Members of the Second Dáil - William Stockley

Professor William F. P. (Frederick Paul) Stockley, M.A. D.Litt., (29 June 1859 – 22 July 1943) was an Irish academic and Sinn Féin politician and Teachta Dála.

Born in Templeogue, then in Co Dublin, he was the son of Mr. John Surtees Stockley, RHA, he was educated at Rathmines School.

Among his classmates were Douglas Hyde and Louis Claude Purser.

In 1893, he graduated from Trinity College, Dublin, before taking a senior moderatorship in modern English literature.

From 1896 to 1903, he was professor at the University of Ottawa and at the University of New Brunswick. In 1905, he was appointed professor of English at University College, Cork. He occupied the chair until his retirement in 1931.

He was president of the Cork Literary and Scientific Society from 1913 to 1915 and President of the Cork Library Committee from 1913 to 1930.

He was author of several books including English Visitors to Ireland from Raleigh to Newman, Newman, Education, and Ireland, Studies in Irish Biography and Introduction to the Dream of Gerontius.

Stockley was a member of Sinn Féin. He was an alderman of the Cork Corporation from 1920 to 1925. In 1920, an attempt was made on his life by police agents. In the 1921, he was elected a Sinn Féin member to the Second Dáil for the National University of Ireland constituency. He voted against the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 and refused to accept the legitimacy of the Irish Free State.

He retained his seat, as an Anti-Treaty Sinn Féin candidate, in the 1922 general election. Along with others, he maintained that the Irish Republic continued to exist and that the rump Second Dáil, composed of anti-Treaty TDs who refused to take their seats in the Free State parliament, was the only legitimate governmental authority in Ireland. He was defeated in the 1923 general election and subsequent 3 November 1923 by-election.

In 1938, he was one of seven remaining abstentionist Second Dáil TDs who transferred the "authority" of what they believed was the Government of the Irish Republic to the IRA Army Council.

In 1892, Stockley married Violet Osborne, daughter of Mr. William Osborne, RHA, of Dublin. She died in 1893. In 1908, he married Marie Germaine Kolb, daughter of Max Kolb, of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Munich. They had two daughters: Violet Annie Alice, who was a member of staff at Cheltenham Ladies' College, and Sophia, who married Seamus Mallin of Dublin. His brother was the Very Rev. Canon J. J. G. (Joseph John Gabbett) Stockley of Lichfield Cathedral. At his death, at the age of 84, Stockley resided at Arundel, Ballintemple, Cork. He is buried in St. Finbarr's Cemetery, Cork.