Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 54.djvu/353

 Correspondence, ii. 273, iii. 274). Neither the father, however, nor the son claimed the fulfilment of this promise, probably to prevent Lord Castlereagh's removal from the House of Commons. He died at Castle Stewart on 8 April 1821. He was twice married: first, on 3 June 1766, to Lady Sarah Frances, second daughter of Francis Seymour Conway, marquis of Hertford [q. v.], by whom he had two sons, of whom Robert (1769–1822) [q. v.], the younger and surviving son, succeeded him; and secondly, on 7 June 1775, to Lady Frances, eldest daughter of Lord-chancellor Camden [see, first ], by whom he had three sons and eight daughters. Of his second family, General Charles William Stewart (afterwards Lord Stewart and third Marquis of Londonderry) [q. v.], British ambassador at Vienna, was the eldest.

In private life Londonderry was not only a very charitable man, but also enlightened. He resided on his estates almost exclusively, and encouraged tenant-right; he remitted rents; he made work for the unemployed, and brought supplies into the district for the distressed. To his family, and especially to the training and fortunes of his son, Lord Castlereagh, he was deeply devoted.

[Gent. Mag. 1821, i. 373; Alison's Life of Lord Castlereagh and Lord Stewart; Castlereagh's Memoirs and Correspondence; Correspondence of Lord Cornwallis; Froude's English in Ireland, ii. 370.]  STEWART, ROBERT, second, better known as (1769–1822), second but eldest surviving son of Robert Stewart, first marquis of Londonderry [q. v.], and of his first wife, Lady Sarah Frances, second daughter of Francis Seymour Conway, marquis of Hertford [q. v.], was born on 18 June 1769. From his childhood he displayed great talent, industry, and resolution of character. His education was begun under Archdeacon Hurrock at a public school in Armagh, and while there he was nearly drowned by the upsetting of a boat on Strangford Lough on 5 Aug. 1788. Shortly afterwards he was placed at St. John's College, Cambridge, where William Pearce (afterwards dean of Ely) was his tutor. He distinguished himself in several college examinations, and was then removed with a view to his entering the Irish House of Commons. He passed portions of 1788 and 1789 in Paris, Geneva, Rome, and Vienna, giving particular attention to political affairs at home and abroad, and on his return to Ireland in 1790 was brought forward on behalf of the independent freeholders of co. Down to wrest one of the county seats from the influence of the Marquis of Downshire. In spite of his youth—for it was only during his canvass that he came of age—his ready speech and pleasing manner secured his election, after a forty-two days' poll; but the expense of the contest, 60,000l., nearly ruined his family, and left his father poor for the rest of his life. He then entered one of the regiments which were enrolled on the outbreak of the French war, and on 26 April 1793 became lieutenant-colonel of the Londonderry militia. On 9 June 1794 he married Lady Emily Anne, youngest daughter and coheiress of John Hobart, second earl of Buckinghamshire [q. v.]

His political views at first were not very definite, or even very consistent. On his election he had pledged himself to parliamentary reform in the sense of the extension of the Irish parliamentary franchise to Roman catholic freeholders, and the act of 1793 which removed the disability was warmly supported by him; but this limitation of his disposition to reform exclusively to the case of the Irish franchise had not been clearly expressed in the first instance, and he was often in his later and strong tory days taunted with apostasy on the strength of this pledge. At first he generally voted with the opposition, but, owing to his duty with his regiment, he was frequently absent from parliament; and although he had already formed the opinion, in advance of his contemporaries, that the parliamentary union of England and Ireland and the repeal of catholic disabilities were both necessary and just, and that the French revolution was likely to lead not to the dismemberment but to the consolidation of France, his sympathies were generally of a tory kind. Besides sitting for co. Down in the Irish parliament, he sat for Tregony (1794–6) in the English parliament, and in 1795 he seconded the address in the English House of Commons. From May 1796 to July 1797 he was member for Orford, Suffolk, and then accepted the Chiltern Hundreds on taking office in Ireland. In February 1796 Thomas Pelham, second earl of Chichester [q. v.], chief secretary, returned to England owing to his rupture with Grattan's party, though he did not resign his office till April 1799. Stewart (now Lord Castlereagh by his father's elevation to an earldom in 1796) was on 25 July 1797 appointed by Lord Camden, the lord lieutenant, to the office of keeper of the privy seal, and was entrusted with the duties of the chief secretaryship in Ireland in Pelham's absence, succeeding to the office when Pelham re-