Captain William Henry O'Shea (1840 – 22 April 1905) was an Irish soldier and

Member of Parliament A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members of ...

. He is best known for being the ex-husband of

Katharine O'Shea Katharine Parnell (née Wood; 30 January 1846 – 5 February 1921), known before her second marriage as Katharine O'Shea, and usually called Katie O'Shea by friends and Kitty O'Shea by enemies, was an English woman of aristocratic background ...

, the long-time mistress of the Irish nationalist leader

Charles Stewart Parnell Charles Stewart Parnell (27 June 1846 – 6 October 1891) was an Irish nationalist politician who served as a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1875 to 1891, also acting as Leader of the Home Rule League from 1880 to 1882 and then Leader of the ...

Life

Born in

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of th ...

, O'Shea was a captain in the

18th Hussars The 18th Royal Hussars (Queen Mary's Own) was a cavalry regiment of the British Army, first formed in 1759. It saw service for two centuries, including the First World War before being amalgamated with the 13th Hussars to form the 13th/18th Royal ...

of the

British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurk ...

. Around 1880, his wife, Essex born Katharine O'Shea, entered into a relationship with the Irish nationalist leader

, with whom she had three children. O'Shea, who was already separated from his wife, knew of the relationship. In 1882 when the Liberal Government was secretly negotiating with Parnell for the terms of his release from Kilmainham prison where he was being held on suspicion of "treasonable practices", the President of the Board of Trade Joseph Chamberlain chose O’Shea as its intermediary, unaware of Parnell's affair with Mrs O’Shea or of the fact that the newly born first child of their liaison was dying. O’Shea spent 6 hours negotiating with Parnell in the prison, extracting the surprising concession that Parnell would tacitly support the Government after his release. It has been suggested that O’Shea won this concession, which reflected well on him, by threatening Parnell with public exposure of his affair with Mrs O’Shea. In 1886, following insinuations of the Parnell affair and O'Shea's complicity in it appearing in the Pall Mall Gazette, O'Shea abstained from voting on the Irish Home Rule bill and resigned his parliamentary seat the following day. However, he only filed for divorce on 24 December 1889 after his wife's aunt, from whom he was expecting a large inheritance, died earlier that year leaving her estate in trust for his wife (thus allegedly violating the terms of O'Shea's marriage contract). However, that will was overturned upon appeal, and the aunt's legacy was shared among Katharine O'Shea's siblings. After the divorce the two surviving children of Parnell and Katharine O'Shea were given into Captain O'Shea's custody. O'Shea was MP for

Clare Clare may refer to: Places Antarctica * Clare Range, a mountain range in Victoria Land Australia * Clare, South Australia, a town in the Clare Valley * Clare Valley, South Australia Canada * Clare (electoral district), an electoral district * Cl ...

from 1880 to 1885 and Galway Borough for a short period in 1886. Although supported by Parnell, he was never a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party.

References

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External links

* * 1840 births 1905 deaths 18th Royal Hussars officers 19th-century Irish people Members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for County Clare constituencies (1801–1922) Members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for County Galway constituencies (1801–1922) UK MPs 1880–1885 UK MPs 1885–1886 {{Ireland-UK-MP-stub