Born in Bantry, County Cork, he left school with little formal education and worked as a railway clerk in Newcastle-upon-Tyne before moving to London in 1878 and becoming parliamentary correspondent of the Nation. He acted as Parnell’s secretary during the American tour of 1880 and represented six different constituencies at Westminster from 1880 until 1918, beginning in Wexford. Called to the Bar in 1884 he became an expert in land law. Virulently anti-Parnellite after the split in the parliamentary party from which he was eventually expelled, his subsequent party allegiances were factional and maverick though he held his North Louth seat from 1892 until 1910 and built a reputation at Westminster as an incisive speaker and a master of procedure. He took silk in 1910 and transferred to the constituency of North Cork, a seat he resigned in 1918 in favour of a Sinn Féin prisoner. He served as first Governor General of the Irish Free State, 1922–28.