Charles Stewart Parnell

Irish politician

• Born: June 27, 1846
• Birthplace: Avondale, County Wicklow, Ireland
• Died: October 6, 1891
• Place of death: Brighton, Sussex, England

One of the leading figures in Irish nationalist history, Parnell fused disparate peoples and organizations into a cohesive Irish Nationalist party for the purpose of achieving home rule for Ireland.

Early Life

Charles Stewart Parnell was born on the Parnell family estate, the eighth child of John Henry and Delia Stewart Parnell. His father’s family was Anglo-Irish, while his mother was of American ancestry, although not much should be made of this fact. His heritage was Protestant, but he was to become more of an unbeliever than a believer. Parnell was hardly serious about his education, even during his three and a half years at Cambridge. When he left Cambridge, he returned to Avondale, which he had inherited on his father’s death in 1859.

Parnell was a tall, athletic-looking man. He wore a beard and a mustache, but contemporaries regarded his eyes, which were a reddish-brown, as his most distinctive feature. He possessed an iron will, but was mild and gentle in personal intercourse. A brother described him as having a “courteous but frigid exterior,” and claimed that he became even more reserved as he matured. Parnell also had a nervous temperament.

Life’s Work

Parnell was first returned to the House of Commons in April, 1875, as a member for Meath. He entered Parliament as a proponent of home rule for Ireland, and it was as a member of Parliament that he was to make his name, although his maiden speech was uneventful except for the assertion that Ireland was a nation, not a geographical fragment of England. He was early recognized as one of the more advanced “home rulers” and became a supporter of Joseph Biggar’s policy of obstructing English legislation as a way to pressure England into making concessions to Ireland. The most blatant use of this procedure occurred on July 31 and August 1, 1877, when the House was kept in session continuously for forty-five hours as seven Irishmen, including Parnell, thwarted the wishes of three hundred Englishmen.

By 1879, Parnell was becoming the leader of the nationalist movement. He was president of the Home Rule Confederation of Great Britain and of the recently formed Irish National Land League but had not been chosen as Isaac Butt’s successor as leader of the Irish parliamentary party after Butt’s death. That honor had gone to an avowed moderate, William Shaw, although his tenure was short-lived. After the general election of 1880, which saw Parnell begin to assert his authority over the party and to emerge from the election with twenty-four supporters out of sixty-three home rulers, Parnell was elected as chairman of the parliamentary party. One of his supporters for the leadership was William Henry O’Shea, and it was not long before Parnell was addressing O’Shea’s wife, Katherine, as “My dearest love.” This was an association that was to have momentous consequences.

Bringing together Irishmen of different persuasions was Parnell’s great accomplishment. From 1879 to 1885, he devoted his energies in and out of Parliament to promoting the national cause. In Parliament, he could be cooperative, as he was in enacting the Third Reform Bill, or he could be intransigent, as he and his supporters were in using the tactic of obstruction.

Out of Parliament, Parnell was occupied with the development of tactics that would demonstrate to the Irish people that he was the leader who could deliver concessions that were desired by both the extremists and the constitutionalists. He thus flirted with the Land League for a time and partially initiated and then supported the practice of making social lepers out of those Irishmen who dared to lease a property from which an Irish tenant had been evicted, a practice that became known as boycotting. His association with the extremists resulted in his being imprisoned in Kilmainham jail from October 13, 1881, to May 2, 1882. This period of imprisonment only solidified Parnell’s hold on Ireland. By August, 1885, John O’Leary, the Fenian leader and editor of the Irish People, was remarking that

Mr. Parnell is the undoubted choice of the Irish people just now, and as long as that is so, and clearly so, I think it is the duty of all Irishmen, even Irishmen of my way of thinking, to take heed that they throw no obstacle in the way of his carrying out the mandate with which he has been intrusted.

Parnell’s career was fast approaching its climax. He saw that climax as the grant of self-government to Ireland. To that end, he proceeded to prepare for the general election of 1885 under the newly enlarged franchise of the reforms of 1884-1885. What he wanted to emerge from the election was a highly disciplined party of eighty or more members in the House of Commons that would hold the balance of power between the two English parties and would thereby be in a position to play one off against the other to see which would make the most concessions for Irish support. The elections produced the desired results.

Parnell secured the election of eighty-six home rulers, a clear demonstration that he was the acknowledged leader of Ireland, and even of Ulster, for his party had secured a majority of one in that province. All home rulers had taken the pledge that they would vote as instructed by the leaders of the party. Furthermore, neither English party had emerged with a majority over its opponent and the Irish combined. Parnell could, therefore, keep either party in or out of power as he chose. He was, even more so than when Timothy M. Healy applied the term to him in 1880, “the uncrowned king of Ireland,” a title that was to cling to his name to his death and beyond.

Although circumstances looked promising for Parnell and the Irish, reality was to prove otherwise. The Conservatives concluded that there was no future for them in making concessions to Ireland, and the Liberals were not united in support of concessions. William Ewart Gladstone led those Liberals who were willing to concede home rule, but Joseph Chamberlain, leader of the Radical section, and Lord Hartington (Spencer Compton Cavendish, later eighth duke of Devonshire), leader of the Whig section, were to split from the Liberal Party. Gladstone’s Home Rule Bill was, therefore, defeated; ninety-three Liberals voted with the Conservatives against it. When a dissolution revealed that the country was even more anti-home rule than Parliament had been, the Conservatives were to come into office and remain in office, except for three years, for a twenty-year period. By the time the Liberals returned to office in 1892, Parnell was dead.

