Caledon Estate Lease Book

Archived at Harvard University’s Houghton Library¹ is a volume entitled, ‘Transactions Relateing to Caledon Estate Since the Grant Thereof to William Hamilton, Esqr. by King Charles the 2^D.’² Actually this book may be best described as the ‘1752 Caledon Estate Lease Book’, listing the lands under lease held at that time by John Boyle, the 5th Earl of Orrery,³ in the vicinity the village of Caledon, Aghaloo parish, in the south-eastern corner of County Tyrone. The book inventories the outstanding leases held by the Earl at that time along with the corresponding lessees and those named whose life spans were used to set the tenure of the lease.

This book is a bound volume of 566 pages – most of which have entries. The entries are arranged alphabetically by townland. The last 15 pages of the book is an index to the 205 leases naming the corresponding lessees. This database comprises a transcription of this index.

The book also contains candid notes written in their own hands from Lord and Lady Orrery to their son, Edmund, who would inherit the estate in 1762. He would eventually become the 7th Earl of Cork and Orrery.

It appears that this volume was created in 1752 for Margaret, Countess of Orrery, who inherited the estate from her father, William Hamilton, in 1723. While the estate passed to John Boyle (as provided under the laws of Great Britain and Ireland at that time) when he married Margaret in 1738, the Countess continued to oversee the running of the Caledon estates up unto her death in 1756. Since this book represents the estate’s inventory of the leases and lessees in 1752, the volume’s title is misleading.

Most of the leases were for farmland surrounding Caledon and were let in May of 1735 by the then ‘spinster’ Margaret Hamilton. There are a few leases dating to her father’s time and several leases made after 1735.

Each entry copies the text from the original lease with its important information: the location (usually a townland), the acreage, the annual rent, the date of when the lease was put into effect and the name of the lessee. Typically, the tenure of the lease was for the lifetimes of one to three individuals named in the lease. The lease would expire after the deaths of those so named.

Most of the leases had provisions (‘covenants’) by which the lessee was required to make improvements to the property such as new dwellings, drainage ditches, the planting of trees and hedgerows, etc. Many properties incorporated bogs and the lease gave permission to the lessee to graze animals in the bog as well as to harvest peat – a common source of fuel.

In May of 1752 an inspection was performed of each of the properties to ascertain if the original covenants for improvements where in fact made. If discrepancies were noted, instructions were given to the lessee or another person to make corrections, typically within two years, or be penalized by an increase in the annual rent.

In an introduction to the volume, Lady Boyle wrote to her son sometime after 1753 (when her husband inherited the earldom of ‘Corke’):

My Dear Edmund,

I hope you will live to see all the leases lent by me expire, I was unexperienced at the Time I let the estate of Caledon, or I should never have given such long and uncertain tenures as those of three lives. Besides I found all the estate out of Lease and the People inclined to go to the West Indies, not a single farm House on the Lands in repare. And the Kingdom in a poor and low condition, occasioned by three successive very unfriutfull years. There consideration obliged me to let both longer terms of years and the Lands at a lower rate than their real worth. But as I hope the sircumstances will be different when you are in possession of Caledon Estate. That the Kingdom of Ireland will be in a flourishing condition: Good Houses, on well improved Farms throughout the Estate, and the several Leases expiring one after another. And as they expire you will find great advantage in letting the several Farms only for the term of 21: or at most 31 years. By this method you will certainly know when your Lands will be in your own power, and you will certainly let your Lands always at the best rent and for the best price. And you will have no other loss, but not having a number of votes against a County election. Which want, in my present was of thingking will prove a great advantage.

M Corke & Orrery

There is a preface to the volume written by Lord Boyle also to his son:

Dear Edmund,

I had the misfortune to have this book fall into my hands, after your dear mother’s demise. She died, as you well remember, on Friday November 24th 1756,⁴ at Knightsbridge: to which place she had been carried, at her own most Ernest request a few days before. – What a loss this was to all! I must endeavour to repair it you and your sister as well as Jean. God help me in my earnest endeavours!

Apparently, Lady Boyle maintained the ‘Lease Book’ while she was alive. The book then passed into the hands of her husband. He apparently maintained the book until his death in 1762. There are no indications that Edmund, their heir, made any entries. Lord Boyle made a series of annotations denoting the deaths of men named in the leases.

1 page 165 Isaiah Thomson 9 March 1759 ‘Lease expired’

2 page 78 William Swan, Junior June 1760

Also on ten other leases: pages 94, 115, 154, 316, 318, 321, 366, 375, 518

3 page 375 Robert Hussey June 1762

4 page 319 William Sloan June 1762

This 1752 lease book apparently became available to James Alexander, the future Earl of Caledon, when he purchased the Caledon Estates from Edmund Boyle in 1776. At that time a new Caledon lease book was made for James. This book is archived at the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland in Belfast.⁵ Each entry was directly copied from Margaret’s 1752 lease book including the original lease as well as the comments resulting from 1752 inspections.

It is important to understand that these lease books were not ledgers for recording income such as rental payments or expenses of the estate. Rather the books kept track of the deaths of the lessees and the other named persons so as to keep track of when a lease expired. This was important to the landlords since once a lease expired, the property could be re-let at a higher price. As Lady Margaret advised her son ‘you will certainly let your Lands always at the best rent and for the best price.’

Charles Potter Holmes lives in Orange County, New York, USA. He is a retired physicist who worked for the US Air Force and NASA. He is an avid family history researcher, focusing on the histories of his ancestors who emigrated from County Tyrone in the late eighteenth century. He is a member of the Ulster Historical Foundation's Guild and has attended our family history conferences, most recently in 2022.

1 The author learned about this resource from an article by Gwen Barry posted on the CoTyroneIreland.com website entitled, ‘An Historical Overview of Land Ownership & Protestant Churches in Aghaloo Parish & Surrounding Area’.

2 The 18th volume of a collection of the personal papers of Charles and John Boyle which are archived at the Houghton Library as ‘Boyle family papers, 1657–1903’. The volume reviewed here is in a sub-collection entitled ‘Business letters to and from Charles Boyle, 4th Earl of Orrery, and John Boyle, 5th Earl of Cork and Orrery, 1714–1760.’ The Library’s call number for this collection is MS Eng 218.

3 Lord Boyle would add the title ‘5th Earl of Cork’ in the following year, 1753.

4 Other accounts about Margaret Hamilton Boyle have her death in 1758. In her husband’s hand, here is a record of her death more than a year earlier.

5 This volume (PRONI, D2433/A/5/3) is part of the large collection of Alexander family documents catalogued as the ‘Caledon Papers’.