Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 54.djvu/352

 heard of O'Neill's advance after the victory, and, immediately decamping in the night, made good his retreat to Derry, leaving ‘Mac Art but an old drum and two or three muskets.’ When Sir Charles Coote (afterwards Earl of Mountrath) [q. v.] in 1648 succeeded to the government of Londonderry, Stewart, who loyally adhered to Charles, refused to obey him, and from his position at Culmore seriously obstructed the approaches to the city. On 28 Feb. Warwick, writing to Michael Jones [q. v.] in the name of the committee, warned him to observe him narrowly, as his behaviour ‘looked with a face of danger,’ and on 4 Nov. Coote and Monck were instructed to take measures to secure him and certain others ‘who, we are informed, will certainly serve the king's interest.’ Coote laid his plan well, and immediately on receiving his instructions inveigled him to Londonderry, arrested him, and sent him prisoner to London. He was committed on parole to the custody of Mr. Morgan at the ‘Wheatsheaf,’ and on 8 Jan. 1649 it was resolved to try him by a council of war; but a week or two later he managed to escape. On 14 May he received a royal commission appointing him, in the event of Viscount Montgomery of the Ardes declining the charge, to the command of the five regiments in the north of Ireland, and twelve days later he joined the besieging army before Londonderry. In obedience to his instructions Sligo Castle surrendered on 7 July to the Marquis of Clanricarde, and on 23 Aug. he gave his vote at a council of war for defending Drogheda.

After the collapse of the royalist cause in Ireland Stewart seems to have retired to Scotland. He was excepted from pardon for life and estate by the act of 12 Aug. 1652 for the settlement of Ireland. At the Restoration he was on 6 Feb. 1660 given a company of foot, and six days later reappointed governor of Londonderry, city and county, ‘in consideration of his many services performed to King Charles I, and the good affection expressed by him in the late troubles in Ireland, in his arming and maintaining a regiment of foot and a troop of horse at his own charge in the service of the said king.’ He resigned or was superseded on 17 Sept. 1661 by Colonel John Gorges. On 22 May 1662 he was appointed a trustee for the '49 officers, and seems to have retained his position as governor of the fort of Culmore till the close of 1670, in which year he is conjectured to have died.

There seems reason to believe that he never married; but if Lodge is correct in making him the brother of Sir William Stewart, he married Helen m'Kie, daughter of John M'Kie of Palgown, by whom he had issue George, who succeeded him, and married Elizabeth, daughter of James Blair of Dunskey; and Agnes, who married William Houston of Cutreoch.

[Lodge's Peerage, ed. Archdall, vi. 243–5; McKerlie's Hist. of Lands and their Owners in Galloway, i. 481–4; Cal. State Papers, Dom. (in addition to references already given), 1645 p. 183, 1647–8 pp. 22, 318, 327, 1649–50 p. 526; Cal. State Papers, Ireland, James I, iii. 272, 292, 296; Carte's Life of Ormonde, i. 188, 309–10, 350, 366–7, 433–4, 487, 491, 493, 530, 535, ii. 59–60; Gilbert's Contemporary Hist. of Affairs, i. 111, 471, 565, 672, 686, 763–4, ii. 230, iii. 157, 199, 342; Hill's Montgomery MSS. pp. 157, 182; Cal. Clarendon State Papers, ii. 11; Gilbert's Hist. of the Confederation, iv. 353, vii. 120, 224; Manuscripts of Marquis of Ormonde, i. 89, 92–5; Hempton's Siege and Hist. of Londonderry, p. 342; Larcom's Survey of the County of Londonderry, pp. 44, 45, 79, 81, 240; Official Return of Members of Parliament, Ireland.] 

STEWART, ROBERT, first (1739–1821), eldest son of Alexander Stewart of Ballylawn Castle, co. Donegal, and Mount Stewart, co. Down, M.P. for Londonderry, who died in 1781, by his wife Mary, sister and heir of Sir Robert Cowan, governor of Bombay, was born on 27 Sept. 1739. His family was very influential in the county Down; in 1769 he was elected one of the county members for the Irish parliament, and was re-elected in 1776, but lost the seat in 1783, and was a peer before the next election. He was undoubtedly a sagacious though never a prominent public man. During the Irish volunteer movement he was one of the delegates sent to the second Dungannon convention in 1783, and was one of its leading spirits. He was advanced to the peerage as Baron Londonderry on 20 Sept. 1789, having been previously sworn of the Irish privy council during Lord Lansdowne's administration, and appointed a trustee of the linen board. He was created Viscount Castlereagh on 6 Oct. 1795, Earl of Londonderry on 8 Aug. 1796, and was made Marquis of Londonderry on 22 Jan. 1816. He was also appointed in 1801 and 1803 governor and custos rotulorum of the county of Down and of Londonderry. His claims to be made a peer of the United Kingdom in 1800, in consideration of his son's services, though not pressed by himself or his son, were not unfavourably considered by the crown, and an assurance was given that if at any future time he or his descendants should desire a British peerage, their wish should be granted (Cornwallis