<..'\1 69-1998 BURKE~ Gerard Francis~ 1936- TI-IE VICEROYALTY OF LORD WILLIAM FITZWILLIAM: A CRISIS IN ANGLO-IRISH POLITICAL HISTORY. The American University~ Ph.D.~ 1968 History~ modern University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. THE VJCEROYALTY OF LORD WILLIAM FITZWILLIAM: A CRISIS IN ANGLO-IRISH POLITICAL HISTORY Submitted to the Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of The Ameri0an University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History Signatures of Committee: Chairman: (j1.14ht, /J tY~w u~L-· 1968 The American University AMERICAN UNiVERSIT• Washington, D. c. LIBR.L\HY . JUL18 1968 W~HfNGTON. 0. f- . .3~ 77. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE PREFACE •••••••••••••••••••• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 0 0 iii CHAPTER I. THE COURSE OF EVENTS • •••••••••••••••••• 1 II. THE COALITION •• •••.•••••••••••••••••••• 22 III. THE TRAGIC ONE HUNDRED DAYS ••••••• ••••• 46 IV. THE AFTERMATH • ••••••••••••••••••••••••• 86 v. ON THE EVE • •••••••••••••.•••••••••••.•• 126 VI. CONCLUSION ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• 150 BIBLIOGRAPHY •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• o. 164 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. PREFACE I am indebted to the American Irish Society for a generous grant in aid of research. I am also very grateful to Professor Alison Olson of The American Univer­ sity, my major supervisor, who assisted greatly in bring­ ing this thesis to completion, to Professor Robert Shipkey and to Dr. Robert E. Burns of Notre Dame University, who gave freely of their time and knowledge. I must mention with gratitude the'helpfulness and courtesy of the staffs of the libraries and repositories in which I have worked. To my wife Rosemary Burke I owe a special but wholly inadequate vote of thanks for taking time out from her busy domestic schedule to give her knowing attention to typing, proof-reading and enhancing the form of the entire dissertation. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER I THE COURSE OF EVENTS In December 1794, the first scene of an histJrical tragedy began in the seemingly promising appointment of a ,.~-... new viceroy for Ireland. In return for the participation of the Portland Whigs in his coalition government Pitt was forced to appoint as Viceroy of Ireland one of Portland's leading followers, Lord William Fitzwilliam. A sensitive, intelligent man of considerable personal integrity, Fitz­ william was heir to the Marquis of Rockingham. He was not only a great English county magnate, but also one of the wealthiest Irish landlords. His passionate interest in Irish affairs, however, was not dictated solely by concern for his personal fortune. He was also a man of deep per- sonal convictions. He believed in the urgent necessity to ameliorate existing tensions in Irish political and economic life, break the stranglehold of the Anglo-Irish governing­ group and guarantee the support of the Irish in England's struggle with France. His appointment as lord lieutenant aroused the hopes of Irish Catholics that substantial political concessions and full emancipation would shortly follow. For more than a decade before the Fitzwilliam viceroyalty conditions in Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 Ireland had been unquestionably improving. The main articles of the penal code (those relating, for example, to ownership of land) were abolished by the Dublin Parlia­ ment. Catholics were acquiring civil rights; they were becoming merchants and beginning to make money in trade. With the removal of the few remaining religious disabili­ ties, a settlement of the tithes and a moderate reform of Parliament, it appeared certain that Ireland, under the guidance of a sympathetic and progressive viceroy like Fitzwilliam, would contribute much to the prosperity of the British Empire. And yet, despite these hopes, four months after his appointment Lord Fitzwilliam was back in England, summarily dismissed by his government for failing to ob­ serve the understandings he had entered into with his colleagues. His dismissal in late February 1795 signalled an end to all the high expectations of the previous year. There began immediately the very violence and revolutionary activ­ ity that his appointment was supposed to prevent. His firing doomed all prospect for further political concessions to the Catholics and ended for a· full generation the drive for Catholic emancipation. It very nearly.:ruptured the recently formed coalition between Pitt and the Portland Whigs upon which