by Maireid Sullivan 2020 - updatd 2022
Work in progress
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Introduction
Part 1 – Brehon Law
Part 2 – The Bloody Red Hand - from Ulster to Munster
Part 3
– The End of Gaelic Ireland
- "The Flight of the Wild Geese"
Part 4
– Acts of Union Part 5
– Irish Famine "Clearances" Part 6
SUMMARY
– On the Value of Irish Land
–
The Origin of Rack Rent
"A whole new slant on life in pre-modern Ireland."
Introduction
According to the great Irish historian Maurice Sheehy (1928-1991), sometime between November 1155 and July 1156, John of Salisbury "spent three months with Pope Hadrian at Beneventum, and it was during this visit that he obtained papal approval for the English invasion of Ireland. He describes the event himself":
[Salisbury] It was at my request that he (the Pope) granted to the illustrious king of England, Henry, the hereditary possession of Ireland, as his letters, still extant, attest: for all islands are reputed to belong by long-established right to the Church of Rome, to which they were granted by Constantine, who established and endowed it. – Maurice Sheehy, (1975), When The Normans Came To Ireland, p.11
One land alone remained Keltic and not Roman. Far out in the western ocean, cut off from European influence not only by the sea but also by the wild highlands of western Britain... It was not till after the fall of the empire in the west that Ireland came to influence the religion and the art of the continent. That development is so remarkable and its results so far-reaching that it deserves all attention. ... How little he knew of Ireland is incidentally illustrated not only by his optimism, but by his geographical idea that Ireland lay directly between Britain and Spain.
– F. J. Haverfield, (1913), Ancient Rome and Ireland
This is the original source of negative stereotypes portraying the Irish as primitive people, and in need of civilisation, reflecting the established Norman (read French Roman Catholic, former 'Viking" settlement) expansionists' party-line shortly after the English Pope Hadrian IV had granted Henry II 'permission' and 'blessings' for the crusade to 'take' Ireland instead of following the Crusaders.
Coinciding with the late 12th century Norman incursions on Irish soil, the RCC established precedence for papal authority in Ireland by rewriting Irish history, bestowing sainthood on leading individuals, hundreds of years after their death, in order to claim philosophical affilliations with "Celtic Christianity" - a school of thought formed long before Roman Emperor Constantine's fourth century launch of the Roman Catholic Church at the Council of Nicaea. These incursions launched a brutal 700 year religio-political battle between England and the Vatican – a protracted period of violence and upheaval that shattered the foundations of traditional Gaelic order: Irish culture and language.
Until now, the Latin writings of the Irish have remained neglected and untranslated."Between 1500 and 1750, when Latin was the medium of European intellectual discourse, more than 300 Irish writers produced more than 1000 printed works, and probably as many, if not more again, like Zoilomastix, never reached print (though this may not have stopped them circulating and having their own influence)."
– Keith Sidwell, Professor of Latin and Greek at Unversity College Cork: Forward, The Natural History of Ireland (2009), by Denis C. O’Sullivan, Cork University Press: Book One, Zoilomastix, 1625, translated from the Latin for the first time. Don Philip O’Sullivan Beare (1590–1660) wrote Zoilomastix in an effort to refute Giraldus Cambrensis' derogatory report on Ireland, Topographia Hiberniae (1186-8).(Reviewed by M. Sullivan, (2010), Ancient Text Restored, Tintean Journal)
Part 1 Brehon Law Back to top See more Brehon Law notes and references HERE:
First documented in the seventh century, Brehon Law came to an end when English Common Law was introduced during the 1600s. Professor of Medieval Irish and Insular History at Trinity College Dublin, Sean Duffy is a prolific scholar of the history, and the editor of the celebrated work: Medieval Ireland: An Encyclopaedia, Routledge, (2005):
“The linguistic evidence indicates that the essential features of the early Irish legal system go back at least as far as the Common Celtic period (c. 1000 B.C.). Thus there are many correspondences between Irish, Welsh, and Breton legal vocabulary." p. 440 (See excerpt on Google books scan)
Excerpt: There is a level of uncertainty concerning when the Brehon legal system began. A number of manuscripts dealing with various aspects of Brehon law, written in the vernacular Irish language and dating from 14th-16th centuries still exist. These manuscripts are based on older texts, which originated in the 7th-8th centuries. However, the legal system represented in these texts had developed from customs and practices that had been passed down orally from generation to generation in the previous centuries. . . . While we cannot know definitively when the Brehon law system actually began, it is clear from references within the texts and the language used in them that the texts reflect a system that was in place in Celtic times, long before its principles were written down during the Christian era . . .p. 2 >>>more
Part 2 The Bloody Red Hand - from Ulster to Munster Back to top
The Desmond Rebellions (1569-1573 and 1579-1583)
'Desmond' is the Anglicisation of the Irish Deasmumhain, meaning 'South Munster' where Irish Catholic adherents, led by the Earl of Desmond, rebelled against the threat of the extension of Protestant English influence over the province of Munster. Fighting on a 'Scorched Earth' policy, they deliberately terrorised civilians - woman and children, and created a barren wilderness.
