Encumbered Estates Court

Encumbered Estates Court, established under the Encumbered Estates Act of 1849 (12 & 13 Vic. c. 77), which superseded the similar act of 1848 (II & 12 Vic. c. 48). It was designed to facilitate the sale of insolvent landed estates, whose owners had been bankrupted by the Great Famine, and thereby inject new capital, predicted by the government to be British, into Irish agriculture. The court's three commissioners were empowered, on a creditor's petition, to enforce the sale of any land or lease encumbered with debts worth more than half the net annual rental. Creditors, including the petitioner, were entitled to bid for the land. The eventual purchaser could be awarded indefeasible title by the court. No compensation was offered to existing tenants for their improvements, and many new owners, particularly in the west of Ireland, used the opportunity of purchase to evict tenants. By 1859, over 5 million acres worth some £21 million had been sold by the court and its successor, the Landed Estates Court (established in 1858 under 21 & 22 Vic. c. 72). Contrary to the government's expectations, the vast majority of the 7,489 purchasers were Irishmen. Most of these came from the established landed and professional elites, and were not the commercially minded arriviste businessmen that convention suggests. The general tightening up of estate management in the 1850s was engaged in by both old and new owners, and was a consequence of changing economic conditions rather than of the operations of the court.

Lindsay Proudfoot