A FEW months before he died in the winter of 1878, 130 years ago, Ireland's first cardinal, Paul Cullen, made a serious error of judgment. He advanced a mortgage to Lord de Freyne of Frenchpark, Co Roscommon. With growing turbulence among tenant farmers, it was a bad time to lend to landowners in the expectation of a good return.
The loan of £45,000 was huge, worth about €5 million today. It came from £80,000 left to the Archbishop of Dublin in 1877 to found a boarding school for "poor and destitute children". The benefactor was Bridget O'Brien, whose family made a fortune in the woollen trade.
The O'Brien Institute (OBI) was built on the former Charlemont estate in Marino. Its most famous pupil was WT Cosgrave, who was enrolled in 1891 after his father died. The Christian Brothers managed the OBI for the O'Brien Trust.
Arthur French became Lord de Freyne in bizarre circumstances. The validity of his father's marriage in 1851 to Mary Maree was questioned, she being Catholic and he a Protestant, so they remarried in the Church of Ireland in 1854. Arthur, their fourth child but the first born (1855) after the remarriage, inherited the 39,000-acre estate in Roscommon and Sligo, let to 1720 tenant farmers.
In 1878 Cullen was 74 and in poor health, De Freyne only 22. Apart from their Catholic faith all they appeared to have in common was their solicitor, John O'Hagan of Harcourt Street. He informed Cullen he could not act for both and would get another solicitor to represent him, adding "the sooner the investment is concluded the better in the present state of European politics". No mention of the "present state" of Irish politics.
It was essentially Archbishop William Walsh, appointed in 1885, who had to manage the consequences of the risky venture. The annual interest payable on the loan was £1907 but the Christian Brothers Record (1932) informs us that the actual return "was small and precarious and for some years the charity was ineffective".
The price of the 41 acres for the OBI was £2,250 and the building cost £25,000. Designed to house 100, the roll rarely rose above 75-80. At one time the superiors let Charlemont's neo-classical Casino in the school grounds to a Mrs Doran for two shillings a week and used the rent to help pay teachers.
Walsh had a dilemma. Obliged to ensure the investment made a solid return to support the charity, he also felt compelled to consider the plight of tenants on de Freyne's congested lands and the increasing resorting to evictions by landlords.
He once offered to facilitate a "friendly conference" between landlords and tenants but the prevailing atmosphere of hostility made it impracticable.
In March 1888, the two had a crisis meeting, after which de Freyne reduced rents by 28 per cent. "You kindly said in our last interview you would remember the difficulties of the times. . . If you will do so you will convey a great obligation on me", he wrote to Walsh.
The archbishop responded by remitting a half-year's interest. When de Freyne sought further relief the following year Walsh agreed to a "half-yearly payment of £500 in the half year in which the bulk of rents are not paid".
But, by 1900 the debt had escalated out of control. In a statement de Freyne claimed tenants "had always been treated kindly" by his family and rents had never been increased. No tenant had been evicted, but practically all refused to pay any rent. He was owed £36,583.
"The sole charge on my estate, amounting to £48,000", he wrote, "belongs to a most important charitable institution in Dublin and as it forms, I believe, the sole support of the charity, my inability to pay interest must ruin the institution".
When de Freyne was granted 40 eviction orders in February 1902, Bishop John Clancy of Elphin wrote pleading with him to compromise before "turning your estate into a wilderness and driving people to extreme measures of revenge". Legislation would render compulsory sale imperative and he should not take such risks "for the sake of warding off in the short term a blow which must inevitably fall on all landlords".
But 300 more eviction orders followed and de Freyne also issued writs against Land League leaders, including Michael Davitt, John Dillon, Patrick Webb and William O'Brien.
In bitter mood he wrote to the Irish Chief Secretary, George Wyndham, asserting that on the slightest suspicion of a tenant having paid rent "he is had up before the local committee of the League and, if they don't consider his answers satisfactory, they fine him. I suppose they spend the fine in Mr. Webb's public house". He urged Wyndham to suppress the league.
However, after the passing in 1903 of the Treasury-funded land purchase scheme, known as the Wyndham Act, he sold most of his estate for £260,000 in 1907 to the Congested Districts Board, set up to alleviate overcrowding in the West.
There is no reference to the loan in the Walsh or de Freyne papers after the sale, presumably because it was fully repaid. When Walsh died in 1921 the Trust's capital was £66,500, producing an annual yield of £2,500 from dependable investments, including a whopping 11 per cent return from the Bank of Ireland.
Jim Cantwell is researching a history of the O'Brien Institute.