Charles Stewart Parnell (; 27 June 1846 – 6 October 1891) was a Protestant Irish landlord, nationalist, politician, land reform agitator, and the founder and leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party. He was one of the most powerful figures in the British politics in the 1880s when he helped overthrow two British governments. He maneuvered Prime Minister William Gladstone and the Liberals into adopting Home Rule. He succeeded by balancing the constitutional, radical, and economic forces at work in the Irish countryside, and by a skillful use of parliamentary procedure, by creating and leading Britain's first disciplined democratic party, and by holding the balance of power between Gladstone's Liberals and Disraeli's Conservatives. He destroyed himself by an adulterous love affair that made his leadership unacceptable to many religious Catholics and Protestants.