By Brian Igoe
By Brian Igoe
Parnell, I suppose, was an aristocrat. His father was a Protestant Landowner, descended from a family of well-to-do merchants from Cheshire who had come to Ireland 200 years previously. A cousin was Viscount Powerscourt, descended from Sir Richard Wingfield who had been Marshall of the Queen's Troops in Ireland 250 years earlier. The Powerscourts are perhaps best known in Ireland for building the great Palladian Mansion outside Dublin, Powerscourt House, now an up-market Ritz-Carlton spa/hotel. And a Grandfather was Sir John Parnell, Chancellor of the Exchequer in Grattan's Parliament and the end of the last, 18th, century. On his mother's side, Parnell had an equally august ancestry. She was Delia Tudor Stewart, daughter of the famous American Admiral Charles Stewart and distantly connected to the English Tudor Royal Family of the 16th century. In 1848, Parnell was two years old.
That is the first paragraph of the chapter, which then goes on to look at Young Irelanders, The Fenians, John O'Mahony, Fenian Brotherhood, Kilbeheny, Trinity College Dublin, Sanskrit, Hebrew, James Stevens, Paris, New York, 'a Nation once again', 'Phoenix newspaper', 'three thousand mile walk' 'Irish Republican Brotherhood', 'IRB', American Civil War, Irish 69th Regiment of the Union Army, Fenian Raids into Canada, William Randall Roberts, in later life he became a respectable Congressman, an Alderman of New York City, and a Government Envoy to Chile. But in 1865 he invaded Canada, Campobello Island, 'IRA', Manchester Martyrs, Chester Castle, Paul Cullen Archbishop of Dublin, Gladstone's disestablishment of the Protestant Church in Ireland, excommunication, William Ewart Gladstone, Land Bill, Charles Stuart Parnell, Cambridge, Nationalist Home Rule League, Isaac Butt, MP for Meath, Joe Biggar from Belfast, John O'Connor Power from Mayo, filibustering, Edmund Dwyer Gray, Frank Hugh O'Donnell, obstructionism, Michael Davitt, Irish Republican Brotherhood, Dartmoor Prison, James Daly, John Dillon, Mark Ryan, Thomas Brennan, Westport, County Mayo, Castlebar, Mayo Land League, the National Land League, the three F's in the public mind, Fair Rent, Fixity of Tenure and Free Sale, evictions, Home Rule, ostracism, Boycott, 'coercion acts', Second Land Act, 1881, Captain William O'Shea, Katherine O'Shea, Kitty O'Shea, Kilmainham, the Kilmainham Treaty, Lord Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Henry Burke were murdered whilst walking in Phoenix Park, Reform Act, Liberal Government fell, Conservatives under Lord Salisbury won, the Purchase of Land (Ireland) Act 1885, the Ashbourne Act, Jacobs Biscuits, Waterford, Industrial Revolution, Belfast, textile mills, 'kitchen houses', Shankhill and Falls Road areas, Ship building, the Titanic, Divorcet, the Uncrowned King of Ireland, Herbert Asquith, Lord Haldane, Yeats, 'Come Gather round me'.
The Book is called 'The Story of Ireland'.
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