In 1793 Agar is elected to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom as one of two representatives for Heytesbury. He succeeds his great-uncle Lord Mendip as second Baron Mendip in 1802 according to a special remainder in the letters patent. This is an English peerage and forces him to resign from the House of Commons and enter the House of Lords. Two years later he assumes by Royal licence the surname of Ellis in lieu of Agar.
Lord Clifden marries Lady Caroline , daughter of George Spencer, 4th Duke of Marlborough, in 1792. His only son, George, becomes a successful politician and is created Baron Dover in his father’s lifetime, but predeceases his father. Lady Clifden dies at the age of 50 at Blenheim Palace in November 1813. Lord Clifden remains a widower until his death at the age of 75 at Hanover Square, Mayfair, London, on July 13, 1836. He is succeeded in his titles by his grandson Henry, the eldest son of Lord Dover.
The Representation of the People Act 1918, passed on February 6, 1918, extends the franchise in parliamentary elections, also known as the right to vote, to women aged 30 and over who reside in the constituency or occupied land or premises with a rateable value above £5, or whose husbands do.
In March 1918, the Liberal Party MP for Keighley dies, causing a by-election on April 26. There is doubt as to whether women are eligible to stand for parliament. Nina Boyle makes known her intention to stand as a candidate for the Women’s Freedom League at Keighley and, if refused, to take the matter to the courts for a definitive ruling. After some consideration, the returning officer states that he is prepared to accept her nomination, thus establishing a precedent for women candidates. However, he rules her nomination papers invalid on other grounds: one of the signatories to her nomination is not on the electoral roll and another lives outside the constituency. The Lords of Appeal in Ordinary are asked to consider the matter and conclude that the Great Reform Act 1832 had specifically banned women from standing as parliamentary candidates and the Representation of the People Act had not changed that.
Parliament hurriedly passes the Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act in time to enable women to stand in the general election of December 1918. The act consists of only 27 operative words: “A woman shall not be disqualified by sex or marriage for being elected to or sitting or voting as a Member of the Commons House of Parliament.”
The first woman to take her seat in the House of Commons is Nancy Astor on December 1, 1919. She is elected as a Coalition Conservative MP for Plymouth Sutton on November 28, 1919, taking the seat her husband had vacated.
The first issue of The Nation, an Irish nationalist weekly newspaper, is published on October 15, 1842. It is printed at 12 Trinity Street, Dublin until January 6, 1844. The paper is later published at 4 D’Olier Street from July 13, 1844, until July 28, 1848, when the issue for the following day is seized and the paper suppressed. It is published again in Middle Abbey Street on its revival in September 1849.
John Mitchel joins the staff of The Nation in the autumn of 1845. On Mitchel’s frequent trips from Banbridge, County Down to Dublin, he had come in contact with the Repeal members who gathered about The Nation office and in the spring of 1843, he becomes a member of the Repeal Association. For the next two years he writes political and historical articles and reviews for The Nation. He covers a wide range of subjects, including the Irish Potato Famine, on which he contributes some influential articles which attract significant attention.
Mitchel resigns his position as lead writer for The Nation in 1847 because he comes to regard as “absolutely necessary a more vigorous policy against the English Government than that which William Smith O’Brien, Charles Gavan Duffy and other Young Ireland leaders were willing to pursue.” Upon his resignation he starts his own paper, The United Irishman.
Women also write for The Nation and publish under pseudonyms such as Speranza (Jane Elgee, Lady Wilde, Oscar Wilde‘s mother), Eithne (Marie Thompson) and Eva (Mary Eva Kelly, who would marry Kevin Izod O’Doherty.
The role played by some of its key figures in the paper in the ill-fated Young Ireland Rebellion of 1848 cement the paper’s reputation as the voice of Irish radicalism. Dillon is a central figure in the revolt and is sentenced to death, the sentence later commuted. He flees Ireland, escaping first to France and, eventually, to the United States, where he serves the New York Bar.
The Nation continues to be published until 1900, when it merges with the Irish Weekly Independent. Later political figures associated with the paper included Timothy Daniel Sullivan and J.J. Clancy.