depended the whole policy of England in its struggle with France. It provoked the spread of dis- Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 3 order throughout Ireland, culminating in a disastrous rebellion. Finally, the legacy of hate and mistrust caused by the Fitzwilliam incident and its aftermath ruined all chance for success of the Act of Union in 1801. Despite these results, the lord lieutenancy of William Fitzwilliam and its aftermath has failed to receive the attention warranted by its critical place in Anglo-Irish politics. Various authors have briefly alluded to the administration of_Fitzwilliam but usually in the context of discussing some aspect of William Pitt's Irish policy. None has considered it important enough for detailed study in its own right; one will search in vain for a satisfac- tory and comprehensive treatment of this tragic event and its consequences for Ireland.l Those nineteenth century historians like Rose and lThis neglect can be partially explained by the fact that Irish political history itself, particularly of the eighteenth century, has until recently received scant atten­ tion from historians. Lecky and Froude have treated this century on a generous scale, but special studies are essen­ tial if we are to have an adequate understanding of the period. Hopefully this deficiency will be remedied by an accumulation of detailed political monographs like Burns' "The Rise of John Fitzgibbon 1776-1789: A Study of Anglo­ Irish Politics in the Age of the American Revolutiorl' and Hamilton's "The Movement for Irish Catholic Relief 1790- 93." But these recent studies are on the period preceding Fitzwilliam's administration. For Fitzwilliam himself one must consult political histories wnich are now half a cen­ tury out of date. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 4 Rosebery, who have mentioned Fitzwilliam in a study of 2 Pitt, were very pro-Pitt and hence anti-Fitzwilliam. Their bias for Pitt colored their interpretation of Fitz- william-'s administration-they accused him of acting precip- itously in supporting Catholic emancipation and condemned him for a lack of foresight in his general conduct of Irish affairs in 1795. To these writers the blame for the poli- tical turmoil caused by Fitzwilliam's dismissal was his alone. He ignored instructions given him by the British ministers before he left for Ireland and allowed his hypo- critical self-rightousness to drive him to unwise actions. Further, he was an impulsive and politically inexperienced individual who knew next to nothing about the machinery through which Ireland was governed. He failed to antici­ pate the political disruption caused by his dismissal of John Beresford, the chief revenue officer, and other Irish officials. In sum, his whole disastrous administration was a consequence of his own ineptness. Their interpretation was, howevAr, quite wrong. They failed totally to see that Fitzwilliam's assess- ment of the Irish situation and his strategy of defusing 2Lord Rosebery, Pitt (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1892), pp. 174-185; Lord Ashbourne, Pitt: Some Chapters of his Life and Times (London: Longmans, Green and Company, 1898), pp. 192-94; c. L. Fa1kiner, Studies in Irish History (London: Longmans, Green and Company, 1902), pp. 126-29; J. H. Rose, Pitt and Napoleon (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1912), pp. 31-36. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 5 Irish radicalism by timely concessions was correct and Pitt's and the Cabinet's was not. Thus, they failed to appreciate the importance of the Fitzwilliam episode as a critical turning point in Anglo-Irish history. It is almost certain that had Fitzwilliam been allowed to support the Catholic Relief Act of 1795 it would have become law. The Irish extremists would not have been com­ pletely satisfied, but tb~ Catholic question as a consti­ tutional issue would have been taken out of Irish politcs a generation before 1829 and the revolution of 1798 quite probably would not have broken out. This dissertation proposes to attempt an answer to some i~portant questions directly related to the administra­ tion of Lord Fitzwilliam: What led to the appointment of Lord Fitzwilliam as viceroy of Ireland? Was his appoint­ ment only the product of political arrangements in England without any real meaning for Irish politics? What caused his speedy recall? Who is to blame for his failure, Fitz­ william or the British Government? What was the effect of his recall in Ireland? Lastly, was it merely a personal tragedy involving