I

At the beginning of the twentieth century, land purchase in Ireland, under land legislation passed by the British government between 1881 and 1896, had ground to a virtual standstill. The numbers within the landlord class who wished to sell, or who could afford to, had been exhausted but demand from occupiers continued to grow for a comprehensive land purchase measure. John Redmond (1856–1918) had led the minority Parnellite wing of the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) after the bitter Parnell split of the early 1890s. Once the party reunited in 1900, Redmond was elected chairman and as such was considered the voice of nationalist tenant farmers. The campaign for the compulsory purchase of landlords' estates, sponsored in the south and west by the United Irish League (UIL) and in Ulster by the unionist MP for South Tyrone, T. W. Russell, had put the Conservative government under increasing pressure to introduce comprehensive land legislation.Footnote ¹ When a relatively unknown Co. Galway landlord, John Shawe-Taylor, called for a conference of landlord and tenant representatives to meet and discuss the land question in September 1902, George Wyndham, Conservative chief secretary of Ireland from 1900 to 1905, gave the proposal his blessing. Over the winter of 1902–3, John Redmond, along with other tenant representatives such as William O'Brien, T. C. Harrington, and T. W. Russell, met with the earl of Dunraven, the earl of Mayo, Colonel Hutcheson-Poe and Colonel Nugent-Everard who represented landlords. Together they negotiated the terms of the Land Conference Report which would form the basis of much of the Irish Land Act of 1903.

Ironically, upon the death of his uncle Lieutenant-General John Patrick Redmond in March 1902, John Redmond had become a landlord when he inherited his uncle's heavily encumbered estate, which was situated near the towns of New Ross and Wexford in Co. Wexford. Nonetheless, he participated as a tenant representative at the Land Conference of 1902–3. When a portion of the tenantry on Redmond's estate near Wexford town offered to purchase their holdings just prior to the introduction of the new act, he accepted, seemingly unaware of the public scrutiny that the sale would attract and its potential to set a standard sale price under the act. The initial terms offered were deemed exorbitant by many in the nationalist community and Redmond's political opponents moved swiftly to take advantage. Although the estate was eventually sold to the entire tenantry at a lower price, the original terms offered by the tenants near Wexford town and initially accepted by Redmond lingered in the public consciousness and were repeatedly cited by political opponents for many years after.

Despite the enduring negative publicity generated by the controversy, there was little mention of it in the early biographies of John Redmond. The first, in 1910, by his nephew, Louis G. Redmond-Howard, and another by his party colleague, Stephen Lucius Gwynn, were quite sympathetic, which is not surprising given the nature of their relationships with Redmond.Footnote ² In 1919, a year after Redmond's death, the British journalist Warre B. Wells published a biography which confined reference to the sale to a few sentences.Footnote ³ It was not until 1932 that Denis Gywnn, a professor at University College Dublin and a son of the aforementioned Stephen, addressed the controversy in any real depth when he refuted some of the allegations made against Redmond.Footnote ⁴ Little further mention appeared in the historiography until 1951 when F. S. L. Lyons fleetingly touched on the controversy in his work on the IPP, where he noted that the sale price reported may have caused Redmond some difficulties.Footnote ⁵ More recently, Paul Bew mentioned the affair in his 1987 work, Conflict and conciliation in Ireland, and later in his short biography John Redmond.Footnote ⁶ His entry on Redmond in the Oxford dictionary of national biography acknowledged that the estate which John Redmond inherited was both ‘financially and politically a burden’.Footnote ⁷ While Patrick Maume has also noted that Redmond ‘faced accusations of demanding extortionate prices’ from his tenants it is significant that the entry on Redmond in the new Dictionary of Irish biography makes no mention of the controversial estate.Footnote ⁸

While some historians have acknowledged that it caused Redmond some embarrassment, a comprehensive account of the events surrounding the sale does not exist. This article addresses this lacuna in the historiography, expanding on the work of Bew and, thus, enhancing the interpretation of Redmond's career, the practice of nationalist politics, and the political impact of land reform in early twentieth-century Ireland. By providing a fuller understanding of John Redmond's personal and political interests, this article should complement recent works on nationalist politics and the Irish land question during this period by authors such as Philip Bull and Fergus Campbell.Footnote ⁹ Likewise, with the recent publication of the first volume (to 1900) of Dermot Meleady's ongoing biography of Redmond, this article offers a fresh perspective on Redmond's political career post-1900.Footnote ¹⁰

II

Upon inheriting his uncle's estate in March 1902, some of Redmond's tenantry enquired about purchasing their holdings under the existing land acts but Redmond replied that he was not in a position to sell.Footnote ¹¹ His reluctance to sell was surely influenced by the encumbered nature of the estate with rent arrears of approximately £4,000 owed to his uncle's widow Roberta Elizabeth Redmond, who was also entitled to an annual jointure. In order to prevent the tenants being sued for the recovery of these rent arrears, Redmond paid his uncle's widow an equivalent sum in cash at his own expense but did not demand any repayment from the tenants.Footnote ¹² This was clearly appreciated and, in January 1903, a spokesman for the tenants, Fr David Bolger, informed John Redmond that ‘in consideration of the burdens on your estate’ and ‘in view of the coming land bill’ they were willing to set aside the question of sale for a period.Footnote ¹³ Introduced in parliament in March 1903, and better known as the Wyndham Act after its author George Wyndham, the Irish Land Act of 1903 was the most comprehensive and ambitious of all of the land acts introduced under the British administration in Ireland. Redmond welcomed the legislation and announced in the House of Commons: ‘it is the greatest effort ever yet made to settle the Irish land question by purchase’.Footnote ¹⁴

