ABSTRACT
On the 5th of February, 1890, John Morley was dining with Charles Stewart Parnell’s legal adviser, the brilliant and much-esteemed solicitor, George Lewis. William Harcourt understood the allusion well enough. During his turn as Home Secretary the police had acquainted him sufficiently with Parnell’s visits to Mrs. O’Shea at Eltham. On Christmas Eve, 1889, Parnell was served with papers as the co-respondent in O’Shea v. O’Shea and Parnell. William Ewart Gladstone, when he formed his fourth and last Ministry, was eighty-three years of age: eight years older than Palmerston was when he became Prime Minister for the last time. Among the Liberal Party leaders the greatest consternation prevailed. William Ewart Gladstone, who had been soothed and reassured by Morley’s report, wrote immediately after the exposure: “It is after all a thunderclap about Parnell. Lord Salisbury, the Conservative Prime Minister, “was thought,” as Morley says, “to go nearest to the core of the solemnity.”.
