Charles Dillon, 12th Viscount Dillon

Charles was born on 6 November 1745 in London.[1][2] He was the eldest child of Henry Dillon and his wife Charlotte Lee. His father was the 11th Viscount Dillon. Charles's mother was the eldest daughter of George Lee, 2nd Earl of Lichfield. His parents had married on 26 October 1744 in London.[3]

In January 1766 Pope Clement XIII ended the Catholic Church's support for the Jacobites and recognised the Hanoverian Dynasty as the rightful rulers of England. On 4 December 1767, in Dublin, Charles conformed to the established church.[8] In that same year he was also elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.[9]

Charles, in his youth, liked racing and gambling and made huge debts.[10] He moved to Brussels to avoid his debtors.

In 1770 he was elected MP for the Westbury Borough constituency in Wiltshire, England.[11]

In 1776 Charles changed his surname from Dillon to Dillon-Lee and quartered his arms accordingly to comply with the will of his maternal uncle George Lee, 3rd Earl of Lichfield. In that same year his mother inherited the Lichfield estate at the death of her uncle the fourth Earl, who died childless.

Charles married twice. He married firstly on 19 August 1776 in Brussels Henrietta-Maria Phipps, daughter of Constantine Phipps, 1st Baron Mulgrave and his wife Lepel Hervey.[13] She was illegitimately descended from James II.

He had two children by Henrietta Maria:

1. Henry Augustus Dillon-Lee (1777–1832), succeeded him as the 13th Viscount; and
2. Frances Charlotte Dillon-Lee (1780–1819), married Thomas Webb, Baronet.[14]

His first wife died in 1782.[15] In 1787 he married, secondly, Marie Rogier of Mechelen.[16] She had been an actress in Brussels and had been his mistress in the time before his first marriage.[17]

They had at least three children:

1. James William Dillon-Lee (1792–1812), seems to have died unmarried;[18]
2. Henrietta Dillon-Lee (died 1811), seems to have died unmarried;[19] and
3. Charlotte Dillon-Lee (died 1866), married in 1813 Frederick Beauclerk (1773–1850), a younger son of Aubrey Beauclerk, 5th Duke of St Albans and an early cricketer.[20][21]

Ditchley House, the seat of the Lee Family

On 4 November 1776 Robert Lee, the 4th Earl of Lichfield, died and the earldom went extinct.[22] The nearest relatives of the last earl were his nieces. Charles's mother inherited the estate as she was the eldest of these nieces.

In 1787 he served as High Sheriff of Mayo. On 3 November 1787, his father, Henry Dillon, 11th Viscount Dillon, died and Charles succeeded as the 12th Viscount Dillon.[23] He was solemnly confirmed in the Viscountcy in 1788 by the Irish House of Lords.[24] He was invested as a Knight of the Order of St. Patrick in 1798.[25]

In 1794 Charles inherited the Lichfield estate from his mother. Ditchley became the seat of the Viscounts Dillon and remained in the possession of the family until 1934.

During the passing of the Acts of Union 1800 Lord Dillon supported the union.[26]

In 1802 Lord Dillon sold the manor of Quarendon, where the seat of the Lee family had once stood, to James Du Pré of Wilton Park. Quarendon was of course part of the land inherited from his mother. In 1806 Lord Dillon raised a regiment, namely the 101st Regular, recruited from the inhabitants of his Irish lands and surrounding areas near Loughglinn, County Roscommon.

Lord Dillon died at Loughglinn, on 9 November 1813.[27][28] Despite his conversion, he was buried in the Dillon Family Vault in the Cemetery at the Augustinian Friary, Ballyhaunis, County Mayo, Ireland. His widow died in London in 1833. He was succeeded by his only son, Henry Augustus, as the 13th Viscount Dillon.

• Brown, Michael; Power, Thomas P. (2005), Converts and Conversion in Ireland 1650–1850, Dublin: Four Courts Press, ISBN 1-85182-810-9
• Burke, Bernard (1866), A Genealogical History of the Dormant, Abeyant, Forfeited and Extinct Peerages of the British Empire (New ed.), London: Harrison
• Burke, Bernard (1949), A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Peerage and Baronetage of the British Empire (99th ed.), London: Burke's Peerage Ltd.
• Cokayne, George Edward (1916), Gibbs, Vicary (ed.), The complete peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, extant, extinct, or dormant, 4 (2nd ed.), London: St Catherine Press – Dacre to Dysart
• Debrett, John (1828a), Peerage of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, 1 (17th ed.), London: F. C. and J. Rivington - England (for Jerningham)
• Debrett, John (1828b), Peerage of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, 2 (17th ed.), London: F. C. and J. Rivington - Scotland and Ireland (for Dillon)
• Debrett, John (1838), Courthope, William (ed.), Debrett's Complete Peerage of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (22nd ed.), London: F. C. and J. Rivington
• House of Commons (1878), "Members of Parliament", Parliamentary Papers, London: H. M. Stationery Office, 62 (for the subject as MP)
• La Tour du Pin, Henriette-Lucy, Marquise de (1913a), Journal d'une femme de cinquante ans (in French), 1 (7th ed.), Paris: Librairie Chapelot
• La Tour du Pin, Henriette-Lucy, Marquise de (1913b), Journal d'une femme de cinquante ans (in French), 2 (7th ed.), Paris: Librairie Chapelot
• MacDougall, Henry (1799), Sketches of Irish Political Characters of the Present Day, London: P. O'Shea Publisher
• O'Callaghan, John (1854), History of the Irish Brigade in the service of France, New York: Printed by the author

• Genealogy of Henry Dillon, 12th Viscount Dillon of Costello-Gallin on The Peerage website