The Wyndham Act provided considerable incentives to landlords to sell and to tenants to purchase. To encourage landlords to sell, the purchase money was paid in cash and every landlord who sold under the act received a 12 per cent cash bonus calculated on the purchase money of the estate. Thus, for every £1,000 of purchase money the landlord received, he was guaranteed a cash bonus of £120 which was not subject to any family or estate charges. Tenant-purchasers received a government loan or ‘advance’ to buy their holding where their landlord wished to sell. This loan would be repaid to the government in the form of an ‘annuity’. One of the more innovative features of the Wyndham Act was the inclusion of a system which became known as the ‘zones’. The zones were intended to guide both landlord and tenant-purchasers towards a satisfactory purchase price and were based on tenants' rents. The zones ensured that the tenant-purchasers' annuities would be appreciably less than their former rents and this proved to be a major incentive for tenants to purchase. Comparing prices by the number of years' purchase of rent had been the principal method used under previous land acts. Under the zones system, prices ranged from 18½ years' to 24½ years' purchase on first term rents and from 21½ years' to 27⅔ years' purchase on second term rents.Footnote ¹⁵

Several leading nationalists had privately opposed the new land act from the outset. John Dillon, the former leader of the anti-Parnellite wing of the IPP, Michael Davitt, the founder of the Irish National Land League, and the Freeman's Journal newspaper under the control of Thomas Sexton predicted that landlords would obtain extortionate terms under the Wyndham Act to the detriment of the tenants. John Dillon, in particular, had become increasingly opposed to the conciliatory attitude adopted by both Redmond and William O'Brien towards Irish landlords and admitted that he would have opposed the new land act in parliament but for party loyalty.Footnote ¹⁶ Firmly believing that the land question was a potent weapon in nationalist hands and that to settle it would risk the attainment of home rule, he found it impossible to overcome his innate distrust of landlords.Footnote ¹⁷

In August 1903, John Dillon publicly declared his opposition to the Wyndham Act at a meeting in Swinford, Co. Mayo.Footnote ¹⁸ Dillon and his supporters feared that the new zones system would be used by landlords to exploit unsuspecting tenants and argued that the average price of land under the new act ought to be similar to the prices paid under the 1885 Ashbourne Land Act. The average prices, in terms of the number of years' purchase for sales in the years 1901 and 1902, were £18·1 and £17·9 respectively.Footnote ¹⁹ However, when the duke of Leinster's estate in Co. Kildare was sold by the trustees at 25 years' purchase in September 1903, it led to outrage among many nationalists who felt that the sale, which was one of the earliest and largest under the act, would lead to tenants around the country having to pay similar exorbitant prices.Footnote ²⁰ As Dillon had warned: ‘When the landlords talk of conciliation … They want 25 years' purchase of their land.’Footnote ²¹

In mid-October 1903, despite the growing anxiety among many nationalists at the potential prices landlords could receive under the new act, John Redmond accepted terms offered by the tenantry on part of his estate near Wexford town which amounted to 23 years' purchase on first term rents and 24½ years' purchase on second term rents. The Wexford Independent newspaper reported a resolution passed by these tenants thanking the IPP leader:

Despite this expression of gratitude, the timing of Redmond's acceptance of the Wexford tenants' offer was ill-judged. There was already a fear among many tenant representatives that the sale terms of the Leinster estate would set a precedent and now Redmond was willing to accept a purchase price that was almost as high. The fact that the tenants themselves had willingly offered such terms was lost amid the controversy that ensued. Indeed, Redmond himself seemed to have underestimated the significance of his actions and the effect that it would have on sale negotiations throughout Ireland. Placed in the invidious position of simultaneously being a landlord and a tenant representative, Redmond faced accusations that he had let his personal interests cloud his political judgement. By accepting what many nationalists viewed as exorbitant terms, Redmond's position as IPP leader was weakened. Any attempt to rein in Dillon, Davitt, and Sexton, who argued against Redmond and O'Brien's policy of conciliation, in the belief that landlords would receive excessive prices under the act, would now be almost impossible.

The Annual register for 1903 noted that Redmond was ‘sharply assailed’ over the purchase price he was alleged to have obtained from his tenants and the ensuing controversy seemed to have a conspicuous effect upon him.Footnote ²³ The independent nationalist, T. M. Healy, observed that Redmond had been ‘cowed by criticism’ while William O'Brien would recollect that the ‘worst effect of all upon the public cause of Mr Redmond's Wexford sale was that the alarm it aroused made him shrink with an all too visible nervousness from that firmness which was now essential for the restoration of discipline in the national ranks’.Footnote ²⁴ Embarrassed and unnerved by the negative publicity surrounding his actions as a landlord, Redmond failed to address decisively the disparity between his inclination to adopt a conciliatory attitude towards landlords and the inclination of John Dillon and his supporters to view the Wyndham Act with suspicion.

