 and 62 Vict., c. xxxvii (12 August 1898)); An Act to Amend the Enactments Relative to Compensation for Criminal Injuries in Ireland (9 and 10 Geo. V, c. lxvi (16 April 1919)); An Act to Amend the Enactments Relative to Compensation for Criminal Injuries in Ireland (10 and 11 Geo. V, c. lxvi (23 December 1920)).
10. Macroom Castle, Co Cork (NAI FIN/COMP/2/4/1).
11. Charles Townshend, ‘British Policy in Ireland, 1906–1921’, in D.G. Boyce (ed.), The Revolution in Ireland, 1879–1923 (Dublin, 1988), p. 189.
12. Irish Times, 10 June 1921; The Liberator, 15 June 1920.
13. The Liberator, 15 June 1920.
14. Irish Times, 29 Sept. 1920.
15. Ibid., 22 Oct. 1921.
16. Ibid., 9 Oct. 1920.
17. Westmeath Examiner, 29 Oct. 1921; Dunne, ‘Aristocracy in County Westmeath’ pp. 309–10.
18. Irish Independent, 5 Mar. 1923; Dunne, ‘Aristocracy in County Westmeath’, p. 309.
19. Irish Times, 29 Oct. 1921.
20. Limerick Leader, 9 Feb. 1921.
21. Ibid.
22. Compensation (Ireland) Commission: Interim Report no. 3, 21 October 1922 (NAI, Dept. of Finance files, 169/65); Irish Times, 14, 22 October 1921.
23. Tom Nelson, Through Peace and War: Kildare County Council in the Years of Revolution (Kildare, 2015).
24. Irish Times, 5 Dec. 1921.
25. Quoted in Bence-Jones, Twilight of the Ascendancy, p. 238.
26. Fanning, Irish Department of Finance, p. 139.
27. Criminal Injuries Compensation Commission. HC Deb 08 May 1922 vol. 153 cc1774-6. https://Api.Parliament.Uk/Historic-Hansard/Commons/1922/May/08/Criminal-Injuries-Compensation-Commission
28. Compensation for Damage to Property in Ireland, Cmd 2445, 293 (1925).
29. Compensation Commission: Procedure for dealing with cases: minute sheet initialled by ‘J.D.’ to Mr O’Brien, 25 July 1922 (NA, Dept. of Finance files, 169/40).
30. A.P. Waterfield to Joseph Brennan, 21 Oct. 1922 (NAI, Dept. of Finance files, 169/40).
31. Dunedin Committee, ‘Case of Sullivan, Herbert’ n.d. (TNA, CO905).
32. Compensation (Ireland) Commission: Interim Report no. 1, 6 December 1925; (NAI, Dept. of Finance files, 169/40).
33. Irish Times, 23 May 1922.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid.
37. Ibid., 22 Sept. 1919.
38. Ibid., 22 Sept. 1923.
39. Bence-Jones, Twilight of the Ascendancy, pp. 238–39.
40. Mark Sturgis to Secretary Provisional Government, 26 July 1922; quoted in Compensation for Malicious Injuries in Ireland, [Cmd 1736], HC 1922, xvii; Marie Coleman, ‘Sturgis, Sir Mark Beresford Russell Grant’, in McGuire and Quinn (eds), Dictionary of Irish Biography.
41. McDowell, Crisis and Decline, p. 140.
42. Dunedin Committee, ‘Notes on Compensation for Malicious Injury Payable to the Irish Free State government’, (TNA, CO905).
43. Ibid.
44. Morning Post, 2 Apr. 1923.
45. Quoted in Buckland, Irish Unionism I, p. 214.
46. R.C. Williams to Office of Public Works, 3 May 1922 (NAI, Dept. of Finance files, 169/17).
47. Desart Court, Co Kilkenny (NAI FIN/COMP/2/10/104).
48. Mount Uniacke, Co Cork (NAI, FIN/COMP/2/4/127).
49. Compensation (Ireland) Commission: Final Report, March 1926 (NA, Dept. of Finance files, 19/2/6).
50. Hansard, 7 July 1922, Col. 1725–26.
51. Compensation for Malicious Injuries in Ireland: Letter to the Provisional Government, Cmd 1736, 1922.
52. Bonar Law at Hotel Cecil, 23 Oct. 1922; quoted in Dunedin Committee, ‘Compensation Notes in Command Papers: Extracts from Speeches, Pledges, etc’ (TNA, CO905).
