Everything about Charles Stewart Parnell totally explained
Charles Stewart Parnell, (
27 June 1846 –
6 October 1891) was an
Irish Protestant landowner,
nationalist political leader,
land reform agitator,
Home Rule MP in the Parliament of the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, founder and leader of the
Irish Parliamentary Party. He was one of the most important figures in
19th century Ireland and
Great Britain and described by
Prime Minister William Gladstone as the most remarkable person he'd ever met. Another future
Liberal Prime Minister,
Herbert 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 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 Tudor Stewart (1816-1896); of
Bordentown, New Jersey), daughter of the American naval hero, Admiral
Charles Stewart (1778-1869) (the stepson of one of
George Washington's bodyguards). There were eleven children in all: five boys and six girls. Admiral Stewart's mother, Parnell's great-grandmother, belonged to the
Tudor family so had a distant relationship with the
British Royal Family. John Henry Parnell himself was a cousin of one of Ireland's leading aristocrats, Viscount
Powerscourt, and also the grandson of a Chancellor of the Exchequer in
Grattan’s Parliament, Sir John Parnell, who lost office in 1799 when he opposed the
Act of Union .
The Parnells of Avondale were descended from an English merchant family, which came to prominence in
Congleton,
Cheshire, early in the seventeenth century where as
Baron Congleton two generations held the office of Mayor of Congleton before moving to Ireland. The family produced a number of notable figures, including
Thomas Parnell (1679-1718), the Irish poet and
Henry Parnell, 1st Baron Congleton (1776-1842) the Irish politician. Parnell’s grandfather William Parnell (1780-1821), who inherited the Avondale Estate in 1795, was a liberal Irish MP for Wicklow from 1817-1820. Thus, from birth, Charles Stewart Parnell possessed an extraordinary number of links to many elements of society; he was linked to the old Irish Parliamentary tradition via his great-grandfather and 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); he belonged to the disestablished
Church of Ireland (its members mostly
unionists) though in later years he was to drop away from formal church attendance . Parnell made it his business to cultivate Fenian sentiments both in Britain and Ireland . 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 ousting from its presidency (even though he'd founded the organisation) and the election of Parnell in his place on 28 August 1877. Parnell was a restrained 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 Home Rule League by the
Whig-orientated
William Shaw. Shaw's victory was temporary, however.
New paradigm
From August 1877 Parnell held a number of private meetings with prominent republican leaders. He visited Paris where he met
Irish-Americans
John O’Leary and
J. J. O'Kelly both of whom were impressed by him and reported positively to the most capable and militant Irish-American
John Devoy of
Clan na Gael . Working together with Davitt who was impressed by him , he now took on the role of leader of the New Departure, holding platform after platform meetings around the country }} after the long depression left them without income for rent. He was elected president of Davitt’s newly founded
Irish National Land League in Dublin on 21 October 1879, signing a militant Land League address campaigning for
land reform. At the age of thirty-two and after just over four years in parliament he'd put into place a political coalition without precedent }}
His activities came to an abrupt end when the
United Kingdom general election, 1880 was announced for April and he returned to fight it. The
Conservatives were defeated by the
Liberal Party,
William Ewart Gladstone was again Prime Minister. Sixty-three Home Rulers were elected, twenty-seven Parnell supporters, Parnell being returned for three seats in Cork, Mayo and Meath,. He chose to sit for the Cork seat. His triumph facilitated his nomination in May in place of Shaw as leader of a new Home Rule League Party, faced with a country on the brink of a land war.
Although the League discouraged violence, agrarian outrages grew widely from 863 incidents in 1879 to 2590 in 1880 . He attempted to defuse the land question with
Balfour’s
dual ownership Second Land Act of 1881 but it failed to eliminate tenant evictions.
Kilmainham crossroads
Parnell’s own newspapers, the
United Ireland, attacked the Land Act , and resulted in losing the support of Devoy’s American-Irish. However, his political diplomacy preserved the national Home Rule movement after the
Phoenix Park Murders of the
Chief Secretary Lord Cavendish, and his Under-Secretary,
T.H. Burke on 6 May. Parnell was shocked to the extent that he offered Gladstone to resign his seat as MP .
Party restructured
Parnell now sought to use his experience and huge support to advance his pursuit of Home Rule and resurrected the suppressed Land League on 17 October 1882 as the
Irish National League (INL). It combined moderate agrarianism, a Home Rule programme with electoral functions, was hierarchical and autocratic in structure with Parnell wielding immense authority and direct parliamentary control . Parliamentary constitutionalism was the future path. The informal alliance between the new, tightly disciplined INL and the Catholic Church was one of the main factors for the revitalisation of the national Home Rule cause after 1882. Parnell saw that the explicit endorsement of Catholicism was of vital importance to the success of this venture and worked in close co-operation with the Catholic hierarchy in consolidating its hold over the Irish electorate . The leaders of the Catholic Church largely recognised the Parnellite party as guardians of church interests, despite uneasiness with a powerful lay leadership . At the end of 1885 the highly centralised organisation had 1,200 branches spread around the country, though less in Ulster . Parnell left the day-to-day running of the INL in the hands of his lieutenants
Timothy Harrington as Secretary, William O’Brien editor of its newspaper
United Ireland and Timothy Healy. Its continued agrarian agitation led to the passing of several
Irish Land Acts that over three decades which changed the face of Irish land ownership, replacing large
Anglo-Irish estates with tenant ownership.