Recommended reading: Peter Crooks, Factionalism and noble power in English Ireland, c.1361–1423 (pdf), submitted for the degree of PhD at the University of Dublin 2007, “The thesis traces the course of a prolonged dispute between two of the most powerful noble houses in Ireland: the Butler earls of Ormond and the Geraldine earls of Desmond.”
The Nine Years War (1593–1603)
The uprising of the Ulster chieftains sparked a general revolt against the English crown with devastating impacts throughout the entire country:
The war was launched in Ulster during 1593, when, at the age of 43, Hugh O’Neill (1550-1616) replaced Turlough Luineach O’Neill as chieftain of the O’Neills of Tyrone, with claims of direct lineage to Niall of the Nine Hostages
Resolving to protect his chosen Catholic faith and to retain the inherited sovereign rights of Gaelic chiefdoms against growing English incursions, Hugh O'Neill took a leadership role in joining forces with his cousin Hugh Maguire, chieftain of Fermanagh, and his close friend Hugh Roe O’Donnell, chieftain of Donegal. Given that they were all named Hugh, it is not surprising that O’Neill took the title, “The O’Neill” - proclaiming himself high king of Ireland in memory of the self-proclaimed high king Brian Boru, who died in 1014 while defeating the Vikings.
Irish paleographer and historian, Professor Francis J. Byrne, (1934-2017) broke new ground in documenting the history of "Irish Kings and High-Kings", (2001): "... the unique blend of pagan tribalism and Christian monasticism which characterises the political landscape of early Ireland, exploring the nature of the traditional Five Fifths of Ireland, the mythology of Tara, and the growth of the high-kingship of Ireland."
In late 1601, according to History Ireland's report, "O’Neill with over 4,000 horse and foot and O’Donnell with 4,000 foot and 3,000 cavalry and the celebrated Captain Richard Tyrrell of Brenockton, County Westmeath, with his muster of about 600 veterans" marched south to Kinsale, Co. Cork and Chieftain Aodh Ruadh Ó Domhnaill(1586-1602) aka Red Hugh O’Donnell of Tyrconnell sailed to Spain seeking military aid, taking with him The Book of Invasions (Leabhar Gabhála na hÉireann’) [available as PDF and on Archive.com] as evidence of an ancient relationship between Ireland and Spain. His mission, a full year's effort to gain support from King Philip III, failed when he unexpectedly died: It is still unsure whether he died of natural causes* or was assasinated - poisoned by an "Anglo-Irish double agent" - as reportedly claimed by witness of two Irish Franciscan chaplains. The obituary for Aodh Ruadh Ó Domhnaill in the Annals of the Four Masters ends with a lament for all the Gaels of Ireland, which clearly conveys the immensely tragic response to his death as marking the end of an era. The Royal Irish Academy quotes The Four Masters:
‘Pitiable, indeed, was the state of the Gaels of Ireland after the death of O’Donnell; for their characteristics and dispositions were changed; for they exchanged their bravery for cowardice, their magnanimity for weakness, their pride for servility; their success, valour, prowess, heroism, exultation, and military glory, vanished after his death. They despaired of relief, so that the most of them were obliged to seek aid and refuge from enemies and strangers, while others were scattered and dispersed, not only throughout Ireland, but throughout foreign countries. . . >>>more
The Battle of Kinsale (1601-2)
News that Hugh O'Donnell was poisoned in Spain sent shock-waves across Ireland and pushed the Spanish allies into action: In September 1601, estimates of between 4,000 and 5,000 Spanish troops arrived on twenty-eight ships at the port of Kinsale, Co. Cork, but they were forced to remain on their ships, surrounded by a massive English seige led by Lord Deputy Mountjoy: England gained a decisive victory. The Battle of Kinsale (1601-2) ended the Gaelic Irish rebellion - and the Nine Years War.
