Parnell
Charles Stewart Parnell made a speech condemning the murders in 1882. This increased his already huge popularity in both Britain and Ireland. He had just enabled some reforms under the Kilmainham Treaty four days before the murders. Parnell's reputation increased in Ireland, being seen as a more moderate reformer who would never excuse such tactics.
However, Parnell's policy of allying his party to Gladstone's Liberal Party in 1886 to enable Home Rule was also ultimately defeated by the murders. Gladstone's Minister Lord Hartington was the elder brother of Lord Frederick Cavendish. Saddened and infuriated by the manner of his brother's early death, Hartington split with Gladstone on the Home Rule bills of 1886 and 1893 and led the breakaway Liberal Unionist Association which allied itself to Lord Salisbury's conservative governments. In the ensuing 1886 general election the Conservatives and Liberal Unionists swept the board. This delayed Home Rule by 28 years, until the Third Irish Home Rule Bill which was passed technically in 1914, but which was never effected.
In March 1887, The Times printed letters purportedly from Parnell claiming sympathy with the murderers and that his public denunciation of them was insincere. It emerged that the letters were forgeries written by journalist Richard Pigott, and Parnell was personally vindicated by the Parnell Commission in 1888–89.
Read more about this topic: Phoenix Park Murders
Famous quotes containing the word parnell:
“No man has a right to fix the boundary of the march of a nation; no man has a right to say to his country, “Thus far shalt thou go and no further.””
—Charles Stewart Parnell (1846–1891)
“But stories that live longest
Are sung above the glass,
And Parnell loved his country
And Parnell loved his lass.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Gladstone in Great Britain and Parnell in Ireland, under the watchword, “Home Rule for Ireland,” are fighting the battle of self-government for all mankind.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)