Redmond's political opponents were quick to take advantage of the controversy pointing out his folly in the context of his dual role as a landlord and as a tenant representative. During the bitterly contested South Meath by-election in late 1903, Charles Stewart Parnell's brother, John Howard Parnell, ran as an independent nationalist against David Sheehy, the official party candidate. During the campaign, supporters of Parnell such as the independent nationalist MP, Jasper Tully, seized on the estate sale to depict Redmond as an avaricious landlord who had betrayed the very Irish tenant farmers he claimed to represent.Footnote ²⁵ According to Tully: ‘The farmers have no one but themselves to blame if every selling landlord in the country says he would be a patent fool if he did not insist on getting at the very least … the same as Mr John Redmond.’Footnote ²⁶

A number of newspapers, such as the pro-unionist Irish Times, also quickly moved to avail of the opportunity to undermine the nationalist leader: ‘Twenty-four and a half years’ purchase is not by any means a bad stroke of business for a landlord whose political followers have paraded Ireland from end to end with the injunction that tenants must not dream of offering more than seventeen or eighteen years.’Footnote ²⁷ The Irish Daily Independent and Nation, owned by the former anti-Parnellite, William Martin Murphy, went so far as to call for Redmond's resignation as leader of the IPP:

Those who feared that the 24½ years' purchase accepted by Redmond would give ‘a headline to the landlords’ soon had those fears realized.Footnote ²⁹ On the estate of Major Maxwell Close in Co. Armagh, for example, the tenants were explicitly offered the same terms as those accepted by Redmond.Footnote ³⁰ Further south in Co. Limerick, the Knight of Glin brought the attention of a deputation of his tenants to the fact that the nationalist leader had accepted 24½ years' purchase, while in Cooraclare, Co. Clare, Fr M. B. Curry wrote how landlords in his parish had asked tenants the rhetorical question: ‘I suppose you saw what Mr Redmond, your leader, got for his property?’Footnote ³¹

Although the Freeman's Journal predicted that landlords would exploit the Wyndham Act to obtain exorbitant terms, it had, as the primary nationalist newspaper, made a rather ambiguous attempt to defend Redmond on account of the exceptional circumstances of his case. In an article on 31 October 1903, it put forward the low rental, the family charges, the cancellation of arrears of rent, and the ‘special services of Mr Redmond to the tenantry of Ireland’ as reasons for what it reproachfully termed ‘a very generous price’.Footnote ³² In response, Michael Davitt declared as preposterous the newspaper's rather weak attempts to justify Redmond's terms:

Davitt believed in land nationalization and had opposed both the Land Conference and the Wyndham Act from the outset. Davitt was openly critical of the terms of Redmond's sale as he believed not only that the price was excessive but that it was being exploited by landlords who wished to obtain similar terms. He considered it the height of hypocrisy for the Freeman's Journal to try to justify the price on account of Redmond's position or past services and then to denounce other landlords for seeking similar terms.

Davitt's savage criticism provoked a counter-response from the newspaper which further attempted to justify Redmond's case:

However, the newspaper's attempts to defend Redmond appeared half-hearted in the wake of Davitt's criticism. Moreover, Davitt's public response to the ‘Redmond terms’ now threatened to damage the unity of the IPP. Fr James C. Cannon of Letterkenny, Co. Donegal, confided to Redmond that ‘Davitt is acting from the worst of motives and would, if he could, plunge the country into another split. His mean and dishonest attempt to misrepresent the negotiations on your Wexford estate is quite enough justification for saying this.’Footnote ³⁵ With such a respected figure as Davitt openly hostile towards Redmond, many nationalists must have feared for the unity of the IPP and another bitter split akin to that of the 1890s.

Redmond's dual role as a landlord and a tenant representative had proved politically divisive. Any attempt now by a battered Redmond to force Dillon to toe the party line and adhere to the policy of conciliation looked extremely unlikely. Although William O'Brien had initially defended Redmond in his newspaper the Irish People,Footnote ³⁶ he would later recall that the ‘alarm raised by the publication of the Wexford terms’ had given critics ‘a weapon before which he [Redmond] quailed’.Footnote ³⁷ In a published letter to Fr O'Flynn, president of the Cork UIL, a frustrated O'Brien announced the resignation of his parliamentary seat in November 1903. He stated that he now wished to prevent a split in the party between the advocates of the Wyndham Act, and of a conciliatory policy towards landlords, and the supporters of Dillon, Davitt, and the Freeman's Journal, who opposed this course.Footnote ³⁸ Significantly, O'Brien's resignation would force an isolated Redmond into an uneasy alliance with Dillon in order to prevent any further split in the nationalist movement; this inevitably also forced Redmond to distance himself from his policy of conciliation towards landlords and support for the Wyndham Act.

III

As his position became increasingly isolated following O'Brien's unexpected resignation, Redmond now felt the need to make a public defence of his actions at a public meeting fixed for 15 November 1903 in Limerick city. This was essentially a damage limitation exercise which Redmond hoped would get his critics back on side and shift the public spotlight away from the sale of his Co. Wexford estate. Warre B. Wells noted how Redmond's position had been ‘rendered very difficult by stories circulated with regard to profits which it was alleged he had made from the sale of his own small estate’.Footnote ³⁹

Indeed, even in the days leading up to the Limerick meeting, Redmond came under attack in the national press. In a published letter to the Irish Times, for instance, Fr Lee, St Michael's parish in Limerick city, stated that he would not attend the planned meeting on account of the fact that:

The independent nationalist MP Jasper Tully followed suit claiming that Redmond had set the price for land under the Wyndham Act in ‘conjunction with his landlord friends’ at the Land Conference.Footnote ⁴¹ Tully questioned if Redmond's position as leader of the nationalist tenant farmers of Ireland had been compromised by his inheritance of his uncle's estate, believing, in fact, that Redmond had ‘lost his claim on the allegiance of the farmers, who practically control the representatives of Ireland’.Footnote ⁴² It was easy now for Redmond's opponents to claim retrospectively that his personal circumstances had influenced his judgement during the Land Conference and that his attitude towards the Wyndham Act was not a reflection of the best interests of tenant farmers. This conflict of interest between John Redmond's political responsibilities as a tenant representative and his personal position as a landlord would remain at the core of the controversy.

