Stopgap Lord Castlereagh was a calm voice amid turmoil and rebellion of 1798

Lord Camden, the lord lieutenant, was not a politician of the first rank and was out of his depth, perhaps even completely so (and certainly by the early summer of 1798). The situation was exacerbated by Camden being deprived of the expertise of Thomas Pelham, the chief secretary, through illness.

Camden was determined to appoint his nephew, Lord Castlereagh, Marquess of Londonderry, as chief secretary. George III and the cabinet were strenuously opposed to an ‘Irish’ appointment at such a critical juncture.

However, in the absence of any obvious alternative, London reluctantly acquiesced and on March 29 1798 the 28-year-old Castlereagh was appointed as acting chief secretary. The appointment was intended to be temporary until Pelham recovered or until a more suitable candidate was identified.

While the appointment looked like nepotism, it wasn’t. Castlereagh was an extremely precocious Ulster-Scot. At the Royal School, Armagh, he was ‘highest in the class’ and determined that no boy would get above him. At St John’s College, Cambridge, he flourished intellectually but he left without taking a degree – as aristocrats tended to do. More significantly he converted from Presbyterianism to Anglicanism there.

In 1790 in a famous election Castlereagh entered the Irish House of Commons as MP for Co Down. He was viewed as the popular candidate, the avowed opponent of the Church of Ireland, Dublin Castle and the Marquess of Downshire, and on this basis secured the votes of the Presbyterian farmers and weavers.

However, despite having drunk toasts ‘To a happy establishment of the Gallic constitution’ and ‘To our Sovereign Lord – the People’, the young Robert Stewart had only limited sympathy for radical ideas.

Dr William Drennan thought him ‘a promising young man, and one of the handsomest in the house, perhaps to become, one day, the most able’.

Events at home and abroad, especially in France, persuaded Castlereagh that it was necessary to support Pitt’s government.

Although not eloquent, Castlereagh’s speeches were admired for their content which demonstrated an intelligent grasp of political realities. As early as 1795 – when Camden became lord lieutenant – he was in the frame for the office of chief secretary, but the position went to Pelham. In 1797 he was appointed Keeper of the Signet, making him a member, albeit a junior one, of the Irish administration.

The day after Castlereagh became chief secretary – March 30 – the Irish Privy Council declared Ireland to be in an open state of rebellion and imposed martial law. Castlereagh told the Irish House of Commons: ‘The United Irishmen are in open rebellion, and therefore only to be met with force.’ He sought to identify and arrest as many of the leading conspirators as possible. This almost certainly had the effect of reducing the scale and extent of rebellion, restricting it to only a few counties.

Rebellion broke out in Leinster on April 23/24 and on June 6 in Ulster. While other members of the Irish political elite lost their heads, Castlereagh kept his. He urged restraint on a simultaneously angry and anxious Irish House of Commons and managed to dissuade them from voting to execute all the state prisoners without trial.

On June 20 Camden, who had not covered himself in glory, was replaced by the Marquess Cornwallis. Although Cornwallis had commanded the army which had surrendered to the Americans at Yorktown, he was an experienced and able soldier and administrator, evidenced by his career as governor-general and commander-in-chief in India.

Meeting Castlereagh for the first time, Cornwallis expected to encounter an incompetent Irish ninny who owed his position to his family connections rather than his ability and was pleasantly surprised to discover that Castlereagh shared his outlook and temperament.

Thus, Cornwallis was happy to entrust Castlereagh with Dublin Castle’s civic and military responsibilities while he assumed responsibility for suppressing the rebellion, including General Humbert’s French invasion, in the field.

Castlereagh and Cornwallis believed in firm action against the military threat but conciliation thereafter. In return for information, even leading United Irish prisoners were allowed to go into exile rather than face execution.

According to Alexander Knox, the High Church theological writer who was briefly Castlereagh’s private secretary, Castlereagh was ‘humane’ and ‘good natured beyond the usual standard of men’.

He did not deny that atrocities took place during the rebellion but he sought to prevent them and felt culpable when he did not succeed in doing so. Again to quote Knox, ‘There was no bloodshed for which he did not grieve’.

Figures as diverse as John Philpot Curran, Dr William Drennan and Daniel O’Connell acknowledged that Castlereagh was the principal obstacle to strident demands from the Irish House of Commons to hang rebels.

He even saved Henry Grattan from the demands of Irish MPs for his prosecution for treason.

Castlereagh was cool and level-headed, a good judge of character and had the ability to accurately appraise a situation and calibrate the appropriate response. He was never the monster that Irish nationalists, like the antiquarian Francis Joseph Bigger, claim. Bigger’s fevered imagination led him to believe Castlereagh could hear the screams of flogged and tortured rebels from his rooms in the castle.

With the departure of his uncle as Lord Lieutenant, Castlereagh cannot have expected to outlast him very long but he would continue to be chief secretary for the next three years.

As early as July, Cornwallis was insistent that Castlereagh was the best man for the job. As he explained to the Duke of Portland, the home secretary: ‘I should be very ungrateful if I did not acknowledge the obligations I owe to Lord Castlereagh, whose abilities, temper and judgment, have been the greatest use to me, and who has on every occasion shown his sincere and unprejudiced attachment to the British Empire’.

In November 1798 Castlereagh was confirmed in office as chief secretary.