The clandestine contacts between Parnell and the Irish Republican Brotherhood as he rose to national leadership in the first years of the land war provoked political controversy in his lifetime and have aroused speculation ever since. Michael Davitt and John Denvir both tried to recruit Parnell into the I.R.B. in 1878 and were told that he was determined never to join a secret society; but some years ago Paul Bew drew attention to a different allegation contained in an anonymous article published in 1930 in An Phoblacht. The writer claimed that as a youth he was one of the Land League organisers imprisoned in Kilmainham jail under Forster’s administration, and recollected a few incidents ‘for the benefit of the younger generation who stand face to face with the same authorities—under a new disguise today’. He described, among other things, the drafting of the ‘no-rent manifesto’ by William O’Brien and I.R.B. recruitment among the prisoners. The article then stated that soon after Parnell’s release from Kilmainham in 1882 he met a Land League organiser from the west while on his way to consult the records of Griffith’s valuation in Trinity College library, that they walked to the library together discussing constitutionalism and physical force, and that in the library Parnell at his own request took the I.R.B. oath, having first pledged the organiser to secrecy for as long as Parnell lived. (The article then casually continues for several paragraphs of reminiscence and reflection.)