1 Genealogical Office, Ireland, MS 436, p. 434, for the history of the Lloyd family The family claimed to be connected with the Goldsmiths, and Robert Jones Lloyd asserted that Oliver Goldsmith had actually been born at Smithhill. The connection arose from the fact that Lloyd's great-grandmother had been the daughter of a certain Rev Oliver Jones, at one time curate at Elphin. Another of Oliver Jones's daughters had married Dr Charles Goldsmith, who was Oliver Goldsmith's father. This information first appeared in a letter written on 24 December 1807 by Robert Jones Lloyd to Rev. Dr Annesley Stream, then curate at Smithhill. The letter was printed in 1808 by Rev Edward Mangin in An essay on light reading, and was reprinted by M. J. McManus in the Sunday Press, 15 April 1951.

2 Wakefield, Edward, An account of Ireland, statistical and political ii. 751-2.Google Scholar The book was published in 1812, but Wakefield had been collecting his material for some years beforehand.

3 M'Parlan, J., Statistical survey of county Leitrim, p. 25 (Dublin, 1802).Google Scholar Twenty years later, another traveller was much struck by the continued low standard of agriculture. Inglis, H. D., A journey through¬out Ireland, p. 283 (London, 1836).Google Scholar

4 M'Parlan, p. 9.

5 P.R.O.I., MSS, box 67. Tithe applotment books for parish of Fenagh.

6 The MS note-books of the surveyors—from which this information is drawn—are now in the Valuation Office in Dublin, and I should like to express my thanks to the secretary for permission to quote from this valuable source, and to the staff of the office for the assistance I received. The note-books relevant to the Fenagh lands are nos 14, 20 and 21.

7 Report of her majesty's commissioners into the state of the law and practice in respect to the occupation of land in Ireland H.C. 1845, (606), xx. 246.Google Scholar Evidence of A. S. V. L. Burchaell, a landowner from the neighbourhood of Drumshambo.

8 The townlands not let to Lloyd were Cornagun and Corragoly. For precise figures of the extent of Lloyd's holding see appendix.

9 Genealogical Office, MS 436, p. 421. See also Burke, , The landedgentry of Ireland, ninth ed., 1898, ii. 234-5.Google Scholar

10 P.R.O.I., Book of Survey and Distribution, Leitrim, MS 2A. 2. 14, ff. 28-9. The names mentioned are Dugenan and McGillroy.

11 Ir. rec. comm. rep.j iii. 166-7. The grant was made on 10 Feb. 1667.

12 Ibid., p. 304.

13 Genealogical Office, MS 267, pp. 252-3.

14 The petition survives in the form of a MS which is almost certainly a copy made by a lawyer's clerk. It bears three dates, 12, 16 and 22 March 1793. This document was apparently at one time a part of the correspondence relating to the Fenagh lands, but is now in the possession of the Very Rev. John Canon Pinkman, P.P., V.G., who has kindly allowed me to see it and to quote from it. The reference to the seventeenth century is on page one of the petition.

15 Registry of Deeds, Transcripts, book 8, pp. 462-3, no. 3142.

16 Registry of Deeds, Transcripts, book 76, pp. 37-8, no. 52618. The reference to a loan is in the Nesbitt petition, p. 7

17 The purchase was actually made by John French of Frenchpark, county Roscommon, in trust for John King, second son of the John King already mentioned, but the money was provided by the King family-Registry of Deeds, Transcripts, book 189, p. 44, no. 124947 and book 189, pp 575-6, no. 128293. It is noteworthy that the account of this transaction in the Nesbitt petition, p. 8, agrees very closely with the records in the Registry of Deeds.

18 There is a letter to John King from his agent Thomas Bond, complaining of the tenants being in arrears, dated 5 Sept. 1805.

19 Thomas Bond to John King, 13 Sept. 1809.

20 William Bond (King's lawyer) to John King, 30 April 1810. Of the other two townlands one, Cornagun, was let to a certain George Johnston at fifteen shillings an acre for a term of three lives, and the other, Corgowly, to Anne Stewart at £1 14s. id. an acre for a term of twenty-one years or one life. A few years earlier rents in south Leitrim had averaged from ten to fifteen shillings an acre. M'Parlan, Statistical survey of county Leitrim, pp. 45—6.

21 Lloyd to John King, 31 May 1810.

22 Lloyd to John King, 1 Nov. 1812. Some, at least, of the tenants made a determined effort to come to a separate agreement of their own with the landlord so as to avoid being placed under a middleman. Thus, from Drumlitten, one Bryan McKeown wrote proposing to pay eighteen shillings an acre or sixpence an acre above any other proposer for his holding in that townland. Bryan McKeown to John King, 19 April 1810. To this period probably belongs another letter (undated) which is signed by eight tenants in the Aughaboneil townland. They asked that they should not be committed ‘ to the mercy of any other person ‘ and declared that not only would they offer twenty-one shillings an acre, or sixpence an acre more than any other proposer for their holdings, but they were ‘ willing and able’ to pay their arrears.

23 Lloyd to John King, 10 Apr. 1813. The total for the year, May 1810 to May 1811, was £691 16s. 6d.

24 Lloyd to John King, 22 Nov. 1815.

25 Lloyd to John King, 30 Nov. 1815 and 6 Dec. 1815. On 20 Dec. 1815 Lloyd sent to John King's nephew, Rev. Henry King, a full state¬ ment of the accounts as they stood up to that time. The first year's payment, as we have seen, was completed by April 1813. The subsequent payments were as follows :

• Half-year May-Nov- 1811, paid by 29 Sept. 1813.