In anguish, Hugh O’Neill surrendered to the Crown, via Lord Mountjoy, and pledged allegiance to the Crown in the Irish Parliament on 3 April,1603, not knowing that Queen Elizabeth had died on 24 March.
Following the death of Queen Elizabeth, without giving birth to an heir, the son of her cousin, Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots (1542-1567), James Stuart of Scotland (1566-1625), became the first king of Great Britain (James VI of Scotland from 1567, and James I of England and Ireland from 1603). Among his first rulings, he allowed the Irish to keep their lands but required chieftains to become earls of the Crown.
The Flight of the Earls
Rather than succumb to vassal status in an unsurmountable political crisis, Hugh O'Neill, with over 14,000 soldiers, accompanied by their wives and children, left Ireland, to join the French, Spanish or Austrian armies in what became known as the Flight of the Earls (1607). O’Neill settled in Rome during the reign of Pope Paul V.
Details of the history are re-examined HERE, and HERE and HERE.
"For Irish political exiles to Spain the first decade of the seventeenth century marked the high watermark of access to royal patronage arising out of the Spanish intervention in Ireland in 1601-2."
Until now, the Latin writings of the Irish have remained neglected and untranslated. In the Foreword, Keith Sidwell, Professor of Latin and Greek at UCC, comments,
"Between 1500 and 1750, when Latin was the medium of European intellectual discourse, more than 300 Irish writers produced more than 1000 printed works, and probably as many, if not more again, like Zoilomastix, never reached print (thought this may not have stopped them circulating and having their own influence)."
In the Introduction, Denis C. O’Sullivan surveys the historic period with specific focus on the O’Sullivan clan’s political struggles --driven from their lands from the 1200s, and finally, after the battle of Kinsale in 1602, when Philip was an impressionable 12 year old, many members of the O’Sullivan Beare clan were exiled to Spain.
. . . In 1625, Don Philip wrote Zoilomastix in an effort to refute Giraldus Cambrensis' derogatory report on Ireland, Topographia Hiberniae (1188) (available as an e-text on the internet). This translation of Zoilomastix, Book One, takes us on a highly colloquial and entertaining journey into the Irish environment, region-by-region, a survey of landscapes, birds and bees, beasts and man -offering a whole new slant on life in pre-modern Ireland. Dr. Denis C. O'Sullivan's translation is a landmark contribution to all aspects of Irish scholarship, natural, cultural, and political.
– M. Sullivan, 2010, Ancient Text Restored
Oliver Cromwell died in 1658, two years before the “Restoration” of the Stuart Monarchy under Charles' son, Charles II, from 1660, king of England, Ireland, and Scotland. During his reign, the Great Plague of London, 1665-1666, was immediately followed by The Great Fire of London. Charles II died in 1685, after converting to Catholicism on his deathbed. Having no legitimate children, he was succeeded by his brother James (b. 1633-1701), who reigned in England and Ireland as James II, and in Scotland as James VII (1685-1688)
In 1673, James, aged 40, married his second wife, 15 year old Roman Catholic Mary of Modena (Italy), (1658-1718). Through twelve pregnancies she gave birth to five children. In June 1688, age 30, she gave birth to their only surviving son, James Francis Edward (1688-1766). At the peak of strained Protestant-Catholic relations, in 1688 James II was deposed in favour of Dutch Protestant William III of Orange (1650-1702), the only child of William II, Prince of Orange and his wife Mary, the eldest daughter of King Charles I of England, Scotland and Ireland.
