139. Of Love and Death, Prison and Murder

The passage of the Land Act for Ireland provided many tenant farmers with a wonderful way of getting their rents reduced. Sadly, that benefit had a downside, as it undermined the enthusiasm for continuing the campaign Parnell wanted to guide into increased pressure for Home Rule. It was by no means the only unintended consequence of measures taken at this time and which made the relations between Britain and Ireland increasingly tense.

Those tensions culminated in the arrest and imprisonment, without trial and merely to prevent a crime that hadn’t been committed, of several leaders of the Irish Land League, including Parnell. That was so contrary to human rights that it rather underlines the colonial nature of British rule in Ireland.

Imprisonment was particularly hard for Parnell because this was also the time when his overwhelming love for Katharine O’Shea was increasingly dominating his life. She was, indeed, pregnant by him.

But, to ensure that every aspect of the human comedy, and tragedy, is present in this episode, we end with a tale of death, the killings that have come to be known as the Phoenix Park murders.

Illustration: Detail from the miniature of Katharine O’Shea that Parnell kept with him in Kilmainham Prison. Public Domain
Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License.