Robert Stewart, 1st Marquess of Londonderry

Robert was born on 27 September 1739, at Mount Stewart,[1] the eldest son of Alexander Stewart and his wife Mary Cowan. His father was an alderman of Derry in 1760, and his grandfather, Colonel William Stewart, commanded one of the two companies of Protestant soldiers that Derry admitted into its walls when Mountjoy was sent there by Tyrconnell before the start of the siege.[2] Robert's mother was a daughter of John Cowan, also an alderman of that same town. His parents married on 30 June 1737 in Dublin.[3]

Robert's mother had a half-brother Robert Cowan from her father's first marriage. This half-brother had made a fortune while being Governor of Bombay and had died in London on 21 February 1737,[11] soon after having returned from Bombay. Robert's parents married about three months after Cowan's death. In his will the Governor bequeathed his estate to his younger brother and then to his half-sister. His younger brother had died in Bombay in 1736. Robert's father, Alexander, received the money and used it in 1743 to buy 60 townlands and a large estate from the Colville family at Newtownards and Comber in County Down.[12][13]

Robert Stewart married twice. He married first in 1766 Sarah Frances Seymour (1747–1770), daughter of Francis Seymour-Conway, 1st Marquess of Hertford.[14]

Robert and Sarah had two sons:

1. Alexander-Francis, died young;[15] and
2. Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh (1769–1822), known as "Castlereagh", became a famous statesman.[16]

His first wife died in childbirth in 1770.[17][18]

In May 1770 Bernard Ward, one of the two MPs representing Down in the Irish parliament of 1769–1776, was ennobled as Baron Bangor[19] and therefore moved to the House of Lords. Stewart stood as candidate in the resulting by-election and was elected to the seat vacated by Lord Bangor.[20][21]

Robert Stewart remarried, on 7 June 1775, taking for his second wife Frances Pratt, daughter of Charles Pratt, 1st Earl Camden.[22]

From his second marriage he had 11 more children, three sons and eight daughters:

1. Charles William (1778-1854), succeeded him as 3rd Marquess;[23]
2. Frances Ann (1777–1810), married Lord Charles Fitzroy;[24]
3. Elizabeth Mary (1779–1798);[25]
4. Caroline (1781–1860);[26]
5. Alexander John (1783–1800);[27]
6. Georgiana (1785–1804), married the politician George Canning, 1st Baron Garvagh, nephew of army general and politician Brent Spencer;[28]
7. Selina Sarah Juliana (1786–1871);[29]
8. Matilda Charlotte (1787–1842), married Edward Michael Ward, the eldest son of the Robert Ward of Bangor;[30]
9. Emily Jane (1789–1865);[31]
10. Thomas Henry (1790–1810);[32] and
11. Octavia (1792–1819), married Edward Law, 1st Earl of Ellenborough.[33][34]

Between 1775 and 1783 Robert Stewart lived in Bangor with his wife, while his father was living at Mount Stewart.

In 1776 a general election was held in Ireland. Robert Stewart stood again for Down and was re-elected.[35] He sat until the dissolution of this parliament on 25 July 1783.

Stewart participated in the Irish Volunteers Movement which aimed to defend Ireland against foreign invasion when British troops were withdrawn to fight in the American Revolutionary War. In 1779, worried by incursions of American and French vessels into the Irish sea, he organised the Newtownards Company of 115 men to act as fencibles. In 1783 he attended the second Dungannon Convention.[36]

His father, Alexander Stewart, died on 2 April 1781[37] and Robert inherited his father's properties in County Down. He moved to the family seat, Mount Stewart, near Newtownards. He completed the Temple of the Winds in the park of the residence, which his father had commissioned. On 17 September 1782 he was sworn to the Irish Privy Council.[38]

He stood in the 1783 general election for County Down but lost to Arthur Hill and Edward Ward.[39]

The arms of Robert Stewart, Earl of Londonderry[40] The Stewart arms are quartered with the Cowan saltires.[lower-alpha 1]

In 1789 Robert Stewart was created Baron Londonderry in the Peerage of Ireland.[42][43]

The following year, 1790, was another general election in Ireland, the occasion to wipe out the electoral defeat of 1783. Being now a peer he could not stand for the House of Commons himself. Instead, he took his eldest son, Robert (the future Viscount Castlereagh), out of Cambridge University and had him run for County Down, which he did successfully[44] but at a cost of £60,000.[45]

In 1795 Stewart became Viscount Castlereagh.[46] The following year, on 8 August 1796, he was elevated to Earl of Londonderry.[47]

His second son, Charles, at this point also gained a seat in the Irish House of Commons as member of parliament for Thomastown borough, County Kilkenny, in an by-election to replace George Dunbar,[48]

Lord Londonderry, as he was now, and his two sons favoured the Act of Union and fought to have it presented once more after it had been turned down in 1799. With the passing of the Act of Union Londonderry become one of the 28 original Irish representative peers[49] and therefore obtained a seat in the House of Lords in London, which he never took up.

1803–1806 he remodelled Mount Stewart house after a design by George Dance.[50]

In 1816 already in his seventies he was created Marquess of Londonderry,[51] due to the influence of his son, Lord Castlereagh. This title is again in the Peerage of Ireland. From 1801 until his death he was an Irish representative peer. He achieved the rare feat of rising from a commoner to a marquess.

He died on 6 April 1821 at Mount Stewart, County Down, and was buried at the nearby Newtownards Priory, where his father already had been laid to rest. He was succeeded by his eldest son Robert as the 2nd Marquess of Londonderry.[52]

• Alison, Archibald (1861), Lives of Lord Castlereagh and Sir Charles Stewart the second and the third Marquesses of Londonderry, 1, Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons
• Bew, John (2012), Castlereagh: A Life, London: Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0199931590 (Snippet view)
• 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 (1893), The complete peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, extant, extinct, or dormant, 5 (1st ed.), London: George Bell and Sons – L to M
• Debrett, John (1808), Peerage of England, Scotland, and Ireland, 2 (6th ed.), London: F. C. and J. Rivington - Ireland and Scotland (for the drawing of the arms)
• 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
• 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 (later events)
• Hamilton, John Andrew (1898), "Stewart, Robert, first Marquis of Londonderry", in Lee, Sidney (ed.), Dictionary of National Biography, 54, London: Smith Elder & Co, pp. 345–346
• House of Commons (1878), "Members of Parliament – Part II", Parliamentary Papers, London: H. M. Stationery Office, 62 (the subject as MP)
• Lodge, John (1789), The Peerage of Ireland, 6, Dublin: James Moore – Viscounts, barons (for Bernard Ward, 1st Viscount Bangor)
• Smyth, Constantine (1839), Chronicle of the Law Officers of Ireland, London: Henry Butterworth (for Table of reigns)
• Teggins, Edward Owen (2020), The East India Company Career of Sir Robert Cowan in Bombay and the Western Indian Ocean c. 1719-35 (PDF)
• Thorne, Roland; Hamilton, J. A. (2004), "Stewart, Robert, first marquess of Londonderry", in Matthew, Colin; Harrison, Brian (eds.), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 52, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 748–749, ISBN 0-19-861402-0
• Watson, I. B. (2004), "Cowan, Sir Robert (d.1737)", in Matthew, Colin; Harrison, Brian (eds.), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 13, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 752–753, ISBN 0-19-8613636

• Genealogy of Robert Stewart, 1st Marquess of Londonderry on The Peerage website