DAVITT, MICHAEL (1846-1906), Irish Nationalist poli tician, son of a peasant farmer, was born at Straide, Co. Mayo, on March 25, 1846. His father was evicted for non-payment of rent in 1852, and migrated to Lancashire, where at the age of ten the boy began work in a cotton mill at Haslingden. In 1857 he lost his right arm by a machinery accident ; he was sent to school, and at 15 became a newsboy and printer's "devil." He drifted into the ranks of the Fenian brotherhood in 1865, and on May 14, 1870, he was arrested at Paddington for treason-felony in arranging to send firearms into Ireland, and was sentenced to 15 years penal servitude. After seven years, spent chiefly at Dartmoor, he was released on ticket-of-leave. He at once rejoined the "Irish Republican Brotherhood," and went to the United States, where his mother, herself of American birth, had settled with the rest of the family, with the idea of grafting constitutional methods on the revolutionary movement on lines which he had thought out in prison. He proposed to link up the campaign for independence with the agrarian question. Returning to Ireland he seems to have persuaded Parnell of the importance of the agrarian element, and helped him to start the Land League in 1879, and his violent speeches resulted in his re-arrest and con signment to Portland by Sir William Harcourt, then home secre tary. He was released in 1882, but was again prosecuted for sedi tious speeches, and imprisoned for three months in 1883. Before this his support of Parnell had led to his expulsion from the supreme council of the I.R.B., though he remained a member of the organization until 1882. Between 1882 and 1885 he conducted a campaign on land nationalization, which Parnell repudiated. He had been elected to parliament for Meath as a Nationalist in 1882, but, being a convict, was disqualified to sit. He was included as one of the respondents before the Parnell Commission (1888-1889), and spoke for five days in his own defence. That he had brought the Irish Party into contact with the Fenians in America was undoubted. (See PARNELL.) He took the anti-Par nellite side in 1890, and in 1892 was elected to parliament for North Meath, but was unseated on petition. He was then returned for North-East Cork, but had to vacate his seat through bank ruptcy, caused by the costs in the North Meath petition. In 1895 he was elected for West Mayo. In 1898 he helped William O'Brien to found the United Irish League to reconcile the Par nellite and anti-Parnellite factions. He retired from the House of Commons to express his disapproval of the Boer War. He fiercely opposed the Wyndham Land Purchase Act and William O'Brien's conciliatory policy. He died on May 31, 1906, in Dublin. A sincere but embittered Nationalist, anti-English, anti-clerical and sceptical as to the value of the purely parliamentary agitation for Home Rule, Davitt was often in conflict with his fellow Home Rulers. In later years his socialistic radicalism connected him closely with the Labour Party. His force of character earned him the respect of many, even of those who thought his doctrine pernicious. The chief original authority is to be found in his own works, notably in his speech before the Parnell Commission, separately published as The Defence of the Land League (1891). See also F. Sheehy Skeffington, Michael Davitt, etc. (19o8).