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Charles William Stewart, 3d Marquess of Londonderry

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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CHARLES WILLIAM STEWART (VANE), LONDONDERRY 3RD Marquess Of (1778-1854), British soldier and diplomatist, was the son of the 1st marquess by a second marriage with the daughter of the 1st Earl Camden. He entered the army and served in the Netherlands (1794) on the Rhine and Danube (1795), in the Irish rebellion (1798), and Holland (1799), rising to be colonel; and having been elected to parliament for Kerry he became under secretary for war under his half-brother Castlereagh in 1807. In 1808 he was given a cavalry command in the Peninsula, where he brilliantly distinguished himself. In 1809, and again in the campaigns of 1810, 1811, having become a major-general, he served under Wellington in the Peninsula as his adjutant-general, and was at the capture of Ciudad Rodrigo, but at the beginning of 1812 he was invalided home. Castlereagh (see Londonderry, 2nd Marquess of) then sent him to Berlin as minister, to represent Great Britain in the allied British, Russian and Prussian armies: and as a cavalry leader he played an important part in the subsequent fighting, while ably seconding Castlereagh's diplomacy. In 1814 he was made a peer as Baron Stewart, and later in the year was appointed ambassador at Vienna, and was a member of the important congresses which followed. In 1822 his halfbrother's death made him 3rd marquess of Londonderry, and shortly afterwards, disagreeing with Canning, he resigned, being created Earl Vane (1823), and for some years lived quietly in England, improving his Seaham estates. In 1835 he was for a short time ambassador at St Petersburg. In 1852, after the death of Wellington, when he was one of the pall-bearers, he received the order of the Garter. He died on the 6th of March 1854. He was twice married, first in 1808 to the daughter of the earl of Darnley, and secondly in 1819 to the heiress of Sir Harry Vane-Tempest (a descendant of Sir Piers Tempest, who served at Agincourt, and heir to Sir Henry Vane, Bart.), when he assumed the name of Vane. Frederick William Robert (1805-1872), his son by the first marriage, became 4th marquess; and on the latter's death in 1872, George Henry (1821-1884), the eldest son by the second marriage, after succeeding as Earl Vane (according to the patent of 1823), became 5th marquess. In 1884 he was succeeded as 6th marquess by his son Charles Stewart Vane-Tempest-Stewart (b. 1852), a prominent Conservative politician, who was viceroy of Ireland(1886-1889), chairman of the London School Board (1895-1897), postmaster-general (1900-1902), president of the Board of Education (1902-1905) and lord president of the Council (1903-1905).