amount of £100,000. The action was compromised without going into court by a payment of £5000.
Practically, the damaging effect of some of the findings of the commission was neutralized by Parnell's triumphant vindication in the matter of the facsimile letter and of the darker charges levelled at him. Parties remained of the same opinion as before: the Unionists still holding that Parnell was steeped to the lips in treason, if not in crime; while the Home Rulers made abundance of capital out of his personal vindication, and sought to excuse the incriminating findings of the commission by the historic antecedents of the Nationalist cause and party. The failure to produce the books and papers of the Land League was overlooked, and little importance was attached by partisans to the fact that in spite of this default (leaving unexplained the manner in which over £100,000 had been expended), the commissioners “found that the respondents did make payments to compensate persons who had been injured in the commission of crime.” Parnell and his colleagues were accepted as allies worthy of the confidence of an English party; they were made much of in Gladstonian Liberal society; and towards the close of 1889, before the commission had reported, but some months after the forged letter had been withdrawn, Parnell visited Hawarden to confer with Mr Gladstone on the measure of Home Rule to be introduced by the latter should he again be restored to power. What occurred at this conference was afterwards disclosed by Parnell, but Mr Gladstone vehemently denied the accuracy of his statements on the subject.
But Parnell's fall was at hand. In December 1889 Captain O'Shea filed a petition for divorce on the ground of his wife's adultery with Parnell. Parnell's intimacy with Mrs O'Shea had begun in 1881, though at what date it became a guilty one is not in evidence. Captain O'Shea had in that year challenged him to a duel, but was pacified by the explanations of Mrs O'Shea. It is known that Captain O'Shea had been Parnell's confidential agent in the negotiation of the Kilmainham Treaty, and in 1885 Parnell had strained his personal authority to the utmost to secure Captain O'Shea's return for Galway, and had quelled a formidable revolt among some of his most influential followers in doing so. It is not known why Captain O'Shea, who, if not blind to a matter of notoriety, must have been complaisant in 1885, became vindictive in 1889. No defence being offered, a decree of divorce was pronounced, and in June 1891 Parnell and Mrs O'Shea were married.
At first the Irish party determined to stand by Parnell. The decree was pronounced on the 17th of November 1890. On the 20th a great meeting of his political friends and supporters was held in Dublin, and a resolution that in all political matters Parnell possessed the confidence of the Irish nation was carried by acclamation. But the Irish party reckoned without its English allies. The “Nonconformist conscience,” which had swallowed the report of the commission, was shocked by the decree of the divorce court. At a meeting of the National Liberal Federation held at Sheffield on the 21st of November, Mr John Morley was privately but firmly given to understand that the Nonconformists would insist on Parnell's resignation. Parliament was to meet on the 25th. Mr Gladstone tried to convey to Parnell privately his conviction that unless Parnell retired the cause of Home Rule was lost. But the message never reached Parnell. Mr Gladstone then requested Mr John Morley to see Parnell; but he could not be found. Finally, on the 24th, Mr Gladstone wrote to Mr Morley the famous and fatal letter, in which he declared his conviction “that, notwithstanding the splendid services rendered by Mr Parnell to his country, his continuance at the present moment in the leadership would be disastrous in the highest degree to the cause of Ireland,” and that “the continuance I speak of would not only place many hearty and effective friends of the Irish cause in a position of great embarrassment, but would render my retention of the leadership of the Liberal party, based as it has been mainly upon the presentation of the Irish cause, almost a nullity.” This letter was not published until after the Irish parliamentary party had met in the House of Commons and re-elected Parnell as its chairman without a dissentient voice. But its publication was a thunderclap. A few days later Parnell was requested by a majority of the party to convene a fresh meeting. It took place in Committee Room No. 15, which became historic by the occasion, and after several days of angry recrimination and passionate discussion, during which Parnell, who occupied the chair, scornfully refused to put to the vote a resolution for his own deposition, 45 members retired to another room and there declared his leadership at an end. The remainder, 26 in number, stood by him. The party was thus divided into Parnellites and anti-Parnellites, and the schism was not healed until several years after Parnell's death.
This was practically the end of Parnell's political career in England. The scene of operations was transferred to Ireland, and there Parnell fought incessantly a bitter and a losing fight, which ended only with his death. He declared that Ireland could never achieve her emancipation by force, and that if she was to achieve it by constitutional methods, it could only be through the agency of a united Nationalist party rigidly eschewing alliance with any English party. This was the policy he proclaimed in a manifesto issued before the opening of the sittings in Committee Room No. 15, and with this policy, when deserted by the bulk of his former followers, he appealed to the Fenians in Ireland—“the hillside men,” as Mr Davitt, who had abandoned him early in the crisis, contemptuously called them. The Fenians rallied to his side, giving him their votes and their support, but they were no match for the Church, which had declared against him. An attempt at reconciliation was made in the spring, at what was known as “the Boulogne negotiations,” where Mr William O'Brien endeavoured to arrange an understanding; but it came to nothing in the end. Probably Parnell was never very anxious for its success. He seems to have regarded the situation as fatally compromised by the extent to which his former followers were committed to an English alliance, and he probably saw that the only way to recover his lost position was to build up a new independent party. He knew well enough that this would take time—five years was the shortest period he allowed himself—but before many months were passed he was dead. The life he led, the agonies he endured, the labours he undertook from the beginning of 1891, travelling weekly to Ireland and intoxicating himself with the atmosphere of passionate nationalism in which he moved, would have broken down a much stronger man. He who had been the most impassive of men became restless, nervous, almost distracted at times, unwilling to be alone, strange in his ways and demeanour. He visited Ireland for the last time in September, and the last public meeting he attended was on the 27th of that month. The next day he sent for his friend Dr Kenny, who found him suffering from acute rheumatism and general debility. He left Ireland on the 30th, promising to return on the following Saturday week. He did return on that day, but it was in his coffin. He took to his bed shortly after his return to his home at Brighton, and on the 6th of October he died. His remains were conveyed to Dublin, and on Sunday, the 11th of October, they were laid to rest in the presence of a vast assemblage of the Irish people in Glasnevin Cemetery, not far from the grave of O'Connell.
The principal materials for a biography of Parnell and the history of the Parnellite movement are to be found in Hansard's Parliamentary Debates (1875-1891); in the Annual Register for the same period; in the Report of the Special Commission issued in 1890: in The Life of Charles Stewart Parnell, by R. Barry O'Brien; in The Parnellite Movement, by T. P. O'Connor, M.P.: and in a copious biography of Parnell contributed by an anonymous but well informed writer to the Dict. of Nat. Biog., vol. xliii.
(J. R. T.)
PARNELL, THOMAS (1679-1718), English poet, was born in Dublin in 1679. His father, Thomas Parnell, belonged to a family (see above) which had been long settled at Congleton, Cheshire, but being a partisan of the Commonwealth, he removed with his children to Ireland after the Restoration, and purchased an estate in Tipperary which descended to his son. In 1693 the son entered Trinity College, Cambridge, and in 1700 took his
