Derrynane House

After he inherited the estate, he invested in the town of Caherciveen, and was known for his benevolent treatment of his tenants. Rather than trying to become an ‘improving’ landlord like many of his contemporaries, who drove tenants out in favour of increasing grazing space for sheep and cattle, O’Connell respected and allowed his tenants to live their lives in a traditional way. Though his treatment of tenants was questioned and criticised in the middle of the 19th century, by correspondents like William Howard Russell and Thomas Campbell Foster, who claimed that O’Connell charged high rents, and allowed conditions of squalor. This was hotly refuted by O’Connell, who was supported by W.E Forster who was the Chief Secretary for Ireland. O’Connell was a polarising figure, lauded and deified by some and seen as a rabble rouser by others.

In his younger years, Daniel O’Connell was known to be headstrong and combative. This was perhaps most tragically seen when he fought a duel with John D’Esterre of the Dublin Corporation, that ended with O’Connell fatally shooting D’Esterre. He later became remorseful of the event, and in 1816 he underwent a spiritual transformation and became a devout Catholic, renouncing duelling and feeling genuine remorse about the killing of D’Esterre. The pistols O’Connell used for the  fatal duel are on display in Derrynane House.

Late 18th century Ireland was a tumultuous place with revolution in the air. After Wolfe Tone’s failed landing at Bantry in 1796, the country was in a near-constant state of unrest. This boiled over in the great 1798 Rebellion, which came to a bloody end at the Battle of Vinegar Hill. O’Connell sought to pursue political change rather than armed rebellion. He was thoroughly opposed to the Act of Union that enshrined British dominion over Ireland, and became a key figure for the ‘Repeal of the Union’ and a champion for Catholic Emancipation. Daniel O’Connell’s achievement in forcing the government to agree to Catholic Emancipation in 1829 was enormous. It earned him the title ‘the Liberator’, among his fellow catholics in Ireland.

After Catholic Emancipation was achieved, O’Connell became a full time politician and parliamentarian. He argued constantly for the Repeal of the Union against implacable opposition. He took his campaign to the people, with a series of enormous rallies known as ‘Monster Meetings’. O’Connell symbolically held the meetings at places of deep history with connections to Irish sovereignty, like the Hill of Tara. These meetings and O’Connell’s growing movement was seen as a direct threat to British rule. When a Monster Meeting was planned for the site of Brian Boru’s famous victory at Clontarf on the 8th October, the government sent a large military force to prevent it taking place. In order to avoid the risk of bloodshed O’Connell backed down and cancelled the meeting. Shortly thereafter he was arrested, tried, and convicted of sedition.

Daniel O’Connell returned to Derrynane to prepare for his trial in 1844. He defended himself, and used the trial to platform his views on the Repeal movement and to criticise British rule in Ireland. This was to be O’Connell’s last trial. He was found guilty, and sentenced to a year’s prison in Richmond Bridewell Penitentiary in Dublin. His fellow prisoners included his son, John O’Connell along with other key figures in the Repeal movement.

During the dark years of the Irish Famine, Daniel O’Connell sought to use all his skills and alliances in parliament to push for greater relief for the poor of Ireland, and expended much of his political capital in the endeavour. He was seen by some to have backed down from his firebrand demands for Repeal, and with his family finances in turmoil, and Ireland undergoing an unthinkable calamity, O’Connell lost heart. He set out to travel to Rome, but he never made it there alive. He died in the Hotel Feder, Genoa, in May 1847. The bed he died upon was transferred into the ownership of the Irish Pontificate College in Rome, who later donated it to the state for display in Derrynane House. O’Connell left an enormous legacy in Irish history. Outside of Derrynane, he is remembered in the name of Dublin’s main thoroughfare O’Connell Street, where you can see a large monument in his honour.