Charles Stewart Parnell

by F.S.L. Lyons

If Daniel O'Connell first articulated modern Irish nationalism, Parnell first organized it. This enigmatic, icy aristocrat became the unlikely and unchallenged leader of Irish nationalism in its early heroic phase. Without him, Home Rule would not have become the formidable cause that it was. Parnell not only mobilized nationalist Ireland, exploiting discontent with the land system and a desire for political autonomy, he also subverted the usages of nineteenth-century British politics by introducing the filibuster into the House of Commons, by dividing Gladstone's Liberal party between those who supported Home Rule and those who opposed it, and generally forced the Irish question to the heart of British politics where it remained until 1922.

Genres: Biography, Ireland, History, Politics, Nonfiction

754 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1977

About the author

Francis Stewart Leland Lyons FBA was an Irish historian and academic who served as the 40th Provost of Trinity College Dublin from 1974 to 1981. He was educated at Dover College in Kent and later attended The High School, Dublin. At Trinity College Dublin, he was elected a Scholar in Modern History and Political Science in 1943. Lyons was a lecturer in history at the University of Hull and then at Trinity College Dublin. He became the founding Professor of Modern History at the University of Kent in 1964, serving also as Master of Eliot College from 1969 to 1972.

Reviews

[ben c]

Reading this slowly, but its good - Parnall held an almost mystical character in our history, this is a more down to earth account of how he came to lead his political party, developed party politics, etc is pure force of character,

[Taylor Ross · Rating 5 out of 5]

Parnell is a figure I’ve heard mentioned thousands of times while reading about or visiting Ireland and I already had a reasonable understanding of why he was so famous in Irish history, but this book really provided the full view of his life and accomplishments that I craved. It is easy to see how Parnell became such an enduring symbol of the Irish struggle for independence with his ability to convince both the Fenian and the Parliamentarian elements that he preferred their method of achieving Home Rule. Those that craved direct methods of violent revolution against the British were convinced that he would do all that would be necessary when the time came, and those that preferred an amicable separation written into law were assured that this was Parnell’s true focus.

I found it striking how many versions of this same man you see described through out the book and how good Parnell seemed to be at allowing others to project their own ideals onto him without his personal opinions and actions actually aligning with those ideals in many cases. He seemed to become this popular hero of the Irish peasantry even though he was a Protestant land lord that visited Ireland as little as possible. He was viewed as this ferocious leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party but in many respects he seemed completely aloof in his role as leader and eventually came to neglect the party in favour of his personal life. In that personal life he was another person entirely who was extremely loving towards Katherine O’Shea, so supersticious as to seem silly, and always seemed to be up to some odd sounding extremely Victorian-era science experiment trying to get gold out of the land in Avondale or the like.

The arc of his story is certainly dramatic. The direct agitation of the Land League, the election campaigns often errupting into violence, his use of Parliamentary Obstructionism in order to force Irish concerns into focus, even being thrown in jail. Even though he is the leader of a relatively small political party, he ends up becoming the decisive factor in which party holds power when the tories and liberals are unable to muster their own complete majorities. The trial over the forged letters that appeared to show Parnell voicing support for Irish revolutionary violence ending in the suicide of the forger and the marring of the reputation of the biggest newspaper in the kingdom. With this leading directly into the O’Shea divorce suit and subsequent political disintegration in Ireland , it is easy to see how people following his story over the years came to have extremely strong feelings towards the man, one way or the other.

I learned an immense amount from this book on many different topics. The influence that America had on Irish politics over the years was very interesting, often holding the purse strings and seeming more eager than anyone for their Irish brethren to use physical violence on the other side of the Atlantic. I enjoyed learning about the origin of the term ‘Boycott,’ invented during the Land War. I also learned a lot about how the church wielded influence in Ireland, how this power was in uneasy competition with the Irish governmental party, and how Parnell’s adultery allowed the church to re-assert their primacy.

I see why Parnell has remained such a romantic figure in Irish history. He seemed to bring the country within reach of Home Rule but failed dramatically in the end. His faults are so human but seem so alien to the character of a powerful political leader in this time considering what was at stake. I find it striking how different the Home Rule that Parnell came to aim at was from what Ireland did end up achieving after the Easter Rising. Parnell’s version certainly would have retained a much stronger British influence on culture and politics than what there is now. I very much enjoyed hearing the details of this man’s story and comparing them against his myth, I think this book did a great job of providing a view of both

[Tiarnán · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have an extremely soft spot for doyen-style mid 20th century narrative history of this kind, with its fastidiousness, focus on the romance or quirks of historical personalities, as well as its commitment to a very old fashioned kind of "evenhandedness".

In terms of the subject matter, the main thing I took from this pamphlet (not book) is Parnell's incorrigible addiction to aura farming. Which in many ways was his ultimate downfall.