Parnell next turned to the Home Rule League Party of which he was to remain the re-elected leader for over a decade, spending most of his time at Westminster,
Henry Campbell his personal secretary. He fundamentally changed the party, replicated the INL structure within it and created a well-organised grass roots structure, introduced membership to replace “ad hoc” informal groupings in which MPs with little commitment to the party voted differently on issues or if they did, often voted against their own party . Or they simply didn't attend the House of Commons at all (some citing expense, given that MPs were unpaid until 1911 and the journey to
Westminster both costly and arduous).
In 1882 he changed its name to the
Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP). A central aspect of Parnell's reforms was a new selection procedure to ensure the professional selection of party candidates committed to taking their seats. In 1884 he imposed a firm ‘party pledge’ which obliged and ensured, that party MPs voted as a bloc in parliament on all occasions. The creation of a strict party
whip and formal party structure was unique in party politics. The Irish Parliamentary Party is generally seen as the first modern 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.
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 and lawyers elected and the disappearance of
Protestant Ascendancy landowners and Tories from it.
Towards home rule
Parnell’s party emerged swiftly as a tightly disciplined and, on the whole, energetic body of parliamentarians . By 1885 he was leading a party well-poised for the next general election, his statements on Home Rule designed to secure the widest possible support. Speaking in Cork on 21 January 1885 :
All of his former close associates, Michael Davitt, John Dillon, William O’Brien and Timothy Healy deserted him to join the Anti-Parnellites. The bitterness of the split was to tear the country apart and resonated well into the next century.
Undaunted defiance, death
On 10 December Parnell arrived in Dublin to a hero’s welcome ,
West Sussex, after Parnell unsuccessfully sought a church wedding. On which day the Catholic hierarchy, worried by the number of priests who had supported him in north Sligo, issued a near-unanimous condemnation of his conduct (only Bishop Edward O'Dwyer of
Limerick withheld his signature). The Parnells took up residence in
Brighton.
He returned to fight the third and last by-election in
co. Carlow having lost the support of the
Freeman's Journal when its proprietor
Edmund Dwyer-Gray deflected to the anti-Parnellites. On the difficult campaign trail, his health visibly faded since Kilmainham gaol and seriously deteriorating during the year,
quicklime was thrown at his eyes by a hostile crowd in
Castlecomer, co. Kilkenny. Fr. PJ Ryan, a Land League protagonist, called in medical aid given by his brother, Dr Valentine Ryan of Carlow Town, a Home Rule sympathiser. Parnell continued the exhausting life of an Irish public agitator, refused to regard parliamentary pressure as outmoded and looked to
the next election to restore his fortunes. On 27 September rather than disappoint his followers in the west he addressed a crowd in pouring rain at Creggs on the
Galway–
Roscommon border and contracted pneumonia.
He returned to Dublin, departing by mail boat on 30 September ("I shall be all right. I'll be back next Saturday week."). He died in his home in Brighton of a heart attack in his wife’s arms on 6 October. He was only 45 years of age. Though an
Anglican, his funeral to the Irish National
Catholic Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin on 11 October 1891, was attended by more than 200,000 people carries just one word in large lettering: PARNELL.
His brother
John Howard inherited the Avondale estate which he found heavily mortgaged and eventually sold it in 1899. Five years later, at the suggestion of
Horace Plunkett it was purchased by the State. It is open to public view and is where the "Parnell Society" holds its annual August summer school. The "Parnell National Memorial Park" is in nearby
Rathdrum, County Wicklow. The capital city
Dublin commemorated Parnell with the naming of
Parnell Street,
Parnell Square and the Parnell Monument on central
O'Connell Street.
He is also commemorated on the first Sunday after the anniversary of his death on October 6th, known as "Ivy Day", which originated when the mourners at his funeral in 1891, taking their cue from a wreath of ivy sent by a Cork woman "as the best offering she cold afford", took ivy leaves from the walls and stuck them in their lapels. Ever after, the ivy leaf became the Parnellite emblem, worn by his followers when then gathered to honour their lost leader.
Personal politics
Parnell's personal political views remained an enigma. An effective communicator he was skilfully ambivalent and matched his words depending on circumstances and audience though he'd always first defend constitutionalism on which basis he sought to bring about change. But he was hampered by the crimes that hung around the Land League, and by the opposition of landlords aggravated by attacks on their property . He was conservative by nature, leading some historians to suggest that personally he'd have been closer to the Conservative rather than to the Liberal Party, but for political needs., Parnell's right hand man, who shared a lot of his opinions, wrote of his own views:
I confess that I felt [in1885], and still feel, a greater leaning towards the British Tory party than I ever could have towards the so-called Liberals. .
Historians believe Parnell and Timothy Healy shared that viewpoint . In later years the double effect of the Phoenix Park trauma and the O’Shea affair reinforced the conservative side of his nature
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, (2004)
Donal McCartney & Pauric Travers, The Ivy Leaf, The Parnells Remembered: Commemorative Essays, U.C.D. Press (2006) ISBN 978-1904558590
Footnotes
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