Charles Stewart Parnell, the 'uncrowned King of Ireland'
Charles Stewart Parnell[1] (27 June 1846 – 6 October 1891) was an Irish political leader and one of the most important figures in
19th century Ireland and the United Kingdom; William Ewart
Gladstone described him as the most remarkable person he had ever met.[2] A future Liberal Prime
Minister, Herbert Henry Asquith, described him as one of the three or four greatest
men of the nineteenth century, while Lord Haldane described him as
the strongest man the British House of Commons had seen in 150 years.
Family background
Charles Stewart Parnell
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| Timeline 1846—1891 |
| Birth |
27 June 1846
|
| 1875 |
Elected Home Rule League MP for Meath.
|
| 1877 |
August: Elected President, Home Rule Confederation of Great Britain;
obstructionist try to wreck South Africa Bill in Commons.
|
| 1878 |
links with Clan na Gael
|
| 1879 |
President, Irish Land League;
'The New Departure' campaign.
|
| 1880 |
May: Replaces William Shaw as chairman (leader) of the Home Rule League;19 September: Parnell outlines
"boycotting" strategy in Ennis speech.
|
| 1881 |
Land Act enacted by Gladstone. Criticised by Irish leaders for exceptions denied aid; 13 October: Arrested for
'treasonable practices' and sent to Kilmainham Gaol; issued 'No Rent Manifesto'.
|
| 1882 |
25 April: Kilmainham Treaty between Parnell & govt. Parnell released.
'No Rent Manifesto' withdrawn. Land Act amended. 8 May 1882: Chief Secretary (Lord Frederick Cavendish) and Under-Secretary T.H. Burke murdered by Invincibles outside Viceregal Lodge (Known as the
"Phoenix Park Murders") Public outcry. Parnell condemns murders; October: Irish National League replaces Land League.
Parnell controls it. Party name changed to Irish Parliamentary Party.
|
| 1883 |
December: Parnell receives £37,000 personal gift following national fundraising to alleviate his "financial distress".
|
| 1884 |
October: Catholic Hierarchy ally themselves with IIP and ditch their own party.
|
| 1885 |
June: Lord Salisbury forms minority Tory ministry. 1 August: Confidential meeting with new Lord Lieutenant, Lord Carnavon. 14 August: Ashbourne Land
Act enacted. 7 November: Parnell urges Irish voters in Great Britain to vote Tory on eve of general election. IIP
wins 85 seats. Hawarden Kite reveals Gladstone is now pro-Irish home rule.
|
| 1886 |
1 February: Gladstone forms ministry with IIP support. 26 March: Cabinet discusses draft Home Rule Bill.
Joseph Chamberlain resigns. 8 June: Bill defeated in Commons.
September: Commons rejects Parnell's Tenants' Relief Bill. October: "Plan of Campaign" launched in "United Ireland"
newspaper. Tories back in power.
|
| 1887 |
Arthur Balfour becomes Chief Secretary. New Land Act and new coercion laws.
March: The Times publishes a series "Parnellism and Crime". 18 April:
article in series links Parnell to the Phoenix Park murders, quoting a letter he supposedly wrote. 17 July: Salisbury (PM)
sets up commission to investigate links between Parnell and crime.
|
| 1888 |
May: Parnell distances himself from the 'Plan of Campaign' in a speech to the Liberal Eighty Club in London.
|
| 1889 |
22 February: Richard Piggott revealed as forger of Parnell letter. Later Gladstone leads Commons in a standing ovation
when Parnell returns. December: Captain O'Shea files for divorce, naming Parnell as co-respondent.
|
| 1890 |
February: Commission's 35 volume report clears Parnell of murder link but not of claimed links with crime.
November: story of divorce breaks. Initial support for Parnell as presumption that it is a new smear. 24 November:
Gladstone tactfully warns Parnell's deputy, Justin McCarthy of "problems" with scandal
for Liberals. 25 November: IIP re-elects Parnell chairman, unaware of Liberal problems. 26 November: Gladstone
letter on problems published. 1 December: After 5 days debate, IPP ditches Parnell. Party splits. Parnell and supporters
seize United Ireland party paper HQ amid fisticuffs. Anti-parnellites launch own newspapers. 22 December:
Anti-Parnellites win Kilkenny North by-election.
|
| 1891 |
January: Parnell rejects peace deal that he retire temporarily from politics and then return later to leadership.