James II's Protestant elder daughter (the prince's half-sister), Mary II, and her husband (and the prince's cousin), William III, became co-monarchs and the Bill of Rights 1689 and Act of Settlement 1701 excluded Catholics from the English throne and, subsequently, the British throne.
Following The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, Oct. 22, 1685 (pdf), the R.P.R. [Religion prétendue réformée -- "the religion called the Reformed"]... Given at Fontainebleau in the month of October, in the year of grace 1685, and of our reign the forty-third.
I. Be it known that for these causes and others us hereunto moving, and of our certain knowledge, full power, and royal authority, we have, by this present perpetual and irrevocable edict, suppressed and revoked, and do suppress and revoke, the edict of our said grandfather, given at Nantes in April, 1598, ...
Ulster Protestants annually celebrate the victory of Protestant King William of Orange over Catholic King James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. History Ireland provides a comprehensive overview of the impacts of the fusion of interrelated factors – British, European and Irish - by Dr Harman Murtagh, senior lecturer in law and Irish studies at Athlone Institute of Techonlogy and a noted historian on Irish military history and settlement studies.
Excerpt: The Irish Factor
Alone of James’s three kingdoms, Ireland had a majority of his Roman Catholic co-religionists, consisting of about three-quarters of the population, comprised of the earlier inhabitants of the island of both Gaelic and Norman (‘Old English’) descent. The preceding century had weakened their position in almost every respect as they lost ground to the newer English and Scottish Protestant settlers, introduced by the plantations. They comprised the remaining quarter of the population and were most heavily concentrated in Ulster.
Relations between the two groups were tense. Despite its losses, Irish Catholic civilisation, fortified by the Counter-Reformation, retained a good deal of underlying strength. James’s accession improved their position and revived their hopes. The Earl of Tyrconnell, their leading spokesman, became Viceroy. Catholics soon took over the Irish army, and were brought into the judiciary and other public offices. Simultaneously the ground was prepared for a Catholic majority in parliament to achieve Tyrconnell’s political objective – the repeal of the Restoration land settlement. Protestants in Ireland felt threatened by this policy and for the most part they welcomed James’s downfall. The Glorious Revolution was a severe blow to Tyrconnell and threatened his hopes for the revival of the Irish Catholic community. Under Irish law, whoever was king of England was also king of Ireland and William indeed had accepted the Irish as well as the English throne from the convention parliament. >>>more
The 1690 Siege of Cork ensured the continued Protestant ascendancy in Ireland.
1. The Flight of the Wild Geese:
Military terms of surrender allowed 14,000 of James II's Irish Jacobite soldiers, and their families, the option to serve in continental European armies, as The Irish Brigage aka The Wild Geese.
2.
Guarantees of religious freedom and retention of property for Catholics who swore allegiance to the crown, led to the Protestant Ascendancy's domination of Ireland until 1916.
The infamous Irish Penal Laws of 1695 led to many "Treaties" marking the end of Gaelic Ireland. Amongst the many treaties, oaths of loyalty, and civil articles restricting freedom, included were, - Replacement of Brehon law with English Common law.
- Earls, formerly Chieftains, no longer permitted to support Gaelic bards.
- English would be the official language.
"After the great body of the Irish people had been made completely illiterate, being unable to read or write either Gaelic or English, their names were curiously mutilated by the newly arrived proprietors to whom the confiscated estates of the Irish Landed Gentry had been conveyed, or by the agents of those proprietors, who had no other guide to write them in English than the owner's pronunciation of his name, which was entered accordingly on the new landlord's rent-roll; and the same old Irish sirname was therefore differently spelled in different localities, thus accounting for the several anglicised forms of many of the old Irish sirnames." John O'Hart, (first published in 1876), "Irish pedigrees; or, The origin and stem of the Irish nation".
"Irish emigration across the Atlantic began long before 1800.
