Stephen Woulfe, an MP and afterwards Chief Baron of the Irish Exchequer and his wife Frances Hamill.
At the 1874 general election, when the franchise was still very restricted, he stood as a Home Rule League candidate and unseated Athlone's sitting Liberal MP, Sir John James Ennis.
[2] Sheil was returned unopposed for Meath County in a by-election in April 1882,[3] and when the Meath constituency was divided under the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885, he was returned unopposed at the 1885 general election as Irish Parliamentary Party MP for the newly created Southern Division of Meath, where he was re-elected unopposed in 1886.
However, he retired from Parliament at the general election of July 1892, apparently feeling that he could no longer defend the Parnellite cause.
He wrote to John Redmond on 8 February 1892: ‘I am not prepared to continue resistance to what I conceive to be Irish public opinion… , the sympathy of the great majority of electors in Ireland is with the section of the Irish Party led by Mr. McCarthy’ (i.e. the Anti-Parnellites).