Parnellites lose two by-elections (2 April Sligo; 8 July Carlow) Closer battle in Sligo but defeat also. Parnell
flirts with Fenianism. 25 June: Parnell marries Katharine O'Shea. Catholic hierarchy
(minus one) issue condemnation. 27 September: Parnell delivers last public speech. Described as "incoherent scurrility —
sad, sad" by John Dillon. Parnell catches pneumonia at the meeting and never recovers.
|
|
|
|
|
| Death |
6 October 1891 |
Charles Stewart Parnell was born in Avondale, County Wicklow, of gentry stock. He was
the third son and seventh child of John Henry Parnell (1811-1859), a wealthy Anglo-Irish
landowner, and his American wife Delia Stewart (1816-1896; of Bordentown, New Jersey), daughter of the American naval hero, Commodore Charles Stewart (the stepson of one of George
Washington's bodyguards). There were eleven children in all: five boys and six girls. Commodore Stewart's mother,
Parnell's great-grandmother, belonged to the Tudor family and so could claim a distant
relationship with the British Royal Family. John Henry Parnell himself was a cousin
of one of Ireland's leading aristocrats, Lord Powerscourt, and also the grandson of a Chancellor of the Exchequer in the
Irish House of Commons, Sir John Parnell. The Parnells of Avondale were descended
from an English merchant family, which came to prominence in Congleton, Cheshire, early in the seventeenth century. Thus, from birth, Charles Stewart Parnell possessed an
extraordinary number of links to many elements of society; he belonged to the established Church of Ireland (most of whose members were unionists),
he was connected with the aristocracy through the Powerscourts, he was linked to the old Irish Parliamentary tradition via his
great-grandfather, to the American War of Independence via his grandfather,
to the War of 1812 (where his grandfather had been awarded a gold medal by the
United States Congress for gallantry), and distantly connected to the Royal
Family. Yet it was as a leader of Irish nationalism that Parnell established his
fame.
Parnell's parents separated when he was six and the boy was sent to school in England, where he spent an unhappy youth. The
young Parnell studied at Magdalene College, Cambridge (1865-9). In 1871 he
joined his elder brother John Howard on an extended tour of the United States. Their travels took them mostly through the
South and apparently the brothers neither spent much time in centres of Irish
immigration nor sought out Irish-Americans. In 1874 he became high sheriff of his home county of
Wicklow. The following year he entered parliament as member for County Meath, supporting
the Home Rule Party. He sat for the constituency of Cork City from 1880 until 1891.
Member of Parliament
Charles Stewart Parnell was first elected to the House of Commons (the lower
level of British legislature), as a Home Rule League MP for Meath, on April 21, 1875. He replaced the deceased League MP, veteran
Young Irelander John Martin. Parnell soon
associated with the more radical wing of the party, which included Joseph Biggar (MP for
Cavan from 1874), Edmund Dwyer Gray (MP for
Tipperary from 1877), F. H. O'Donnell (MP for
Dungarvan from 1877) and John O'Connor Power (MP
for County Mayo from 1874) and engaged in a policy of obstructionism (i.e., the use of technical procedures to disrupt the House of Commons' ability to
function) to force the House to pay more attention to Irish issues, which had previously been ignored. This behaviour was opposed
by the less aggressive chairman (leader) of the Home Rule League, Isaac Butt. Biggar and
O'Connor Power also had links with the Irish Republican Brotherhood, a
physical force Irish organisation that had staged a rebellion in
1867. The question of Parnell's closeness to the IRB, and whether indeed he ever joined the organisation, has been a matter of
academic debate for a century. The evidence suggests that later, following the signing of the Kilmainham Treaty, Parnell did take the IRB oath, possibly for tactical reasons.[3]
What is known is that IRB involvement in the League's sister organisation, the Home Rule Confederation of Great Britain, led
to the moderate Butt's ouster from its presidency (even though he had founded the organisation) in 1877 and the election of
Parnell in his place.[4]
Leader
Parnell was never a great speaker in the House but his organisational, analytical and tactical skills earned wide praise,
enabling him to take on the British organisation's presidency. Butt died in 1879 and was replaced as chairman of the League by
the Whig-orientated William Shaw. Shaw's victory was
temporary, however. In the April 1880 general election twenty-seven supporters of Parnell's were returned as MPs, outnumbering
the support base of Shaw. In May 1880 Parnell was elected chairman of the party. Though the elections were for each session of
Parliament, he remained leader for over a decade.
