Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh

thumb|200px|Quartered arms of Robert Stewart, 2nd Marquess of Londonderry, KG, GCH, PC, PC (Ireland)

Robert Stewart, 2nd Marquess of Londonderry (18 June 1769 – 12 August 1822), usually known as Lord Castlereagh, derived from the courtesy title Viscount Castlereagh ( ) by which he was styled from 1796 to 1821, was a British statesman. As secretary to the Viceroy in Ireland, he worked to suppress the Rebellion of 1798 and to secure passage in 1800 of the Irish Act of Union. As the Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom from 1812, he was central to the management of the coalition that defeated Napoleon, and was British plenipotentiary at the Congress of Vienna. In the post-war government of Lord Liverpool, Castlereagh was seen to support harsh measures against agitation for reform, and he ended his life an isolated and unpopular figure.

Early in his career in Ireland, and following a visit to revolutionary France, Castlereagh recoiled from the democratic politics of his Presbyterian constituents in Ulster. Crossing the floor of the Irish House of Commons in support of the government, he took a leading role in detaining members of the republican conspiracy, the United Irishmen, his former political associates among them. After the 1798 Rebellion, as Chief Secretary for Ireland he pushed the Act of Union through the Irish Parliament. However, unable to overcome the resistance of King George III to the Catholic Emancipation that they believed should have accompanied the creation of a United Kingdom, both he and Prime Minister William Pitt resigned.

From 1805 Castlereagh served as Secretary of State for War in Pitt's second administration and, from 1806, under the Duke of Portland. In 1809 he was obliged to resign after fighting a duel with the foreign secretary, George Canning. In 1812, Castlereagh returned to government serving Lord Liverpool as Foreign Secretary and as Leader of the House of Commons. Castlereagh organised and financed the alliance that defeated Napoleon, bringing the powers together at the Treaty of Chaumont in 1814.

Following Napoleon's second abdication in 1815, Castlereagh worked with the European courts represented at the Congress of Vienna to frame the territorial, and broadly conservative, continental order that was to hold until mid-century. He resisted the imposition of harsh terms on France, believing that they would upset the European balance of power. After 1815, at home, Castlereagh supported repressive measures that linked him in public opinion to the Peterloo Massacre of 1819. Widely reviled in both Ireland and Great Britain, overworked, and personally distressed, Castlereagh died by suicide in 1822.

Early life and career in Ireland

Robert was born on 18 June 1769 in 28 Henry Street, in Dublin's Northside. He was the second and only surviving child of Robert Stewart (the elder) and his wife Sarah Frances Seymour-Conway. His parents married in 1766.

The Stewarts

The Stewarts had been a Scottish family settled in Donegal whose fortunes had been transformed by the marriage of Castlereagh's grandfather Alexander Stewart to an East India Company heiress. The legacy from Robert Cowan, the former Governor of Bombay, allowed for the purchase of extensive properties in north Down including the future family demesne, Mount Stewart, on the shores of Strangford Lough.Strangford Lough|

As a Presbyterian (a "Dissenter" from established Anglican church), Castlereagh's father, Robert Stewart, had an easy reputation as a friend of reform. In 1771, and again in 1776, he was elected from County Down to the Irish House of Commons. In 1778 he joined the Irish Volunteer movement, raising an armed and drilled company from his estates. In parliament and among the Volunteers, he was a friend and supporter of Lord Charlemont and his policy. This favoured Volunteer agitation for the independence of Ireland's Ascendancy parliament, but not for its reform and not for Catholic emancipation.

The elder Robert Stewart was created Baron Londonderry in 1789, Viscount Castlereagh in 1795, and Earl of Londonderry in 1796 by King George III, enabling him from the Act of Union of 1800 onwards to sit at Westminster in the House of Lords as an Irish representative peer. In 1816 he was elevated to Marquess of Londonderry. At some point, likely in advance of his elevation in 1795 to Viscount, he led his family in taking the established Anglican communion.

Young Robert's mother died in childbirth when he was a year old. Lady Sarah Frances Seymour-Conway had been the daughter of Francis Seymour-Conway, 1st Marquess of Hertford, and Isabella Fitzroy. Lord Hertford was a former British Ambassador to France (1764–1765) and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (1765–1766). Isabella Fitzroy was a daughter of Charles FitzRoy, 2nd Duke of Grafton. But he then withdrew, pleading an illness that he admitted to Camden was something "which cannot be directly acknowledged before women", i.e. something sexually transmitted.