53. Quoted in Compensation for Southern Irish Loyalists [6 Nov. 1925] (TNA, CO905, DO 50925/25).
54. Compensation Act 1923.
55. Dromoland, Co Clare (TNA 762/14/21).
56. Compensation Claims Register (NAI, OPW files 2D/62/60-9).
57. Howard Dudley to Lord Dunalley, 13 Mar. 1924 (NLI, Dunalley papers, MS 29,810 (19)).
58. Howard Dudley to Lord Dunalley, 10 Apr. 1924; ibid.
59. R. Dudley to Lord Dunalley, 27 May 1924; ibid.
60. Morning Post, 2 Apr. 1923.
61. Ibid.
62. Howard Dudley to Lord Dunalley, 13 May 1923 (NLI, Dunalley papers, MS 29,810).
63. Ibid.
64. Lord Devonshire to T.M. Healy, 24 Mar.1923 (NAI, Dept. of Taoiseach files, S2158).
65. Draft of Statement by President W.T. Cosgrave, 27 May 1923 (NAI, Dept. of Taoiseach files, S2158).
66. Minutes of conference to discuss Compensation Act, 30 June 1923 (NAI, Dept. of Finance files, FIN 1/2895).
67. Macroom Castle, Co Cork (NAI, FIN/COMP/2/4/1).
68. Brennan, ‘A Political Minefield’, p. 413.
69. Crooke, White Elephants, pp. 6–7.
70. Draft of statement by President W.T. Cosgrave, 26 March 1923 (NAI, Dept. of Taoiseach files, S2188).
71. Ibid.
72. Dunedin Committee, terms of reference, no. 1 (TNA, CO 905).
73. Irish Times, 14 Apr. 1923.
74. Ibid., 29 Mar. 1923.
75. Peter Mandler, The Fall and Rise of the Stately Home (New Haven and London, 1997).
76. Damage to Property (Compensation) Act, 1923: Register of Claims (NAI, OPW files, 2D/62/60-69).
77. Kildare Observer, 3 Mar. 1923, 29 Nov. 1924.
78. Irish Times, 13 Sept. 1927.
79. Quoted in O’Riordan, East Galway Agrarian Agitation,, p. 39.
80. Leinster Leader, 12 Dec. 1925; my gratitude to Mario Corrigan for providing information on this case.
81. Ibid.
82. Symes, Sir John Keane, p. 57.
83. David Rowe and Eithne Scallan, Houses of Wexford (Whitegate, 2004), not paginated; Bence Jones, A Guide to Irish Country Houses, p. 26.
84. Inventory and valuation of furniture at Ballynastragh, Feb. 1910 (NAI, Esmonde papers, 981/42) [hereafter Esmonde Inventory, 1910].
85. The People, 28 Feb. 1925.
86. Esmonde Inventory, 1910.
87. List of contents burned at Ballynastragh, Mar. 1923 (NAI, Esmonde papers, 981/4/5).
88. D. Barrett, ‘Circular to Dublin Metropolitan Police Criminal Investigation Department’, 12 Apr. 1924 (NLI, Esmonde papers, 981/4/8/2).
