Chichester House Claims
On 10 August 1700, Chichester House on Dublin’s College Green became the setting for one of the most consequential administrative deadlines in post-war Ireland. By midnight, anyone claiming an interest in property forfeited after the Williamite victory had to lodge papers with the trustees created by the English Act of Resumption. Clerks remained at work by candlelight as claimants and their agents delivered deeds, mortgages, leases, judgments and family settlements. More than 3,000 claims were ultimately entered. The scene was not a parliament in session, nor a public trial, but it exposed a central fact of life in Ireland at the opening of the eighteenth century: land, law and political security were inseparable.