Stewart was not convinced of Burke's contention that the revolution would produce a French Cromwell, although he recognised that outside Paris the principles of liberty were not as entrenched. As the revolutionary factions, the Jacobins and Girondins, struggled for supremacy in the capital, it was "the nation at large" that would "ultimately decide between them." While calling for the removal of their remaining civil disabilities, Stewart stopped short of endorsing extension to Catholics of the right to vote on the same forty-shilling freehold terms as Protestants that was provided in the bill.

However, his loyalty to Pitt now seemed unconditional.

In 1794, partly as a result of the promotion of his interests by his Camden connections, Stewart was offered the Government-controlled seat of Tregony in Cornwall. In 1796, he transferred to a seat for the Suffolk constituency of Orford, which was in the interest of his mother's family, the Seymour-Conways (Marquess of Hertford). He held these seats simultaneously with his county seat in Ireland.

Marriage

In 1794, Stewart married Lady Amelia (Emily) Hobart, a daughter of John Hobart, 2nd Earl of Buckinghamshire, a former British Ambassador to Russia (1762–1765) and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (1776–1780). Her mother, Caroline Conolly, was the granddaughter of William Conolly, Speaker of the Irish House of Commons in the early 18th century and one of the wealthiest landowners in Ireland. Caroline's brother, Thomas Conolly, was married to Louisa Lennox, sister of Emily FitzGerald, Duchess of Leinster, whose son and Emily's cousin-by-marriage, Lord Edward FitzGerald, was a leader of the United Irishmen and one of their martyrs in the early stages of the Irish Rebellion of 1798.

Emily Stewart was well known as a hostess for her husband in both Ireland and London and during some of his most important diplomatic missions. In later years she was a leader of Regency London high society as one of the Lady Patronesses of Almack's. She is noted in contemporary accounts for her attractiveness, volubility and eccentricities.

Chief Secretary for Ireland

Suppression of the United Irishmen

thumb|right|Bloody Castlereagh, 1798

In 1795, Pitt replaced William Fitzwilliam, 4th Earl Fitzwilliam, as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland with Stewart's uncle, John Pratt, 2nd Earl Camden. Fitzwilliam had urged that the emancipation of Catholics be completed with their admission to parliament. Camden's arrival in Dublin was greeted with riots, and that year Stewart crossed the floor of the Irish House of Commons to join the supporters of the government, the Dublin Castle executive. Stewart became an essential adviser to the inexperienced and unpopular Lord Lieutenant, who was Stewart's senior by only ten years.

In August 1796, Stewart's father was elevated to the title Earl of Londonderry. As his son, Stewart was henceforth styled Viscount Castlereagh.

In September, acting upon evidence of communication with the French, Castlereagh personally led troops in a series of raids in Belfast and its environs (the "Siege of Belfast") that netted leading members of the United Irishmen. Among them were men who had supported him in the election of 1790.

In December 1796, a large French expedition to Ireland failed to effect a landing at Bantry Bay, but due only to contrary winds. As an officer in the militia, Castlereagh was well apprised of the lack of preparedness to meet a combination of professional French soldiery and the countrywide insurgency it would likely trigger.

In February 1797, Castlereagh was at last appointed to the Dublin Castle administration as Keeper of the King's Signet for Ireland. Following a declaration of martial law he was made both a Lord of the Treasury and a Member of the Privy Council of Ireland (1797–1800). At the urging of Camden, Castlereagh assumed many of the onerous duties of the often-absent Chief Secretary for Ireland, who was responsible for day-to-day administration and for asserting the influence of Dublin Castle in the House of Commons. In this capacity, and after March 1798 as Acting Chief Secretary, Castlereagh played a key role in crushing the United Irish rising when it came in May and June 1798.

In November 1798, Castlereagh was formally appointed to the office of Chief Secretary by Camden's successor, Lord Cornwallis.

Executions of William Orr and James Porter

Castlereagh's general policy was to offer immediate clemency to the rebel rank-and-file, many of whom were then inducted into the yeomanry, while still focusing on the politically committed leadership. But already before the rebellion, he had begun to earn the sobriquet "Bloody Castlereagh".

