Connolly, Mary
(1996)
The Minches of Athy, County Kildare:
A Catholic Middle-Class Family in
the Nineteenth Century.
Masters thesis, National University of Ireland Maynooth.
Abstract
One of the recurring themes in the history and literature of Ireland in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has been the decline of the landlord class.
Until the last quarter of the nineteenth century this group, although not quite in the
ascendant, was still referred to as the ascendancy or landed establishment. Their
position justified such descriptions. They still had a monopoly of wealth, status and
power in Ireland. Their wealth was enormous in terms of land. Twenty years after the
famine two-thirds of the country’s land surface was owned by about 2000 people and
less than 800 people possessed half of that land.1 In spite of electoral reform in 1850
which greatly expanded the parliamentary franchise, landed families still accounted for
almost seventy-five per cent of Irish M.P.s in 1868.2 The 1870s began a period of
decline for the ascendancy so that by the end of the century much of their power and
influence has been lost to members of the catholic middle class.
| Item Type: |
Thesis
(Masters)
|
| Keywords: |
Minches; Athy; |
| Academic Unit: |
Faculty of Arts,Celtic Studies and Philosophy > History |
| Item ID: |
5194 |
| Depositing User: |
IR eTheses
|
| Date Deposited: |
17 Jul 2014 12:44 |
| URI: |
|
| Use Licence: |
This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available
here |
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