Parnell, Charles Stewart 1846-91
Irish politician

Charles Parnell was born in Avondale, County Wicklow, the grandson of Sir John Parnell (1744-1801), who had been Chancellor of the Irish Exchequer. His father belonged to an old Cheshire family which had purchased land in Ireland, and his mother was the daughter of an American admiral. He studied for four years at Magdalene College, Cambridge, but took no degree. He became High Sheriff of County Wicklow (1874), and in 1875 he became an MP supporting home rule.

In 1877-78 he gained great popularity in Ireland by his audacious and deliberate obstruction of parliamentary tactics. In 1878 he devoted himself to agrarian agitation, and was elected president of the Irish National Land League, for whom he secured substantial donations from the USA. In 1880 he became chairman of the Irish Parliamentary Party. The Land League was later declared illegal, and was revived in 1884 as the National League, with Parnell as president.

In 1886, Parnell and his 85 fellow Irish MPs used their vote to help introduce William Gladstone's Home Rule Bill, but failed to secure the legislation because of defections by Liberal MPs. When Salisbury took the issue to the country later the same year, he was returned with a Unionist majority of more than 100, causing Parnell to form an alliance with Gladstone. In 1889, Parnell was cleared of complicity in the murder of Thomas Henry Burke and other organized outrages following the publication in The Times of letters purportedly written by him. His character restored, he was given the freedom of the city of Edinburgh the same year.

In 1890 Parnell was cited co-respondent in a divorce case brought by Captain William Henry O'Shea (1840-1905) against his wife Katherine, and a decree was granted with costs against Parnell. The Irish members met to consider his position a week later, and eventually elected Justin McCarthy chairman in his place. Parnell also lost support in Ireland, and at the general election of 1892, 72 anti-Parnellites were returned against nine of his supporters. Meanwhile, Parnell had died suddenly in Brighton, five months after his marriage to Katherine O'Shea; he is buried in Glasnevin cemetery, Dublin.

Bibliography: P Bew, Parnell (1980).