When his son died in 1865, the ageing Thomas Spring Rice was deeply shocked.  This was, the

writer of his obituary, observed ' quite evident in his appearance when he last came home to

Mount Trenchard...'  It was Stephen's eldest son, Thomas ( see photo Thomas Spring, Rice ,

2nd Baron Mont eagle) , who succeeded, at seventeen, to the estate and the title when the first

Lord Monteagle died in 1866.

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Thirty years later when his grandfather's entry was being written in the Dictionary of National Biography , the second Lord Mounteagle entered into an interesting correspondence with the elderly Stephen de Vere.  The entry had been written by a nationalist who regarded Thomas Spring Rice as a unionist.  Important achievements had been suppressed and false impressions given, Stephen de Vere told Lord Monteagle.  He drew a portrait of the principled Whig that Thomas Spring Rice had been for his grandson, listing his work for social reform, his unflinching support for religious freedom coupled with his repudiation of repeal, his determination to abandon political life and sacrifice all his prospects rather than forsake the old Whig principles of his career as Disraeli and Lord Derby had done.  He empahsised Spring Rice's dislike of O'Connell  - he hated O'Connell - an important point , for O-Connell had become a symbol of constitutional nationalism in the late nineteenth century.  The message that he wished to give the grandson was that his grandfather had been true to his principles, honest, hardworking, public spirited. The implication was that this tradition was more important than adherence to contemporary nationalist views as a means of serving the country.

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Stephen de Vere did not entertain much hope that the biographer could be induced to appreciate Thomas Spring Rice as someone who had worked effectively in Ireland's interest.  Home Rule had become a pressing politicial issue, the primary policy of the Irish Parliamentary Party.  With constituencies regularly returning IPP members to Parliament the landlord's political influence was on the wane.  The experience of the Land War of the 1880's had driven a wedge between landlords and tenants and induced both Liberal and Conservative governments to pass land acts which aimed to encourage tenants to purchase land from the landlords.  On the one hand landlords began to feel that their local influence was irreversibly eroded and that the government no  onger had their interests in mind.  On the other hand, with the death of Parnell in 1891 and the consequent loss of vigour and direction of the Irish Parliamentary Party, and with the realisation that land purchase was inevitable, the late 1890's were also a period when the more liberal landlords began to discover a new role.

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Lord Mounteagle had outlined his conception of the landlor's role in Ireland in 1883.  It was his grandfather's view, carefully reformulated for a period when their role was in balance.  The 'upper class' was the 'resident gentry' , bound by ties of common interest, personal knowledge, and mutual good feeling, to those around them, and at the same time enabled by their position to command a wider range of vision, and to place at the service of the public an intelligence trained by higher cultivation and attainments by a deeper hold upon principles - trusted stewards of public interests in local affairs.  Unlike many liberal landlords he had not been quick to give rent abatements during the agricultural depression of the late 1870's and the subsequent Land War,  provoking unrest on his estate.  But he argued , he had not increased rents during the previous period of prosperity and he preferred to rely on stimulating employment by initiating public works.  Once peasant proprietorship became inevitable, enshrined in the land acts, he accepted it, rather than the half hearted attempt to retain control with progressive rent reduction. Both idealistic and pragmatic , he was well suited to the changing circumstances of the late nineteenth century.