89. Messrs Miller and Beatty to Sir Thomas Esmonde, 11 Jan. 1923 (NAI, Esmonde papers, 981/4/2/26).
90. Sir Thomas Esmonde to Lord Eversley, 20 June 1923 (NAI, Esmonde papers, 981/4/8/2).
91. Sir T. Esmonde versus Minister for Finance, February 1925; (NAI, Esmonde papers 981/4/9/4).
92. Echo and South Leinster Adventurer, 1 August 1925.
93. Myles Higgins to Sir Thomas Esmonde, 13 March 1925 (NAI, Esmonde papers, 981/4/9/1).
94. Irish Independent, 9 Dec. 1924.
95. Sir Thomas Esmonde to President W.T. Cosgrave, 8 May 1925 (NAI, Esmonde papers, 981/4/8/5).
96. Sir Thomas Esmonde to Philip Hanson, 28 Jan. 1924 (NAI, Esmonde papers, 981/4/2/26).
97. Sir Thomas Esmonde to President W.T. Cosgrave, 27 July 1925; (NAI, Esmonde papers, 981/4/9/9).
98. Joseph Brennan to Sir Thomas Esmonde, 6 January 1926; ibid.
99. Lord Danesfort to Lord Dunedin, 11 Nov. 1925 (TNA, Dunedin Committee papers, CO 905).
100. Brennan, ‘A Political Minefield’, p. 407.
101. Ibid., p. 415,
102. Ibid., p. 417; Clark, Everyday Violence in the Irish Civil War, pp. 23–27.
103. Cappoquin, Co Waterford (TNA CO762/82/11).
104. Marlfield, Co Tipperary (TNA CO762/95/19).
105. Quoted in Clark, Everyday Violence in the Irish Civil War, p. 27.
106. Frenchpark, Co Roscommon (TNA CO 762/146/16).
107. Castleboro, Co Wexford (TNA CO762/82/3).
108. Ibid.
109. King-Harman, The Kings, Earls of Kingston, p. 264.
110. Castleboro, Co Wexford (TNA CO762/82/3).
111. Ibid.
112. Ibid.
113. Symes, Sir John Keane, p. 50.
114. Ibid., p. 55.
115. S. and R.C. Walker to Lord Dunalley, 15 August 1924 (NLI, Dunalley papers, MS 29,810 (19)).
116. Howard Dudley to Lord Dunalley, 24 April 1924; ibid., MS 29,810 (19).
117. B.E.F. Sheehy (architect) to Dunalley, 14 April 1925; ibid., MS 29,810 (20).
118. Lord Dunalley, Khaki and Green (London, 1940), p. 248.
119. Terence Prittie, Through Irish Eyes (London, 1977), p. 42.
120. Prittie, 6th Baron Dunalley, ‘History of the Prittie family’ (unpublished, private possession), pp. 1, 27.
121. Prittie, Through Irish Eyes, p. 32.
122. Bence-Jones, Guide to Irish Country Houses, p. 164.
123. Country Life, 7 Sept. 2016.
124. Joseph Hone, The Moores of Moore Hall (London, 1936), p. 266.
125. Ibid., p. 267.
126. Derryquin Castle, Co Kerry (TNA, CO 62/58/1).
127. Ibid.
128. Ibid.
129. Col. W.A. King-Harman (TNA, CO 762/29/1); Irish Independent, 14 May 1926.
130. The same was true in Northern Ireland; Purdue, The Big House in the North of Ireland, p. 125.
131. Dunedin Committee, ‘Case no. 12 Mrs Uniacke’ n.d. (TNA, CO905).
132. Quoted in Weekly Telegraph, 10 Feb. 1923.
133. Fingall, Seventy Years Young, p. 440.
134. T.F. Crozier to Sybil Lucas-Scudamore, June 1921 (private possession).
135. Terence Dooley, A Future for Irish Historic Houses? (Dublin, 2003); https://www.irishheritagetrust.ie/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Historic-House-Survey-T-Dooley-2003-smaller-file-size.pdf
136. Butler, ‘Lord Oranmore’s Journal’, p. 591.
9 The End of Revolution?
1. Bevan, The Destruction of Memory, p. 16.
2. Ibid., pp. 51–52.
3. Timothy Mawe, ‘A Comparative Survey of the Historical Debates Surrounding Ireland, World War I and the Irish Civil War’, Historical Studies, 13 (2012); quoted in O’Riordan, East Galway Agrarian Agitation, p. 51.
4. Dáil Debates, vol. 3, 28 May 1923, 1163.
5. Ibid., 1818.
6. Ibid., vol. 12, 17 June 1925, 1143.
7. Anton Lucas and Carol Warren (eds.), Land for the People: The State and Agrarian Conflict in Indonesia (Ohio, 2013); see, for example, Brian DeMare, Land Wars: The Stories of China’s Agrarian Revolution (Stanford, 2018); E.J. Hooglund, Land and Revolution in Iran, 1960–1980 (Texas, 2012); Dana Markiewicz, The Mexican Revolution and the Limits of Agrarian Reform (1993).
