[2] Through his reputation as a friend of the farmers, after having been imprisoned for four months following an agrarian case, and backed by Parnell, he was elected in a Monaghan by-election in June 1883, deemed to be the climax in the Healy–Parnell relationship.

Prompted by the depression in the prices of dairy products and cattle in the mid-1880 as well as bad weather for a number of years, many tenant farmers unable to pay their rents were left under the threat of eviction.

A substantial minority of the Irish people never forgave him for his role during the divorce crisis, permanently damaging his own standing in public life.

Following Parnell's death in 1891, the IPP's anti-Parnellite majority group broke away forming the Irish National Federation (INF) under John Dillon.

[2] In the following decades, largely due to his expanding legal practice, he became a part-time politician and estranged from the national movement, setting up his own personal 'Healyite' organisation, called the "People's Rights Association", based on his position as MP for North Louth (a seat he held until the December 1910 election when defeated by Richard Hazleton).

He remained "the enemy within", recruiting malcontent MPs to harass the party and survived politically by dint of his assiduous constituency work, as well as through the influence of his clerical ally Dr. Michael Cardinal Logue, Primate of All Ireland and Archbishop of Armagh.

O’Brien had been for years one of Healy's strongest critics, but now he too felt annoyed both by his own alienation from the party and by Redmond's subservience to Dillon.

They were in agreement that agrarian radicalism brought little return, and with Healy practically becoming a Parnellite, they preferred to pursue a policy of conciliation with the Protestant class in order to further the acceptance of Home Rule.

In 1908 Healy acted as counsel for Sir Arthur Vicars, former Ulster King of Arms, in connection with the 1908 investigation of the previous year's theft of the Irish Crown Jewels.

He lost his seat in the following December 1910 election, but soon afterwards rejoined the O'Brienites, O’Brien providing the 1911 north-east Cork by-election vacancy created by the retirement of Moreton Frewen.

Healy's reputation was not enhanced when he represented as counsel his associate William Martin Murphy, the industrialist who sparked the 1913 Dublin Lockout.

[2] Healy assiduously cultivated relationships with power brokers in Westminster such as Lord Beaverbrook, and once they were introduced at Cherkley, was great friends with Janet Aitken for the remainder of his life.

Having done much to damage the popular image and authority of constitutional nationalism, Healy after the Easter Rising was convinced that the IPP and Redmond were doomed and slowly withdrew from the forefront of politics, making it clear in 1917 that he was in general sympathy with Arthur Griffith's Sinn Féin movement, but not with physical force methods.

In 1916, he also represented the family of Francis Sheehy Skeffington as an observer at the court martial of Captain Bowen-Colthurst, and he participated in the subsequent Royal Commission of Inquiry into the murders at Portobello Barracks.

During this time, Healy also represented Georgina Frost, in her attempts to be appointed a Petty Sessions clerk in her native County Clare.

[9] In 1920 the Bar Council of Ireland passed an initial resolution that any barrister appearing before the Dáil Courts would be guilty of professional misconduct.

Before the December 1918 general election, he was the first of the AFIL members to resign his seat in favour of the Sinn Féin party's candidate, and spoke in support of P. J.

Healy was also unique (along with his successor, James McNeill) amongst all the Governors-General in the British Empire in the 1920s in that he was never sworn in as a member of the Imperial Privy Council.

However, the waspish Healy still could not help courting further controversy, most notably in a public attack on the new Fianna Fáil and its leader, Éamon de Valera, which led to republican calls for his resignation.

He had access to all sensitive state papers, and received instructions from the British Government on the use of his powers to grant, withhold or refuse the Royal Assent to legislation enacted by the Oireachtas.