Henry Dillon, 13th Viscount Dillon

Henry Augustus was born on 28 October 1777 at Brussels, then the capital of the Austrian Netherlands. He was the elder of the two children and the only son of Charles Dillon-Lee and his first wife Henrietta Maria Phipps.[1] His father, the 12th Viscount Dillon, had conformed to the established religion.[2] His mother was the only daughter of Constantine John Phipps, 1st Baron Mulgrave, an Anglo-Irish family. Thus both parents were Protestants and part of the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland. They had married in 1776 at Brussels.[3]

He appears below as the elder of two siblings:

1. Henry Augustus (1777–1832); and
2. Frances Charlotte (1780–1819), who married Thomas Webb, Baronet.[4]

His mother died in 1782[5] when Henry Augustus was only four. In 1787 his father remarried to Marie Rogier of Mechelen,[6] who had been an actress in Brussels and had been his father's mistress in the time before he married Henry's mother.[7]

His father's second marriage produced three children, which are:

In 1794, when he was 17 years old, Henry Augustus was made a Colonel of the newly created Catholic Irish Brigade, an unlikely employment for a Protestant that was due to his family connections. This Catholic Irish Brigade lasted only four years, being dissolved in 1798.

He seemed to have left the Austrian Netherlands and have gone to England where, in 1799, aged 22, he was a Member of Parliament for County Harwich. In 1802 he became a Knight for Mayo. His knighthood ended in 1813 upon the death of his father, when he acceded to the Peerage as the thirteenth Viscount Dillon of Costello-Gallen.

In February 1807, Henry Augustus Dillon-Lee married Henrietta Browne, sister of Dominick, 1st Baron Oranmore and Browne, daughter of Dominick-Geoffrey Browne, by Margaret, daughter of the George Browne, 4th son of the 1st Earl of Altamont. The marriage took place at Castle MacGarrett near Claremorris, County Mayo, Ireland. The Brownes were an Anglo-Irish and Protestant family.[13]

The marriage produced ten children:

1. Henrietta Maria (1808–1896), campaigned for better education for girls and married Edward John Stanley, 2nd Baron Stanley of Alderley.[14]
2. Charles Henry (1810–1865), born in Dublin, died at Ditchley, Oxford; succeeded his father as 14th Viscount;[15]
3. Theobald Dominick (1811–1879), the 15th Viscount Dillon, who died childless and was succeeded by his brother;[16]
4. Arthur Edmund Denis (1812–1892), who married Ellen Adderley and succeeded his brother as the 16th Viscount Dillon;[17]
5. Constantine (1813–1853), who emigrated to New Zealand;[18]
6. Robert George Lee (1817–1822), who died young;[19]
7. Margaret Frances Florence (1818–1885), who was a maid of honour to her majesty and married the geologist William John Hamilton.[20]
8. Gerald Normanby (1823–1880), who married Louisa FitzGibbon, daughter of Richard Hobart FitzGibbons, 3rd Earl of Clare, and changed his surname to hers.[21]
9. Louisa Anne Rose (1825–1902), who married the Hon. Spencer-Cecil Ponsonby of Bessborough;[22] and
10. Helena Matilda (born 1827).[23]

Emily W. Sunstein in her biography Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality writes "the literary Lord Dillon... was said to be Eliza Rennie's lover."

Breaking my own horse (H. A. Dillon) by James Gillray, 1803

On 9 November 1813 his father died at Loughglinn, County Roscommon, and was buried in the Dillon Vault at Ballyhaunis.[24][25] Henry succeeded as the 13th Viscount Dillon, at the age of 36.

He died on 24 July 1832 in London and was buried in the All Saints Church at Spelsbury.[26] He was the first Dillon to be buried in Spelsbury. His widow died thirty years later at the Hotel Windsor, Paris, 18 March 1862, aged 73.

Henry Dillon's published works include:

• Short View of the Catholic Question (London: J. Debrett, 1801), 32 pages
• Letter to the Noblemen and Gentlemen who Composed the Deputation from the Catholics of Ireland on the Subject of their Mission (London: J. Budd, Crown and Mitre, 1805), online at Google Books, 56 pages
• A Commentary on the Military Establishments and Defence of the British Empire (Dillon publisher: Printed by Cox, Son, and Baylis ... for E. Kerby, 1811)
• The Tactics of Ælian: Comprising Military Systems of the Grecians (London: E. Kerby, 1814), online at Google Books
• Discourse upon the Theory of Legitimate Government (Florence, 1817), online at Google Books, 89 pages
• The Life and Opinions of Sir Richard Maltravers: an English Gentleman of the Seventeenth Century, Volume 1 (London: G. and W.B. Whittaker, 1822), online at Google Books Corvey CME 3-628-48097-3; ECB 345; EN2 1822: 29; NSTC 2D13576; OCLC 35663915.
• The life and opinions of Sir Richard Maltravers: an English gentleman of the seventeenth century, Volume 2 (London: G. and W.B. Whittaker, 1822), online at Google Books
• Rosaline de Vere, Volume 1 (London: Treuttel and Würtz, Treuttel junior and Richter, 1824), online at Internet Archive Corvey CME 3-628-48547-9; ECB 502; EN2 1824: 29; NSTC 2D13577; OCLC 12423730.
• Rosaline de Vere, Volume 2 (London: Treuttel and Würtz, Treuttel junior and Richter, 1824), online at Internet Archive

Also: various works of jurisprudence.

• Brown, Michael; Power, Thomas P. (2005), Converts and Conversion in Ireland 1650–1850, Dublin: Four Courts Press, ISBN 1-85182-810-9
• 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 (1828), 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
• 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

• Genealogy of Henry Dillon-Lee, 13th Viscount Dillon of Costello-Gallin on The Peerage website
• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Henry Dillon