8. Robert Gerwarth, The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End, 1917–1923 (New York, 2016) pp. 10, 35, 153–59.
9. Helga Baitenmann, ‘Popular Participation in State Formation: Land Reform in Revolutionary Mexico’, Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 43 no. 1 (Feb. 2011), pp. 1–31.
10. Foster, The Irish Civil War, p. 27; John M. Regan, The Irish Counter-Revolution, 1921–1936: Treatyite Politics and Settlement in Independent Ireland (Dublin, 1999).
11. Kevin O’Higgins, ‘Mexican Politics’ (UCD, O’Higgins papers, P197/137); Free State, 18 Mar. 1922; Address by Kevin O’Higgins to the Irish Society at Oxford University, 31 Oct. 1924 (UCD, O’Higgins papers, P197/141); Regan, The Irish Counter-Revolution, pp. 244–45.
12. See chapter 6; Paul Bew, Ellen Hazelkorn, Henry Patterson, The Dynamics of Irish Politics (London, 1989), pp. 22–23; Brian O’Neill, The War for the Land in Ireland (London, 1933), p.104; on the land courts and their success, [Erskine Childers], The Constructive Work of Dáil Éireann: no. 2 (1921), pp. 9–14; J.J. Lee, Ireland 1912–1985: Politics and Society (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 113–15; Mary Kotsonouris, Retreat From Revolution: Dáil Courts, 1920–1924 (Dublin, 1994).
13. Dáil Debates, vol 3, 28 May 1923, 1148, 1153–4.
14. Terence Dooley and Tony McCarthy, ‘The 1923 Land Act: Some New Perspectives’, in Mel Farrell, Jason Knirck and Ciara Meehan (eds.), A Formative Decade: Ireland in the 1920s (Dublin, 2015), pp. 132–156; Eunan O’Halpin, ‘Politics and the State 1922–32’, in J.R. Hill (ed,) A New History of Ireland Volume VII: Ireland 1921–84 (Oxford, 2010), p.116.
15. R. F. Foster, Modern Ireland 1600–1972 (London, 1989), p. 525; J.J. Lee, Ireland 1912–1985: Politics and Society (Cambridge, 1989), p. 97.
16. Patrick Hogan, ‘Seizure of Land’, 22 Dec. 1922 (NAI, Dept. of Taoiseach files, S 1943).
17. Dooley and McCarthy, ‘The 1923 Land Act’, pp. 132–55.
18. Financial Agreements Between the Irish Free State Government and the British Government, 12 Feb. 1923 (NAI, Dept. of Taoiseach files, S3459); Patrick Hogan, Memorandum on 1923 Land Bill Prepared for President W.T. Cosgrave, 18 Apr. 1923 (NAI, Dept. of Taoiseach files, S3192); ‘Irish Free State Land Purchase (Loan Guarantee): Memorandum Explaining Financial Resolution’, British Parliamentary Papers (1924–25), H.C. [Cmd. 2286]. See also, Maurice Moore, British Plunder and Irish Blunder: The Story of the Land Purchase Annuities (Dublin, 1927).
19. Dáil Debates, vol. 3, 28 May 1923, 1161–62.
20. Ibid., vol. 3, 14 June 1923, 1972.
21. Sammon, In the Land Commission, p. 279.
22. Patrick Hogan, Report on the Land Purchase and Arrears Conference of 10–11 Apr. 1923, 17 Apr. 1923 (UCD, Blythe papers, P24/174).
23. Dáil Debates, vol. 3, 28 May 1923, 1165.
24. Patrick Hogan to W.T. Cosgrave, 18 Apr. 1923: Memo on Terms of Proposed Land Bill (NAI, Dept. of Taoiseach files, S3192).
25. Sheehan, ‘The 1923 Land Act’, p. 135.
26. Ibid., pp. 264–77.
27. David Seth Jones, ‘Land Reform Legislation and Security of Tenure in Ireland after Independence’ in Éire-Ireland, vol. 33–34, no. 4 (1997), pp. 116–43; Regan, The Irish Counter-Revolution, p. 204.
