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.