In the 1600s, approximately 25,000 Irish Catholics left – some were forced to move, others left voluntarily – for the Caribbean and Virginia, while from the 1680s onwards Irish Quakers and Protestant Dissenters began to depart for the New World." - Irial Glynn 2011
The Editor of English and Irish settlement on the river Amazon, 1550-1646 (1989), Canadaian Emeritus Professor of History Joyce Lorimer's extensive research is ongoing:“In view of the attention paid by historians in recent decades to the early exploration and settlement of North America, the neglect of such an important area as the Amazon in the same period seems odd.”
The Anglo-Irish ascendancy shared patterns of anxiety among British, French and American people. For example, The Society of United Irishmen (1791-1804), founded by Theobald Wolfe Tone, (1763-1798), included Catholics and Protestants who had joined forces against oppressive British colonial aristocracy. Following the example of the American Revolution, between 1765 and 1783, and the French, Revolution, between 1789 and 1799.
"The 1798 rebellion was a failed attempt to found a secular independent Irish Republic. ... establishing an Irish Republic based on the principles of the French Revolution." - The 1798 Rebellion – a brief overview by Independent Irish historian John Dorney:
The Irish Rebellion of 1798, lasting from May to September 1798, was a failed attempt by the Irish (Catholics and Protestants) to establish an Irish Republic independent of British rule. Instead of gaining independence, the British tightened their grip. See the National Archives of Ireland overview on The Rebellion of 1798 (pdf)
The Act of Union of 1800, signed by George III in August 1800, launched the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, from 1 January 1801: From the beginning of the 1800s, the British Parliament responded to an estimated 2.3 million Irish people facing starvation by enacting a law consolidating legal control of all decisions related to Ireland's governance with the Act of Union of 1800.
Excerpt:
Guy Beiner: …(1:10) what it means when communities who have participated in a rebellion might change their political affiliations: What happened with the Presbyterians who were out in 1798 and later the same communities became known as “Unionist” communities, sometimes strongly associated with “Orangism” and what that means to memories which are no longer comfortable...” (1:35)
Part 5 Irish Famine "Clearances" Remembering the Great Irish Famine – 1845-1852 Back to top
The Poor Law Amendment Bill of June 1847
The intended purpose of the June 1847 Bill:
Transfer responsibility for poor relief to Irish property owners.
The consequence:
Avoiding tax liability became a driving force for landlords attempting to consolidate their estate holdings by quickly removing dependents and destroying all buildings on their lands.
"What had the Poor Law Amendment Act been intended to accomplish? To raise wages—to make the poor independent—to diminish crime—and to lessen in the future the number of illegitimate children in this country. Had it accomplished any one of these objects? Not one. There was not the slightest pretence for saying that any one of the anticipations with which the Bill had been attended had been fulfilled." – Vol. 93, cc845
Recommended reading HERE:
7 ESSAYS by James V. Mullin, author, The Irish Famine Curriculum.
An Gorta Mór – aka The Great Hunger, Irish Potato Famine, and Irish Genocide.
The 1841 census showed the Irish population at 8,175,124.
40 years later, the 1881 census showed the population had fallen by 37% - over 3 million, to 5,174,836. The Irish population continued to fall to 4,228,553 by 1926.
"Almost 4000 vessels carried food from Ireland to the ports of Bristol, Glasgow, Liverpool, and London during 1847, when 400,000 Irish men, women and children died of starvation and related diseases. The food was shipped under military guard from the most famine-stricken parts of Ireland. . ."
– Christine Kinealy, ‘A Death-Dealing Famine’:
The Great Hunger in Ireland, 1997, University of Chicago Press, pp. 32-36
and, “. . . As the Famine progressed, it became apparent that the government was using its information not merely to help it formulate its relief policies, but also as an opportunity to facilitate various long-desired changes within Ireland. These included population control and the consolidation of property through various means, including emigration”
– Christine Kinealy, The Great Calamity: The Irish Famine 1845-52, 2006, Gill Books
See preview on Google Books
Part 6
SUMMARY
On the Value of Irish Land Back to top
Ulster Custom Consequences of The Flight of the Earls:
Clearings / Ulster Custom / Rack Rent The Nine Years War (1594–1603) was launched from Ulster, in the north of Ireland, when, at the age of 43, Hugh O’Neill (1550-1616) replaced Turlough Luineach O’Neill as chieftain of the O’Neills of Tyrone, with claims of direct lineage to Niall of the Nine Hostages. Following defeat by the English at The Battle of Kinsale (1601-2), rather than succumb to vassal status, Hugh O'Neill, along with over 14,000 soldiers, accompanied by their wives and children, left Ireland, to join the French, Spanish or Austrian armies in what became known as the Flight of the Earls (1607).
