Redmond, William Archer

Redmond, William Archer (1825–80), MP, was born in March 1825 at Ballytrent, Co. Wexford, second son of Patrick Walter Redmond, JP and high sheriff of Co. Wexford, and his wife Hester, only daughter of Joseph Kearney of Rocklands, Co. Wexford. Educated at Stonyhurst, a Lancashire Jesuit school popular with the Irish catholic establishment, at Bonn, and at TCD, from where he took his BA in 1847, he then worked in the Irish civil service but retained political ambitions. He was elected home rule MP for Wexford borough on 25 April 1872, and attended the conference organised by Isaac Butt (qv) to set up the Irish Home Rule League at the Rotunda in Dublin in November 1873. Although he was one of the first parliamentary committee of eight MPs that formed the home rule party with Butt as its leader in 1874, failing health limited his political involvement to agitating on behalf of temperance societies, and supporting Bishop Thomas Furlong (qv) in a successful attempt to close public houses within the Ferns diocese on religious holidays. He died 2 November 1880 from heart disease in Cork after making his last public appearance in Dublin the previous week. His body was removed to Wexford town and buried in the family vault in St John's. He married (1848) Mary, daughter of Capt. R. H. Hoey of Wicklow; they had two daughters and two sons, the nationalist politicians John Edward Redmond (qv) and William Hoey Kearney Redmond (qv).