Footnotes

ʻGENERAL GOVERNOR OF THAT PART OF OUR UNITED KINGDOM CALLED IRELAND' – Marquess Wellesley's instructions as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.

Wellesley's Irish administration started with high hopes: ʻWellesley's support for Catholic emancipation suggested that, in the short run, he was in a position to allay the religious and social discontent which spread rapidly in the aftermath of the war. At the same time he was popular with Irish protestants, who saw him and Wellington as two of their own, and had conspicuously benefited from the military and political offices created by the brothers all over the British empire and in the Iberian peninsula. This fund of goodwill was, however, rapidly exhausted in a country lurching again towards political violence, where the clandestine resistance of Ribbonmen and Whiteboys was matched by the public display of power of the Orange lodges. A few months after his arrival in January 1822 Wellesley was already in bad odour in Dublin when he attempted, through the lord mayor of the city, to prohibit the annual garlanding of the statue of William III, which constituted the classic demonstration of Orange triumphalism. A riot followed and troops were called out. Later, Wellesley was insulted in public and narrowly missed injury from a flying bottle thrown at him in the theatre. He responded by prosecuting those he regarded as responsible for these incidents. But the Dublin grand jury threw out the charges and the Irish administration very nearly stood condemned for its policy in the Commons... Worse, Wellesley's grip over business was visibly weakening. His "pretentious yet penurious" administration... courted public ridicule. In a pathetic throwback to his Indian durbars, he dressed up his attendants in silver lace and required heralds to accompany him to the viceregal chapel in Dublin Castle... It is doubtful, of course, whether even a more dynamic and less self-indulgent politician could have proceeded much further. The artificial boom which had concealed Irish poverty during the French wars had ended abruptly in 1816. Irish manufacturing was withering away without tariff protection, its food supply dangerously dependent on a single crop, the potato. The shift of political power to London following the union had only exacerbated the kingdom's sense of marginality and malaise' (C. A. Bayly, ODNB). Wellesley was to continue in office until 1828, when his brother, the Duke of Wellington, became Prime Minister on the death of Canning, and to resume the post briefly in 1832-4. Ironically, it was Wellington, the die-hard defender of the Protestant Ascendancy, rather than his more liberal-minded brother, who was to bring in Catholic emancipation, when faced by the threat of civil war.