However, some of Redmond's contemporaries believed that he was being treated very harshly particularly in view of the fact that he had not imposed a price but rather had accepted a price for his land offered to him by his tenants. The chief secretary, George Wyndham, confided to the Cork landlord and writer, Moreton Frewen, that it was unfair that political ‘capital’ had been made out of Redmond's situation.Footnote ⁴³ Sir Joseph Neale McKenna, the former nationalist MP for South Monaghan who owned an estate in Co. Cork, publicly defended Redmond in a letter to the Irish Times pointing out that ‘Mr Redmond's tenants were quite as well able as their landlord to make a good bargain, and that on this occasion have done so.’Footnote ⁴⁴ Redmond's party colleague, T. P. O'Connor, would later recollect that ‘personal enemies criticised [Redmond] with the unfairness of political controversy the terms of sale; as a matter of fact they were quite equitable, and Mr Redmond was not a penny the richer.’Footnote ⁴⁵

Alderman Stephen O'Mara assured Redmond that he would receive ‘a hearty and enthusiastic reception’ at the Limerick meeting although he did acknowledge that there was ‘a strong feeling about the sale’ of his estate ‘among a certain class of farmers’.Footnote ⁴⁶ At the meeting in November 1903, Redmond admitted that some Irish landlords had sought to obtain unfair prices on the strength of a price of 24½ years' purchase reported by the press. He pointed out that the actual terms offered by his tenantry near Wexford town were significantly lower than those published, particularly because the rent arrears owed by the tenants had been wiped out.Footnote ⁴⁷At a time when Redmond needed the support and public backing of his nationalist colleagues, however, it was quite significant that both Dillon and Davitt failed to attend the Limerick meeting; Dillon excused himself on health grounds while Davitt pleaded a prior engagement.Footnote ⁴⁸

While some members of the IPP, like John Dillon, may have been wary of personally criticizing Redmond in public, the independent nationalist, T. M. Healy, had no such reservations. At a public meeting in his constituency, the MP for North Louth admonished Redmond for attempting to sell so quickly under the Wyndham Act, arguing that Redmond ought to have waited for a number of months instead of setting a precedent for sales prices. In his opinion, Redmond had ‘put up the price on every tenant in Ireland’ and the Redmond terms would ‘echo and re-echo on every estate’.Footnote ⁴⁹

Meanwhile, back in Co. Wexford, John Redmond came under increasing pressure from tenant representatives including Fr David Bolger who was associated with the tenantry around the New Ross part of his estate. The tenants on this section of the estate considered their land to be considerably poorer than that around Wexford town:

While the terms published in the press in October 1903 were agreeable at the time to those tenants near Wexford town, it seems that the furore that followed convinced those on other parts of the estate that better terms could be obtained. In a letter responding to Fr Bolger's pleas to reduce the price and to consider the political implications, Redmond revealed the personal considerations involved:

The sale of the estate was clearly an emotive and highly charged personal subject for Redmond and, initially, he seemed intent on maximizing his material interest in the estate. However, in late December 1903, new terms for his entire estate were eventually agreed upon with his tenants, which were lower and more varied than those previously reported. The final details of the sale can be confirmed by an extant letter from the Irish Land Commission which shows that sixteen tenants on the estate who had first term rents paid 22·1 years' purchase, twenty-nine tenants with second term rents paid 23·7 years' purchase, and forty-six, who never had a judicial rent fixed, paid 18·3 years' purchase.Footnote ⁵² The apparent climb-down on Redmond's part could be attributed to the negative publicity that the original terms had attracted but it was also an obvious attempt to repair some of the damage to his political reputation and standing as IPP leader. His inheritance had certainly proved to be a considerable burden, both politically and financially.

Overall, Redmond sold just over 3,000 acres for £33,779 but despite enduring claims to the contrary from his opponents, he actually made little personal gain from the sale of the estate and obtained none of the bonus.Footnote ⁵³ According to the final surviving estimate, the purchase money available to John Redmond, after all the charges on the estate had been cleared, was eventually put at £740.Footnote ⁵⁴ According to Redmond himself:

To counteract rumours still circulating about the sale of the estate, these ‘facts’ of the case were published by Redmond's solicitors, O'Keeffe and Lynch, in the Irish Times in July 1904. In spite of this and the fact that the final sale price and the circumstances surrounding the Redmond estate sale were widely publicized, the original terms offered and accepted by Redmond in October 1903 haunted the nationalist leader for the rest of his political career.Footnote ⁵⁶

