Ireland Tithe Defaulters, 1831
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Ireland Tithe Defaulters, 1831
29.067 records
This collection records the main evidence that survives about the people involved in the infamous Tithe War. All agricultural households were required by law to pay an annual tithe (or religious tax) of 10% of the produce they produced. All landholders had to pay this tax to the official state church, the Anglican (Episcopalian) Church of Ireland, regardless of their religion. Roman Catholic farmers were also required to pay a tithe to their own priests and as a consequence deeply resented this official tax .<br>The names in these records are of those who refused to pay the tithe and whom were recorded by the Church of Ireland clergy. Information listed in these records may include: name, address, occupation, information regarding the relevant parish which often includes data from the 1831 and 1841 census for comparisons (number of houses recorded in census vs. number of tithe defaulters) and the text of the relevant clergy affidavit.<br><br>In 1830 and 1831 the situation escalated so that many people refused to pay this tithe. Over the following years there were several “battles” between farmers, clergy and police, resulting in many casualties including deaths. It is remembered as the Tithe War, and the people most affected by this conflict are precisely those most affected by emigration and the famine in the next generation.<br>This is a unique record of these people at the time that the various Schedules were compiled, namely, in June, July and August, 1832. Since the 1831 census was almost completely destroyed in 1922, this is a doubly important source for these areas.<br><br><b>Background</b><br>As non-payment increased during 1830 and 1831, many Church of Ireland clergymen found themselves in serious financial conditions. The Dublin Government established the “Clergy Relief Fund 1831”, by statute in 1832, to alleviate their hardship. But clergymen could only claim for the arrears of 1831, on condition they followed a prescribed process. One consequence of this Act was that the Government then had the job of collecting the arrears of tithes in each parish rather than the clergymen.<br><br><b>Process</b><br>If the clergyman wished to seek assistance under the terms of the Act, he had to: - Swear an Affidavit setting out the methods he had employed in attempting to recover the arrears of tithe for 1831. - Accompany the affidavit with a Schedule, 'hereunto annexed', setting out the 'Names, Descriptions, and Places of Abode of the Persons, Occupiers of Land' within his Parish or the 'Representatives of such of them as are dead'. This schedule also had to state how much tithe was due from each tithe payer and how much each tithe payer was in arrears. The affidavits and the schedules then had to be sent to Dublin Castle for a decision as to whether relief would be granted or not under the terms of the Act, which set up the Clergy Relief Fund.<br><br><b>The Affidavits</b><br>These are the most colourful part of the records, and consistently convey the united resistance to the payment of tithes. These conspiracies or collective refusals were called 'Combinations', often organised around the pretext of hurling matches (hence the term “Hurlers”). The majority of the affidavits deal with violent resistance to the payment of tithes. The affidavits make constant reference to 'the affair at Carrickshock'. This incident terrified the Church of Ireland clergymen and put an end to their attempts to recover the arrears of tithes. Carrickshock is a townland near Hugginstown in County Kilkenny, in the parish of Knocktopher. On Wednesday, 14th December, 1831, a crowd of five hundred people followed a party of thirty-eight police under the command of the chief constable, Captain Gibbons, and a process server, named Edmund Butler, whom the police were obviously protecting. The crowd wanted Butler to be handed over to them. The confrontation eventually turned nasty. A hail of stones rained down on the police and Gibbons and fourteen of his men were killed. So also were Butler and twenty-five to thirty local people.