In the intervening years, Parnell’s fortunes were to decline, rise to unprecedented heights, and then fall precipitously. Parnell and his party remained associated with the Liberals with the hope that once the Liberals were returned to office a new Home Rule Bill would be introduced and this time it would pass. Even before the First Home Rule Bill was introduced, however, Parnell’s enemies were plotting his downfall. Their plan was to link him with criminal activities in Ireland, and they found a willing and naïve accomplice in the Times. A series of forged letters were sold to that paper and were printed in 1887 under the heading of “Parnellism and Crime,” linking Parnell to the so-called Phoenix Park murders, the murder of the newly appointed chief secretary and the undersecretary in Phoenix Park in 1882.

The publication of the series coincided with the debate in Parliament on a new coercion bill. The timing of publication, along with the fact that the letters had been previously submitted to a distinguished lawyer, who was skeptical of their authenticity and who advised the Times against publication, has led some to speculate that the Times and the government were working together to discredit Parnell and Irish nationalism, thereby enabling the government to enact stringent coercive measures against Irish nationalists. Whatever the truth may be, Parnell’s response to the accusations was one of outward indifference. In Parliament, he denied that he had written the letters, but he took no further immediate action. Parnell’s inaction was partly a result of ill health. For some time he had been suffering from illness, about which the details are unknown, but which may have been Bright’s disease.

When Parnell did take action, he asked for the appointment of a select committee to investigate the charges against him. The government refused a select committee but did enact legislation for the appointment of a special commission to investigate not only the charge that Parnell was implicated in the Phoenix Park murders but also the activities of the Land League, with which Parnell was no longer on the best of terms. In other words, the question of whether Parnell had written the letters that implicated him in the Phoenix Park murders was to be only a minor part of the investigation.

The government had apparently become aware that the letters were suspect, and they did not want Parnell and Ireland to be regarded as injured parties when it was proven that Parnell had not written the letters attributed to him. Rather, the English government wanted to continue to rule Ireland with a strong hand under the new coercion law that had been enacted. The special commission legislation was passed, and the three judges conducted their investigation. The letters were proven to be forgeries, and the forger was revealed. The special commission also investigated the Land League, however, and when their report was debated in the Commons, government spokespersons and supporters dwelt upon the activities of the Land League rather than upon the fact that Parnell had been vindicated.

Parnell’s vindication came in 1889, but almost immediately he had a new problem. Captain O’Shea sued his wife for divorce and named Parnell as corespondent. The divorce case ruined Parnell’s political career and was partially responsible for his death. O’Shea secured his divorce and Parnell then married Katherine, but his party removed him as leader and the Roman Catholic Church would no longer support him. With a segment of the party remaining loyal to him, he believed that he could recoup his position by demonstrating that he retained the support of the Irish people. Consequently he ran in by-elections, but this effort was too much of a strain for his already weakened constitution. He died in his wife’s arms on October 6, 1891.

Significance

Charles Stewart Parnell was a remarkable man. A landowner and a Protestant, he became the leader of tenant farmers and Catholics in a nationalist movement that came close to achieving self-government for Ireland. He was also remarkable in that he was able to moderate between the constitutionalists and the extremists and to persuade them to cooperate in a common objective. The fact that he almost succeeded is a testimony to his ability, vision, and firmness of will. No other Irish leader, except perhaps Eamon de Valera, has since held such influence over the Irish people.

Bibliography

Abels, Jules. The Parnell Tragedy. New York: Macmillan, 1966. A popular account of the life of Parnell. The reader must use caution in separating fact from speculation.

Callanan, Frank. The Parnell Split, 1890-1891. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1992. Chronicles the events that occurred after Parnell was named as corespondent in Kitty O’Shea’s divorce suit. Callanan describes how the reactionary views of Timothy H. Healy, a critic of Parnell, played an important role in Parnell’s downfall.

Foster, R. F. Charles Stewart Parnell: The Man and His Family. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1976. This is a supplement to the Lyons’s biography that deals more with the personal side of Parnell’s life.

Kee, Robert. The Laurel and the Ivy: The Story of Charles Robert Parnell and Irish Nationalism. New York: Penguin Books, 1993. Exhaustive biography, tracing Parnell’s political career and analyzing his impact on Irish nationalism and British politics.

Larkin, Emmett. The Roman Catholic Church in Ireland and the Fall of Parnell, 1888-1891. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979. This is a volume in Larkin’s history of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland and is especially useful for understanding Parnell’s relations with the Church.

Lyons, F. S. L. Charles Stewart Parnell. London: William Collins, 1977. The best biography of Parnell by one of the best of Irish historians. A thoroughly scholarly work.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The Fall of Parnell. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1960. The best discussion of the divorce case and all its implications.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Ireland Since the Famine. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1971. A good general history of Ireland for the period of Parnell’s life.

O’Brien, R. Barry. Life of Charles Stewart Parnell. 2 vols. New York: Harper and Bros., 1898. Reprint. New York: Greenwood Press, 1969. A chronological biography of Parnell by one of his contemporaries. Originally published in 1898.