O’Brien shares his primary education with a townsman with whom he is later to have a close political connection, CanonPatrick Augustine Sheehan of Doneraile. He enjoys his secondary education at the Cloyne diocesan college, which results in his being brought up in an environment noted for its religious tolerance. He greatly values having had this experience from an early age, which strongly influences his later views for the need of such tolerance in Irish national life.
A journalist from 1869, O’Brien is appointed editor of the Irish Land League’s weekly United Ireland by Parnell in 1881. In October of that year the British authorities suppress the paper and put O’Brien in Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin, along with Parnell and others. There he draws up a No Rent Manifesto, which, when read at a Land League meeting, results in the outlawing of the League. Released from prison in 1882, he resumes the editorship of United Ireland, and in 1883 he is elected to the British House of Commons, remaining there until 1895. His “plan of campaign” is disavowed by Parnell but nonetheless stirs up fierce agitation. To suppress the movement, the British government passes the Criminal Law and Procedure (Ireland) Act 1887, under which O’Brien is jailed again.
For some time following the O’Shea divorce case (1889–90), in which Parnell is corespondent, O’Brien attempts to mediate between the Parnellites and their opponents, although he sides with the majority in rejecting Parnell’s continued leadership of the Irish Home Rule struggle. In 1902 he supports the Land Conference, which secures agreement between landlords and tenants’ representatives and results in George Wyndham‘s Land Purchase Act (1903), which is designed to turn Irish tenant farmers into occupying owners.
Retiring from political life, O’Brien contents himself with writing and declines Éamon de Valera‘s offer to stand for Fianna Fáil in the 1927 general election. He dies suddenly at the age of 75 on February 25, 1928, while on a visit to London with his wife. His remains rest in Mallow, and one of the principal streets in the town bears his name to this day. His head-bust overlooks the town Council’s Chamber Room and one of his finest portraits hangs in University College Cork.
Butt is called to the Irish bar in 1838 and the English bar in 1859. Intermittently from 1852 he represents, successively, one English and two Irish constituencies in the House of Commons. In 1848 he undertakes the defense of the Young Ireland leaders, who are charged with high treason for their abortive insurrection that year. From 1865 to 1869 he is the principal defense counsel for the imprisoned leaders of the Fenians (Irish Republican, or Revolutionary, Brotherhood).
Despite his legal work for the Fenians, Butt, who is basically a conservative, fears the consequences of a successful Fenian revolt. Disillusioned, however, by the British government’s failure to relieve the Irish Great Famine of the late 1840s, he becomes convinced that a native parliament is required for Irish land reform and other needs. In May 1870 he calls for an Irish Parliament subordinate to the imperial Parliament at Westminster, and later that year he forms the Home Government Association. From 1871 he quickens the Irish nationalist agitation in the House of Commons but gradually loses his leadership, partly because he disapproves of Parnell’s tactics of obstructing routine parliamentary business.
Butt amasses debts and pursues romances. It is said that at meetings he is occasionally heckled by women with whom he had fathered children. He is also involved in a financial scandal when it is revealed that he had taken money from several Indian princes to represent their interests in parliament.
Isaac Butt dies on May 5, 1879, in Clonskeagh in Dublin. His remains are brought by train to Stranorlar, County Donegal, where he is buried in a corner of the Church of Ireland cemetery beneath a tree by which he used to sit and dream as a boy. His grave has been restored and the memorial now includes a wreath.
Despite his chaotic lifestyle and political limitations, Butt is capable of inspiring deep personal loyalty. Some of his friends, such as John Butler Yeats and the future Catholic Bishop of Limerick, Edward Thomas O’Dwyer, retain a lasting hostility towards Parnell for his role in Butt’s downfall.
In May 2010 the Church of Ireland parishes of Stranorlar, Meenglass and Kilteevogue instigate an annual memorial Service and Lecture in Butt’s honour, inviting members of the professions of law, politics and journalism to reflect aspects of his life. Speakers have included Dr. Joe Mulholland, Senator David Norris, Dr. Chris McGimpsey and Prof. Brian Walker.