In October 1797 his stepmother, Lady Frances, had petitioned Camden for the life of William Orr.

After the rebellion, during which Mount Stewart was briefly occupied, Castlereagh was content that leading United Irishmen in the Presbyterian north be allowed American exile. An exception was made in the case of James Porter, executed, again despite the entreaties of Lady Frances, following a court martial before Castlereagh's father, Lord Londonderry. Porter, who had been his family's Presbyterian minister and, in 1790, his election agent, had become a household name in Ulster as the author of a satire of the county gentry, Billy Bluff, in which Londonderry was serially lampooned as an inarticulate tyrant.

The Act of Union and the promise of Emancipation

In 1799, in furtherance of both his own political vision and Pitt's policies, Castlereagh began lobbying in the Irish and British Parliaments for a union that would incorporate Ireland with Great Britain in a United Kingdom. In addition to security against the French, Castlereagh saw the principal merit of bringing Ireland directly under the Crown in the Westminster Parliament as a resolution of what ultimately was the key issue for the governance of the country, the Catholic question.

During the campaign for the Act of Union, both Castlereagh and Cornwallis had, in good faith, forwarded informal assurances they had received from Pitt's Cabinet to the Irish Catholics that they would be allowed to sit in the new United Kingdom Parliament. However, opposition in England, and not least from the King, George III, obliged Castlereagh to defy what he saw as "the very logic of the Union."

Pitt had tried to follow through on his commitment, but when it came to light that the King had approached Henry Addington, an opponent of Catholic emancipation, about becoming prime minister to replace him, both Castlereagh and Pitt resigned. Castlereagh would long be held personally responsible by many Catholics in Ireland for the breach of promise and the British Government's failure to remove their remaining political disabilities. More than this, he won cabinet approval for schemes to ensure that the Established Church was not alone in preaching loyalty to the Crown.

To counter "the democratic party in the [Presbyterian] synod, most of whom, if not engaged in the Rebellion, were deeply infected with its principles", His efforts to extend a similar scheme to the Catholic clergy met with stiffer resistance: priests would not accept support from the Crown while it continued to deny their communicants political equality. (In 1810, with Castlereagh out of office, Drennan and his friends secured a government grant for the education of Presbyterian ministers in their new, distinctly liberal, Belfast Academical Institution).

Despite the prestige of a new cabinet position in London, Castlereagh was defeated in a campaign marked by repeated aspersions on his failure to father a child, and by the taunts of those who, otherwise no friends of the Downshires, reminded him of the principles on which he had stood in 1790.

In August 1807, he concurred with Foreign Secretary George Canning in authorising a British bombardment of the neutral Danish capital, Copenhagen. They sought to pre-emptively capture or destroy the Dano-Norwegian fleet fearing that it would fall into French hands. The incident precipitated both the Anglo-Russian War of 1807 and Denmark's adherence to the Continental System and alliance with France.

In 1808 Castlereagh had been warned by Dumouriez that the best policy England could adopt with respect to colonies in Spanish America was to relinquish all ideas of military conquest by Arthur Wellesley and instead support the emancipation of the territories. Furthermore, Dumouriez suggested that once emancipation was achieved, a constitutional monarchy should be established with the exiled Duke of Orleans as King.

In 1809, with the Dowager Marchioness of Downshire now manoeuvring against him in London, the debacle of the Walcheren Expedition subjected Castlereagh to particularly hostile scrutiny. Canning missed but Castlereagh wounded his opponent in the thigh. There was much outrage that two cabinet ministers had sought to settle their differences in such a manner, and they both felt compelled to resign. Six months later, Canning published a full account of his actions in the affair, but many who had initially rallied to him became convinced Castlereagh had been betrayed by his cabinet colleague.

Foreign Secretary

thumb|right|[[Lord Castlereagh (Chantrey)|Lord Castlereagh. Marble bust of Castlereagh by Francis Leggatt Chantrey, 1821. Yale Center for British Art]]

Three years later, in 1812, Castlereagh returned to the government, this time as foreign secretary, a role in which he served for the next ten years. He also became leader of the House of Commons in the wake of Spencer Perceval's assassination in 1812.