IV

An added dimension to the Redmond estate sale controversy came to light in July 1904. It transpired that John Redmond had withdrawn the estate from the Land Judge's Court (which dealt with heavily encumbered and bankrupt estates) in July 1903 just when the passage of the Wyndham Act through parliament looked assured.Footnote ⁵⁷ It had not gone unnoticed by political opponents, like the independent nationalist T. M. Healy, who waited for an opportune moment to raise it. This new information about Redmond's pre-emptive actions led Healy to question his motives for selling his estate. Healy argued that if the Redmond estate had remained in the court it could eventually have been sold to the tenants by the land judge at a considerably lower price than the 24½ years' purchase Redmond had initially accepted.Footnote ⁵⁸

In what was a rather embarrassing incident for John Redmond and the IPP, Healy decided to raise the issue in the House of Commons during a debate on legislation introduced in July 1904 to clarify certain aspects of the Wyndham Act.Footnote ⁵⁹ Healy wanted to prevent vendors under the Wyndham Act, such as Redmond, who had taken their estates out of the Land Judge's Court before sale, from obtaining the cash bonus. The House of Commons debate eventually descended into disorder with much of Healy's speech disrupted by loud cries from the IPP benches. The incident concluded with the leader of the Irish unionists, Colonel Edward Saunderson, gleefully pointing out that ‘the debate had ended in a manifestation which illustrated the justice of their [unionist] objection to an Irish home rule parliament’.Footnote ⁶⁰Punch magazine was quick to see the significance of the incident and the public discomfort that it caused Redmond. Its issue of 20 July 1904 included a cartoon entitled ‘A Dreadful Exposé’ where Redmond, caricatured as an owl, was mercilessly pecked by Healy in the guise of a crow.Footnote ⁶¹

Following Healy's antics in front of a packed House of Commons, Canon Patrick Furlong, the parish priest of Taghmon, Co. Wexford, who had represented some of the tenants during the sale negotiations, sought permission from Redmond to ‘do something in the way of contradicting the lies which are being repeated … by Healy’.Footnote ⁶² Redmond was eager to take Healy to task himself but ‘having dealt with the matter in public once’ at Limerick, in November 1903, he was ‘not anxious to do so again’ and agreed that Canon Furlong should address the problem.Footnote ⁶³ The first of a series of letters penned by Furlong appeared in the Freeman's Journal on 26 July 1904 in which he defended the sale and condemned T. M. Healy and the Irish Daily Independent and Nation newspaper for deliberately propagating false reports about the sale terms.Footnote ⁶⁴ Not all agreed with Canon Furlong's defence of John Redmond. Some tenants on the Redmond estate, such as H. D. Jeffares, were adamant that Redmond had generally inflated the price of Irish land under the new act:

In August 1904, Healy's tactic would be repeated by Jasper Tully when he created further embarrassment by unsuccessfully requesting information about the Redmond sale from the chief secretary, George Wyndham, in the House of Commons.Footnote ⁶⁶ The Redmond estate controversy not only raged in Ireland but had particular repercussions in the United States of America where Clann na Gael attempted to exploit the situation. Under the leadership of John Devoy, committed to physical force nationalism and opposed to John Redmond and his party, Clann na Gael had opposed the 1903 Land Act and viewed the controversy as an opportunity to undermine Redmond. The Gaelic American newspaper, established and edited by Devoy, denounced the huge profits that they alleged would accrue to Redmond from the sale as early as November 1903.Footnote ⁶⁷ However, Redmond was ably defended by Patrick Ford's Irish World and American Industrial Liberator newspaper and by John O'Callaghan, the national secretary of the UIL in America. At a league meeting held in November 1903 at Brookline in Massachusetts, O'Callaghan publicly denounced the ‘malicious whisperings and the patent falsehoods’ directed against John Redmond.Footnote ⁶⁸ However, with accusations about the sale becoming ‘the stock and trade of the men in America whose one platform is to assail Mr Redmond’, O'Callaghan sought and received a letter from the Irish Land Commission which outlined the details of the sale.Footnote ⁶⁹ With this official statement in hand, O'Callaghan addressed a public meeting at the Grand Opera House, Philadelphia, in 1906, at which he dismissed as lies the accusations made by certain Clann na Gael members, such as Judge O'Neil Ryan, that Redmond had ‘set the pace for Irish landlords by raising the price of his own land on his tenants’.Footnote ⁷⁰ The address was published as a pamphlet issued by the UIL of America.

Back in Ireland, public attention continued to be focused on the sale of the Redmond estate by a variety of prominent political figures. In early 1907, for instance, William O'Brien took a libel action against the Freeman's Journal and announced in the witness box that the conciliatory policy towards landlords had proved a failure ‘owing to Mr Dillon's speeches, the attitude of the Freeman[‘s Journal], and the sale of the Redmond estate’.Footnote ⁷¹ Consequently, the notorious 24½ years' purchase price was restated in the newspaper coverage of the case. For good measure, O'Brien repeated the charge later that year at a meeting in Cork, and in an article in The Nineteenth Century and After, where he emphasized that Redmond's 24½ years' purchase had set the standard for prices under the 1903 Land Act.Footnote ⁷²