28. Pashman, Building a Revolutionary State, p. 3.
29. Sammon, In the Land Commission, pp. 264–79.
30. George Morgan to Sybil Lucas-Scudamore, 6 Sept. 1920 (Lucas-Scudamore papers, private possession).
31. George Morgan to Sybil Lucas-Scudamore, 9 Feb., 21 Feb. 1921; ibid.
32. S. Simpson to Sybil Lucas-Scudamore, 19 Mar. 1921; ibid.
33. Ibid.
34. George Morgan to Sybil Lucas-Scudamore, 3, 30, 31 May 1920; ibid.
35. Crozier to Sybil Lucas-Scudamore, 1 Mar. 1922; ibid.
36. Report of M.T. Henchey, 30 June, I July 1931; ibid.
37. David Seth Jones, Graziers, Land Reform and Political Conflict in Ireland (Washington, 1995), p. 219.
38. Dáil Debates, vol. 92, 23 Feb. 1944.
39. Crooke, White Elephants, pp. 128–34.
40. Memo for Government: ‘Preservation of Mansions and Large Houses’, 5 Aug. 1958; quoted in Crooke, White Elephants, p. 128.
41. Ibid., p. 127.
42. ‘Table A: Big Houses in Hands of Land Commission, 5 Aug. 1958’; Crooke, White Elephants, pp. 247–51.
43. Knight of Glin, D.J. Griffin, N.K. Robinson, Vanishing Country Houses of Ireland (Dublin, 1988), p. 136.
44. Dáil Debates, vol. 164, 30 Oct. 1957, 229–30; Sammon, In the Land Commission, p. 45.
45. Glin et al., Vanishing Country Houses, p. 136.
46. Somerville-Large, The Irish Country House, p. 357; Cannadine, Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy, pp. 90–103.
47. L.P. Curtis Jr, ‘The Last Gasp of Southern Unionism: Lord Ashtown of Woodlawn’, Éire-Ireland, vol. 40, 3:4 (2005), pp. 140–88.
48. Frank McDonald, ‘The Mansions Left to Fall into Decay’, Irish Times, 1 Nov. 2012.
49. Ballinahinch, TNA CO762/82/9
50. Dáil Debates, vol. 17, 7 Dec. 1926, 466.
51. Ibid., vol. 18, 17 Feb. 1927, 622–3.
52. Ibid., vol. 19, 25 Mar. 1927, 1123–4.
53. Ibid., vol. 19, 25 Mar. 1927, 101
54. Ibid., vol. 21, 4 Nov. 1927, 854.
55. Ibid., vol. 40, 11, 25 Nov. 1931, 1201, 1998.
56. Purdue, The Big House in the North of Ireland, pp. 150, 236.
57. Ibid., p. 217.
58. Minutes of Proceedings of Dáil Éireann, 1 Mar. 1922, p. 144.
59. Ibid., vol. 28, 7 Mar. 1929.
60. Ibid., vol. 13, 2 Dec. 1925, 1109.
61. Richard Dunphy, The Making of Fianna Fáil Power in Ireland 1923–1948 (Oxford, 1995), p. 75.
62. Ibid.
63. T. E. Duffy, ‘Old Irish Republican Army Organisation: County of Meath and Environs: Report and Schemes with Appendices Presented to President de Valera and his Government for Consideration’, May 1933 (UCD, Aiken papers, P104/2887); Irish Press, 16, 17, 18 Jan. 1933.
64. Dooley, ‘Land for the people’, pp. 99–130.
65. Jones, Graziers, p. 217.
66. Fianna Fáil, A Brief Outline of the Aims and Programme of Fianna Fáil (Dublin, n.d.), p. 4.
67. An Act to Amend Generally the Law, Finance and Practice Relating to Land Purchase . . ., no. 38/1933 [13 Oct. 1933].
68. Meath Chronicle, 19 Jan. 1935.
69. P.J. Davern to Frank Aiken enclosing resolutions passed by United Republican Association of County Tipperary, 2 Apr. 1933 (UCD, Aiken papers, P104/2875).
