Charles Stewart Parnell transformed from an Anglo-Irish squire into the leader of the Home Rule movement. Renowned for his leadership of the Land League and mastery of parliamentary obstruction, he championed tenant farmers’ rights and advanced the cause for Irish self-governance. Despite a controversial personal life, he left a lasting legacy in the fight for Irish independence, writes Maolsheachlann Ó Ceallaigh.

 

In 1905, a textbook with the title Irish History Reader was published by the Christian Brothers. The book was used for many decades in the Christian Brother schools which educated generations of Irish children.

Towards the very end of the book, there is a section headed “Parnell Movement: Land League”. It describes Charles Stewart Parnell’s career as the leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party in the British House of Commons, his involvement in the Land League (a mass movement which campaigned for better conditions for tenant farmers), and his efforts to win Home Rule for Ireland. Two pages later, it concludes: “The brilliant leadership of Parnell had come to a sad end. He had died in the previous year, and now, for a time, the Home Rule question faded out of the region of national politics.”

The passage is an extraordinary one, for several reasons. There is no mention of the divorce scandal that overshadowed Parnell’s final years, split the Irish Parliamentary Party, and divided the whole nation. There is no hint of the bitterness that engulfed the country, dividing it into factions that remained at loggerheads for a decade.

Most extraordinarily of all, this Catholic textbook has no word of criticism for a leader who, after the divorce scandal came to light, was sternly denounced by Ireland’s Catholic bishops. Archbishop Croke of Cashel, previously a supporter of Parnell, wrote: “I will use whatever influence I possess in driving the wicked and deceitful man from public life and position in Ireland.”

Only fifteen years after his sudden death, Charles Stewart Parnell’s reputation had already soared beyond recent controversies and attained the status of a national legend.
But behind the legend lies a more complex and human story.

Parnell was born into the Anglo-Irish, Protestant, landowning elite of Ireland. At a time of growing tension between landowners and their tenant farmers, the Parnells had a reputation as good landlords.

Young Charles’s parents separated when he was six, and he was mostly schooled in England. He inherited the Avondale estate at the age of twenty-one.

At first, Charles seemed content to live a rather aimless life as a country squire. He attended Cambridge University for three years but was suspended for one term after a brawl. He never returned. Parnell’s appetite for a fight was shown again when he tried to gatecrash a private party in a hotel in Glendalough. Both of these incidents ended in court appearances.

In his mid-twenties, Charles displayed another aspect of his personality that would have huge consequences for his future: intense passion for a woman. On a trip to Paris, he met a beautiful American heiress named Abigail Woods and “fell a complete slave to her attractions”, according to his brother. They were inseparable for weeks, but Abigail decided to break off their relationship and return to America.

Parnell followed her, hoping to revive the romance, but without success. Abigail’s reported reason: “She did not intend to marry him, as he was only an Irish gentleman without any particular name in public”.

Continue reading in this week’s Ireland’s Own