Excerpt:
Origin of the Ulster Tenant-right Custom (pp. 12-15)
The origin of the Ulster Tenant-right Custom is wrapped up in considerable obscurity. Inquirers, seeking to throw light on the subject have arrived at various conclusions. It is now, however, generally conceded that the Custom arose in the early part of the 17th century - in the reign of James I. - and was the direct outcome of the plantation of Ulster. The plantation originated in the insurrections of the two great native chieftains of the north, the Earls of Tyrone and Tryconnel. On their flight and attainder five hundred thousand acres of land, in Ulster, were forfeited to the crown. There upon King James, on the initiative of Lord Bacon, determined on settling the lands which had thus come into his hands on a system that would secure the crown from future difficulties with the native Irish.
From the mid-to-late-1700, those vacated lands were 'settled' by Scottish migrants following the forced eviction from the Highlands and western islands of Scotland: The “Highland Clearances”.
The "Rack Rent" system
The "Tenant-right Custom of Ulster" implemented from the beginning of King James I's rule is referred to as the origin of the "Rack Rent" system,
"landlords were able to 'auction off' leases to the highest bidders. That practice, known as 'rack renting', forced renters to bid more than they could afford to pay."– H. Tyler Blethen and Curtis W. Wood Jr., (2013), From Ulster to Carolina: The Migration of the Scotch-Irish to Southwestern North Carolina, UNC Press, p. 17
The marriage of King Charles I to a French Roman Catholic Henrietta Maria, Louis XIII of France's youngest sister, in May 1625, inflamed fear of RCC influence over England.
Seven years of war between Charles I’s supporters and Oliver Cromwell’s forces ended in 1649 with the execution of Charles I, whose son, Charles II (1630-1685) escaped a similar fate by remaining in the Netherlands until he was approached by leaders of both factions, and agreed to a deal, making them “Proprietors” of the North American colonies in return for restoration of the crown. (Noeleen McIlveena, 2009)
"An understanding of the English Revolution is crucial ... formed in the crucible of 'Oliver's Days.' The mixture of politics, religion, economics, and military experience suffused the thinking of all who had come of age in the twenty years prior to 1660" – Northern Irish historian, Professor Noeleen McIlveena, whose documentation of this history is essential reading: A Very Mutinous People, 2009. See excerpts HERE
Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum. June 1657: An Act for convicting, discovering and repressing of Popish Recusants: ". . . shall give in charge unto the Grand Juries, diligently to enquire, and present the names of all such persons, being of the age of sixteen years, as are suspected or reputed to be Papists, or Popishly affected . . ."
Oliver Cromwell's 17c coercion in clearing Irish lands included transportation of 'slaves' to the British 'plantation complex' across the "West Indies".
"In 1641, Ireland's population was 1,466,000 and in 1652, 616,000. According to Sir William Petty, 850,000 were wasted by the sword, plague, famine, hardship and banishment during the Confederation War 1641-1652. At the end of the war, vast numbers of Irish men, women and children were forcibly transported to the American colonies by the English government.(7) These people were rounded up like cattle, and, as Prendergast reports on Thurloe's State Papers(8) (Pub. London, 1742), "In clearing the ground for the adventurers and soldiers (the English capitalists of that day)... To be transported to Barbados and the English plantations in America. It was a measure beneficial to Ireland, which was thus relieved of a population that might trouble the planters; it was a benefit to the people removed, which might thus be made English and Christians ... a great benefit to the West India sugar planters, who desired men and boys for their bondsmen, and the women and Irish girls... To solace them."(9) ... in an English law of June 26, 1657: "Those who fail to transplant themselves into Connaught (Ireland's Western Province) or (County) Clare within six months... Shall be attained of high treason... Are to be sent into America or some other parts beyond the seas..." Those thus banished who return are to "suffer the pains of death as felons by virtue of this act, without benefit of Clergy." – Robert E. West, England's Irish Slaves (1995)
William Petty (1623-1687) "the father of modern economics and its first econometrician" political economist, physician, scientist and philosopher.
