After imprisonment in Dartmoor, Maidstone and Lewes prisons in England, de Valera and other prisoners were released under an amnesty in June 1917. On 10 July 1917 he was elected member of the British House of Commons for East Clare (the constituency which he represented in Dail Eireann until 1959) in a by-election after MP Willie Redmond died fighting in World War I.