The Landlord's Rents: Weighing a Letter, an Account Book and a Family Memoir
During a Classroom-Based Assessment, Aoife is investigating a dispute over a proposed monument in her town to a local landlord, Colonel Wray, who died in 1874. She has three sources. Source A is a letter from a tenant farmer, dated 1869, complaining that Wray raised rents after a bad harvest; the letter was copied into a local newspaper by a nationalist editor in 1902. Source B is Wray's estate account book for 1869, which records rent increases of 10 per cent on 14 of 63 holdings and notes 'arrears forgiven' for six families. Source C is a typed family history written in 1985 by a descendant of the estate agent, saying Wray was 'a fair man who improved the land'. Aoife's teacher warns her that she cannot simply average the sources. Aoife must decide which claims about Wray are well supported and how to present her findings without pretending the dispute can be settled completely.
1. Which source is most useful for establishing what Wray actually did with rents in 1869, and why? Explain what limits even that source.
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Source B is the strongest evidence for the narrow factual question of what happened to rents on the estate in 1869. It is a contemporary administrative record, produced in the ordinary running of the estate, and it gives quantities: increases on 14 of 63 holdings and arrears forgiven for six families. Its purpose was not to persuade the public, so it is less likely to be shaped by a campaign. But 'most useful' is not the same as 'completely reliable'. The book records transactions, not motives or the tenants' experience; it may omit informal pressure, and a 10 per cent rise may have been offset by falling prices or by the arrears concession. Source A survives only as a newspaper copy made in 1902 by a nationalist editor, so wording may have been selected or altered, though it preserves a tenant's complaint. Source C is a family memoir written 111 years after the events and is shaped by loyalty to the agent. Aoife should use B to establish the recorded figures, A to show contemporary grievance and later nationalist use of it, and C to show family memory. She should not use any one source to settle Wray's character.
2. Aoife wants to write: 'Wray raised rents on most tenants during the famine years.' Using the sources, explain why this would be an unsafe claim and what she should write instead.
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On the figures in Source B, 14 out of 63 is about 22 per cent, not 'most'. The account book is for 1869, which is after the Great Famine of 1845–52, so calling them 'famine years' is a chronological error unless she has evidence about the 1840s. Source B also records arrears forgiven for six families, which complicates a simple story of a harsh landlord. A safer sentence would be: 'In 1869, Colonel Wray's estate account book records rent increases on 14 of 63 holdings and the forgiving of arrears for six families; a tenant's letter copied in 1902 complained of a rent rise after a bad harvest.' This separates what the record shows from what a source claims and from later interpretation. If Aoife wants to argue that Wray was harsh, she needs evidence about the size of the increases, the tenants' ability to pay, and comparisons with neighbouring estates, not a vague appeal to 'most tenants'.
3. Source A and Source C disagree about Wray's character. Explain how Aoife should handle this disagreement in her project rather than choosing one.
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Aoife should treat the disagreement as evidence in its own right. Source A tells us that a tenant grievance existed and that a nationalist newspaper in 1902 found it useful; Source C tells us that the agent's descendants remembered Wray as fair. Neither is a neutral verdict on his character. She can set them side by side with Source B's figures, asking what each source is trying to do and who it is speaking to. She should write something like: 'The sources disagree about Wray's character because they come from different positions and were produced at different times. The account book allows us to say what was recorded about rents; the letter and the memoir show how tenants and the agent's family remembered him.' She should also say what evidence would help: Poor Law records, other estate accounts, land agitation records, or tenant testimony. That is more honest than choosing the source that fits her own view.