Sir John Parnell, 2nd Baronet

Sir John Parnell, 2nd Baronet (December 25, 1744 – December 1801) was an Irish Member of Parliament.

He was a Protestant landowner whose family originally left from Congleton, Cheshire.^[1] Although not of the typical Catholic Irish background, the Parnells are renowned through Irish history for their efforts to bring about a more emancipated country.

He first served as an MP for Bangor in the Parliament of Ireland from 1767 to 1768. ^[2] He then sat for Queen's County from 1783 until the Union with Great Britain in 1800/01.^[3] After the Union he sat in the Parliament of the United Kingdom for a short time before his death as MP for Queen's County.^[2]

From a line of politically motivated ancestry who moved to Ireland in the 1600s, Sir John rose to the highest positions in Irish politics and Parliament as Commissioner of Revenue (1780), Chancellor of the Exchequer (1787) and Lord of the Treasury (1793).^[4]

He died suddenly in London in 1801.

Opposers

Sir John's great-grandson, the legendary land-reformer Charles Stewart Parnell

Sir John was great-grandfather of Charles Stewart Parnell, known as the uncrowned king of Ireland and was best known for opposing (with his son Henry also an MP)^[3] the Act of Union between the two kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801. Before this, Sir John was a Commander of Irish Volunteers^[5] and had been instrumental in winning the right to vote for Irish Catholics and for them to enter Parliament.^[3] However the latter faltered as parliament was dissolved in 1800.

Henry Grattan remarked Sir John as being: "an honest, straightforward, independent man, possessed of considerable ability and much public spirit; as Chancellor of the Exchequer he was not deficient, and he served his country by his plan to reduce the interest of money. He was amiable in private, mild in disposition, but firm in mind and purpose. His conduct at the Union did him honour, and proved how warmly he was attached to the interests of his country, and on this account he was dismissed".

Family

Sir John married Laetitia Charlotte Brooke in 1774,^[6] together they had 4 children. Their eldest son John Augustus was a deaf mute who was housed in a large walled garden for most of his life, while their second son Henry Brooke Parnell would go on to inherit the title and follow in the family's footsteps to become an M.P. (as an Irish Lord) for Queen's County in the UK House of Commons.^[3]

References