"William Petty, physician, epidemiologist, political economist, demographer, cartographer, and administrator was an intellectual product of the seventeenth century. ... This scientific approach to public policy places Petty squarely in the context of modern epidemiologic and public health practice and marks the initiation of a major use of the epidemiologic method." - Banta, J E (1987) Sir William Petty: modern epidemiologist (1623-1687), NIH
Cromwell's
land valuer, Sir William Petty (1623-1687) used the principle of capitalisation of the rent of land to value England and Ireland.
(ii) The Economic Writings of Sir William Petty, vol. 1, (1662),Cambridge University Press. "The political anatomy of Ireland with the establishment for that kingdom when the late Duke of Ormond was Lord Lieutenant ... : to which is added Verbum sapienti, or, An account of the wealth and expences of England, and the method of raising taxes in the most equal manner ..."
Some 150 years before the introduction of David Ricardo’s "Law of Rent theorem" became the basis for the theory of land valuation, Sir William Petty famously used the principle of capitalisation of the rent of land to value England and Ireland. Australian Tax Office Land Valuer and researcher Bryan Kavanagh wrote about this obscure piece of Irish history in an article published in THE AGE Newspaper in 2005: Resource rents hold the property key (shared here, with permission) and, in June 2012, Bryan Kavanagh also described (on his blog), William Petty's valuation of England: WHERE IT ALL GOES HORRIBLY WRONG, 2012
Classical Days – When the role of land rent in the economy was understood.
"Bring back the intellectual rigour of Sir William Petty and the classicists!"... With no disrespect for Adam Smith, some still see Sir William Petty (1623-1687) as the father of modern economics and its first econometrician. In many respects, I think Petty was the true founder of classical economicsbecause he had an even deeper understanding of the role (and the sheer extent) of rent within the economy than Adam Smith. Being both a valuer and an economist, he had a much broader picture of the economy than today’s superficial economists."
– Bryan Kavanagh, Land Valuer, Australian Tax Office
Defining The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith (1723-1790), the reputed founder of Classical Political Economics, visited the Physiocrats in France while touring across Europe (1764-1766) as tutor to the young Scottish nobleman Henry Scott, 3rd Duke of Buccleuch. Smith was influenced by the Physiocrats' economic theorem: "the wealth of nations was derived solely from the value of land agriculture or land development". Ten years later, Classical Political Economics theorem was formally launched with the publication of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations (1776).
The Law of Rent Theorem Around 1809, English Economist David Ricardo (1772-1823) contributed to the debate by defining the 'income derived' from the ownership of land and other free gifts of nature as "The Law of Rent" (aka Economic Rent, Ricardo's Law, Resource Rent).
See further details under Economic History, Part 4HERE
... without a knowledge [of The Law of Rent], it is impossible to understand the effect of the progress of wealth on profits and wages, or to trace satisfactorily the influence of taxation on different classes of the community. – David Ricardo
The Origin of Rack Rent
By the 1870s, all of Ireland (estimated at 97%) was rented to tenant farmers.
The "Rack Rent" system (the word "rack" evoking the medieval torture device) which was legalised with The Landlord and Tenant (Ireland) Act of 1870 and the Land Law (Ireland) Act of 1881, both of which were enacted under Prime Minister William Gladstone (1809-1898), whose very active public life extended from the 1830s to the 1890s, including four terms as Chancellor of the Exchequer, where his aim to replace income taxes with direct taxes was usurped by the cost of the Crimean War. The Irish National Land League & Michael Davitt - in the footsteps of Daniel O’Connell (1775-1847), founder of a non-violent form of Irish nationalism - across the late 1800s Irish diaspora led to the Irish Land League and the The Irish Home Rule Bill, April 1893:
Michael Davitt's speech before the House of Commons:
