The Assassins: Conspiracy, Revenge, and the Phoenix Park Murders That Stunned Victorian England, Kavanugh - B-

     The 1880's saw the first viable stirrings of an Irish effort to overthrow the feudal system of land ownership that had been oppressing the indigenous Irish for centuries. Ironically, it was led by a Protestant landlord, Charles Stewart Parnell, MP. In response to a famine in the western counties, Parnell established the Land League.  The League encouraged the Irish to withold rents and developed a system of boycotts that garnered the attention of Westminster. The Crown's response was to banish the League, and indict Parnell and 13 others for inciting violence. After the prosecution floundered, Gladstone suspended thirty-six Irish MPs. Parliament passed a Coercion Act targeting the Irish for engaging in civil disobedience, and under its terms, Gladstone had Parnelll arrested again. 

   The constabulary in Dublin began to hear rumors of impending violence, sponsored by Irish-Americans, against English officeholders. Unbeknownst to the police, an assassins group, the Irish Invincibles, had been formed and high on their list was Wiliam Forster, Chief Secretary of Ireland. The spring in 1882 saw Gladstone and Parnell reach a rapprochement. Parnell was released from jail and headed to London for further discussions. On the evening of May 6th, Thomas Burke, Forster's assistant, and Lord Cavendish, who was in Dublin to succeed Forster, were walking in Phoenix Park in the heart of Dublin. They were murdered by Joe Brady and Tim Kelly. The following day local papers reported that they had been executed on orders of the Irish Invincibles. 

  As Gladstone had appointed Cavendish, the husband of his wife's niece, to help him bring a settlement to Ireland, the assassination was viewed as a disaster by all but the Irish republicans. Parnell was so despondent that he offered to resign from Parliament. It took until the following January for the police to find an informer willing to testify against the Invincibles. James Carey turned state's evidence in exchange for a grant of leniency. The trial began in April, although many of the plotters were in New York. Justice was swift and five Invincibles were hung at Kilmainham Jail in May and June.  Carey was trundled off to South Africa and met an assassin's bullet on the trip. The man who shot him, Pat O'Donnell, was, in turn, returned to England, tried and hung.

  The republicans have honored the Invincibles and O'Donnell as Irish heroes. Gladstone's last attempt to create home rule for Ireland faltered in 1886 and Parliament reverted to hostility toward the Irish. The Irish party in Parliament fell apart when Parnell was named as a respondent in the divorce of his long-time paramour, Kitty O'Shea. Soon thereafter, the forty-five-year-old Parnell died of heart failure. Gladstone's fourth premiership in the 1890's was brief. A Home Rule Bill would not pass until 1914, and even then, its implementation was deferred because of the outbreak of war.