(Pictured: Isaac Butt, portrait by John Butler Yeats)
O’Connor is born into a prominent Irish Protestant family who claims to be the descendants of the 12th-century king Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair. He is educated mainly at Portarlington Grammar School and has some elementary schooling in England.
O’Connor practices law but exchanges law for politics when he enters the British Parliament in 1832 as a member for County Cork. Unseated in 1835, he turns to radical agitation in England, although he continues to press Irish grievances and to seek Irish support. As a result of his humour, invective, and energy, he becomes the best-known Chartist leader and the movement’s most popular speaker. His journal, the Northern Star (founded in 1837), gains a wide circulation.
O’Connor’s methods and views alienate other Chartist leaders, particularly William Lovett, but in 1841, after spending a year in prison for seditious libel, he acquires undisputed leadership of the Chartists. Failing to lead the movement to victory and vacillating in his attitude toward the middle class and toward the People’s Charter, a six-point bill drafted and published in May 1838, he begins to lose power, although he is elected to Parliament for Nottingham in 1847. The failure of the People’s Charter in 1848 marks the beginning of the end for O’Connor, whose egocentricity is already bordering on madness.
The circulation of the Northern Star falls steadily, and it loses money. O’Connor’s health is failing, and reports of his mental breakdown regularly appear in the newspapers. In the spring of 1852, he visits the United States, where his behaviour leaves no doubt that he is not a well man.
In 1852 in the House of Commons O’Connor strikes three fellow MPs, one of them Sir Benjamin Hall, a vocal critic of the Land Plan. Arrested by the Deputy Sergeant-at-Arms, he is sent by his sister to Dr. Thomas Harrington Tuke‘s private Manor House Asylum in Chiswick, where he remains until 1854, when he is moved to his sister’s house. He dies on August 30, 1855, at 18 Albert Terrace, Notting Hill Gate and is buried on September 10 in Kensal Green Cemetery. No fewer than 40,000 people witness the funeral procession. Most Chartists preferred to remember O’Connor’s strengths rather than his shortcomings.
In 1778, English Catholics are relieved of the restrictions on land inheritance and purchase. A savage reaction to these concessions produces the Gordon Riots of 1780, and the whole history of Catholic Emancipation is one of struggle against great resistance. In 1791 the Roman Catholic Relief Act repeals most of the disabilities in Great Britain, provided Catholics take an oath of loyalty. In 1793 the army, the navy, the universities, and the judiciary are opened to Catholics, although seats in Parliament and some offices are still denied. These reforms are sponsored by William Pitt the Younger, who hopes thereby to split the alliance of Irish Catholics and Protestants. But Pitt’s attempt to secure a general repeal of the Penal Laws is thwarted by George III. Pope Pius VII consents to a royal veto on episcopal nominations if the Penal Laws are repealed, but the move fails. In Ireland the repeal of Poynings’ Law in 1782 is followed by an act (1792) of the Irish Parliament relaxing the marriage and education laws and an act (1793) allowing Catholics to vote and hold most offices.
The Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 permits members of the Catholic Church to sit in the parliament at Westminster and to hold all but a handful of public offices. O’Connell had won a seat in a by-election for Clare in 1828 against an Anglican. Under the then extant penal law, O’Connell as a Catholic, is forbidden to take his seat in Parliament. Peel, the Home Secretary, until then is called “Orange Peel” because he always supports the Orange (anti-Catholic) position. Peel now concludes, “Though emancipation was a great danger, civil strife was a greater danger.” Fearing a revolution in Ireland, Peel draws up the Catholic Relief Bill and guides it through the House of Commons. To overcome the vehement opposition of both the House of Lords and King George IV, the Duke of Wellington works tirelessly to ensure passage in the House of Lords and threatens to resign as Prime Minister if the King does not give Royal Assent.
With the Universities Tests Act 1871, which opens the universities to Roman Catholics, Catholic Emancipation in the United Kingdom is virtually complete.
