SNIPPET: In the 1800s, the land of Ireland was owned by about 20,000 landlords. With their families they were known collectively as the Ascendancy. They rented or leased their land to tenant farmers. Since agriculture was about the only way of making a living at the time, the overwhelming majority of the Irish people belonged to the tenant farmer class. The level of rent payable to the landlord became a major source of conflict from time to time. For about twenty years after the Famine, Irish farmers were fairly well off, but in the 1870s, poor harvests and falling prices for agricultural goods caused a drop in farmers' income. Rent became a heavy burden. Michael DAVITT was the Father of the Land League. Born in County Mayo in 1846, DAVITT's family was evicted from their farm when he was six. They emigrated to Lancashire where the young boy lost his arm in an accident in a cotton factory. He later became involved with the Fenians in England. He was sentenced to 15 years in gaol but was released after seven. DAVITT returned to Mayo where he started the Land League in 1879 to campaign for fair rents. It became such a powerful body that the British Prime Minister, W. E. GLADSTONE, was forced to introduce a land act in 1881. This act took from the landlord the power to set the rent on the farms on his estate. The Land Commission was given statutory powers to intervene between landlord and tenant and to set a fair rent. Later legislation, passed under pressure from well-organised tenant farmers, reduced the power of the landlords still further. By the 1890s, the power of the Ascendancy was virtually broken. Conservative British governments introduced several land purchase schemes. By lending money to tenant farmers to buy out their farms, they also helped the landlords to get good prices for their estates and to extricate themselves from the difficult position they found themselves in.