The United Irishman newspaper edited by Arthur Griffith, who founded the National Council which later merged with other nationalist organizations to create Sinn Féin, viewed the Redmond estate sale as part of a wider conspiracy to inflate the price of land under the 1903 Land Act and condemned the ‘scandalous’ terms.Footnote ⁷³ This ‘shameful affair’ was later used by Sinn Féin in the lead up to the North Leitrim by-election in February 1908 to criticize Redmond and the IPP.Footnote ⁷⁴ At a meeting in the constituency, the Sinn Féin candidate, Charles Dolan, who had recently defected from the IPP, reminded his audience that the IPP leader was a landlord who had sold his estate under the 1903 Land Act.Footnote ⁷⁵ Some months later, the agrarian reformer and former Parnellite, Andrew J. Kettle, whose son Tom was the IPP member for East Tyrone, went further, denouncing Redmond as ‘a landlord whom the fates used to give the landlords a pretence for raising the price of land’.Footnote ⁷⁶

The Redmond estate sale controversy entered the public domain once again in March 1909. Although William O'Brien and T. M. Healy had rejoined the IPP in early 1908, both left again after little more than a year. O'Brien departed following the infamous ‘Baton Convention’ of the UIL held on 9 February 1909 at which members had debated whether or not to support the 1909 land bill. The convention was chaired by Redmond and there had been considerable disturbance with O'Brien being unable to get a hearing and many of his supporters being attacked by members of the Ancient Order of Hibernians wielding batons. As a result, some of O'Brien's supporters took a legal action against UIL officials and T. M. Healy was employed to act as counsel for the prosecution. During the course of the heavily publicized action, efforts were made by Healy and O'Brien to discredit and embarrass Redmond over the sale of his estate prompting him to retaliate by reading out in court the final sale terms from an official Irish Land Commission letter.Footnote ⁷⁷

Following his second departure from the IPP, William O'Brien immediately founded the All-For-Ireland League (AFIL) in March 1909. The organization's power base was centred in the Cork region and O'Brien was supported by nationalist MPs like T. M. Healy, who used this platform to continue his vociferous attacks on Redmond. With two general elections in January and December 1910, the estate sale remained a potent and relevant election issue. Healy and O'Brien, as T. P. O'Connor noted, made the Redmond ‘terms of purchase … the starting-point for a new campaign.’Footnote ⁷⁸ In North Louth, T. M. Healy faced the official IPP candidate, Richard Hazelton, and he seldom missed an opportunity to undermine the IPP campaign by accusing Redmond of inflating the price of land for Irish tenant farmers under the Wyndham Act.Footnote ⁷⁹ Although colleagues of Redmond, such as David Sheehy, took Healy to task for continually spreading the ‘lie’ of 24½ years’ purchase, Healy adhered to his policy of attacking Redmond on the subject.Footnote ⁸⁰ He even circulated a pamphlet in his constituency simply entitled ‘“Voters of Louth. Healy sold no estate at 24 years’ purchase”’.Footnote ⁸¹

At an AFIL demonstration in Dungarvan, Co. Waterford, in September 1910, at which both Healy and O'Brien spoke, the audience was told that Redmond's actions had cost Irish tenant farmers millions of pounds as a result of inflated prices paid to landlords under the 1903 Land Act.Footnote ⁸² William O'Brien stood for East Mayo in the December 1910 general election and at a meeting in Castlebar he took the opportunity to refer to Redmond as ‘the apostle of that twenty-four and a half years’ purchase’.Footnote ⁸³ Although O'Brien was ultimately unsuccessful, the controversy received fresh impetus, not only in Ireland but in Britain; in an interview with the Morning Post, for instance, O'Brien repeated the declaration that he had left the IPP in 1903 because Redmond sold his estate for 24½ years' purchase. Stephen Gwynn, who would later write a biography of Redmond, publicly took O'Brien to task for propagating the falsehood that the estate had been sold at such a figure and in 1911 a series of public letters passed between the two men in the press.Footnote ⁸⁴

With the issue becoming an important weapon in the AFIL anti-Redmond arsenal, other members such as T. M. Healy's brother, Maurice, also attempted to utilize it for electoral benefit. On the subject of landlords seeking high prices, Maurice told a tenants' deputation that ‘Redmond's price of 24½ years' purchase was quite bad enough.’Footnote ⁸⁵ Such attacks prior to the December 1910 election forced IPP members, such as J. J. Shee, John Cullinan, and Peter Ffrench, to address the sale of Redmond's estate at the hustings.Footnote ⁸⁶

At the first annual convention of the AFIL, in June 1911, T. M. Healy could not resist disparaging Redmond over the ‘24½ years' purchase’.Footnote ⁸⁷ Shortly afterwards, another war of words broke out when Healy took umbrage to a public letter from John Redmond to John Muldoon, IPP member for East Cork, in which he referred to ‘being stabbed in the back’ by his own countrymen.Footnote ⁸⁸ Part of Healy's response focused on Redmond, the champion of the Irish tenant farmers betraying their trust though his action in the sale of his estate. However, Redmond was ably defended by Muldoon who admonished Healy for repeating ‘the stale slander about twenty-four years’ purchase for the sale of the Redmond estate’.Footnote ⁸⁹

Unionists were equally adept at using the estate sale controversy for their own ends. Although John Redmond's son, William Archer Redmond, was elected IPP member for East Tyrone in the December 1910 general election, the sale of his father's estate had been utilized by his opponents during the election campaign to undermine his support amongst tenant farmers. One unionist newspaper in the constituency asked ‘how can young Redmond talk about land purchase when his father got 24½ years' purchase for his own property!’ This prompted William Archer, at a meeting in Ardboe, Co. Tyrone, to reiterate the terms of the sale and to denounce those who sought to spread such lies.Footnote ⁹⁰

