6F.J., 14 Sep. 1903. ‘Ashbourne prices’ were the 17–18 years’ purchase of first-term rents set as a guideline purchase price by the 1885 Land Act.
7Ibid., 26 Sep. 1903.
8Ibid., 8, 10, 24 Oct. 1903.
9Ibid., 30 Sep., 22 Oct. 1903; Devlin to Dillon, 14, 17 Sep. 1903, DP Ms. 6729/95, 96; Bull, ‘The nationalist response’, pp. 295–6.
10Dillon to Redmond, 23 Sep. 1903, RP Ms. 15,182 (4).
11Redmond to Dillon, 25 Sep. 1903, RP Ms. 15,182 (4).
12Dillon to Redmond, 2 Oct. 1903, RP Ms. 15,182 (5).
13Redmond to Dillon, 7 Oct. 1903, RP Ms. 15,182 (5).
14F.J., 21 Oct. 1903.
15Redmond to O’Brien, 21 Oct. 1903, OBP Ms. 10,496 (9).
16Shawe-Taylor to Archbishop William Walsh, 1, 10 Sep. 1903, WP Ms. 365/3; F.J., 11, 25 Sep. 1903.
17Dillon to Redmond, 2 Oct. 1903, RP Ms. 15,182 (5).
18O’Brien to Redmond, 16 Oct. 1903, OBP Ms. 10,496 (12).
19Redmond to O’Brien, 31 Oct. 1903, OBP Ms. 10,496 (9).
20Paul Bew, Conflict and Conciliation in Ireland 1890–1910 (Oxford, 1987), p. 113.
21Redmond to M.J. O’Connor, 12, 30 Sep. 1903; M.J. O’Connor to Fr Bolger, 25 Sep. 1903; I am grateful to James and Sylvia O’Connor, of M.J. O’Connor Solicitors, formerly of George’s St., Wexford, for giving me access to the correspondence regarding the sale of the Redmond estate held in their office.
22‘The second-term tenants get 20 per cent [reduction] but there are only about twelve of them. The great bulk of the tenants are non-judicial – men who never went into court because their rents were so low on an average about 30 per cent below the [Griffith] valuation. These men quite recently got a temporary abatement of 15 per cent and now this will be increased by 25 per cent making in all 40 per cent....’ Redmond to O’Brien, 21 Oct. 1903, OBP Ms. 10,496 (9).
23M.J. O’Connor to Redmond enclosing communique, 17 Oct. 1903, RP Ms. 15,214 (4).
24Wexford Independent, 2 Jan. 1904. On his arrival in New York in August 1904 for the UIL of America Convention, Redmond said ‘laughingly’ in reply to questions from The American: ‘Why, my tenants came to me and said I would have to sell out to them. I told them all right, and then they asked the price. I said: “Go home and fix on the price yourselves”, and they did so, and I accepted their offers. We were always on the friendliest terms ever since I was a boy.’ RP Ms. 7435.
25O’Brien, Olive Branch, p. 282.
26Redmond to O’Brien, 28 Oct. 1903, OBP Ms. 10,496 (9).
27I.I., 3, 20 Oct. 1903. The sympathetic Harrington had written to Redmond in January of that paper: ‘I wish we could get some means of buying the Independent and taking it out of the present hands. We want some security against the treachery of the Freeman. The Independent has gone so far off the track now that the FJ no longer regards it as a rival and hence they have grown both stiff and impertinent.’ Harrington to Redmond, 25 Jan. 1903, RP Ms. 15,194.
28F.J., 31 Oct. 1903.
29Ibid., 4 Nov. 1903. There was an air of coup d’etat about the Freeman of 22 October, which ignored the party leader and carried a supportive message from Sexton to a West Belfast by-election candidate, ‘Mr Davitt’s Powerful Appeal’ censuring the Leinster tenants, and, as if the Land Act had never happened, an item headlined ‘The Land War in mid-Tipperary’ which turned out to be a report on the seizure of four milch cows.
30Ibid., 26 Oct. 1903.
31O’Brien to Redmond, 29 Oct. 1903, OBP Ms. 10,496 (12).
32O’Brien to Redmond, 2, 4 Nov. 1903, OBP Ms. 10,496 (12).
33F.J., 6 Nov. 1903.
34Redmond to O’Brien, 9 Nov. 1903, OBP Ms. 10,496 (9).
35Redmond to Dillon, 6 Nov. 1903, RP Ms. 15,182 (5).
36Dillon to Redmond, 7, 9 Nov. 1903, RP Ms. 15,182 (5).
37F.J., 16 Nov. 1903; O’Brien, Olive Branch, p. 296. At Limerick he defended his estate sale from ‘malicious representation’, asserting that a ‘majority’ of the tenants [actually 47 of 99], who had never gone into the Land Courts, would probably buy at 18.5 years’ purchase, which was really 16.5 when the wiping out of 2 years’ arrears was taken into account, and that on a rental that was 25 per cent below Griffith’s Valuation.
38Bull, ‘The nationalist response’, pp. 300–1; Gailey, Ireland and the Death of Kindness, pp. 219–20.
39Ginnell to Redmond, 29 Nov. 1903, RP Ms. 15,191 (2). O’Donnell had earlier complained to Redmond of Ginnell’s behaviour at the office they shared: ‘I think my position ought to be protected from a man who is only one step removed from lunacy….’ O’Donnell MP to Redmond, 18 Aug. 1903, RP Ms. 15,218 (2). Henry O’Shea, a Limerick Guardian and League official, told a senior MP of having been assaulted by local Directory member John McInerney