Kilmainham Treaty

The Kilmainham Treaty was an informal agreement reached in May 1882 between Liberal British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone and the Irish nationalist leader Charles Stewart Parnell. Whilst in gaol, Parnell moved in April 1882 to make a deal with the government, negotiated through Captain William O'Shea MP. The government would settle the "rent arrears" question allowing 100,000 tenants to appeal for fair rent before the land courts. Parnell promised to use his good offices to quell the violence and to

Gladstone released the prisoner and the agreement was a major triumph for Irish nationalism as it managed to win abatement for tenant rent-arrears from the Government at the height of the Land War.

The agreement extended the terms of the Second Land Act of 1881, with which Gladstone intended to make broad concessions to Irish tenant farmers. But the Act had many weaknesses and failed to satisfy Parnell and the Irish Land League because it did not provide a regulation for rent-arrears or rent-adjustments (in the case of poor harvests or deteriorated economic conditions).

After the Second Land Act became law on 22 August 1881, Parnell in a series of speeches in September and October launched violent attacks on William Forster the Chief Secretary for Ireland and even on Gladstone. Gladstone warned him not to frustrate the Act, but Parnell repeated his contempt for the Prime Minister. On 12 October the Cabinet, fully convinced that Parnell was bent on ruining the Act, took action to have him arrested the following day in Dublin.

Parnell was conveyed to Kilmainham Gaol, where he joined several other prominent members of the Land League who had also protested against the Act and been jailed. There, together with William O'Brien, he enacted the No Rent Manifesto campaign. He was well aware that some in the Liberal Cabinet—in particular Joseph Chamberlain—were opposed to the mass internment of suspects then taking place across Ireland under the Irish Coercion Act. The repressions did not have the desired effect, with the result that Forster became isolated within the Cabinet, and coercion became increasingly unpopular with the Liberal Party.

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