Henry Villiers-Stuart, 1st Baron Stuart de Decies

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Henry Villiers-Stuart, 1st Baron Stuart de Decies (born June 8, 1803 in London , † January 23, 1874 in Dromana , County Waterford ), was a British nobleman and politician.

Origin and youth

Henry Villiers-Stuart was born as Henry Stuart as the eldest son of Henry Stuart , the fifth son of John Stuart, 1st Marquess of Bute , and his wife Gertrude Amelia Mason-Villiers , the only child of George Mason-Villiers, 2nd Earl Grandison , born. When his parents died within a few days in August 1809, he became an orphan at the age of six and heir to his maternal grandfather's estate in Dromana, Ireland, which included over 120 km 2 of real estate. He attended Eton College from 1816 to 1819 and then studied at Christ Church College , Oxford. In 1822 he changed his name to Villiers-Stuart . When he came of age in 1824, he moved his main residence to Dromana, where he lived lavishly.

Political activity

At the end of 1824, Villiers-Stuart joined the Catholic Association . In the general election of 1826 he prevailed in a sensational election with the help of Catholic supporters against the previous electorate, the anti-Catholic George Beresford , as the Tories MP for County Waterford . In the House of Commons he campaigned for Catholic emancipation . However, his election campaign had left him in debt, and on a visit to Waterford in April 1828 he had to flee from his creditors. He had to sell property in Hertfordshire and resigned in June 1829. In the general election in 1830, through the mediation of his cousin John Crichton-Stuart, 2nd Marquess of Bute, he was elected MP for Banbury . In the next general election, which was held in 1831, he ran for neither Waterford nor Banbury. Instead, when the office of Lord Lieutenant was introduced for the Irish counties on the English model in 1831 , he became Lord Lieutenant for the City and County of Waterford. In 1837 he became a member of the Privy Council for Ireland. On March 10, 1839 he was raised to hereditary peer as Baron Stuart de Decies , of Dromana within the Decies in the County of Waterford . He was also a Colonel in the Waterford Militia .

Access to the Dromana House near Waterford, which was expanded by Villiers-Stuart

Family and offspring

On January 12, 1826, Villiers-Stuart married the Austrian Theresia Pauline Ott, twelve years his senior, according to the Catholic rite . The validity of the marriage was soon called into question as Catholic rite marriage was not officially recognized in Britain at the time. In addition, his wife already had two children from a relationship with the Austrian officer Leopold Gersch, and it was not clear whether she had already been married to Gersch and whether he was still alive or had already died. Villiers-Stuart was never able to fully clarify these questions. He married his wife in Scotland in 1827 and again in Ireland around 1835, but the legitimacy of his only son, Henry Windsor Villiers-Stuart, was so in doubt that he did not inherit his father's title after his death. In 1840 he had promised his younger brother William that he would inherit the claim to the title and his property after his death, but after the death of his wife in 1867 he persuaded his son Henry Windsor to move to Dromana House, which he had expanded extensively. Due to his poor health, he managed to get his son to become Vice Lieutenant of Waterford in 1872. In doing so, he paved the way for him to take up his inheritance and run as a member of the House of Commons.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ PRONI: Villiers-Stuart Papers, p. 16. (pdf, 510 KB) Retrieved September 28, 2014 .
  2. ^ Carla King: Defying the Law of the Land: Agrarian Radicals in Irish History . Google eBook, The History Press, 2013. ISBN 978-0-7524-9952-9
  3. ↑ Dromana House & Carden: History of Dromana. Retrieved September 29, 2014 .
personal data
SURNAME Villiers-Stuart, Henry, 1st Baron Stuart de Decies
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Stuart, Henry
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British nobleman and politician, member of the House of Commons
DATE OF BIRTH June 8, 1803
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH January 23, 1874
Place of death Dromana