Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 49.djvu/340

 prise, 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, 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,

(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