The History of the Irish Famine

Fallen Leaves of Humanity: Famines in Ireland Before and After the Great Famine

Christine Kinealy, Gerard Moran, Christine Kinealy, Gerard Moran

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781315513638
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia mondiale

The Great Irish Famine remains one of the most lethal famines in modern world history and a watershed moment in the development of modern Ireland – socially, politically, demographically and culturally. In the space of only four years, Ireland lost twenty-five per cent of its population as a consequence of starvation, disease and large-scale emigration. Certain aspects of the Famine remain contested and controversial, for example the issue of the British government's culpability, proselytism, and the reception of emigrants. However, recent historiographical focus on this famine has overshadowed the impact of other periods of subsistence crisis, both before 1845 and after 1852.

This volume seeks to counterbalance the recent historiographical focus on the Great Irish Famine which has overshadowed the impact of other periods of subsistence crisis, both before 1845 and after 1852. As occurred during the Great Famine, they often resulted in increased levels of evictions, emigration, disease and death, although the scale was lower. While the Great Famine brought major economic, social and demographic changes, large areas of the country retained pre-famine structures with many communities continuing to have a subsistence existence and, consequently, regular crop failures and famines. These lesser known famines are examined in this volume along with the causes and why they did not achieve the scale of the Great Famine.

Part I
The crises of the late 1720s

1
The letters of Hugh Boulter, Archbishop of Armagh (1727–1729)

Hugh Boulter (1672–1742) was born in London. Educated at Oxford, he was made Fellow of Magdalen College. In 1719, Boulter served as chaplain to Hanover, on behalf of King George I.¹ In 1724, George nominated Boulter to the Primacy of the Protestant church in Ireland, then vacant, which he hesitated to accept.² He arrived in Ireland in November of that year. The sending of English-born Bishops to Ireland was viewed by the Westminster government as ‘an indispensable condition of the preservation of English supremacy in the government of Ireland’.³ During his time in the country, Boulter quickly established himself as a central figure in the government of Ireland where he assiduously promoted the English interest, which also meant the Protestant interest, in the country. In accordance with the latter aim, Boulter was involved in a number of projects to found schools for the conversion of Catholics. They were largely unsuccessful.

Boulter’s first years in Ireland coincided with a series of bad harvests,⁴ and solutions to the perennial problem of hunger and famine preoccupied him. The poor harvests coincided with a period of economic stagnation, exacerbated by a shortage of silver and gold. The bankers were widely blamed for this economic downswing, with Dean Jonathan Swift even suggesting that a new law should be introduced to ‘hang up half a dozen bankers every year, and thereby interpose [at] least some short delay to the further ruin of Ireland’.⁵

Boulter was active in assisting during the shortages, including in raising subscriptions. In gratitude for his generosity to the poor of Ireland, in 1741 a full-length portrait of him by Francis Bindon⁶ was placed in the hall of the poor house in Dublin. Boulter died in London. He was buried in Westminster Abbey on 12 November 1742, his memorial being designed by Sir Henry Cheere.⁷

A selection of Boulter’s letters was printed in two volumes at Oxford in 1769, under the superintendence of Ambrose Philips,⁸ who had been his secretary in Ireland. This series consists of letters from November 1724 to December 1738, to state officials and eminent churchmen in England. They were republished at Dublin in 1770 by George Faulkner, who, in his introduction to them, observed that Boulter, with all his virtues, ‘was too partially favourable to the people of England and too much prejudiced against the natives of Ireland.’ The letters show that Boulter’s interests combined political with ecclesiastical – with the former usually taking precedence.

Four letters by Hugh Boulter from, Letters written by His Excellency Hugh Boulter, D.D., Lord Primate of all Ireland, &c.⁹ to several ministers of state in England, and some others: containing an account of the most interesting transactions which passed in Ireland from 1724 to 1738, second volume (Dublin; G. Faulkner and J. Williams, 1770).¹⁰

1. To the Archbishop of Canterbury¹¹

Dublin, July 20, 1727.

My Lord,

I have had the honour of your Excellency’s of the 13th, and before the receipt of this your Lordship will receive the two lists of officers which are of importance in our present state, and with all possible speed an account of all other patents for places.

We have been in such a hurry with getting the bills ready to be sent to England, that I have not had time to draw up a short account of the Bishop of Cloyne’s case for your information, but will do it by the first opportunity. My Lord Chancellor has written so fully about the bills we have sent, that I have little to add.

The whole council were satisfied it was our duty to transmit a money bill, but we think if your Excellency is here early enough it will be better to make no use of it; as to the corn and tillage bill, the great damage to this kingdom by landlords tying up their tenants from ploughing, the throwing so many families out of work that might be employed by tillage, and the terrible scarcity next to a famine that a great part of the kingdom now labours under by the corn not yielding well last year, and to which we are liable upon any the least accident in our harvest, make us all very desirous of having it past; and as it is only five acres out of an hundred that are to be tilled, and that every farmer has till Michaelmas¹² come two years to lay out his schemes of ploughing, we hope it will not be counted any hardship to force them to plough so small a proportion of their land.

The want of such a provision as is made in the bill about mending bridges, has often occasioned 50 or 100/. expense to the county, where 5 or 10/. would have done at first.

The indemnifying bill speaks for itself.

As to the bill requiring for a years conversion in papists before they practice the law, your Lordship knows the bad case we are in here with new converts practicing, and the dangerous consequence it may have in length of time; your Lordship has likewise seen, that nothing can be moved about papists or converts in either house but what is at last so clogged as to come to nothing which made us willing to send over a bill to this sore point ; if there are political reasons on the other side of the water for dropping it, the crown is under no difficulty, because we have sent bills enough without it; but I believe if it is returned, it will certainly pass here.

