The present Earl of Dunraven, Windham Thomas Wyndham-Quin, was born in 1844, educated at Eton and Christ Church College, Oxford, and in 1870 married Florence, daughter of Lord Charles Lennox Kerr, a member of parliament from County Wexford. Dunraven is one of the most active and versatile men in the kingdom, and is almost as well known in the United States, being soldier, sailor, horseman, sportsman, yachtsman, explorer, politician, newspaper correspondent, author, antiquarian, economist, and historian. After receiving his degree at Oxford Dunraven served for several years in the Life Guards, and in 1871 resigned upon succeeding to the title and estates. While he was in the army he gained the reputation of being the best steeple-chase rider in the kingdom. Upon leaving the army he became a correspondent of the London Daily Telegraph and represented that paper in an expedition to Abyssinia and during the Franco-Prussian war. He then went into politics and was under secretary for the colonies during two of Lord Salisbury’s administrations. He then went into parliament and made a reputation as chairman of committees on the sweating system and the housing of the working classes. He devoted much time and attention to horse breeding and has a stock farm adjoining his estate at Adare with “Desmond,” the most famous stallion in the kingdom, at the head of his stud. He has been offered $150,000 for the horse.
In 1874 Dunraven went to the United States with his wife and spent nearly a year in the Rocky Mountains hunting big game and exploring and climbing peaks and shooting buffaloes with General Sheridan and Buffalo Bill. He wrote a book giving an account of his experience. He then took up the Irish question, went into it very deeply, and has retained his interest until now. He has written several books on the land question and the other economic problems of Ireland. He has been a prolific contributor to the magazines, and was the inventor of what is known as the “devolution policy” as a substitute for home rule in Ireland, which Sir Antony MacDonnell worked up into the so-called “Irish councils bill,” which proposed to give home rule in every respect except the courts, police, and legislation. His lordship went through Ireland making speeches in favor of the project, but the leaders of the Irish parliamentary party declined to accept it and it fell to the ground.
The Earl of Dunraven is best known in the United States, however, as a yachtsman. For several years he was the leader of that sport in England, and in 1893, 1894, and 1895 sailed for the America’s cup with three successive yachts named Valkyrie. The third contest was a fiasco, as may be remembered. Lord Dunraven published a pamphlet setting forth his side of the controversy, which created a great sensation. His lordship has made a thorough study of the archæology of this section of Ireland, and has written several interesting volumes on the subject.
XXX
COUNTY GALWAY AND RECENT LAND TROUBLES
County Clare and County Galway are the districts of the greatest unrest in Ireland; and the largest number of boycotts, cattle drives, and evictions have occurred there of late years because certain large landowners, chief of whom is the Earl of Clanricarde, stubbornly refuse to sell their estates under the Land Act of 1903 or restore the tenants they have evicted or divide up their pastures into farms. The Earl of Clanricarde carried the matter into court, where he was sustained in his refusal to sell, on the ground that the law is not compulsory, and it is probable that parliament will adopt an amendment, now pending and introduced since the decision, requiring every large landowner in Ireland to divide up his estates among his tenants at prices to be fixed by the courts.
The disturbances that are taking place at present are gentle and mild compared with what have occurred during the land wars of the past, and they are confined to a limited area and a small number of estates. The methods of “persuasion” used by the tenants and the “landless” men, as those who are entirely without farms are called, are, however, very much the same as those adopted years ago, but they are not so effective as they used to be. They are severely punished by the courts, and the taxpayers are assessed for all the damages committed. If these assessments could be confined to the particular parish within which the outrages occur it would be very much better, for it is not fair to ask innocent property owners twenty and thirty miles from the scene to pay for the mischief of a few reckless and irresponsible persons over whom they have no control.
County Limerick is usually quiet. There has been no trouble there and the best of feelings prevail between the landlords and their tenants, with a few exceptions. There was only one criminal case (of infanticide) at the dockets of the courts in July, 1908, when I was there, two boycotts, and twenty-one complaints of intimidation, which, however, did not all relate to land matters. There were thirty-four evictions in County Limerick that year, most of them being due to poor crops and the lack of remittances from America.
Lough Rea, the seat of the Clanricarde, has been the residence of that family since the year 1300. Althenry, the neighboring town, is also very old, and has belonged to the earls of Clanricarde since 1238. There is a castle, a Dominican monastery, a Franciscan monastery, and several churches, all in ruins, destroyed by Red Hugh O’Donnell in 1596. The Earl of Clanricarde never visits his Irish property. He has never occupied his ancestral home and has been seen in the vicinity but once since he came into the inheritance thirty or forty years ago.
The boycott was invented at the little town of Ballinrobe, a pretty village of about fifteen hundred inhabitants, on Lough Mask, about twenty miles north of Galway. Charles S. Parnell made a speech at Ennis, the capital of County Clare, Sept. 19, 1880, advising the people to punish those who did not sympathize with them by “isolating them from their kind as if they were lepers.” This advice was first applied to Captain Boycott, agent for the estate of Lord Erne, near Ballinrobe, and he was a complete victim of the policy. The police could do nothing. There was no law under which dealers could be compelled to sell him food and drink, and all his supplies had to be shipped to him from Dublin. Nobody would speak to him, nobody would work for him, nobody would accept his money, and, as Parnell suggested, he was treated as if he were a leper. The plan was so successful that it was promptly adopted throughout Ireland, and has since been commonly used elsewhere under the name of the first victim.