William Steuart Trench: a troubled legacy

William Steuart Trench, who died 150 years ago on August 10th, was an unusual combination of land agent and author (he made his living as the former). While he didn’t bequeath a word and concept to the English language, like his counterpart Capt Charles Boycott, scholars who have written about him point to an ambivalence in his actions, as is evident in the dubious compliment that “even at his worst, he gave his tenants the care that a good stock breeder gives his stock”.

He was born in November 1808, near Ballybrittas, Co Laois (then Queen’s County), the youngest son of Thomas Trench, Church of Ireland Dean of Kildare, and Mary Weldon, whose father Robert was a landowner and MP for Athy. After attending the Royal School, Armagh, he went to Trinity College Dublin, which he left without taking a degree. He then studied agriculture and land management and worked as an assistant land agent. He married Elizabeth Sealy Townsend in 1832; they had two sons and a daughter.

Appointed agent of the Shirley estate in Co Monaghan in 1841, he resigned in 1845 because “the owner refused to implement reforms intended to create a more humane environment and efficient administration”, according to Gerard Lyne, who wrote the entry on Trench in the Dictionary of Irish Biography. In 1850, he became agent of the Lansdowne estate in Co Kerry; the following year he added the agency of the Bath estate in Co Monaghan, and in 1857 was also appointed to the Digby estate in Co Offaly (then King’s County). He retained these appointments for the rest of his life.

During the later stages of the Great Famine, he began a scheme of assisted emigration, where tenants in arrears had their debts written off and were given their fares out of Ireland. He shipped some 4,500 people from Kerry to America. He claimed they were well provided for, but in fact many were sent off starving and in rags. However, “despite wild claims by his critics concerning mortality among the emigrants, most survived and many found better lives in America,” according to Gerard Lyne.

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A code of estate rules he introduced appears very harsh. Tenants were not allowed to marry without permission, on pain of fine or eviction, nor were they allowed to accommodate any unauthorised guests. The intention was to combat impoverishment, but Lyne pointed to some shockingly inhumane consequences, such as where near Cahersiveen a starving, homeless 12-year-old boy was beaten to death by his aunt and her husband because they were afraid to break Trench’s hospitality rule.

Mary Delaney, who wrote about Trench’s management of the Digby estate in Offaly (1857-71), said that his vast improvements there gained national and international recognition for Lord Digby and earned Trench a reputation as an improver well ahead of his time. However, it wasn’t all good news as she pointed out that he also broke leases, demolished houses and banished poor people in some ruthless management of the estate.

“He is loathed equally in the folklore of Monaghan and Kerry, while his grave at Donaghmoyne, near Carrickmacross, Co Monaghan, has been repeatedly vandalised,” wrote Gerard Lyne, who opined that the folklore doesn’t tell the whole story, as he also tried to improve agriculture and fisheries, built roads and piers, planted forests and saved people from starvation during periods of distress by providing relief measures.

In 1868, Trench published his memoir Realities of Irish Life. Lyne believed that it showed “considerable literary ability” but that as a historical record, it was “self-regarding, vainglorious and unreliable”. Nevertheless, it proved a huge success, achieving five editions within a year. The Edinburgh Review said that it had “the force, humour and pathos of Dickens at his best”. In it he justified his use of assisted emigration. He also described, in an entertaining manner, the various attempts to assassinate him. Ierne: A Tale was the title of a romantic novel published by him in 1871. It was set in Kerry during the 1867 Fenian rising but drew few readers.

He died at Essex Castle, his residence on the Bath estate, near Carrickmacross and is buried in nearby Donaghmoyne. He was vain, arrogant and could be ruthless and bullying but it cannot be denied that he was capable, energetic and enterprising and he certainly had an impact on the estates he managed. Perhaps Frank McNally’s comment on him in this column (January 28th, 2017) that his was “the relatively humane face of a cruel system” is a fair assessment.