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 serve it for them.’ It is preserved by his descendants, together with the speaker's chair, at Antrim Castle. Foster was one of the few anti-unionists who obtained seats in the united parliament. He appears to have taken part in the debates of the house for the first time on 16 March 1802 (Parl. Hist. xxxvi. 362–3). On 7 May following he supported Nicholls's motion for an address, thanking the king for the removal of Pitt, and broadly asserted that the union had been carried by corrupt means (ib. p. 652). Foster, however, subsequently became reconciled to Pitt, and in July 1804 was appointed chancellor of the Irish exchequer in the place of Isaac Corry. Though not officially appointed, Foster had brought in the Irish budget in the preceding month, and had acted on several other occasions in the house as if he had been formally installed in office. A debate was raised by Francis upon the informality of these proceedings (Parl. Debates, ii. 1001–10), and Foster, having subsequently vacated his seat for the county of Louth on his appointment, was duly re-elected in the month of August. On 14 May 1805 he made a vigorous speech against Fox's motion for a committee on the Roman catholic petition (ib. iv. 999–1006). In consequence of some differences of opinion which had arisen among the ministry during this session on his Irish financial measures, Foster proffered his resignation, but Pitt refused to accept it. Upon the formation of the ministry of All the Talents in 1806, Foster was succeeded by Sir John Newport, but on 30 April 1807 he was reappointed to his old office, which he continued thenceforth to hold until 1811, when he was succeeded by William Wellesley Pole, afterwards Lord Maryborough. It is asserted by the author of Grattan's ‘Life’ (v. 422) that in the debate on the Irish Tobacco Duties Bill in May 1811, Foster, roused by an assertion of Bankes that Ireland was becoming a burden to England, exclaimed with great indignation, ‘Take back your union! take back your union!’ The debate is, however, differently reported in ‘Hansard’ (Parl. Debates, xx. 311). After his retirement from office Foster rarely spoke in the House of Commons, and on 17 July 1821 he was created a peer of the United Kingdom by the title of Baron Oriel of Ferrard in the county of Louth. He does not seem to have taken any part in the debates in the House of Lords. He died at his seat at Collon in the county of Louth on 23 Aug. 1828, in his eighty-eighth year.

Foster married, on 14 Dec. 1764, Margaret, the eldest daughter of Thomas Burgh of Bert in the county of Kildare. She was created Baroness Oriel of Collon, county Louth, in the peerage of Ireland, on 3 June 1790, and Viscountess Ferrard, in the same peerage, on 7 Nov. 1797, with remainder to her male issue, and died on 20 Jan. 1824. Their younger son, Thomas Henry Foster, who succeeded to the two Irish titles on the death of his mother and to the English barony of Oriel on the death of his father, assumed, by royal license, dated 8 Jan. 1817, the surname and arms of Skeffington only, having previously married Lady Harriet Skeffington, in her own right Viscountess Massereene and Baroness Loughneagh. The present Viscount Massereene and Ferrard is the great-grandson of the last speaker of the Irish House of Commons. Though not an eloquent speaker Foster had a clear and forcible delivery. His four speeches in the Irish House of Commons previously referred to were all published, and had a wide circulation. ‘Memory’ Woodfall described him as ‘one of the readiest and most clear-headed men of business’ he had ever met with (Correspondence of William, Lord Auckland, 1861, i. 80), while his unimpeachable character and wide financial knowledge were everywhere recognised. Foster was admitted a student of the Middle Temple, but was never called to the English bar. He was elected a bencher of the King's Inns, Dublin, on 22 May 1784, and twice served as a lord justice in the absence of the lord-lieutenant, viz. in 1787 and 1789. A mezzotint engraving, by C. H. Hodges, of a portrait of Foster, by C. G. Stuart, was published in 1792.



FOSTER, JOHN (1770–1843), essayist, eldest son of John Foster, a small farmer and weaver, living at Wadsworth Lane in the parish of Halifax, Yorkshire, who found time for a good deal of theological reading and took a leading part in the baptist congregation in his neighbourhood, was born 17 Sept. 1770, and at a very early age displayed what he afterwards called ‘an awkward but entire individuality.’ At twelve he had the