An Irish Absentee and his Tenants

archives a large collection of the papers of an Irish landlord of the eighteenth century.That landlord was frightened away from Paris by the slaughter of the Swiss guards on 10 Aug. 1792, and by the wholesale arrests which preceded the massacres of the following month.A stampede naturally set in among the wealthy visitors.Till then many had remained, believing that the storms of the Revolution were over, or that foreigners could be in no danger of molestation; but they now perceived that Paris was not a safe place to dwell in.To leave, however, was no easy matter.The municipality and the sections, or district committees, had usurped the prerogative of issuing passports, and these were not obtainable without extreme difficulty.There could scarcely have been an actual desire of detaining foreigners, but there was a suspicion, not always unfounded, that they were doing a good turn to their French aristocratic friends by taking charge of valuables, or even by smuggling their owners in disguise as servants.The earl of Kerry, whose papers I am about to analyse, had applied for a passport, but, as he wrote on 1 Sept. to William Lindsay, the embassy secretary, 1 ' I now receive for answer that I must prove that we and our servants are foreigners.In order to facilitate my departure from this state of imprisonment I have given up the thought of taking French servants.'He contemplated asking for a passport for the provinces, so as to get to Calais and wait for a chance of slipping across the Channel; but he feared that his property would be confiscated.Lindsay, enclosing the letter in a despatch to his government, said: ' I have only to observe on it that there are many English here at present who are in a situation to that of his lordship.'Alarmed doubtless by the prison * Whose own grandfather was taken away from his catholic and rebel father to be educated as a protestant at Trinity College

Business · Irish · Historical Studies of British Isles · Irish and British Studies · Philosophy

• The wealth of the greater Irish landowners, 1750-1815

  Open Access•David Clay Large, David Large•Irish Historical Studies•1966

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