Treaty of Chaumont

In his role of foreign secretary, he was instrumental in negotiating what has become known as the quadruple alliance between Britain, Austria, Russia, and Prussia at Chaumont in March 1814, in the negotiation of the Treaty of Paris

In the years 1812 to 1822, Castlereagh continued to manage Britain's foreign policy, generally pursuing a policy of continental engagement uncharacteristic of British foreign policy in the nineteenth century. Castlereagh was not an effective public speaker and his diplomatic presentation style was at times abstruse. Abolitionists after 1807 focused on international agreements to abolish the Atlantic slave trade. In 1806, Castlereagh had opposed Wilberforce's abolition bills arguing that the slave trade could not be suppressed by Britain alone, but only by broad international agreement. These were preliminary to the Congress of Vienna the Final Act of which included a declaration condemning the slave trade. Wilberforce, himself, allowed that Castlereagh had secured all that "could be done".

Nonintervention in European affairs

In May 1820 Castlereagh circulated to high officials a major state paper that set the main British policy for the rest of the century. Temperley and Penson call it, "the most famous State Paper in British history and the one of the widest ultimate consequences." Castlereagh called for no British intervention in continental affairs. He argued that the purpose of the Quadruple Alliance was to contain France and put down revolutions. But the Spanish revolt did not threaten European peace nor any of the great powers. Castlereagh said that in actual practice the powers would seldom be able to agree on concerted action, and he pointed out that British public opinion would not support interventions. He admitted that individual states could indeed intervene in affairs in their recognized sphere of interest, such as Austria's intervention in Italy. mercilessly lampooned Castlereagh. In what were the "verbal equivalents of the political cartoons of the day", Tom Crib's Memorial to Congress (1818), To the Ship in Which Lord Castlereagh Sailed to the Continent (1818) and Fables for the Holy Alliance (1823), Moore savages Castlereagh's pirouetting with Britain's reactionary continental allies. At the Congress, the Foreign Secretary had "showed his phiz--/To sign away the Rights of Man/ To Russian threats and Austrian juggle;/ And leave the sinking African/ To fall without one saving struggle--".

Widely read, so that Moore eventually produced a sequel, was his verse novel The Fudge Family in Paris (1818). The family of an Irishman working as a propagandist for Castlereagh in Paris, the Fudges are accompanied by an accomplished tutor and classicist, Phelim Connor. An upright but disillusioned Irish Catholic, his letters to a friend reflect Moore's own views. Connor's regular epistolary denunciations of Castlereagh had two recurrent themes. First is Castlereagh as "the embodiment of the sickness with which Ireland had infected British politics as a consequence of the union":

This imputation that he had betrayed his country, bloodied his hands in 1798, and deliberately deceived Catholics at the time of the Union all reportedly wounded Castlereagh. Moore learnt from a mutual connection that Castlereagh had said that "the humorous and laughing things he did not at all mind, but the verses of the Tutor in the Fudge Family were quite another sort of thing, and were in very bad taste indeed." while the public resented his role in handling the Commons side of the divorce of George IV and Queen Caroline. He was also condemned for his association with repressive measures of the Home Secretary, Lord Sidmouth (the former prime minister Addington). He spoke of resigning his office if matters did not improve.

Castlereagh began confessing to what was at the time criminal activity. He had already told his friend Mrs. Arbuthnot that he was being blackmailed for an alleged homosexual offence; at a 9 August meeting with the King, Castlereagh appeared distracted, said he was being mysteriously watched by a servant, and that he had committed all manner of crimes, remarking finally, "I am accused of the same crime as the Bishop of Clogher." Percy Jocelyn, who had been the Bishop of Clogher until the previous month, was prosecuted for homosexuality. The King concluded he was unwell and urged him to rest. On the advice of Bankhead, Castlereagh went to his country seat at Woollet Hall in Water Lane, North Cray, Kent, for a weekend stay. He continued to be distressed, and to the concern of his friends and family, ranted wildly about conspiracies and threats to his life. No special watch was kept on him, though his wife saw to it that his pistols and razors were locked away.

