William Smith O'Brien (; 17 October 1803 – 18 June 1864) was an Irish nationalist Member of Parliament (MP) and a leader of the Young Ireland movement. He also encouraged the use of the Irish language. He was convicted of sedition for his part in the Young Irelander "Famine Rebellion" of 1848 but his sentence of death was commuted to deportation to Van Diemen's Land. In 1854, he was released on the condition of exile from Ireland, and he lived in Brussels for two years. In 1856 Smith O'Brien was pardoned and returned to Ireland, but he was never active again in politics. Early life Born in Dromoland, Newmarket on Fergus, County Clare, William Smith O'Brien was the second son of Sir Edward O'Brien, 4th Baronet, of Dromoland Castle. His mother was Charlotte Smith, whose father owned a property called Cahirmoyle in County Limerick. William took the additional surname Smith, his mother's maiden name, upon inheriting the property. He lived at Cahermoyle House, a mile from Ardagh, County Limerick. He was a descendant of the eleventh century Ard Rí (High King of Ireland), Brian Boru. He received an upper-class English education at Harrow School and Trinity College, Cambridge. Subsequently, he studied law at King's Inns in Dublin and Lincoln's Inn in London. From April 1828 to 1831 Smith O'Brien was the Tory faction MP for his father's borough, Ennis. Although a Protestant country-gentleman, he supported Catholic Emancipation and the 1829 Catholic Relief Act while remaining a supporter of British-Irish union. In 1835 Smith O'Brien became Whig MP for Limerick County. In 1837 Daniel O'Connell clashed with him over his opposition to the introduction of secret voting in elections and also Smith O'Brien's support for granting state payments to Catholic clergy. The Catholic Bishops came out in support of O'Connell's stance on Church and nation, resolving "most energetically to oppose any such arrangement, and that they look upon those that labour to effect it as the worst enemies of the Catholic religion." Smith O'Brien remained in the House of Commons until 1849 when his seat was forfeited. Young Ireland and the Irish Confederation In 1843, in protest against the imprisonment of Daniel O'Connell, he joined O'Connell's anti-union Repeal Association. Within the association he identified with the circle around Charles Gavan Duffy and his paper The Nation which O'Connell in hostile reference to Giuseppe Mazzini's anti-clerical and insurrectionary Young Italy dubbed Young