New style, new party, new rules
Parnell fundamentally changed the Home Rule League. He restructured it from top to bottom, creating a well-organised grass
roots structure and membership to replace the League's previous informal grouping, in which MPs regularly voted differently on
issues or did not come to the House of Commons at all. In 1882 he changed its name to the Irish Parliamentary Party and in 1884 imposed a strict party oath obliging its MPs to vote en
bloc. The creation of a strict party whip and formal party structure was unique in
politics. The Irish Parliamentary Party is generally seen as the first modern British political party, its efficient structure
and control contrasting with the loose rules and flexible informality found in the main British parties, which came to model
their party structures on the Parnellite model.
Candidate selection
A central aspect of Parnell's reforms was to ensure that professional selection of candidates took place. Previously
candidates had often emerged in ad hoc arrangements, had little commitment to the party and either didn't bother to go to
the House of Commons at all (some citing expense, given that MPs were unpaid and the journey to Westminster was both costly and
arduous) or if they did, regularly voted against their own party.[5] Parnell's new selection procedure, and the party oath, ensured that the party ran candidates who were
committed to taking the seats and voting with their party on all occasions.
The changes impacted on the nature of candidates chosen. Under Butt, the party's MPs were a mixture of Catholic and Protestant, landlord and
others, Whig, Liberal and
Tory, often leading to disagreements in policy that meant that MPs split in votes. Under Parnell,
the number of Protestant and landlord MPs dwindled, as did the number of Tories seeking election. The parliamentary party became
much more Catholic and middle class, with a large number of journalists such as Timothy
Michael Healy being elected. The disappearance of Protestant landowners and Tories from the IPP made it easier for Parnell
to ensure the party voted as a bloc in the House of Commons.
Balance of power
Parnell's unified Irish bloc came to dominate British politics, making and unmaking Liberal and Conservative governments in the
mid-1880s as it fought for home rule (internal self government
within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland) for
Ireland. In the mid 1880s, Liberal Party leader William
Ewart Gladstone committed his party to support for the cause of Irish Home Rule, introducing the First Home Rule Bill in 1886. However the measure failed to pass the
British House of Commons, following a split between pro- and anti-home rulers
within the Liberal Party.
Though home rule was a central demand of the Irish Parliamentary Party, it also campaigned for Irish land reform. In that campaign, some of its members worked closely with an organisation known as the
Irish National Land League.
Parnell was elected president of the Land League on 21 October 1879. In January 1880, together with John Dillon, he visited the United States
to raise funds and awareness for the Land League. On 2 February 1880 he addressed the House of Representatives on
the state of Ireland.
The association with the Land League led various members, including John Dillon,
Tim Healy, William O'Brien,
Willie Redmond and Parnell himself to serve periods in prison. The
agitation led to the passing of a series of Land Acts that over three decades changed the face of Irish land ownership, replacing
large Anglo-Irish estates with tenant ownership.
In 1882, Parnell dissolved the Land League, and founded the National League to
campaign on broader issues.
The Piggott forgeries
In March 1887, Parnell found himself accused by the British newspaper The Times of
support for the murders of the Chief
Secretary for Ireland Lord Frederick Cavendish, and the Permanent
Under-Secretary for Ireland, T.H. Burke and of the general
involvement of his movement with crime (i.e., with illegal organisations such as the IRB). Burke and Cavendish had been brutally stabbed to death on 6
May 1882 in the Phoenix Park in Dublin. Letters were
published which suggested Parnell was complicit in the murders. Below is the most important one. However, a Commission of Enquiry
revealed in February 1889 that the letters were in fact a fabrication created by Richard Piggott, an anti-Parnellite journalist, who later committed suicide after the letter was showed
to be a forgery by him with his characteristic mistakes. Parnell then took The Times to court and the newspaper paid him
£5,000 damages in an out-of-court settlement. When Parnell entered parliament, after he was vindicated, he received a standing
ovation from his fellow MPs led by Gladstone. The 35-volume report did not clear Parnell's movement of criminal involvement
however.
