Parnaell

Out of the famine disaster grew several revolutionary movements, the Young Ireland Movement and the Fenian Movement, being just two but they all had the same goal in mind - to free Ireland from British rule.

Charles Stewart Parnell was born on 27th June 1846 in Avondale, Co Wicklow. The son of a wealthy protestant landowner and an American mother (who held very anti-British views). Parnell it is said, practically raised himself, he was left with a nurse maid called nurse Twopenny. Charles is remembered in his younger days, by his brothers and sisters as being "excessively self willed and undisciplined". This might explain why his parents shipped him off to boarding school earlier than was normal in such circles. His nurse Twopenny said "Master Charley is born to rule", but his family werent prepared to be ruled by a six ye

Catherine O'Shea's husband, Captain O'Shea decided not to take any action over her affair with Parnell on the grounds that when her rich aunt died that he would recieve a vast pay off. Mrs O'Shea's aunt did eventually die and she inherited a fortune, but it was left to her in such a way as to prevent her husband from being able to touch it, so when Captain O'Shea realised there was to be no big pay day he was furious. In November 1890 Captain William O’Shea, a former member of the Home Rule party, obtained a divorce from his wife, Catharine, naming Parnell as co-respondent. The effect on Parnell’s career was shattering.

ar old so he was shipped off to a boarding school for backward children.After boarding school Charles spent three and a half largely unproductive years at Cambridge, he left after a rucous with a taxi driver landed him in county court. While in Cambridge things were beginning to happen in Ireland which were beginning to force politics upon his attention.

Back in Ireland an agricultural slump was looming and the tenant farmers faced their gravest crisis since the great famine. In the west of Ireland the crops were failing and it looked as though the famine was returning. To take political charge in such a crisis Parnell was ideally suited. On 21 October 1879, Davitt founded the Irish National Land League in Dublin with Parnell as President, it was started mainly as a response to illegal evictions and intimidation of tenants. The main objectives of the League were to provide tenants with a fair rent, fixed tenure and free sale. The long term aim was that farmers would own the land (peasant proprietorship). The Land League became a hugely popular movement overnight. The Land League taught the Irish farmers to stand on their own feet and assert their rights. Gladstone became Prime Minister for the second time in April 1880 and hoped to pass an emergency Land Bill through parliament that summer. When he was defeated in the House of Lords, the Land League took law in to its own hands.After the introduction of the land law act, the popular power of the Land League, organized mainly by ex-Fenians, spread rapidly throughout the country. Mass demonstrations to secure reductions of rents were successfully mobilized. Land Courts had been set up to acess what the fair rents should be, but people were taking matters into their own hands. Shots were being fired into peoples windows, there were threatening letters sent and visits made in the dead of the night to people which the league regarded as paying to much rent or for taking holdings from people who they deemed were unfairly evicted. The leadership of the Land League offically denounced violence as did Parnell from his position in Parliament. The Irish correspondent of The Times described the Land League as " a very distinct and potent government which is rapidly superseding the Imperial government.... It rules with an iron hand and with a promptitude which enforces instant obedience. Its code is clear, its executive resolute, its machinery complete and its action uniform. There is a government de facto and a government de jure - the former welding a power which is felt and feared, the latter exhibiting the paraphernalia and pomp, but little of the reality of power." Parnell exploited this situation fully in parliament to bring the issue of Ireland firmly to the forefront of every

Some topics in this essay:
Land League, Nationalist Party, Archbishop Cashel, Party Gladstone, Catharine O’Shea, Master Charley, Speaking Ennis, Captain O'Shea, Home Rule, Land Courts, land league, home rule, boarding school, british government, land act, captain o'shea, charles stewart, charles stewart parnell, nurse twopenny, fell apart, home america, shipped boarding school, land act law, uncrowned king ireland,