About freeholders
Freeholders were men who either owned their land outright or who held it in a lease for the duration of their life, or the lives of other people named in the lease, or the lives of other people named in the lease.
The value of the property and land (the ‘Freehold’), among other factors, would have determined the Freeholder’s right to vote.
1727-1793 - only Protestants with a freehold of at least 40 shillings a year could vote
1793-1829 - Protestants and Catholics with 40-shilling freeholds were allowed to vote
1829 onwards - the rate was increased to 10 pounds for everyone, stripping many freeholders of their right to vote and increasing the influence of landlords
Freeholders' records in PRONI
Freeholders' records are arranged by county and fall into two categories:
Registers listing and detailing those entitled to vote
Poll Books that list those who exercised their vote and their chosen candidate
Before secret ballots were introduced through the 1872 Ballot Act, voters were required to stand up and declare their votes publicly. This often led to intimidation and coercion.
Freeholders’ records provide a range of information about land ownership and may contain all or some of the following:
Name, address, occupation and religion of the freeholder
date and place of freeholder’s registration
location, description and value of the freehold
name and address of the landlord
names of other lives (those living in the same property)
Freeholder’s records are one of PRONI’s most valuable substitutes for census material that did not exist in the 18th and 19th centuries or for public records that were destroyed during the Irish Civil War. The records are of particular value to historians for analysing voting patterns and other political trends.
Records available through the Freeholder’s Records application
The PRONI Freeholder’s Records application can be used to search or browse over 5,500 digitised sheets from pre-1840 registers and poll books. You can also view and download images from the digitised records that match a search.
To access the application and guidance on using it, visit our Freeholder’s Records page.