Dear Sir, - I am not surprised at your friend's anger, but he and you should know that to denounce the murders was the only
course open to us. To do that promptly was plainly our best policy. But you can tell him, and all others concerned, that, though
I regret the accident of Lord Frederick Cavendish's death, I cannot refuse to admit that Burke got no more than his deserts. You
are at liberty to show him this, and others whom you can trust also, but let not my address be known. He can write to House of
Commons. Yours very truly, Charles S. Parnell.[6]
Mrs Katharine O'Shea
Parnell was viewed as an Irish national hero, referred to in the media as the "Uncrowned King of Ireland", a term originally
coined by journalists to describe Daniel O'Connell. However, Parnell's triumph was
shortlived. It was soon 'revealed' (though it had been widely known among politicians at Westminster) that Parnell had been the long term partner, and father of three of the children, of
Katharine O'Shea, also known subsequently as Kitty.[7] She was the wife of a fellow MP, Captain William
O'Shea of Galway, who had started divorce proceedings after failing to secure a large inheritance due to his wife. Captain
O'Shea had stayed married to Katharine because her old and wealthy aunt liked him and was going to leave a large sum of money.
The aunt lived for another 11 years; when she died Captain O'Shea gained less money than he expected and he initiated divorce
proceedings.[citation needed] After the divorce Katharine married Parnell. Under pressure from
politicians, newspapers and churches, Gladstone could not support the Irish Parliamentary Party while Parnell remained its
leader.
Party divides
Divorce is forbidden under Catholic doctrine and most of Parnell's supporters were Roman Catholics. As co-respondent, Parnell
was legally the cause of the divorce. He was also criticised by Nonconformists. Parnell's
reputation was high but the scandal crippled this support. As a direct consequence of the O'Shea divorce, the Unionist movement
in Ulster gained strength, as they espoused puritan values and they began to see the Home Rule movement as "morally wrong".
Parnell refused to resign. Not only did he refuse to resign but he exploited his position as party chairman to block any
motion to remove him. After a meeting lasting two days the majority of those present walked out to found a new organisation, thus
creating rival Parnellite and Anti-Parnellite parties. The minority who supported Parnell continued in the Irish National League under John Redmond, the vast majority
of Anti-Parnellites forming the Irish National Federation, later led by
John Dillon and supported by the Catholic Church. At a party meeting, Parnell challenged
Gladstone's intervention with the question, "Who is the master of the party?"; Tim
Healy, a notoriously waspish MP, responded with the legendary "Who is the mistress of the party?" putdown. The fact that
it was Tim Healy who so vehemently opposed Parnell was seen as the ultimate humiliation: Healy had been one of Parnell's
strongest supporters and had referred to Parnell as 'the Uncrowned King of Ireland'.[8]
See also: Diocese of Meath
Personal politics
Parnell's personal political views remained an enigma. He defended the radical
republican and atheist Charles Bradlaugh yet associated with the Roman Catholic
Church. He was linked both with aristocracy and with the Irish Republican
Brotherhood, with speculation in the 1990s that he may have even joined the latter organisation. The historian Andrew
Roberts argues that he was sworn into the IRB in the old library at Trinity College
Dublin in May 1882 and that this was concealed for 40 years.[9] Socially he was a conservative, leading some historians to speculate that personally he would have
been closer to the Conservative Party than the Liberals but for political needs. Andrew Kettle, Parnell's right hand
man, who shared a lot of his opinions, wrote of his own views:
I confess that I felt [in 1885], and still feel, a greater leaning towards the British Tory party than I ever could have
towards the so-called Liberals.[10]
Historians believe that Parnell, and Tim Healy, shared that viewpoint.[11]
Death
Parnell was deposed as leader and fought a long and bitter campaign for re-instatement. He conducted a political tour of
Ireland to regain popular support, attracting Fenian "hillside men" to his side. He married
Katharine on 25 June, 1891 in Steyning, West Sussex, on which day the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy issued a near-unanimous condemnation of his conduct (only
Edward O'Dwyer of Limerick withheld his signature).[12] He lost the support of the Freeman's Journal. On the difficult campaign
trail he had quicklime thrown at his eyes by a hostile crowd in Castlecomer, County Kilkenny. Fr. PJ Ryan, a Land League
protagonist, immediately called in medical aid, which was given him by his brother, Dr Valentine Ryan of Carlow Town, a Home Rule
sympathiser. On 27 September Parnell addressed a crowd in pouring rain at Creggs on the
Galway–Roscommon border and contracted
pneumonia.
He returned to Dublin, thence to Brighton, departing by the mail boat, 30 September. ("I shall be all right. I shall be back next Saturday week.") He died in his wife's arms of a
heart attack brought on by rheumatic fever, near midnight, 6 October in his and Katherine's
home in Brighton. Though an Anglican, he was buried in Dublin's largest
Roman Catholic cemetery, Glasnevin.
