In the 1880 general election he was elected as one of two Home Rule League members for Wicklow, taking his seat in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The Wicklow constituency was divided under the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885, and at the following 1885 general election he was elected by a much larger majority for the new Eastern division of Wicklow constituency, and again in 1886. In the enlarged Irish Parliamentary Party, he was much older than most of his fellow MPs, who were typically born around the time of the Irish Famine in the later 1840s.