He is commonly known among the people as 'the old fox of the mountain,' and he is very proud of it! "This old Stephen Maher," said Mr.Brooke, "is renowned in connection with a trial for murder, at which he was summoned as a witness.

When he was cross-examined by Mr.Molloy, Q.C., he fenced and dodged about with that distinguished counsellor for a long time, until getting vexed by the lawyer's persistency, he exclaimed, 'Now thin, Mr.Molloy, I'd have ye to know that I had a cliverer man nor iver you was, Mr.Molloy, at me, and I had to shtan' up to him for three hours before the Crowner, an' he was onable to git the throoth out of me, so he was! so he was!'" Neither did Dr.Dillon mention the fact that one of the demands made of Captain Hamilton, Mr.Brooke's agent, in December 1886, was that a Protestant tenant named Webster should be evicted by Mr.Brooke from a farm for which he had paid his rent, to make room for the return thither of a Roman Catholic tenant named Lenahan, previously evicted for non-payment of his rent.
When Mr.Brooke's grandfather bought the Coolgreany property in 1864, he adopted a system of betterments, which has been ever since kept up on the estate.

Nearly every tenant's house on the property has been slated, and otherwise repaired by the landlord, nor has one penny ever been added on that account to the rents.
In the village of Coolgreany all the houses on one side of the main street were built in this way by the landlord, and the same thing was done in the village of Croghan, where twenty tenants have a grazing right of three sheep for every acre held on the Croghan Mountain, pronounced by the valuers of the Land Court to be one of the best grazing mountains in Ireland.
Captain Hamilton became the agent of the property in 1879, on the death of Mr.Vesey.One of his earliest acts was to advise Mr.Brooke to grant an abatement of 25 per cent.

in June 1881, while the Land Act was passing.

At the same time, he cautioned the tenants that this was only a temporary reduction, and advised them to get judicial rents fixed.
The League advised them not to do this, but to demand 25 per cent.
reduction again in December 1881.