Charles Stewart Parnell

Charles Stewart Parnell (June 27 1846 – October 6 1891) was an Irish political leader and one of the most important figures in 19th century Ireland and the United Kingdom; William Ewart Gladstone thought him the most remarkable person he had ever met. A future Liberal Prime Minister, Herbert Henry Asquith, described him as one of the three or four greatest men of the nineteenth century, while Lord Haldane described him as the strongest man the British House of Commons had seen in 150 years.

Family background

Charles Stewart Parnell1 was born in County Wicklow, of gentry stock. He was the third son and seventh child of John Henry Parnell, a wealthy Anglo-Irish landowner, and his American wife Delia Stewart, daughter of the famous American naval hero, Commodore Charles Stewart (the stepson of one of George Washington's bodyguards). Commodore Stewart's mother, Parnell's great-grandmother, belonged to the Tudor family and so could claim a distant relationship with the British Royal Family. John Henry Parnell himself was a cousin of one of Ireland's leading aristocrats, Lord Powerscourt. Thus from birth Charles Stewart Parnell possessed an extraordinary number of links with a whole variety of elements of society; from the established Church of Ireland to which he belonged (and most of whose members were unionists) and the aristocracy through his cousins, the Powerscourts, to the American War of Independence and the War of 1812 (where his grandfather had been awarded a gold medal by the United States Congress for gallantry) right to a distant link with the Royal Family. Yet it was as a leader of Irish nationalism that Parnell established his fame.

Related Topics:
1 - County Wicklow - Anglo-Irish - Delia Stewart - Charles Stewart - George Washington - Tudor - Church of Ireland - Unionists - American War of Independence - War of 1812 - United States Congress - Irish nationalism

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The young Parnell studied at Magdalene College, Cambridge and in 1874 became high sheriff of his home county of Wicklow. The following year he entered parliament as member for County Meath, supporting the Home Rule party.

Related Topics:
Magdalene College, Cambridge - 1874 - County Meath - Home Rule

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