70. Report of Thurles Conference of IRA, 2 Oct. 1932 (UCD, Twomey papers, P69/54 (37)).
71. Inspectorate notice no. 11/35: signed by S.J. Waddell, Commissioner and Chief Inspector of Irish Land Commission, 4 May 1935 (NAI, Dept. of Taoiseach, S 6490 (A)).
72. Meath Chronicle, 16 Mar. 1935.
73. Since I first wrote about this incident, the availability of a whole range of new sources including BMH witness statements and IRA pension files have shed much new light on this episode; Dooley, Decline of the Big House, pp. 175–78. I would like to thank Shaun Evans, Tony McCarthy and Annie Tindley, editors of Land Reform in the British and Irish Isles since 1800 (Edinburgh, 2001) for allowing me to publish this extended extract from my chapter which appears in the same.
74. Irish Times, 16 Apr. 1920.
75. Bernard Bourke, A Geneaological and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry of Ireland (London, 1912), p. 505.
76. James MacDonald and James Sinclair, History of Aberdeen Angus Cattle (London, 1910), pp. 327–41, 594.
77. Westmeath Independent, 21 Apr. 1923.
78. John Noel McEvoy, ‘A Study of the United Irish League in the King’s County, 1899–1918’ (MA thesis, NUI Maynooth, 1992), p. 29; Leinster Leader, 5 July 1902.
79. ‘Ratepayer’ to editor, Leinster Leader, 31 Dec. 1898.
80. Dooley, Decline of the Big House, pp. 160–65
81. C.J. Kingston to Under-Secretary, Dublin Castle, 16 Mar. 1915; http://www.rte.ie/centuryireland/images/uploads/further-reading/Ed48-KingsCountyRecruitingCombo2.pdf
82. Memoir of Frederick Beaumont-Nesbitt of Tubberdaly, King’s County (copy in author’s possession).
83. https://www.everyoneremembered.org/profiles/soldier/1751121/
84. Ibid.
85. Freeman’s Journal, 12 June 1919.
86. Memo by E.J. Beaumont-Nesbitt [hereafter EJB], ‘Tubberdaly, near Rhode, King’s County’, 28 May 1923 (NAI, Dept. of Justice files, 5/822).
87. On Kildare, see Tom Nelson, Through Peace and War: Kildare County Council in the Years of Revolution 1899–1926 (Kildare, 2015).
88. EJB to Mrs M. Savage-Armstrong, 19 Jan. 1925; quoted in Patrick Buckland, Irish Unionism, 1885–1923: A Documentary History (Belfast, 1973), p. 382.
89. Tullamore and King’s County Independent, 31 Jan. 1920.
90. Christopher Jones, IRA pension application, no. 2907, MSP34REF18628 http://mspcsearch.militaryarchives.ie/detail.aspx; Irish Examiner, 14 Nov. 1921.
91. IRA pension claim form, Mary Swords, 9 Feb. 1952, MSP34REF62664; I would like to thank Ciarán Reilly for bringing Mary Swords to my attention.
92. Reference of Col Liam Egan included in ibid.
93. EJB to Mrs Savage-Armstrong, 19 Jan. 1925; Buckland, Irish Unionism: A Documentary History, p. 382; Memo by EJB, ‘Tubberdaly, near Rhode, King’s County’, 28 May 1923 (NAI, Dept. of Justice files, 5/822).
94. Evening Herald, 1 July 1920.
95. Freeman’s Journal, 17 Apr. 1923; Eamonn Ó Cúgáin [Eamonn Coogan] to Secretary of Home Affairs, 2 July 1923 (NAI, Dept. of Justice files, 5/822).
96. Freeman’s Journal, 4 Aug. 1923.
97. Military Archives, Military Services Pension Collection, http://mspcsearch.militaryarchives.ie/detail.aspx; on the dates of his internment see Sunday Independent, 13 Nov. 1921; Offaly Independent, 4 Nov. 1922.
