Desmond, the 'Big Knight', succeeded as Knight of Glyn in 1866. It was Desmond's sensible managing wife, Isabella, who saw the estate through the Land War of 1880.
Florence Arnold-Foster, the niece and adopted daughter of Ireland's chief secretary, visited Glin in 1882. She painted a very gloomy picture of poverty caused by the ruthless cutting down of rents in response to the Land War and the ill feeling that this engendered. This caused the knight to be 'entirely estranged from his people who used to look up to him as the head of an ancient clan and would bring their quarrels before him for arbitration rather than take them to the County Court.' He had to go around his property armed and things did not look up at Glin until his son FitzJohn married Rachel Wyndham Quin in 1897.