Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Rowan, Archibald Hamilton
ROWAN, ARCHIBALD HAMILTON (1751–1834), United Irishman, only son and heir of Gawin Hamilton of Killyleagh Castle, co. Down, a lineal descendant of Hans Hamilton, vicar of Dunlop in Ayrshire, father of James Hamilton, viscount Claneboye (1559–1643) [q. v.], was born in Rathbone Place, London, in the house of his maternal grandfather, William Rowan, on 12 May 1751. His education was superintended by his grandfather, who placed him at a private school kept by a Mr. Fountain in Marylebone. When he was sixteen his grandfather, a man of considerable wealth, died, leaving him his entire property, on condition, first, that he adopted the name of Rowan in addition to his own; secondly, that he was educated at either Oxford or Cambridge; and, thirdly, that he refrained from visiting Ireland till he attained the age of twenty-five, under penalty of forfeiting the income of the estate during such time as he remained there. Accordingly, he entered Queens' College, Cambridge, where, having fallen into a fast set, he speedily became more remarkable for his dogs and hunters and feats of strength than for his love of learning, ‘and so,’ according to a contemporary, ‘after coolly attempting to throw a tutor into the Cam, after shaking all Cambridge from its propriety by a night's frolic (in which he climbed the signposts and changed the principal signs), he was rusticated, till, the good humour of the university returning, he was readmitted, and enabled to satisfy his grandfather's will.’
After spending a few months in America as private secretary to Lord Charles Montague, governor of South Carolina, and paying some secret visits to Ireland, Rowan, through the influence of the Duke of Manchester, obtained a commission as captain of the grenadiers in the Huntingdon militia. In consequence of his extravagant manner of living, he was about this time compelled to sell out of the funds a considerable quantity of stock inherited from his grandfather; but far from learning prudence by his misfortunes, he hired a house on Hounslow Heath, in addition to his lodgings in London, where he indulged his fancy for horses and hunting to the top of his bent. In 1777 he was induced by Lord Charles Montague to accept a lieutenant-colonelcy in the Portuguese army. On arriving at Lisbon, however, he found that the Marquis of Pombal, through whose influence the English officers had been appointed, had lost power. Accordingly, after visiting Tangier, he returned to England, and joined his regiment at Southsea, but on the camp breaking up he resigned his commission and went to reside at his mother's house in London.
Here he made the acquaintance of his future wife, Sarah Anne Dawson, the daughter of Walter Dawson of Lisanisk, near Carrickmacross, co. Monaghan. They were married in the following year (1781) in Paris, where they resided till 1784, when, in compliance with his mother's wish, he removed to Ireland, and took a cottage near Naas in co. Kildare, till the requirements of his rapidly increasing family obliged him to purchase the estate of Rathcoffey in the same county. He at once began to display great interest in the political affairs of his country, and, enlisting as a private in his father's company of Killyleagh volunteers, he was chosen a delegate for co. Down to the volunteer convention that met at Dublin on 25 Oct. 1784. In May 1786 he succeeded his father in the command of the Killyleagh volunteers; but it was his conduct in the case of Mary Neal, two years later, that brought his name first prominently before the public. Mary Neal was a young girl who had been decoyed into a house of ill-fame and outraged by a person in high station. The case was complicated by a cross charge of robbery, while the woman by whose connivance the outrage was committed, after being sentenced to death, was pardoned by the viceroy at the instigation, it was supposed, of the girl's seducer. Rowan thereupon published ‘A brief Investigation of the Sufferings of John, Anne, and Mary Neal,’ and offered a strong but ineffectual opposition to what he and many others considered an abuse of the prerogative of mercy. Failing in his object, he took the unfortunate girl into his own house, and finally apprenticed her to a dressmaker; but ‘her subsequent character and conduct were not such as could requite the care of her benefactor or justify the interest she had excited in the public mind’ (Autobiogr. p. 103 n.; cf. Barrington, Personal Sketches, i. 327). In 1790 there was established at Belfast a Northern Whig Club, of which Rowan was admitted an original member. In October of the following year he made the acquaintance of Theobald Wolfe Tone [q. v.], and was by him persuaded to join the Society of United Irishmen. Shortly afterwards, in consequence of the arrest of the secretary of the society, James Napper Tandy [q. v.], he was fixed upon by Tone, on account of his respectability and reputation for personal bravery, to assist him in preventing the society from ‘falling into disrepute’ by calling out any member of parliament who ventured to speak disrespectfully of them. He was at the same time appointed secretary to the Dublin committee. Their determination and appearance in the gallery of the house ‘in their whig-club uniforms, which were rather gaudy,’ had the effect of drawing upon them the attention of government; and in December 1792 Rowan was arrested on a charge of distributing a seditious paper, beginning ‘Citizen soldiers, to arms!’ at a meeting of volunteers held in Dublin to protest against a government proclamation tending to their dissolution. As a matter of fact he was not the author of the pamphlet, nor was he on the occasion in question guilty of disseminating it (cf. Grattan, Life of Henry Grattan, iv. 166). He gave bail for his appearance when wanted, but it was not till 29 Jan. 1794 that he was brought up for trial in the court of king's bench. In the meanwhile he further aggravated the government by acting as the bearer of a challenge on the part of the Hon. Simon Butler to the lord-chancellor, Lord Fitzgibbon (subsequently Earl of Clare), and by going shortly afterwards himself to Scotland in order to challenge the lord-advocate for certain disparaging words used in regard to him. His defence, at his trial in Dublin, was conducted by Curran, whose speech on that occasion is by many regarded as his finest effort in oratory. But being found guilty, he was sentenced to a fine of 500l., imprisonment for two years, and to find security himself in 2,000l. and two others in 1,000l. each for his good behaviour for seven years.