• Half-year Nov. i8iiHMay 1812, paid by 25 Mar. 1814.

• Half-year May-Nov. 1812, paid by 27 Nov. 1814.

The third of these appears to have been the last full half-yearly payment made by Lloyd up to that time. The only further payment of any sort known to have been made during 1815 was the sum of £200 paid on 11 Nov. 1815 as a portion of the rent for the period Nov. 1812 to May 1813.

26 Lloyd to John King, 17 Aug. 1816.

27 Lloyd to John King, 28 Mar. 1817.

28 In two letters to John King dated 28 Oct. 1817 and 20 Nov. 1817 he mentioned the sums of £80 and £127 2s. 10½d. respectively.

29 It is perhaps relevant that fever was prevalent in the Mohill and Carrick-on-Shannon districts at this time. It was at its height between June and October 1817; it abated in March 1818, returned again in July and continued until the end of the year. First report from select committee on the state of disease, and condition of the labouring poor, in Ireland, app., p. 49, H.C. 1819 (314) viii. Lloyd himself lost his youngest son from typhus during 1817. Lloyd to John King 15 Oct. 1817.

30 The rent was divided thenceforth between Rev. Henry King and a minor, John King. The former was to have £218 17. 4½%d. p.a. and the latter £300 p.a. Copy of letter from H. Walsh (agent of Henry King) to Lloyd dated 4 Mar. 1821 and sent by Walsh to King, 15 Mar. 1821.

31 H. Walsh to Rev. Henry King, 15 Mar. 1821.

32 Lloyd's request for a reduction and Henry King's emphatic refusal of it are mentioned in a letter from the latter to H. Walsh, 15 Nov 1821.

33 H. Walsh to Rev. Henry King, [ ] 1822. In that same year, on August 19, Walsh wrote to King his opinion that ‘ these are no times for middlemen ’ He admitted that he saw no prospect of the lands bringing in more than twelve or fourteen shillings an acre. ‘See then what misery must be incurred by the scores of wretches from whom a profit over this rent must be exacted. Tenants who hold large tracts in their own Rands must be lported and protected, but this case of middlemen nowadays is matter for serious consideration’

34 H. Walsh to Edward Piers, the Kings’ family lawyer, 15 Aug. 1825.

35 The last letter extant that Lloyd wrote concerning the Fenagh lands was received by Edward Piers on 23 Oct. 1826 and the latter had it copied on to the back of a letter he himself wrote next day to Rev. Henry King. In the letter Lloyd stressed his age and his general inability to impose his will upon a ‘formidable host of rebellious tenants’ It seems that, although he was only in his 66th year, his health had not been good for some years past. He died in 1832 (Genealogical Office, MS 436, P. 434).

36 The term ‘ sum ‘ is described in the Oxford English Dictionary as a variant of ‘ soum \ The latter form was usual in Scotland, where it could mean either the amount of pasturage which would lport one cow or a proportional number of sheep, or the number of sheep or cattle that can be maintained on a certain amount of pasture. Two eighteenth-century instances of the use of the term ‘ sum ‘ are given. One is from Charles Smith and Walter Harris, The antient and present state of the county Down (Dublin, 1744), p. 134, n. : ‘A sum of cattle in these parts is what they call a collop in other parts of Ireland, consisting of one full grown cow or bullock of three years old, or a horse of that age …’ The authors add that sometimes a horse is reckoned at one and a half sums and that eight sheep make a sum. The other example is in Arthur Young, A tour in Ireland (Dublin, 1780), i. 283-4. Writing of Florence Court, Enniskillen, Young says that a sum * implies a portion of land sufficient for a given stock; for instance keeping a cow is a sum; a horse a sum and a half ‘. Among other examples he gives are ‘ a cow's grass ‘, and this seems to be what is meant in the present instance. We may be sure that Lloyd's zeal in dividing up the grass-land in the way he did was an important source of the hostility with which some at least of the tenants came to regard him and of which he complains in his letters.

37 William Bond, of Bride Street, Dublin. He was John King's lawyer.

38 William Lawder, later one of the tithe commissioners for county Leitrim and responsible for the Tithe Applotment book of 1833 for Fenagh parish. See P.R.O.I., MSS, box 67.

39 The weather during the summer and autumn of 1816 and 1817 was extremely bad. In 1816 it rained heavily between July and October and much of the harvest was ruined. By mid-summer 1817 the crop failure of the previous year had resulted in widespread distress. F. Barker and J. Cheyne. An account of the rise,, progress and decline of the fever lately epidemical in Ireland (London, 1821), i. 30–34.Google Scholar

40 The following year, a select committee reckoned the population of Leitrim at that time to be 105,000, which may well be an exaggeration. It attributed the current distress primarily to the failure of the potato crop and to the inability of the peasantry, through lack of means, to buy the grain that was available. Report from select committee on the employment of the poor in Ireland, H.C. 1823, (561), vi. 4.Google Scholar According to a nearly contemporary estimate, the population of Fenagh parish was 4,172. Lewis, S., A topographical dictionary of Ireland (London, 1827), i. 617.Google Scholar

41 See p. 307, n. 30, above.