His academic studies seem to have been half-hearted.

At the end of a year his name was taken off the College books by his father, but was replaced.

At the close of his second year of study, in July 1876, it was removed again and for good.
But apart from what he learnt at school, his real education was an apprenticeship; he was trained in the House of Commons for the work of Parliament.

He was a boy of fifteen, of an age to be keenly interested, when the representation of Wexford passed from his great-uncle to his father.

Probably the reason why he was removed from Trinity College was the desire of Mr.William Redmond to have his son with him in London.
Certainly John Redmond was there during the session of 1876, for on the introduction of Mr.Gladstone's second Home Rule Bill he recalled a finely apposite Shakespearean quotation which he had heard Butt use in a Home Rule debate of that year.