The Bloody Sunday Inquiry, also known as the Saville Inquiry or the Saville Report after its chairman, Mark Saville, Baron Saville of Newdigate, is launched on April 3, 1998, by British Prime MinisterTony Blair. The inquiry follows campaigns for a second inquiry by families of those killed and injured in Derry on Bloody Sunday during the peak of ethno-political violence known as The Troubles. The inquiry is set up to establish a definitive version of the events of Sunday, January 30, 1972, superseding the tribunal set up under John Widgery, Baron Widgery that had reported on April 19, 1972, eleven weeks after the events, and to resolve the accusations of a whitewash that had surrounded it.
The judges finish hearing evidence on November 23, 2004, and reconvene once again on December 16 to listen to testimony from another witness, known as Witness X, who had been unavailable earlier.
The report is published on June 15, 2010. That morning thousands of people walk the path that the civil rights marchers had taken on Bloody Sunday before fourteen were killed, holding photos of those who had been shot. The families of the victims receive advance copies of the report inside the Guildhall.
Then British prime minister David Cameron addresses the House of Commons that afternoon where he describes what British soldiers had done as “both unjustified and unjustifiable, it was wrong.” He acknowledges, among other things, that the paratroopers had fired the first shot, had fired on fleeing unarmed civilians, and shot and killed one man who was already wounded. He then apologises on behalf of the British Government by saying he is “deeply sorry.”
(Pictured: Lord Saville and his colleagues visit the Bogside during their first day in the city on April 3, 1998. Credit: Derry Journal)
The Irish Volunteers are a part-time military force whose original purpose is to guard against invasion and to preserve law and order when regular troops are being sent to America during the American Revolutionary War. Members are mainly drawn from the Protestant urban and rural middle classes and the movement soon begins to take on a political importance.
The first corps of Volunteers is formed in Belfast and the movement spreads rapidly across Ireland. By 1782 there are 40,000 enlisted in the Volunteers, half of them in Ulster. Strongly influenced by American ideas, though loyal to the Crown, the Volunteers demand greater legislative freedom for the Dublin Parliament.
The Dungannon Convention is a key moment in the eventual granting of legislative independence to Ireland.
At the time, all proposed Irish legislation has to be submitted to the Privy Council of the United Kingdom for its approval under the great seal of England before being passed by the Parliament of Ireland. English Acts emphasise the complete dependence of the Irish parliament on its English counterpart and English Houses claim and exercise the power to legislate directly for Ireland, even without the agreement of the parliament in Dublin.
The Ulster Volunteers, who assemble in Dungannon, County Tyrone, demand change. Prior to this, the Volunteers received the thanks of the Irish parliament for their stance but in the House of Commons, the British had ‘won over’ a majority of that assembly, which led to a resistance of further concessions. Thus, the 315 volunteers in Ulster at the Dungannon convention promised “to root out corruption and court influence from the legislative body,” and “to deliberate on the present alarming situation of public affairs.”
The Convention is held in a church and is conducted in a very civil manner. The Volunteers agree, almost unanimously, to resolutions declaring the right of Ireland to legislative and judicial independence, as well as free trade. A week later, Grattan, in a great speech, moves an address of the Commons to His Majesty, asserting the same principles but his motion is defeated. So too is another motion by Henry Flood, declaring the legislative independence of the Irish Parliament.
However, the British soon realise they can resist the agitation no longer. It is through ranks of Volunteers drawn up outside the parliament house in Dublin that Grattan passes on April 16, 1782, amidst unparalleled popular enthusiasm, to move a declaration of the independence of the Irish parliament. After a month of negotiations, legislative independence is granted to Ireland.
(Pictured: The original Irish Parliament Building which now houses the Bank of Ireland, College Green, opposite the main entrance to Trinity College, Dublin)
Hobart marries firstly Margaretta, daughter of Edmund Bourke, in 1792. They have one son, who dies in infancy, and a daughter, Lady Sarah, who marries Prime Minister Lord Goderich and is the mother of George Robinson, 1st Marquess of Ripon. After Margaretta’s death in 1796 he marries secondly the Hon. Eleanor Agnes, daughter of William Eden, 1st Baron Auckland, in 1799. There are no children from this marriage.
Robert Hobart dies at Hamilton Place, London, on February 4, 1816 at the age of 55, after falling from his horse. He is succeeded in the earldom by his nephew, George. Lady Buckinghamshire dies in October 1851, at the age of 74.