Retrospective speculative diagnoses vary. At the time, his brother blamed "the intrigues that were carried on by the women surrounding the king" (the king's mistress, Lady Conyngham, was not on good terms with Castlereagh's wife). George Agar Ellis, on the other hand, concluded Castlereagh was disillusioned by "the nothingness of human grandeurs ... the sad effects which disappointment and chagrin may have on a mind in which religion is not uppermost, for I have no doubt that the sad and apparently irretrievable state of affairs in England was the real cause of ... [his] unfortunate state of mind." Later verdicts attribute the problem to overwork and mental stress, or to "a psychotic depressive illness". The pallbearers included the Prime Minister Lord Liverpool, the former prime minister Lord Sidmouth and two future Prime Ministers, the Duke of Wellington and Frederick Robinson. Some radicals, notably William Cobbett, claimed a "cover-up" within the government and viewed the verdict and Castlereagh's public funeral as a damning indictment of the elitism and privilege of the unreformed electoral system. At his funeral on 20 August, the crowds which lined the funeral route were generally respectful and decorous, but some jeering and insults were heard (although not to the level of unanimity projected in the radical press); and there was cheering when the coffin was taken out of the hearse at the Abbey door.

Some of his opponents were damning in their verdicts. Thomas Creevy defied "any human being to discover a single feature of his character that can stand a moment's criticism. By experience, good manners and great courage, he managed a corrupt House of Commons pretty well, with some address. This is the whole of his intellectual merit. He had a limited understanding and no knowledge, and his whole life was spent in an avowed, cold-blooded contempt of every honest public principle." Sir Robert Wilson believed that there had never been "a greater enemy to civil liberty or a baser slave."

Others of Castlereagh's political opponents were more gracious in their epigrams. Henry Brougham, a Whig politician and later the Lord Chancellor, who had battled frequently with Castlereagh, once almost to the point of calling him out, and had denigrated his skills as Leader, wrote in the week following Castlereagh's death:

Modern historians stress the success of Castlereagh's career in spite of the hatred and ignominy he suffered. Trevelyan contrasts his positive achievements and his pitiful failures. His diplomacy was applauded by historians. For example, in 1919 diplomatic historians recommended his wise policies of 1814–1815 to the British delegation to the Paris peace conferences that ended the First World War. Historian R. J. White underscores the paradox:

His biographer John Bew writes:

Styles

Robert Stewart acquired the courtesy title Viscount Castlereagh in 1796 when his father was created Earl of Londonderry in the Irish peerage. Upon his father's death in 1821, he succeeded as 2nd Marquess of Londonderry, a title to which his father had been raised in 1816. His younger half-brother, the soldier, politician and diplomat Charles Stewart (later Vane) succeeded him as 3rd Marquess of Londonderry in 1822.

He was styled through his life as follows:

Robert Stewart, Esquire (1769–1789)
The Honourable Robert Stewart (1789–1796)
Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh (1796–1797)
The Right Honourable Viscount Castlereagh (1797–1814)
The Right Honourable Viscount Castlereagh, KG (1814–1821)
The Most Honourable The Marquess of Londonderry, KG, GCH, PC, PC (Ire) (1821–1822)

Memorials and tributes

Castlereagh Street in Sydney was named after him in 1810 by Governor Macquarie.
The Sydney suburb locality of Castlereagh was also named after him by Macquarie in 1810.
The Castlereagh River in north-western New South Wales was dedicated to him in 1818 by George Evans and explored by John Oxley.
The New South Wales electoral seat of Castlereagh also carried his name from 1904 until 1991.

Notes and references

Explanatory notes

Citations

General and cited sources

– A to C (for hamlet of Castlereagh)

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Bew's book about Castlereagh appeared first in 2011 at Quercus as "Castlereagh: Enlightenment, War and Tyranny" for Great Britain and then in 2012 at Oxford University Press under the shortened title "Castlereagh: A Life" for the United States. Both editions are available in Google Books. The text seems identical, but curiously the 2011 edition lacks page numbers. I therefore cite the 2012 edition.

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– Marriages, baptisms and burials from about 1660 to 1875
– L to M (for Londonderry)
– Scotland and Ireland
– (for timeline)
– (especially for early years, access to family papers)

External links

A Letter to Lord Viscount Castlereagh, John C. Hobhouse, London: Robert Stodart (1819), on the Peterloo massacre