Such was his reputation that his gravestone of unhewn Wicklow granite, erected in 1940,
[13] carries just one word in large lettering:
PARNELL.
Overall assessment
Charles Stewart Parnell is regarded as one of the most extraordinary figures in Irish and British politics. He single-handedly
invented the modern political party with its whip, while having the power to make and unmake governments in the United
Kingdom.
Over a century after his death he is still surrounded by public interest. His sudden death, and the sex scandal which preceded
it, gave him a public appeal and interest that other contemporaries, such as Tim Healy or John Dillon, could not match.
Historians speculate as to whether, had Parnell lived, home rule would have been achieved a decade earlier, and whether the
granting of home rule earlier would have meant that there would have been no Easter
Rising, no Irish War of Independence and no independent Ireland. Or
perhaps the achievement of independence would have flowed from a home rule settlement rather than by revolution.
The scale of Parnell's impact can be seen in the fact that parties from Fianna Fáil and
Fine Gael have tried to claim him as "one of their own", as more recently have some in
Sinn Féin. The uniqueness of his appeal was shown when, in the early 1890s two visiting
members of the British Royal Family, Prince Albert Victor,
Duke of Clarence and Prince George, Duke of York (later King
George V), paid a private visit to Glasnevin Cemetery to see the grave of the "uncrowned king of Ireland".
Ultimately what is clear is that the O'Shea divorce scandal and Parnell's death changed the shape of late nineteenth century
politics. Just how much was changed by his death can be but speculated. For generations of Irish people Parnell came to be seen
as the "lost leader", against whose mythical reputation no later leader who lived a normal lifespan and who faced the
practicalities of governance that Parnell never faced, could hope to prevail.
Trivia
Parnell on the Irish £100 note (1990 to 2002)
- Charles Stewart Parnell was played by a clean-shaven Clark Gable in Parnell, a
1937 MGM movie about the Irish leader. This film was notable as Gable's biggest flop
and occurred at the height of his career, when almost every other Gable movie was a smash hit.
- Though generally called the "uncrowned king of Ireland", Parnell was in fact the second to be described as such. The same
term was applied 30 years earlier to Daniel O'Connell.
Parnell Grave, Glasnevin Cemetery
Footnotes
- ^ Most contemporaries pronounced his name as par-nell with the
emphasis on the latter part of the name. He himself disapproved of this pronunciation, pronouncing his name par-nell, with
the emphasis on the start of the name.
- ^ Gladstone's exact words were, 'I do not say the ablest man; I say the most
remarkable and the most interesting. He was an intellectual phenomenon.'
- ^ Alvin Jackson, Home Rule: An Irish History 1800—2000 p.45.
- ^ ibid.p.42.
- ^ A land bill introduced by party leader Isaac Butt in 1876 was voted down in
the House of Commons, with 45 of his own MPs voting against him.
- ^ http://www.chaptersofdublin.com/books/General/parnellforgeries.htm
- ^ Kitty is a Hiberno-English
Irish colloquial version of Catherine. She herself was not called Kitty by those who knew her. It was suggested that the use of
the word Kitty carried a double-meaning: firstly as the name was more usually used by the lower classes it was seen as
implying that she was "beneath Parnell" in terms of class (Kitty was a name more likely to be used by a chambermaid or servant than the wife of an aristocrat. Secondly "kitty"
was a slang term for a prostitute.
- ^ James Joyce spoke of Parnell in his
novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man where
Parnell was used as a symbol of lost hope in Ireland and in Irish unity. References to Parnell also abound in his second and
third novels Ulysses and Finnegans
Wake.
- ^ A. Roberts, Salisbury (Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1999) pp. 456-457.
- ^ Laurence J. Kettle, Material for Victory: The Memoirs of Andrew J.
Kettle, Right Hand Man to Charles Stewart Parnell (Dublin, 1958) p.69.
- ^ Alvin Jackson, Home Rule: An Irish History 1800—2000
- ^ http://steyningmuseum.org.uk/parnell.htm
- ^ J. J. Horgan, Parnell to Pearse (1949), p.50
Additional reading and sources
- Robert Kee, The Green Flag (Penguin, 1972–2000), ISBN 0-14-029165-2
- Robert Kee, The Laurel and the Ivy (Penguin, 1994), ISBN 0-14-023962-6
- Claude Berube and John Rodgaard, "A Call to the Sea: Captain Charles Stewart of the USS Constitution" (Potomac Books Inc,
2005), ISBN 1-57488-518-9
See also
External links
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