AustLit

Short, stormy and tragic was the career of Charles Stewart Parnell, who entering the House of Commons in 1875 at the age of 29, became so powerful an advocate of Home Rule that in 1881 he was imprisoned on a charge of inciting the Irish to open revolt. Through the influence of Captain O’Shea and his brilliant wife, who conducted the negotiations with the Prime Minister, Gladstone, Parnell was released a year later, but only to become a more zealous advocate of Irish nationalism, which, however, soon received a temporary setback as a result of several outbreaks of violence, of which it was falsely suggested that Parnell was one of the instigators…(p. 17)