The Quit Rent Office developed as a result of the Cromwellian confiscations of land
in Ireland following the 1641 Rising, the Confederate wars and the Cromwellian conquest
of 1649-53. A vast quantity of land was confiscated from Irish Catholic landowners
who were found guilty of treason by their association with the Confederation of Kilkenny.
Prior to the Cromwellian plantation Irish Catholics landowners owned approximately
60% of the Ireland, thereafter they owned 8-9%. These landowners then had their lands
declared forfeit and granted to English ‘adventurers’ (so called because they had
adventured money to finance the English parliament during the English civil war and
the reconquest of Ireland) and soldiers who had served in the reconquest. Catholic
landowners who could prove their innocence were allowed to keep a proportion of their
lands, but those residing in the provinces of Leinster, Munster and Ulster were to
resettle in Connacht, around which a series of garrisons of English soldiers were
to be deployed to discourage any future rebellions. Some restitution of lands to Catholics
took place during the 1660s, bringing the percentage owned up to approximately 22%,
before the Williamite war and subsequent confiscations of the 1690s reduced it to
about 10% and destroyed the landed and political power of the Irish Catholic elite
for a century. The sudden availability of such quantities of Irish land necessitated
a process of surveying in order to determine who owned what lands in 1641, and how
forfeited land could then be distributed. The Civil Survey was undertaken from 1654-6,
and it determined the ownership, values, rentals and acreage of lands on a parish
and barony basis for all of Ireland excluding Galway, Mayo, Roscommon, Sligo and Clare.
The actual mapping of Ireland was conducted during the Down Survey under Sir William
Petty, which used the information provided by the Civil Survey to produce Books of
Survey and Distribution used as a basis for its parish and barony maps of the country.
The records from these surveys, in the form of the Books of Survey and Distribution
and the Down Survey maps, make up a major element of the Quit Rent Office Collection.
Quit rents were rents due to the Exchequer from these land grants and were collected
continuously from the 1660s until the 1930s. From 1669 to 1683, the collection of
most government revenue, including the quit rents, was farmed out to private operators,
and these collectors appointed a Clerk of the Quit Rents. After 1682 the government
appointed Commissioners of the Revenue and collection of the quit rents reverted to
the state, but this office was continued, and the Office of Clerk of the Quit Rents
became a department of the Commissioners of Revenue, part of the revenue side of the
Exchequer. During the 18th Century the office continued to collect quit rents, which
were usually fairly minor sums (amounting to about £50,000 per annum in 1806). The
office also collected some other crown land charges such as rents on markets, fairs,
fisheries and ferries, post corn rents and plus acre rents, undisposed lands rents
and composition rents. Collection of quit rents apparently proved difficult; there
were many cases of arrears and in 1798 an Act for the Sale of Quit, Crown and Other
Rents was passed, with many being sold during the 19th Century. The office also managed
crown estates throughout Ireland, including individual estates, premises in towns
and cities, and crown rights for foreshores, mining rights and suchlike. It also managed
the Phoenix Park in Dublin and the Curragh in Kildare. The Clerk became a patent officer
in 1761, and the office continued thus until 1827, when under the Crown Lands (Ireland)
Act of that year the Land Revenues of Ireland, including the Quit Rent Office, were
transferred to the Commissioners of Woods, Forests and Land Revenues, wherein the
Quit Rent Office continued as a department. In 1866 responsibilities for managing
foreshores was passed from the Commissioners of Woods and Forests to the Board of
Trade, but from 1903 the Quit Rent Office acted as agent for the board in their management,
and so most of the records remained with the office. In 1923 the ever-diminishing
revenues (about £8,000 by 1933) of the Quit Rent Office were transferred to the Irish
Free State. By the 1930s the obscurity of the office, along with its whiff of colonial
overlordship, led to much denigration and some humour in the Dáil, exemplified by
the comment of Fianna Fáil TD HV Flinn in 1942 that the Quit Rent Office ‘seems to
be gradually dying of inanition, thank God … Do not ask me any more about quit rents.
It is the only thing on which I ask for mercy’. The functions of the office were transferred
to the Irish Land Commission in 1943.