His imprisonment in the Dublin Newgate was rendered as little irksome as possible by the visits of his wife and friends, and in order to while away the time he occupied himself in drawing up a report of his own trial (printed by P. Byrne of Grafton Street; another report was published about the same time by W. m'Kenzie of College Green). Three months had thus elapsed when he received a visit from the Rev. William Jackson (1737?–1795) [q. v.] and a government spy of the name of Cockayne. Jackson's object was to obtain a report of the state of affairs in Ireland for the Comité de Salut Public. A report such as he wanted was accordingly drawn up by Tone, copied by Rowan, and betrayed by Cockayne, in consequence of which Jackson was arrested. Cockayne, with the connivance, it is suggested, of Lord-chancellor Fitzgibbon (Wills, Irish Nation), brought the news of Jackson's arrest to Rowan, who at once concerted measures for his own escape. Nor was the danger that threatened him an imaginary one; for it appears from a letter from Marcus Beresford to his father, written on the very day of Jackson's arrest, that government had determined to hang Rowan, if possible (Beresford Corresp. ii. 25). Accordingly, two days later, having succeeded in bribing the under-gaoler to allow him to visit his house in Dominick Street, for the ostensible purpose of signing a deed, he managed to slip out of a back window, and to escape to the house of a Mr. Sweetman at Sutton, near Baldoyle, where he lay concealed for three days. With Sweetman's assistance a boat was found to carry him to France, and though before it sailed the sailors were aware who their passenger was, and that rewards amounting to 2,000l. had been offered for his apprehension, they refused to betray him, and a few days later landed him safely at Roscoff, near Morlaix in France. On landing, however, he was immediately arrested as a spy, and, being taken to Brest, was for some time imprisoned in the hospital there, till, orders for his release arriving, he was taken to Paris. Hardly had he arrived there when he was attacked by fever, which confined him to his bed for six weeks. On his recovery he was examined before the Comité de Salut Public, and had apartments assigned to him at the expense of the state. He resided in Paris for more than a year, during which time he formed an intimate acquaintance with Mary Wollstonecraft [q. v.]; but finding that after the death of Robespierre all parties in France were too much occupied with their own concerns to pay attention to Ireland, he obtained permission to go to America, and, after a wearisome voyage, reached Philadelphia on 18 July 1795. His departure from France was notified to the Earl of Clare, who throughout had evinced extraordinary kindness to him and his family, and the earl now exerted his influence to prevent the sequestration of Rowan's estates, and thus enabled his wife to remit him 300l. annually.
Quitting Philadelphia, Rowan settled down at Wilmington on the Delaware, and was shortly afterwards joined there by Tone and Tandy. But the scenes he had witnessed in Paris during the reign of terror had materially modified his political opinions, and, declining to take any part in Tone's enterprise, he established himself as a calico printer. After a year's experience he gave the business up, having lost considerably by the experiment. When the news of the contemplated legislative union between Great Britain and Ireland reached him, he expressed his satisfaction in unequivocal terms. ‘In that measure,’ he wrote, ‘I see the downfall of one of the most corrupt assemblies, I believe, ever existed, and instead of an empty title, a source of industrious enterprise for the people and the wreck of feudal aristocracy.’ Holding such opinions, though unable to gratify his friend, Richard Griffith (1752–1820) [see under Griffith, Richard, d. 1788], by admitting the error of his former ways as a ground of pardon, the Irish government, influenced by Lord Clare, made little difficulty in granting him permission to return to Europe, with the prospect of pardon when peace was concluded with France. He sailed on 8 July 1800, and on 17 Aug. arrived at Hamburg, but immediately quitted that ‘emporium of mischief,’ as he calls it, for Lübeck. After being joined there by his wife and family, he removed to Altona. In July 1802 he formally petitioned for his pardon, but, in consequence of the death of the Earl of Clare, it was not until April 1803 that he was informed that he might safely return to England, provided he gave security not to go to Ireland till expressly permitted to do so. His applications to be permitted to return to Ireland met with no response till the viceroyalty of the Duke of Bedford. His outlawry was then reversed in the same court that had pronounced his punishment, and Rowan, in a few manly words which did not compromise his principles, publicly thanked the king for the clemency shown to him and his family during his exile. The death of his father occurring about this time, he established his residence at Killyleagh Castle, where his liberality and interest in their welfare speedily endeared him to his tenantry, and rendered him popular in the district. Not considering that his pardon had enforced silence upon him, he continued to take an active interest in the politics of his country, and he was one of the first persons to whom Shelley addressed himself on his memorable visit to Dublin in 1812. Rowan probably gave the poet little encouragement. He was, however, a warm supporter of catholic emancipation, and a subscriber to the Catholic Association. In February 1825 his conduct was severely animadverted upon in parliament by Peel, who spoke of him as an ‘attainted traitor,’ and by George Robert Dawson, M.P. for Derry, who called him ‘a convicted traitor.’ He was warmly defended by Brougham and Christopher Hely-Hutchinson; but deeming some further apology necessary, he insisted, though in his seventy-fourth year, on challenging Dawson, but was satisfied by an explanation. He attended a meeting of the friends of civil and religious liberty in the Rotunda on 20 Jan. 1829, when his appearance on the platform was greeted with tumultuous applause. On 26 Feb. 1834 his wife, to whom he was tenderly attached, died in her seventieth year, and was shortly afterwards followed to the grave by her eldest son, Gawin William Rowan Hamilton, on 17 Aug. The shock proved too much for Rowan. He died on 1 Nov. following, and was buried in the vaults of St. Mary's Church, Dublin.
