his son by the first marriage, became 4th marquess; and on the latter’s death in 1872, George Henry (1821–1884), the eldest son by the second marriage, after succeeding as Earl Vane (according to the patent of 1823), became 5th marquess. In 1884 he was succeeded as 6th marquess by his son Charles Stewart Vane-Tempest-Stewart (b. 1852), a prominent Conservative politician, who was viceroy of Ireland (1886–1889), chairman of the London School Board (1895–1897), postmaster-general (1900–1902), president of the Board of Education (1902–1905) and lord president of the Council (1903–1905).
LONDONDERRY, ROBERT STEWART, 2nd Marquess of
(1769–1822), British statesman, was the eldest son of Robert
Stewart of Ballylawn Castle, in Donegal, and Mount Stewart
in Down, an Ulster landowner, of kin to the Galloway Stewarts,
who became baron, viscount, earl and marquess in the peerage
of Ireland. The son, known in history as Lord Castlereagh, was
born on the 18th of June in the same year as Napoleon and
Wellington. His mother was Lady Sarah Seymour, daughter of
the earl of Hertford. He went from Armagh school to St John’s
College, Cambridge, but left at the end of his first year. With
Lord Downshire, then holding sway over the County Down,
Lord Stewart had a standing feud, and he put forward his son,
in July 1790, for one of the seats. Young Stewart was returned,
but at a vast cost to his family, when he was barely twenty-one.
He took his seat in the Irish House of Commons at the same
time as his friend, Arthur Wellesley, M.P. for Trim, but sat later
for two close boroughs in England, still remaining member
for Down at College Green.
From 1796, when his father became an earl, he took the courtesy title of Viscount Castlereagh, and becoming keeper of the privy seal in Ireland, he acted as chief secretary, during the prolonged absence of Mr Pelham, from February 1797. Castlereagh’s conviction was that, in presence of threatened invasion and rebellion, Ireland could only be made safe by union with Great Britain. In Lord Camden, as afterwards in Lord Cornwallis, Castlereagh found a congenial chief; though his favour with these statesmen was jealously viewed both by the Irish oligarchy and by the English politicians who wished to keep the machine of Irish administration in their own hands. Pitt himself was doubtful of the expediency of making an Irishman chief secretary, but his view was changed by the influence of Cornwallis. In suppressing Lord Edward Fitzgerald’s conspiracy, and the rebellion which followed in 1798, Castlereagh’s vigilance and firmness were invaluable. His administration was denounced by a faction as harsh and cruel—a charge afterwards repudiated by Grattan and Plunket—but he was always on the side of lenity. The disloyal in Ireland, both Jacobins and priest-led, the Protestant zealots and others who feared the consequence of the Union, coalesced against him in Dublin. Even there Castlereagh, though defeated in a first campaign (1799), impressed Pitt with his ability and tact. With Cornwallis he joined in holding out, during the second Union campaign (1800), the prospect of emancipation to the Roman Catholics. They were aided by free expenditure of money and promises of honours, methods too familiar in Irish politics. When the Act of Union was carried through the Irish parliament, in the summer of 1800, Castlereagh’s official connexion with his native land practically ended. Before the Imperial Parliament met he urged upon Pitt the measures which he and Cornwallis thought requisite to make the Union effective. In spite of his services and of Pitt’s support, disillusion awaited him. The king’s reluctance to yield to the Roman Catholic claims was underestimated by Pitt, while Cornwallis imprudently permitted himself to use language which, though not amounting to a pledge, was construed as one. George III. resented the arguments brought forward by Castlereagh—“this young man” who had come over to talk him out of his coronation oath. He peremptorily refused to sanction emancipation, and Pitt and his cabinet made way for the Addington administration. Thereupon Castlereagh resigned, with Cornwallis. He took his seat at Westminster for Down, the constituency he had represented for ten years in Dublin. The leadership of an Irish party was offered to him, but he declined so to limit his political activity. His father accepted, at Portland’s request, an Irish marquessate, on the understanding that in the future he or his heirs might claim the same rank in the Imperial Legislature; so that Castlereagh was able to sit in the House of Commons as Marquess in 1821–1822. Wilberforce discussed with Pitt the possibility of sending out Castlereagh to India as governor-general, when the friction between Lord Wellesley and the directors became grave; but Pitt objected, as the plan would remove Castlereagh from the House of Commons, which should be “the theatre of his future fame.”
In 1802, Castlereagh, at Pitt’s suggestion, became president of the Board of Control in the Addington cabinet. He had, though not in office, taken charge of Irish measures under Addington, including the repression of the Rebellion Bill, and the temporary suspension of the Habeas Corpus in 1801, and continued to advocate Catholic relief, tithe reform, state payment of Catholic and dissenting clergy and “the steady application of authority in support of the laws.” To Lord Wellesley’s Indian policy he gave a staunch support, warmly recognized by the governor-general. On Pitt’s return to office (May 1804), Castlereagh retained his post, and, next year, took over also the duties of secretary for war and the colonies. Socially and politically, the gifts of his wife, Lady Emily Hobart, daughter of a former Irish viceroy, whom he had married in 1794, assisted him to make his house a meeting-place of the party; and his influence in parliament grew notwithstanding his defects of style, spoken and written. As a manager of men he had no equal. After Pitt’s death his surviving colleagues failed to form a cabinet strong enough to face the formidable combination known as “All the Talents,” and Castlereagh acquiesced in the resignation. But to the foreign policy of the Fox-Greville ministry and its conduct of the war he was always opposed. His objections to the Whig doctrine of withdrawal from “Continental entanglements” and to the reduction of military expenditure were justified when Fox himself was compelled “to nail his country’s colours to the mast.”
The cabinet of “All the Talents,” weakened by the death of Fox and the renewed quarrel with the king, went out in April 1807. Castlereagh returned to the War Office under Portland, but grave difficulties arose, though Canning at the Foreign Office was then thoroughly at one with him. A priceless opportunity had been missed after Eylau. The Whigs had crippled the transport service, and the operations to avert the ruin of the coalition at Friedland came too late. The Tsar Alexander believed that England would no longer concern herself with the Continental struggle, and Friedland was followed by Tilsit. The secret articles of that compact, denied at the time by the Opposition and by French apologists, have now been revealed from official records in M. Vandal’s work, Napoléon et Alexandre. Castlereagh and Canning saw the vital importance of nullifying the aim of this project. The seizure of the Danish squadron at Copenhagen, and the measures taken to rescue the fleets of Portugal and Sweden from Napoleon, crushed a combination as menacing as that defeated at Trafalgar. The expedition to Portugal, though Castlereagh’s influence was able only to secure Arthur Wellesley a secondary part at first, soon dwarfed other issues. In the debates on the Convention of Cintra, Castlereagh defended Wellesley against parliamentary attacks: “A brother,” the latter wrote, “could not have done more.” The depression produced by Moore’s campaign in northern Spain, and the king’s repugnance to the Peninsular operations, seemed to cut short Wellesley’s career; but early in 1809, Castlereagh, with no little difficulty, secured his friend’s appointment as commander-in-chief of the second Portuguese expedition. The merit has been claimed for Canning by Stapleton, but the evidence is all the other way.
Meanwhile, Castlereagh’s policy led to a crisis that clouded his own fortunes. The breach between him and Canning was not due to his incompetence in the conduct of the Walcheren expedition, In fact, Castlereagh’s ejection was decided by Canning’s intrigues, though concealed from the victim, months before
