Parnell Commission - The Commission

The Commission

After considerable argument, the government eventually set up a Special Commission to investigate the charges made against Parnell and the Home Rule party. The commission sat for 128 days between September 1888 and November 1889. In February 1889, one of the witnesses, Richard Piggott, admitted to having forged the letters; he then fled to Madrid, where he shot himself. Parnell’s name was fully cleared and The Times paid a large sum of money by way of compensation after Parnell brought a libel action. His principal lawyer was Charles Russell, who was later created Lord Killowen. Russell also wrote an influential book about the case.

In an out-of-court settlement Parnell accepted £5,000 in damages. While this was less than the £100,000 he sought, the legal costs for The Times brought its overall costs to £200,000. When Parnell re-entered parliament after he was vindicated, he received a standing ovation from his fellow MPs.

The Commission did not limit itself to the forgeries, but also examined at length the surrounding circumstances, and in particular the violent aspects of the Land War and the Plan of Campaign. In July 1889 the Irish Nationalist MPs and their lawyers withdrew, satisfied with the main result. When it eventually published its 35 volumes of evidence it satisfied for the most part the pro- and anti-nationalist camps in Ireland:

• Nationalists were pleased that Parnell had been heroically vindicated, in particular against The Times which had become a supporter of the high Tory prime minister Lord Salisbury.
• Unionists conceded that Parnell was innocent, but pointed to a surrounding mass of sworn evidence that suggested that some of his MPs had condoned or advocated violence, in such a way that murders were inevitable. They also made much of the fact that Piggott had formerly been a Nationalist supporter and was clearly deranged.