98. Offaly Independent, 11 Aug. 1923.
99. Westmeath Independent, 21 Apr. 1923; Leinster Leader, 21 Apr. 1923.
100. Westmeath Independent, 21 Apr. 1923.
101. Leinster Leader, 21 Apr. 1923.
102. Ibid.
103. Ibid., 9 June 1923.
104. Irish Independent, 12 Sept. 1923.
105. Tubberdaly, King’s County (TNA, Compensation files, CO 762/64/12).
106. Philip McConway, ‘The Civil War in Offaly’, Tullamore Tribune, 2 Jan. 2008.
107. Christopher Jones, application for service medal, no. 2907, MSP34REF18628, http://mspcsearch.militaryarchives.ie/detail.aspx
108. Ibid.; Westmeath Independent, 4 Nov. 1922.
109. Ibid.
110. IRA pension claim form, Mary Swords, 9 Feb. 1952, MSP34REF62664.
111. Reference of Patrick Cox included in ibid.
112. Philip McConway, ‘The Civil War in Offaly’, Tullamore Tribune, 2 Jan. 2008; Leinster Leader, 3 Feb. 1923.
113. Eamonn Ó Cúgáin to Secretary of Home Affairs, 2 July 1923 (NAI, Dept. of Justice files, 5/822).
114. Clarke, Everyday Violence in the Irish Civil War; Gavin Foster, The Irish Civil War: Politics, Class, and Conflict (London, 2015).
115. Dooley, Decline of the Big House, pp. 187–92.
116. Reilly, ‘The Burning of Country Houses in Co Offaly’, p. 111.
117. Midland Tribune, 5 May 1923.
118. EBN Irish Grants Committee form.
119. Dáil Debates, vol. 3, 28 May 1923, 1161.
120. Ibid., vol. 3, 14 June 1923, 1971.
121. John Kelly to Minister of Agriculture, 4 July 1923 (NAI, Dept. of Justice files, 5/888).
122. Ibid.
123. Ibid.
124. Ibid.
125. Copy of letter from Christopher Jones to Sir [EJB], 10 July 1923 (NAI, Dept. of Justice files, 5/888).
126. EJB to Mrs Savage-Armstrong, 19 Jan. 1925; Buckland, Irish Unionism, p. 382.
127. Christopher Jones, application for service medal, no. 2907, MSP34REF18628, http://mspcsearch.militaryarchives.ie/detail.aspx
128. Patrick Hogan to Minister of Home Affairs [Kevin O’Higgins], 13 July 1923 (NAI, Dept. of Justice files, 5/888).
129. Ibid.
130. Quoted above on p. 266.
131. Freeman’s Journal, 4 Aug. 1923.
132. Superintendent Sean Liddy to Commissioner of Civic Guard, 28 July 1923 (NAI, Dept. of Justice files, 5/888).
133. Offaly Independent, 11 Aug. 1923.
134. Public Safety (Emergency Powers) Act, no. 28, 1 Aug. 1923.
135. Freeman’s Journal, 4 Aug. 1923; Offaly Independent, 11 Aug. 1923.
136. Eamonn Ó Cúgain to Secretary, Minister for Home Affairs, 30 Jan. 1924 (NAI, Dept. of Justice files, 5/888).
137. Ibid.
138. Drogheda Independent, 14 June 1924.
139. Ibid.
140. Quoted in W.N. Osborough, ‘Dismissal and Discharge Under the Probation of Offenders Act 1907’, Irish Jurist, vol. 16, no. 1 (Summer 1981), p. 1.
