Talk:Sir George Errington, 1st Baronet

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Errington, Parnell, the Vatican, and British collusion[edit]

According to both the Dictionary of Irish Biography's entry on Errington and Richard Barry O'Brien's 1898 biography The Life of Charles Stewart Parnell, 1846-1891; Volume II (see pages 23-27 by the book's numbering, or pages 37-41 of the PDF), while he was MP, George Errington was the unofficial (secret) British envoy to the Vatican in the first half of the 1880s, and the key facilitator of a collusion between the Holy See under Cardinal Domenico Jacobini and the British foreign office under Earl Granville to suppress the movement of Charles Stewart Parnell and home rule agitation. Both these sources say Errington's involvement at British behest was instrumental in the Vatican's order for their clergy to stop participating in fundraising for Parnell. The same charge was made by Irish politician Michael Davitt in the journal The Nineteenth Century in an 1893 article called "The Priest in Politics" (see link to Internet Archive here, page 147 or an alternate link to the article here from the Marxist Internet Archive). According to O'Brien's biography there were documents and testimony admitting to Errington's secret involvement with Granville's Foreign Office exposed in the House of Commons. I think this should be mentioned in this article. It's probably the most significant historical element of Errington's life, and suggests his key involvement in events of national importance during the Home Rule and Land War struggles. As of now, the article says nothing about Errington's life except for the dates of his MP terms and his ennoblement, which is a great omission. VolatileChemical (talk) 05:14, 1 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Here's some more citations: from "The Politics of Cardinal McCabe, Archbishop of Dublin, 1879-85" (JSTOR link behind paywall here) by Royal Irish Society historian C.J. Woods from a talk at the Old Dublin Society in 1967, published in the Dublin Historical Record June 1973. See PDF pages 6-8 (105-107 on the pages itself) In it Wood cites UK Foreign Office correspondence found in the Public Record Office under the title "Italy : Mr Errington's missions to the Vatican 1881-85". Woods expanded on these claims in his article Ireland and Anglo-Papal Relations, 1880-85 (paywalled link on JSTOR) in 1972 published in Irish Historical Studies, again citing documents publicly available in the Public Record Office (now National Archives) and the letters of Curia official Bernard Smith held in the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls and kept in microfilm copy at the Catholic University of America. These all seem to be quite reputable sources and compelling evidence for these pretty significant events involving Errington. VolatileChemical (talk) 13:45, 1 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]