V

As one of the earliest, and certainly one of the most high-profile, sales under the Wyndham Act, the Redmond estate sale attracted considerable public attention. While Redmond's objectivity as a tenant representative, once he had inherited his uncle's estate, is questionable, there appears to have been an element of naivety on his part throughout the whole episode. Redmond seems to have viewed the sale of his estate as a private matter but the fact that land was such a politicized issue in Ireland meant that any politician's involvement in land purchase, especially the leader of the IPP, would become not only a public but a political issue. As leader of the nationalist tenant farmers of Ireland, the sale of his estate was always going to attract intense scrutiny. Rather than waiting until a standard price had been established by the sale of other estates, he naively agreed to terms at the introduction of the act, seemingly unaware of the fact that he would help to set a precedent for sale prices for landed estates throughout the country.

As Paul Bew has pointed out, the initial price of 24½ years' purchase turned out to be ‘acutely embarrassing’.Footnote ⁹¹ This was compounded by the fact that the ‘Redmond terms’ closely followed the announcement of the Leinster estate sale terms which were perceived as a godsend for landlords who had feared that prices, in terms of years' purchase of rent, might not exceed those obtained under the 1885 Ashbourne Land Act. The fact that it was the tenants themselves who had offered the initial terms of 24½ years' purchase was lost in the controversy. Those initial terms became a popular reference for landlords as much as political opponents and the fact that the estate was finally sold at a lower number of years' purchase was all but ignored. In 1905, the northern landlord W. H. Boyd, for example, stated that ‘land under the land purchase act of 1903, was worth what the leader of the nationalists, Mr Redmond, had got – namely, 24½ years' purchase and the bonus'.Footnote ⁹² In 1908, when many remaining landlords who had not sold their estates faced the introduction of compulsory land purchase, Lord Barrymore of Fota House, Co. Cork, quipped: ‘If Mr Redmond's idea of compulsion is to compel us to sell our estates upon the terms upon which he sold his, I suppose we shall all be prepared to consider the question with a more or less favourable eye.’Footnote ⁹³

Given his position, any attempt by Redmond not only to gain by but to maximize his material interest in the sale of land would also prove problematic. The withdrawal of his estate from the Land Judge's Court to avail of the terms of the Wyndham Act would have been a prudent business move for any other landlord in a similar position; unfortunately for Redmond, he was anything but an ordinary landlord and that should have encouraged caution. However, the case of those who portrayed Redmond as a ‘felonious landlord’ attempting to make a financial gain was certainly undermined by the fact that he made so little from the sale and obtained none of the cash bonus.

Redmond seems to have only twice publicly addressed the controversy; first, at the Limerick meeting in late 1903 and secondly, when forced to do so in court in 1909. The attacks against him over his estate were, as T. P. O'Connor outlined, borne ‘for the most part in silence’.Footnote ⁹⁴ A more aggressive stance in tackling the controversy, as opposed to the characteristically conservative approach he adopted, might have nipped it in the bud. Indeed, after his death, M. J. O'Connor, the solicitor who had represented some of Redmond's tenants during the negotiations, lamented that he had been ‘vilified over the sale’ and expressed regret that Redmond had not allowed him to ‘clear the atmosphere’ at the time.Footnote ⁹⁵

The allegation that, as a landlord, Redmond had exploited his own tenants, and betrayed the nationalist tenantry that he represented, persisted for many years after the event. Indeed, the longevity of the controversy reflected the continued importance of the land question in Irish politics. In rural Ireland, where local politics predominantly revolved around the land question, opponents of the IPP were particularly adept at using the controversy to persuade tenant farmers, who formed the backbone of the IPP's support, that their votes should go elsewhere. They argued that, despite posing as the peoples' champion, the affair not only revealed Redmond to be a landlord, the hereditary enemy of Irish tenants, but that his actions were selfish, un-patriotic, and hypocritical. One of the principal criticisms of the Wyndham Act by the IPP had been that landlords were receiving exorbitant prices but such protestations seemed hypocritical given the headline the IPP leader himself was alleged to have set for landlords by the sale of his own estate. Political opponents, particularly in rural constituencies, regularly revived the myth of ‘24½ years' purchase’ at election time to avail of the ‘profound resentment and distrust among the farmers’ which the controversy had created in some quarters.Footnote ⁹⁶ Redmond's Janus-like position, trying to reconcile being a landlord while simultaneously appearing as the spokesman for tenant farmers, exemplified the conflicting interests often present in the IPP. This was comparable to his party's position during the Ranch War of 1906–9 when ‘graziers sat on public platforms denouncing the very system from which they were profiting’.Footnote ⁹⁷