141. EJB to Mrs Savage-Armstrong, 19 Jan. 1925; Buckland, Irish Unionism, p. 382.
142. Ibid.
143. Ibid.
144. Application to Irish Grants Committee, 1927 (TNA, Compensation files, CO 762/64/12).
145. Brian Beaumont-Nesbitt to Bobbie Tyrell, 27 Sept. 1991 (private possession).
146. Ibid.; Reilly, ‘Burning of Country Houses in Offaly’, p. 131.
147. Offaly Independent, 10 Oct. 1931.
148. Ibid.
149. Mary Swords to IRA Pension Board, 6 Sept. 1962; MSP34REF62664.
150. Dáil Debates, vol 41, no. 15, 19 May 1932.
151. C. Desmond Greaves, Liam Mellows and the Irish Revolution (London, 2004), p. 364.
152. Dooley, ‘The Land for the People’, pp. 99–131.
153. Offaly Independent, 11 June 1932.
154. P.J. Gorry to Oscar Traynor, Minister for Defence, 3 Nov. 1953, Christopher Jones, application for service medal, no. 2907, MSP34REF18628, http://mspcsearch.militaryarchives.ie/detail.aspx
155. Ibid.
156. Land Act 1933, no. 38 of 1933; Dooley, ‘Land for the People’, pp. 99–131.
157. This is taking into consideration that of the total number of ‘mansions’ returned in 1906 (see chapter one), not all were aristocratic houses, some were glebes, rectories, lodges and so on.
158. Leinster Leader, 14 Apr. 1923.
159. Meath Chronicle, 14 Apr. 1923.
160. Irish Times, 15 July 1922.
161. For the full story, see Dooley, The Decline and Fall of the Dukes of Leinster.
162. Quoted in Leinster Leader, 17 June 1922.
163. Charles Hamilton to Henry Mallaby-Deeley, 8 Apr. 1924 (Hamilton papers, private possession).
164. Leinster Leader, 17 June 1922.
165. Workers of Bessborough Estate, Kilkenny, to President W.T. Cosgrave, 24 Nov. 1923 (Military Archives, A/7432).
166. Report and Complaint by Marquess of Sligo to Secretary to the Minister of Local Government, 6 May 1922 (Military Archives, A/7065).
167. Meath Chronicle, 28 Aug. 1920, 10 Feb. 1923.
168. Dáil Debates, vol. 29, 19 Apr. 1929, 18.
169. Ibid., vol. 13, 2 Dec. 1925, 1127.
170. Ibid., vol. 40, 11 & 25 Nov. 1931, 1201, 1998.
171. Fr Brett to William Sears, 22 Jan. 1923 (Military Archives, A/7432).
172. T.M. Healy to Richard Mulcahy, 23 Dec. 1922; Mulcahy to GOC Limerick Command, n.d. (Military Archives, A/7432).
173. Quoted in Ciarán Reilly, ‘“Ill-gotten acres”: The GAA and the Irish Country House’, in Terence Dooley and Christopher Ridgway (eds.), Sport and Leisure in the Irish and British Country House (Dublin, 2019), p. 224.
174. Karina Holton, Valentine Lawless, Lord Cloncurry, 1773–1853: From United Irishman to Liberal Politician (Dublin, 2018).
175. Leslie, The Irish Tangle, p. 149.
176. K. Dorrian to Lord Cloncurry, 5 Apr. 1922 (Cloncurry Diary 1922, private possession).
177. Quoted in James Durney, The Civil War in Kildare (Cork, 2011), p. 145.
178. Amory, Biography of Lord Dunsany, p. 170.
179. Bence-Jones, Twilight of the Ascendancy, pp. 12, 37.
180. Bull, Monksgrange, p. 205.
181. Coleman, ‘Protestant Depopulation in Longford’, p. 968.
182. Irish Times, 2 Apr. 2016.
183. Quoted in Purdue, The Big House in the North of Ireland, p. 148.
184. Bielenberg, ‘Exodus’, p. 215.
185. Hughes, Defying the IRA?.
186. Tuam Herald, 25 June 1921.
187. Irish Times, 5 Nov. 1921.
188. Quoted in ibid., p. 13.
189. Robert O’Byrne [The Irish Aesthete], ‘Summerhill, A Souvenir’, https://theirishaesthete.com/tag/summerhill/
190. Robert O’Byrne has done a great deal to resurrect these memories on his award-winning blog, https://theirishaesthete.com/
191. Quoted in Frank Delaney, Betjeman Country (London, 1985), p. 83.
192. Leslie, The Irish Tangle, pp. 146. 173.
193. See Bevan, The Destruction of Memory, p. 25.
194. Raymond Gillespie, ‘Foreword’ in O’Riordan, East Galway Agrarian Agitation, p. 2.
195. E.P. Thompson, ‘The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century’ in Past & Present, no. 50 (Feb. 1971), p. 112.