The Irish land questions - where it all began

Oh! She’s a fresh and fair land;

Oh! She’s a true and rare land;

Yes! She’s a rare and fair land –

This native land of mine.

– Thomas Davis

Land is at the core of the Irish psyche. Whether one is from the plains of Meath, the hills of Connemara or the backstreets of Belfast, it is infused in our hearts and souls. Since our first Mesolithic ancestors came to these shores around 9,000 years ago, it has entwined itself into our culture, religion, politics, economy, and society. It is central to who we are as a people.

It is doubtful if our Mesolithic forbearers who arrived on these shores around 7,000 BC worried too much about tenurial systems of land ownership. To these nomadic hunter gatherers, a stout stone axe would have been more useful in settling land disputes than a visit to a local solicitor’s office. The subsequent arrival of the first Irish Neolithic farmers around 4,000 BC would undoubtedly have brought with it a need for a rudimentary system of rules and customs, by which those early settlers would have protected their interests. Although, I suspect that, on occasions, a good axe might still have come in handy.

The law of the land

Thanks to the work of scholars such as Fergus Kelly, we know that there existed, from early Christian times (fifth century), a relatively sophisticated series of written laws dealing with land ownership and the rights and duties attaching to it.

Irish society at the time was – to quote the noted academic Daniel Anthony Binchy – “Tribal, rural, hierarchical and familiar (in the sense of family)”. These 150 tribes or families, including the O’Neills in Ulster, O’Tooles and Kavanaghs in Leinster, O’Rourkes and O’Connors in Connaught and Mc Carthys and O’Briens in Munster, owned the land of Ireland. Each family or túath (tribe), consisting of at least 3,000 followers, was led by a king or a chieftain. These leaders apportioned land under a system known as “Gavelkind” [a system of inheritance in which a deceased person’s land is divided equally among all male heirs] among his various kinsmen in return for an annual tribute and an obligation to farm it.

More irish than ...

The Norman invasion of 1169 changed all this. The installation of Norman overlords such as Hugh de Lacy in Meath, Strongbow in Leinster, and Raymond le Gros Fitzgerald in Munster, introduced the concept of ‘feudalism’ into Ireland.

Under the ?feudal system, lords held land subject to the Crown, in return for a commitment to provide military services. Tenants of these same lords were obliged to pay them homage, hand over a portion of their annual output and to provide services and labour to the manor.

Many Irish chieftains acquiesced to the new social order and found themselves subject to their Norman overlords, becoming their tenants. Eventually, many of the Norman lords married into the families of these Irish chieftains giving rise to the claim that, “they became more Irish than the Irish themselves.”

Whether this was valid or not is highly debateable, as the evidence suggests that this group remained culturally, socially, and economically very distinct from their Irish subjects. These Norman overlords held sway for almost four centuries.

In 1542, Henry VIII was proclaimed King of Ireland. Dissatisfied with the way the former Norman overlords were governing the country, he, and his Tudor successors, sought to consolidate English rule in Ireland by a combination of military campaigns and centralised administrative powers. A key component of this was a policy known as “surrender and regrant” whereby Irish chieftains and indeed many Norman overlords would surrender their lands to the Crown only to receive them back along with an English title in return for their loyalty to the monarch and an undertaking to promote English laws and customs.

Plantations

Those who refused had their lands confiscated and these were awarded to English and Scottish settlers. These “plantations” were to be a central plank in establishing English rule in Ireland for the next 150 years.

Following the defeat of the Irish chieftains at the Battle of Kinsale in 1603 and the subsequent “Flight of the Earls” in 1608, the policy of confiscation and plantation gathered pace. Between 1603 and 1641, it is estimated that 70,000 English and 30,000 Scots were awarded lands and settled in Ireland particularly in the province of Ulster. The military campaign of Oliver Cromwell in the late 1640s saw over 7,500 soldiers awarded lands with a further 1,000 “adventurers” (people who funded the war effort) receiving over 1.6 million acres.

The victory of William of Orange over James II, at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, saw a further series of confiscations and awarding of lands to both soldiers and “adventurers”. Of even more significance was the introduction of the “Penal Laws” between the years 1695 and 1728. Far reaching and discriminatory in the extreme, these laws effectively removed Catholics from all forms of public life, from practising certain professions and, most significantly, from owning land.

The process of dispossession, which had commenced with the Norman invasion in the 11th century and accelerated by the military campaigns of the 16th and 17th centuries and enshrined in 18th century laws was now complete. It would be almost 150 years before this injustice would start to be addressed.

After a career spanning over 40 years – initially as an accountant but later stockbroking, consulting and, for the past 20 years, running his own business – Tony Mc Carthy received his PhD from Maynooth University in 2017. He is a former writer in residence in the Princess Grace Library Monaco, and is currently a visiting fellow at the School of History in Newcastle University. His most recent publication, Land Reform in the British and Irish Isles since 1800, which he co-edited with Prof. Annie Tindley and Dr Shaun Evans, was published by Edinburgh University Press in February 2022. He is also co-editor along with Prof. Terence Dooley and Prof. Annie Tindley of a book dealing with Irish land legislation which will be published by McGill University Press later this year.