Furthermore, this not only highlighted the close connection between land and politics but a duality in the practice of politics in Ireland – manifested to some degree by the divisions within the IPP itself. Redmond was essentially a parliamentarian, a statesman, whose priorities lay with the pursuit of home rule in parliament at Westminster. His ignorance of land matters had been demonstrated as early as 1896 when he naively declared that the 1896 Land Act had solved the Irish land question.Footnote ⁹⁸ By contrast, the majority of his parliamentary colleagues who had built their careers on agrarian agitation were more in touch with grassroots nationalist opinion and, therefore, more aware of the continued importance and relevance of land issues in rural Ireland post-1903. In 1905, The Times reported that within the party, John Dillon's most steadfast supporters, such as Denis Kilbride and John Roche, ‘frequently strike covertly at Mr Redmond in connexion with the sale of his estate’.Footnote ⁹⁹ According to D. D. Sheehan, a close political ally of William O'Brien, the controversy ‘irretrievably tied the hands of Mr Redmond so far as making any heroic stand against Mr Dillon and his fellow-conspirators was concerned’.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Consequently, the controversy weakened Redmond's authority as leader of the IPP. That weakness had, according to D. D. Sheehan, been ‘engendered by the unforgettable mistake he made in regard to the sale of his estate’. Sheehan added that Redmond's ‘mistake’ had been ‘held over him as a sword of Damocles, and that he was never able to get away from its haunting shadow sufficiently to assert his own authority in the manner of an independent and resolute leader’.Footnote ¹⁰¹

Redmond would remain vulnerable to criticism on the issue of his estate sale from within the nationalist movement for the remainder of his political career. Even at the height of his popularity in 1912, thanks to the introduction of the third home rule bill that April, the issue continued to be utilized against him by political opponents. Questions now arose as to whether or not Redmond, permanently damaged in the eyes of some members of the farmer class, could be trusted to deliver home rule. In that year, the UIL deemed it necessary to publish a pamphlet, with the revealing title Mr Redmond's estate. An unscrupulous allegation. The simple facts. Mr Redmond's vindication, which set out to highlight the facts of the case and to quash the persistent allegation that Redmond had sold his estate at a high price of 24½ years' purchase.Footnote ¹⁰² The contents of the official Irish Land Commission document outlining the final terms of sale were included in the publication which concluded: ‘With these facts and figures before them, the friends of Mr Redmond and of the Irish Party will have no difficulty in dealing with this malicious and unscrupulous allegation wherever they may meet with it.’Footnote ¹⁰³ However, the pamphlet appeared to have had little effect and Redmond continued to be accused of inflating the price of land. In a House of Commons debate on an unsuccessful land bill in 1913, John Dillon condemned the prices that landlords like the duke of Leinster had received under the Wyndham Act. Sir Frederick Banbury, Conservative MP for the City of London, justified the prices obtained by landlords by countering that John Redmond had received a similar price from his tenants.Footnote ¹⁰⁴

Not only had the controversy weakened Redmond's position as leader of the IPP but it would continue to overshadow the rest of his career. From 1914 onwards, there were other issues with which to attack Redmond's political judgement, and his position as IPP leader, including his encouragement of Irish men to enlist in the British army following the outbreak of the First World War, his acceptance in 1916 of a vague, if temporary, partition of Ireland to bring home rule into immediate operation, and, later, his ambiguity on the issue of conscription.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ Yet, the estate sale controversy remained one of the primary weapons used by opponents. James K. McGuire, the American Democratic Party politician and member of Clann na Gael, used the estate sale to criticize Redmond's support for Irish recruitment to the British army during the First World War. McGuire argued that Redmond's greed had led to Irish tenant-purchasers paying millions of pounds more than their holdings were worth yet he was now calling on the same people, whom he had previously betrayed, to ‘die for England’ on a foreign battlefield.Footnote ¹⁰⁶

An increasingly powerful Sinn Féin did not hesitate to use the Redmond sale to gain political advantage. In 1917, Laurence Ginnell, a former IPP member, blamed him for burdening tenant-purchasers with increased annuity repayments in a pamphlet entitled The land question: ‘Mr Redmond promptly set a headline for the English garrison by selling at 24½ years’ purchase land for which it is said he could not previously have got twelve years' purchase.’Footnote ¹⁰⁷ During the North Roscommon by-election of that year, Count George Plunkett, whose son was the executed 1916 leader Joseph Plunkett, defeated the official IPP candidate T. J. Devine and the independent nationalist Jasper Tully. At a meeting in support of Count Plunkett, Laurence Ginnell appealed to the voters to remember that John Redmond sold ‘a shabby little estate in Co. Wexford at 24 ½ years' purchase’.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ The accusations of 24½ years' purchase had become so widespread and credible that even upon John Redmond's death in 1918, The Times obituary quoted the first terms offered by the Wexford tenants and not the final lower terms which were accepted by the entire estate.Footnote ¹⁰⁹

By highlighting the impact of the Redmond estate sale controversy on prices under the Wyndham Act, the repercussions it had for Redmond's political reputation and its effect on existing tensions within the nationalist movement, it is hoped that this article will offer a fresh perspective on our understanding of the political life of John Redmond. The sale of the estate he had inherited from his uncle was indeed a ‘haunting shadow’ that persistently followed Redmond for the rest of his political career; it was, as Redmond himself reportedly stated, his ‘damnosa hereditas’.Footnote ¹¹⁰ His political opponents, nationalist and unionist, exploited the controversy to embarrass, undermine, and discredit him, and the fall-out from the episode tainted his political reputation both at home and abroad. The longevity and endurance of the episode can be gauged from The life of John Redmond by Denis Gwynn who noted that although the facts of the sale had been published by Redmond's solicitors as early as 1904, the belief persisted that he had obtained extortionate terms from his tenants: ‘the story was frequently revived afterward, and even now [1932] is widely believed’.Footnote ¹¹¹ The fact that the memory of the controversy remained fresh and was capable of tarnishing Redmond's reputation, as late as the 1930s, is remarkable.