The New Student's Reference Work/Davitt, Michael

Davitt, Michael, Irish journalist and, with Mr. Parnell, founder of the Irish Land-League, was born in 1846, in Mayo County, Ireland, of poor parents, who were evicted from their little homestead when Davitt was a youth.  This seems to have given a sinister coloring to his entire life, for we find him connected with the Fenian brotherhood in 1865, and five years later he was tried for treason-felony and sentenced to penal servitude.  Released in 1882, he was in the following year arrested for seditious speech and imprisoned, and when a prisoner in Portland convict-prison he was elected to Parliament, but disqualified by vote of the House of Commons.  Subsequently, when released from imprisonment, he was again elected to Parliament, but was unseated on petition, and resigned in consequence of bankruptcy proceedings against him.  Mr. Davitt traveled widely, and made a tour of the United States in behalf of the Irish Land-League, of which he has written a Defense.  He also published Life and Progress in Australia and Leaves from a Prison-Diary.  He died on May 31, 1906.  He was the stormy petrel of Anglo-Irish politics, but a devoted patriot.