Definition of "tenant-right" [tenant-right]

• The right of tenancy of a tenant on a manor, who holds not at the will of the lord but according to the custom of the manor.
• The right, or claim of right, in various forms or degrees, on the part of agricultural tenants, particularly in Great Britain and Ireland, to continue the tenancy so long as they pay the rent and act properly, to have the rent not raised so high as to destroy their interest, to be allowed to sell their interest on leaving to a purchaser acceptable to the landlord, and to receive a compensation from the landlord if turned off.

The Century Dictionary (Public Domain)

• "Barrington Erle probably meant the great man in whose service he himself had become a politician — required that the candidate should be a safe man, one who would support “the party,” — not a cantankerous, red-hot semi-Fenian, running about to meetings at the Rotunda, and suchlike, with views of his own about tenant-right and the Irish Church."
• "That conversation had taken place on a Friday, and on the following Sunday, early in the day, he left his rooms after a late breakfast — a prolonged breakfast, during which he had been studying tenant-right statistics, preparing his own speech, and endeavouring to look forward into the future which that speech was to do so much to influence — and turned his face towards Park"
• "It is not needed that the reader should be troubled any further with the strategy of one political leader or of another, or that more should be said of Mr Monk and his tenant-right."