I hear this day, that the address yesterday presented by some Roman Catholicks, occasions great heats and divisions among those of that religion here.

I am, &c

2. To the Archbishop of Canterbury

Dublin, Feb. 24, 1727

My Lord,

I have troubled your Grace with two long letters already, and must beg leave to trouble you with a third, about some other bills we are sending over, in getting which returned hither I must beg your Grace’s assistance at the council.

As many of the parishes here are very large and intermixed with other parishes, and others of too little income to subsist by themselves, and little enough for extent to be united to some other parish or part of a parish, there was an act passed in the 14th and 15th of King Charles the second, by which parishes might be divided or united for conveniency’s sake, with proper consents and the approbation of the chief governor and the council. As that act was expired, a new act was passed 2nd Georgii, for the real union and division of parishes, in which was a proviso, that no union made in virtue of the former act of King Charles the second should be capable of being dissolved, nor any part of such union be united to any other parish, unless the parish Church of such united parish does lye three country miles from some part of such parish, &c.

Now as three country miles are often five or six measured miles; and as several of those unions were made without regard to the conveniency of the people, but purely to make a rich benefice; as we are now endeavouring to make it possible to have the worship of God celebrated in all parts of this kingdom, we find it necessary to repeal this clause, and to lay such parishes open to a division as well as other old parishes.

There is another clause added to that bill, which relates to the removing of the site of Churches. By the act 2nd Georgii for the real union and division of parishes, it is enacted that the site of an inconvenient Church may be changed for one more convenient with the consent of the patron, &c.

Now with us many Churches stand at the end of a long parish, or on the wrong side of a bog or river, in respect of the greatest part of the parishioners, or at least protestants; so that it would be very convenient to change such situation of the Church -, but where the King is patron, as his consent is to be had, the expense of having a letter from England to give his Majesty’s consent under the broad seal here to such a change, and pending a patent for it, is so great, as to discourage these removals: and I can assure your Grace 10/. is harder to be raised here upon a country parish than 100/. is in England upon a parish of the same extent, and our gentry part with money on such occasions as unwillingly as the peasantry.

It is therefore provided in the same bill, that the chief governor, &c. may consent for the King where the King is patron; and as the King’s patronage cannot be hurt by such a change of the site of a Church, but the parish will probably prove of better value; and as the taking off of this expense may occasion the building several more convenient Churches, we hope the bill will be returned to us: And I can assure your Grace there are instances in two or three acts already where the chief governor, &c. is impowered to consent for the King.

These two clauses make up an act, entitled, an act for repealing a clause in an act for the real union and division of parishes; and to enable the chief governor, &c. to consent for the crown, &c.

There is part of another bill which will go over, that is of great consequence to this kingdom; the title of the act is, I think, an act to prevent frauds, &c. in buying corn, &c. and to encourage tillage.

It is the latter part of this bill about tillage that is of great moment here. The bill does not encourage tillage by allowing any premium to the exporters of corn, but barely obliges every person occupying 100 acres or more (meadows, parks, bogs, &c. excepted) to till five acres out of every 100 and so in proportion for every greater quantity of land they occupy. And to make the law have some force, it sets the tenant at liberty to do this, notwithstanding any clause in his lease to the contrary. We have taken care to provide in the bill, that the tenant shall not be able to burn-beat any ground in virtue of this act;¹³ and since he is tied up from that, and from ploughing meadows, &c. the people skilled in husbandry say, he cannot hurt the land though he should go round the 100 acres in 20 years.

I find my Lord Trevor objected to a bill we sent from council,¹⁴ that this was a breaking of private contracts, and invading property: but I think that nothing, since the lessor receives no damage by it, and the publick is very much benefitted; and this is no more than what is done every session in England, where rivers are made navigable or commons inclosed; and in many road bills.

I shall now acquaint your Grace with the great want we are in of this bill: our present tillage falls very short of answering the demands of this nation, which occasions our importing corn from England and other places; and whilst our poor have bread to eat, we do not complain of this; but by tilling so little, if our crop fails, or yields indifferently, our poor have not money to buy bread. This was the case in 1725, and last year, and without a prodigious crop, will be more so this year. When I went my visitation last year, barley in some inland places, sold for 6s. a bushel, to make the bread of; and oatmeal (which is the bread of the north) sold for twice or thrice the usual price: and we met all the roads full of whole families that had left their homes to beg abroad, since their neighbours had nothing to relieve them with. And as the winter subsistence of the poor is chiefly potatoes, this scarcity drove the poor to begin with their potatoes before they were full grown, so that they have lost half the benefit of them, and have spent their stock about two months sooner than usual; and oatmeal is at this distance from harvest, in many parts of this kingdom three times the customary price; so that this summer must be more fatal to us than the last; when I fear many hundreds perished by famine.

Now the occasion of this evil is, that many persons have hired large tracts of land, on to 3 or 4000 acres, and have stocked them with cattle, and have no other inhabitants on their land than so many cottiers as are necessary to look after their sheep and black cattle; so that in some of the finest counties, in many places there is neither house nor corn field to be seen in 10 or 15 miles travelling: and daily in some counties, many gentlemen (as their leases fall into their hands) tye up their tenants from tillage: and this is one of the main causes why so many venture to go into foreign service at the hazard of their lives, if taken, because they can get no land to till at home. And if some stop be not put to this evil, we must daily decrease in the numbers of our people.

But we hope if this tillage bill takes place, to keep our youth at home, to employ our poor, and not be in danger of a ...