black rent

Definitions

1. 1

   Blackmail (rent paid in corn, meat, or the lowest coin).

   • [F]rom whose rich domains in Meath he received a “black rent” equivalent to £10,000 a year[.]
2. 2

   Protection money.

   • [N]othing could have preserved them from total extirpation but the assistance afforded them by the other Irish princes and tribes, whose friendship and protection they purchased by paying them a tribute, or black rent, as it was called.
   • [S]he pays me the black rent, and I let her alone[.]

The neighborhood