It was not so easy to deal with the 120 leaseholders.  To what extent they had improved their farms before they got the leases, Mr. Trench does not say.  But as the absentee landlord had done nothing, and spent nothing, whatever increase to the value had been made was undoubtedly the work of the tenants; and after the leases were obtained, they would naturally feel more confidence in the investment of their savings in the land.  However that may be, a professional man, employed by Lord Digby, estimated the value over and above the reserved rent at 30,600 l., which sum the new landlord proposed to put into his own pocket, by increasing the rent one-third.  The plea for this sweeping confiscation was, that the late Lord Digby, cousin to the present, had only a life interest in the Irish estate, and therefore, the leases were all illegal and worthless.  Accordingly the new lord commenced proceedings to evict the whole of the tenantry for non-title.  They were astounded.  They held meetings; they deliberated; they appealed to the landlord; they appealed to the executors of the late peer, who had large estates in England, and died worth a million sterling in the funds, all of which he willed away from the heir of his title and Irish estates.  Says Mr. Trench:—­

’It may readily be supposed that circumstances so peculiar as these created considerable anxiety in the district.  The tenantry, many of them large and respectable land-holders, now learned, for the first time, that their leases were good for nothing in law.  They had been duly ‘signed, sealed, and delivered’ to them under a full belief on their part that the contract was not only just and honourable, but also perfectly legal; and their feelings may be imagined when they found that they were suddenly threatened with a total loss of the property which they had always looked upon as secure.’[1]

[Footnote 1:  ‘Realities of Irish Life,’ p.314.]

Pending the ejectment proceedings, they were knocked about from post to pillar, without getting any satisfaction.  The landlord referred them to the executors, although he knew well they had no legal claim on them whatever, and that to legal claims only could they pay any attention.  The executors again referred them to their landlord, who was determined to break the leases, come what would.  Now, if the Irish law regulating the relations of landlord and tenant were based upon justice and equity, the wrong done by the late earl, if any, was a wrong for which the tenants should in no way be held responsible.  The wrong was done to the heir-at-law.  To him, and not to the tenants, compensation should have been made by the executors.  And after all, it was really to him that the money was advanced to buy up the leases, in order to save him from assassination, for the tenants had no legal claim upon them.