The Great Famine of 1845 to 1849 left over one million dead with a further one million emigrating over the next ten years. One of the most significant effects of this disaster was to demonstrate to the ordinary Irish people that the English Government had failed them in their time of need and that they must seize control of their own destiny. Many accused the British Government of an 'orchestrated genocide'.
Out of the famine disaster grew several revolutionary movements, the Young Ireland Movement and the Fenian Movement, being just two but they all had the same goal in mind - to free Ireland from British rule.
Charles Stewart Parnell was born on 27th June 1846 in Avondale, Co Wicklow. The son of a wealthy protestant landowner and an American mother (who held very anti-British views). Parnell it is said, practically raised himself, he was left with a nurse maid called nurse Twopenny. Charles is remembered in his younger days, by his brothers and sisters as being "excessively self willed and undisciplined". This might explain why his parents shipped him off to boarding school earlier than was normal in such circles. His nurse Twopenny said "Master Charley is born to rule", but his family werent prepared to be ruled by a six year old so he was shipped off to a boarding school for backward children.After boarding school Charles spent three and a half largely unproductive years at Cambridge, he left after a rucous with a taxi driver landed him in county court. While in Cambridge things were beginning to happen in Ireland which were beginning to force politics upon his attention.
Some years after Parnell had returned to Ireland the countrys' political state was in disarray, the Fenian Movement had faded to mere obscurity and Britain had a new Liberal Prime Minister - Gladstone, who was on a mission to "pacify Ireland". Such was the state of affairs when Parnell first began to consider a career in politics.
