Humphreys, David (1843–1930), parish priest and agrarian agitator, was one of three sons and four daughters born to William Humphreys, of Murroe, Co. Limerick, large tenant farmer (75 acres), and his wife (née Enright) of Croom, Co. Limerick. Baptised on 18 June 1843, he was educated primarily at home by his older brother Tom, and entered Thurles College in September 1863. He entered seminary training at Maynooth in August 1865, was ordained in Thurles on 19 September 1869, and then served as professor of logic at St Patrick's College, Thurles (1869–78). In 1878 he began his pastoral ministry in Galbally, Co. Limerick, and in 1880 was transferred as curate to Clonoulty, Co. Tipperary, where he became involved in the agrarian agitation, becoming president of the local branch of the Land League. This period also marked Humphrey's emergence as a polemicist, as he published several pamphlets on the land agitation, justifying the Land League's mission and attacking Gladstone's 1881 Land Act – particularly logical anomalies he saw in certain clauses which seemed to violate the act's innovative principle of dual ownership. During the land war Humphreys was one of the most ardent clerical supporters of the ban on fox-hunting in Tipperary, seeing the sport as being inextricably linked to landlordism and the aristocracy, and arguing that the ban would raise the British public's awareness of the declining social status of landlords in Ireland.
In April 1882 Humphreys was present at the eviction of his family from their Co. Limerick farm, which strengthened his resolve to fight the landlord system in Ireland. He was curate in Newport, Co. Tipperary (1883–5), and he also became secretary of the local branch of the Irish National League, the successor to the suppressed Land League. In 1885 he was assigned to Tipperary town and soon became a guiding force in the Plan of Campaign, a programme of collective bargaining by tenants with their landlord through the withholding of the excess rent above a ‘just’ level determined by the tenants. Humphreys was one of the most outspoken priests who challenged the 1888 papal rescript condemning the Plan of Campaign and boycotting, arguing that the type of landlord–tenant relationship cited in the document did not exist in Ireland, and pointing out that the document was not ex cathedra, and therefore not infallible. He also held that boycotting was not contrary to scripture but was a moral necessity in Ireland, where, he maintained, the law favoured the landlord over the tenant farmer.
In 1889 the Tipperary town tenants on the Arthur Hugh Smith-Barry (qv) estate agreed to a self-imposed 10 per cent levy of the poor-law valuation of their holdings to support evicted tenants on the Ponsonby estate in Co. Cork, where their landlord, Smith-Barry, was the chief agent of a landlord syndicate to purchase estates suffering under the Plan of Campaign. Because of their altruistic levy, the Tipperary tenants demanded a 25 per cent abatement, which Smith-Barry refused, and in July 1889 the withholding of rents led to several sheriff's sales and widespread ejections. In October a Tenants' Defence Association was established at Thurles to raise money for ‘New Tipperary’, a new settlement to be constructed adjacent to Tipperary town as a visible defiance of landlordism in general and Smith-Barry in particular. In November Humphreys led a committee of tenants who recovered stock and furniture from premises about to be evicted, and who were instrumental in the planning of the new town. In December, 233 out of 355 Smith-Barry tenants in Tipperary town withheld their rents, resulting in 175 evictions.
Humphreys and William O'Brien (qv) were the driving forces behind the establishment of New Tipperary – basically two new streets on the edge of town to house the evicted tenants. The project relied substantially upon voluntary labour but, with expenditure of £250 per week, eventually carried a cost of £50,000. With about a hundred dwellings, a showpiece arcade for businesses, and 200 acres of grazing land for livestock, the new ‘town’ was an instant tourist attraction after it opened in April 1890. But Humphreys's involvement in the new community brought him to the attention of the constabulary, and in September 1890 he was arrested for conspiracy to prevent the payment of rent; he defended himself, and was discharged.
With the fall in December 1890 of Charles Stewart Parnell (qv), who had always been against New Tipperary and aloof from the Plan of Campaign, and the break-up of the parliamentary party, the new settlement began to wane, as it was increasingly difficult to get nationalists to focus attention and funds on the community. Humphreys blamed Parnell for the community's decline, and rarely missed an opportunity to attack the fallen leader. When in March 1891 the anti-Parnellite Irish National Federation was inaugurated in Tipperary to replace the Parnellite National League, Humphreys was appointed vice-president. By May, Smith-Barry tenants were beginning to backslide, after a deputation of tenants came to terms with their landlord and began to return to ‘old’ Tipperary. In 1894 Humphreys negotiated to purchase the fee simple of New Tipperary, but was transferred to the parish of Killenaule, Co. Tipperary, where he was promoted to parish priest. William O'Brien later purchased New Tipperary for £750; by 1895 all Smith-Barry tenants had come to terms with their former landlord and had returned.
In Killenaule, Humphreys turned his attention from the land agitation to education and fought on behalf of the catholic tenants on the Erasmus Smith (qv) properties in Tipperary and Limerick for their share of an endowment set up in the seventeenth century for the instruction of mainly protestant tenants. Between 1889 and 1913 he wrote several pamphlets on this controversy and became involved in a protracted lawsuit to acquire a share of the endowment for catholic children on the Erasmus Smith estates. This did not conclude until 1937, when a compromise was reached to split the fund between protestant and catholic schools. During the Anglo–Irish war Humphreys used his pulpit to attack republicans, whom he saw as thwarting home rule. He died in Killenaule on 22 June 1930.