Valentine Browne was attainted for his association with James and his estates were confiscated in 1691. His son Nicholas Browne, 4th Baronet, 2nd Viscount was also a Jacobite supporter and attainted and could not claim the estates. Nicholas Browne's children were still to inherit, so the commissioners of the estate were instructed not to let the estate for more than 21 years. However, it was let to John Blennerhasset and George Rogers (two members of parliament) for a contract of 61 years. Blennerhasset and Rogers claimed they planned to plant the estate with Protestants when their illegal contract was questioned by the English Commission in 1699. The contract was quashed, and in 1703 the estate was sold to John Asgill, who had married a daughter of Nicholas Browne. Under his management, two ruthless and greed-driven men, Timothy Cronin and Murtagh Griffin, collected the hearth money tax from tenants and felled the woods for quick profit. Aodhagán composed a vitriol-ridden satire upon the death of Griffin, and another in "honour" of Cronin. It is likely that as a consequence of the loss of the estate by the Brownes, Ó Rathaille had to leave his native district and lived in poverty close by Tonn Tóime, at the edge of Castlemaine Harbour, some 12 miles west of Killarney. On the death of Nicholas Browne in 1720, the Kenmare estates were again placed under the ownership of a Browne – Nicholas' son Valentine (5th Baronent, 3rd Viscount). Having been destitute for so long (even composing a poem on his gratitude at receiving the gift of a pair of shoes) Ó Rathaille clearly hoped for a restoration of his position as ollamh, and celebrated Valentine's marriage to Honora Butler in 1720 in an Epithalamium. However, society had changed vastly in the intervening time; also, the estates had suffered under the mismanagement of John Asgill and were taking a severely reduced income. Valentine Browne either could not or would not restore Ó Rathaille's position. It seems that the refusal of this request was sufficiently devastating for Ó Rathaille to compose the poem in which he launches a vitriolic attack on the new English gentry like Valentine Browne and makes reference to the failure of the Jacobites as being a primary cause for his own situation. Little historical biographical reference has been found concerning Ó Rathaille's personal circumstances during his life, and the above details are mostly