Marlene,
Did I send you this Yeilding information?  If so, here it is again.  I added some historical background in help the reader understand the newspaper article.  Rgds, Howard

The Yeilding’s of Limerick, 1823.

In 1815 Napoleon was defeated, and the Napoleonic Wars ended after some 30 years of conflict. Although this end of hostilities was welcomed by everyone in that part of the world, it would soon bring unwanted hardships to all of the British Isles. The end of the war meant thousands of soldiers were returned to civilian lives. The war machine was insatiable making endless demands on the Kingdom’s production of goods and services and had driven a long period of prosperity. With the return of thousands of now jobless war veterans, vacant jobs were soon filled or vanished as industrial production was quickly cut back to meet the reduced needs. A severe recession was soon underway. By 1820 unemployment, higher rents, and low market prices (caused by falling demand) for farm products as well as industrial goods was hurting everyone, including the privileged classes. Thus, even though the Great Famine was still over 20 years away, there were thousands of homeless and starving in Ireland. To pay their taxes, landowners were forced to raise rents to offset the loss of land revenues. Tenants, unable to pay their rents, were either having their property seized and auctioned off to pay their debts (called distress for rent), or were being put off their land. In the latter instance, families were put out on the street and their now empty homes were sometimes burned to make more land available to the landowner for cultivation or grazing.

In 1820 the population of Ireland was more than twice that of today. Tenants sometimes subleased their land to others as joint tenants. Thus, land was being split up into smaller plots making it increasingly difficult to support the growing families thereon.

When “distress for rent” was claimed by the landlord, or his overseer, it often included standing crops, livestock, and farming implements. To prevent the loss of their crops, it was not uncommon among the tenant farmers to band together by the hundreds, and “harvest” the crops during a night raid. A resident landowner would often be confined to his home, beaten into submission, forced to flee, or a combination thereof to prevent him from interfering with the theft. Even well armed, a landowner would be helpless in the face of two or three hundred raiders armed with pitch forks and spikes. Unable to steal the confiscated livestock or crops the tenants would sometimes resort to destroying them to prevent their benefiting the landowners. Thus cows were hoed (physically deformed to prevent their resale or giving milk) or butchered, horses had their ears cut off, and stocks of grain burned.

It is with this back drop that the Yeilding’s, large land owners in Limerick and Kerry Counties, were caught up in the troubling events of the time as described in the following newspaper account.

THE CONNAUGHT JOURNAL1 
Galway, Thursday, October 9, 1823



LIMERICK, OCT. 4. 
On Friday last, a number of men, armed with sickles and hay-forks, 
assembled on the lands of Ballyphilip, near Kilmore, in this County, held by 
persons of the name of Duggan, under Mr. Nathaniel Simeux, on which 
previously a distress for rent had been made, by authority from a receiver 
under the Court of Chancery, and though the care-taker came forward and 
cautioned this banditti to desist, they, by force, maliciously cut down 
several acres of unique oats, and drew off the lands a quantity of same. 
Next day they dug the potatoes growing on said farm, and drew off some of 
the corn cut the day before. Mr. Richard Yielding, jun.2 whose father has an 
estate on said lands, having heard of the outrage, came up in support of the 
care-taker, in order to prevent the corn from being removed, but to no 
effect, as the fellows dropped their spades, and with hay-forks, forced away 
the corn, and also grossly abused Mr. Yielding- six of the party were 
apprehended early on Sunday morning, by W.R. Yielding, Esq. and a party of 
the military from Kilmore, while in the act of conveying away the remainder 
of the cow. Several hundred persons were assembling to destroy and carry off 
the remainder off the property with horses, cars, &c., but on the appearance 
of the military they fled in all directions.



1. We owe our sincere thanks to: Cathy Joynt Labath, Abstracts from Irish Newspapers, 

2. “Richard Yielding, jun.”, I believe was our Richard Massy Yeilding, Jr., who by 10 years later had migrated to Canada with his brother, Agar Yeilding. His father, Richard Massy Yeilding, Sr., is referred to in the article and is identified on Agar’s grave stone as his father, “the late Richard Massy Yeilding.” Richard Jr. would have been 23 years old at the time of the reported conflict while brother Agar would have been 9. “W.R. Yielding” was Richard Jr.’s grandfather, Col. William Richard Yeilding, who would have been about 72.
3. Ballyphilip is a townland near Rathkeale, Co. Limerick, about 10 miles east of the Yeilding family homeland of Glensharrold.

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