Viscount Castlereagh was a great statesman of the nineteenth century whose reputation rose on the issue of foreign policy but declined with his role as spokesman of home policy after the Napoleonic Wars. He was also known for his commitment to the Irish and English Union and his advocacy of a widening of Catholic rights.
Background
Castlereagh was born Robert Stewart on 17 June 1769, the eldest surviving son of Robert Stewart, the first Marquess of Londonderry, and his first wife, Lady Sarah Frances, the second daughter of Francis Seymour Conway, Marquess of Hertford.
Education
He was educated at Armagh in Ireland, and then at St. John’s College, Cambridge. He visited Paris, Geneva, Rome, and Vienna in 1788 and 1789, and on returning to Ireland in 1790 he contested and won one of the County Down seats in the Irish Parliament— but at a cost of £60,000, which nearly ruined his family. At the outbreak of the French wars in 1793 he became lieutenant colonel of the Londonderry militia.
Career
He served as M.P for Tregony (1794—1796) in the English Parliament and as M.P. for Orford, Suffolk (1796-1797). In 1797, he was appointed to the chief secretaryship of Ireland. In this capacity he ordered the arrest of the United Irishmen who had rebelled against English rule in 1798 with the help of French troops. Shordy afterward he was involved in pressing for the Act of Union between Ireland and England and also for a degree of Catholic emancipation. The Act of Union was passed in 1800; but the king’s refusal to make any significant concessions to the Irish Catholics led Castlereagh to resign in 1801, following the example of William Pitt, the Younger, who had resigned as prime minister over the same issue. Casdereagh held no official position in Henry Addingtons ministry but was given the responsibility of conducting through Parliament two Irish measures—the Suppression of Rebellion Act and the Suspension of Habeas Corpus, the right of trial with a jury.
After the Act of Union of 1800, Castlereagh sat in the House of Commons for County Down until 1805, when he was defeated in the parliamentary election. He was elected for Boroughbridge, in Yorkshire, in January 1806. He was subsequently elected as M.P. for Plympton Earl in Devon in November 1806 and for County Down again in 1812, 1818, and 1820. On succeeding to the Irish peerage, he was elected for Orford in April 1821. This almost unbroken period of tenure in the English Parliament projected him forward in a succession of governments, particularly on foreign policy.
Encouraged by William Pitt, Castlereagh joined Addington’s administration as president of the (East India) Board of Control in 1802, which gave him a seat in the cabinet. In cabinet he spoke increasingly on foreign policy, almost acting as Pitt’s mouthpiece. After Pitt formed a new government in 1804, Castlereagh was given the additional post of secretary of war in 1805. On Pitt’s death he lost these responsibilities; but in 1807 he again became secretary of war, this time in the Duke of Portland’s ministry. In this post he supported Arthur Wellesley’s military campaigns in Spain and Portugal, during the Peninsular War.
Castlereagh returned to office as foreign secretary on 28 February 1812, in the latter days of Spencer Percevals ministry, and remained in that post under Lord Liverpool until his death in 1822.
Castlereagh became Lord Londonderry after the death of his father on 11 April 1821. By this point the enormous work burden and a number of health problems, particularly gout, were beginning to take their toll. It seems that his mind also was going: on 12 August 1822 he committed suicide by cutting his throat with a penknife; an inquest found him to have been of unsound mind. He was subsequently buried in Westminster Abbey, on 20 August 1822.
Achievements
Views
Stewart generally voted with the Tories when he was able to attend sessions of the Irish Parliament, and was firm in his belief in the necessity of a parliamentary union between England and Ireland as well as of the removal of restrictions against the Catholics.
Connections
On 9 June 1794 he married Lady Emily Anne, the youngest daughter and coheiress of John Hobart, the second earl of Buckinghamshire.