A portrait of him from an original lithographic drawing, taken when well advanced in years, forms the frontispiece to his autobiography, and there is another copy of the same in Madden's ‘United Irishmen’ (2nd ser. i. 328). According to his friend, Dr. Drummond, he was in his youth a singularly handsome man, of ‘a tall and commanding person, in which agility, strength, and grace were combined.’ His besetting fault was vanity, which rendered him an easy tool in the hands of clever men like Wolfe Tone, and there can be little doubt that for the prominent place he holds in the history of the United Irish movement he was indebted rather to his position in society and to a readiness ‘to go out’ than to any special qualification as a politician. Of his ten children, the eldest son,
Gawin William Rowan Hamilton (1783–1834), captain in the royal navy, born in Paris on 4 March 1783, entered the navy in 1801, and was present at the capture of St. Lucia and Tobago in 1803. He took part in the capture of Alexandria in 1807, and on 30 March that year commanded a party of blue-jackets at the assault on Rosetta, when he was severely wounded in recovering a gun which had fallen into the hands of the enemy. He was promoted lieutenant in 1809, and two years later was appointed to the Onyx. In 1812 he was raised to the rank of post-captain in command of the Termagant. After seeing active service on the coasts of Spain and Italy, he was transferred to the North American station. In 1817 he married Katherine, daughter of Lieutenant-general Cockburn, by whom he had an only child, Archibald Rowan Hamilton, father of the first Marchioness of Dufferin. In 1820 he was appointed to the Cambrian, and until 1824 was principally employed in the Levant in protecting the Greeks, in whose cause he spent much of his private property. His vessel was lost shortly after the battle of Navarino by running foul of the Isis, and striking on the island of Carabousa. He was subjected to a court-martial, but honourably acquitted, and afterwards appointed to the Druid on the South American station; but being compelled by ill-health to resign, he returned to Killyleagh, where he died on 17 Aug. 1834, of water on the chest.
[During his residence at Wilmington, Rowan compiled a short account of his own life, which he subsequently committed to the care of his friend, T. K. Lowry, Q.C., editor of the Hamilton MSS., for publication. But Mr. Lowry's professional duties leaving him little time for literary work, the manuscript was entrusted to the Rev. W. Hamilton Drummond, and accordingly published at Dublin in 1840. The life, written in a simple and disingenuous fashion, characteristic of the author, though somewhat deficient in the matter of dates, is the basis of Thomas Macnevin's Lives and Trials of Archibald Hamilton Rowan … and other Eminent Irishmen, Dublin, 1846; of the life in Wills's Irish Nation, iii. 330–8; and of that in Webb's Compendium of Irish Biography. Other sources of information are Howell's State Trials, xxii. 1034–1190; Grattan's Life of Henry Grattan, iv. 162–7; Wolfe Tone's Autobiography; Fitzpatrick's Secret Service under Pitt, pp. 169 seq.; Curran's Life of Curran, i. 306–18; Barrington's Personal Sketches, i. 327–34; Madden's United Irishmen, passim; Beresford's Corresp. ii. 25, 29; Corresp. of Lord Cornwallis, ii. 382; Lady Morgan's Memoirs, ii. 148–51, 331; Phillips's Curran and his Contemporaries, pp. 185–200; Cloncurry's Personal Recollections, pp. 159–63; Fitzpatrick's Ireland before the Union, 4th edit. pp. 118–21; O'Reilly's Reminiscences of an Emigrant Milesian, iii. 87–93; m'Dougall's Sketches of Irish Political Characters, pp. 271–273; Lecky's Hist. of England; information kindly furnished by T. K. Lowry, esq., of Dundrum Castle, co. Dublin.]