Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh

“ Throughout, Castlereagh maintained his tranquil ascendancy in the House of Commons, though he had few colleagues who were capable of standing up against Brougham. Canning, indeed, had returned to office and had defended the “Six Acts,” but Castlereagh bore the whole burden of parliamentary leadership, as well as the enormous responsibilities of the Foreign Office. His appetite for work caused him to engage in debates and enquiries on financial and legal questions when he might have delegated the task to others. ”

“ The Spirit of Despotism was a tract of 1795, of which a few copies had been privately circulated with great secrecy. Hone reprinted it, and prefixed the following address to "Robert Stewart, alias Lord Castlereagh" [417] : "It appears to me that if, unhappily, your counsels are allowed much longer to prevail in the Brunswick Cabinet, they will bring on a crisis, in which the king may be dethroned or the people enslaved. Experience has shown that the people will not be enslaved—the alternative is the affair of your employers." Hone might say this without notice. ”

“ Tod Jones (who afterward sent a bullet through Sir Richard Musgrave’s abdomen) .
Lord Castlereagh was the son of Mr. Stewart, a country gentleman, generally accounted to be a very clever man, in the north of Ireland. He had been a professed and not very moderate patriot, and at one time carried his ideas of opposition exceedingly far,—becoming a leading member of the Reform and Liberal societies. [57]
57. ”

“ Castlereagh, now marquess of Londonderry, was again to be the British representative, and he drew up for himself instructions that were handed over unaltered by Canning, his successor at the Foreign Office, to the new plenipotentiary, Wellington. In the threatened intervention of the continental powers in Spain, as in their earlier action towards Naples and Sardinia, England refused to take part. The Spanish revolutionary movement, Castlereagh wrote, “was a matter with which, in the opinion of the English cabinet, no foreign power had the smallest right to interfere.” ”

“ Castlereagh’s conviction was that, in presence of threatened invasion and rebellion, Ireland could only be made safe by union with Great Britain. In Lord Camden, as afterwards in Lord Cornwallis, Castlereagh found a congenial chief; though his favour with these statesmen was jealously viewed both by the Irish oligarchy and by the English politicians who wished to keep the machine of Irish administration in their own hands. Pitt himself was doubtful of the expediency of making an Irishman chief secretary, but his view was changed by the influence of Cornwallis. ”

“ STEWART, WILLIAM (1481?–1550?) , Scots chronicler and verse-writer, born about 1481, was great-grandson of one of the illegitimate sons of Alexander Stewart, earl of Buchan [q. v.] , and was thus descended from Robert II, king of Scotland. He was educated like his namesake, William Stewart (1479–1545) [q. v.] ”

“ I. Robert Stewart, duke of Albany (c. 1345–1420) , regent of Scotland, was a son of King Robert II. by his mistress, Elizabeth Mure, and was legitimatized when his parents were married about 1349. In 1361 he married Margaret, countess of Menteith, and after his widowed sister-in-law, Isabel, countess of Fife, had recognized him as her heir, he was known as the earl of Fife and Menteith. Taking an active part in the government of the kingdom, the earl was made high chamberlain of Scotland in 1382, and gained military reputation by leading several plundering expeditions into England. ”

“ England alone was capable of reconciling all their wishes, and restoring to the various forces the unity which, like the bundle of sticks in the fable, rendered them invincible when united, though each separately would be easily overcome.
Lord Castlereagh arrived on the Continent to confer with Lord Aberdeen, Lord Cathcart, and his own brother Sir Charles Stewart; and from this time the influence of the British legation was complete and paramount. ”

“ Canning had thrown away his chance by his unwise refusal of the Foreign Office. None of the ministers had any pretension to lead when Castlereagh was busy abroad and Canning was sulking at home, and Castlereagh’s letters to Vansittart, the chancellor of the exchequer, show how these difficulties weighed upon him in facing the position at Vienna, where it was imperative for him to appear. At Vienna he realized at once that the ambition of Russia might be as formidable to Europe and to Great Britain as that of the fallen tyrant. ”

“ There is no good life of Lord Cathcart: the Memoirs published on his death are very inferior, and for military details based on the Royal Military Calendar; for his embassy, however, see the Castlereagh Despatches, vols, ix-xii., and Sir A. Alison's Lives of Lord Castlereagh and Sir Charles Stewart, 1862; see also Douglas and Wood's Peerage of Scotland, i. ”

“ Three hundred and thirty years ago, Robert Stewart, a descendant of this house, in right of Marjorie his mother, daughter of King Robert Bruce, obtained the kingdom of Scotland.
Uncertainty.
There are many people who falter and tremble as long as there is any mixture of doubt in their minds as to what they can, or what they ought to do, but who, the moment that doubt ceases, have power and will to dare every thing. ”

“ Castlereagh had returned to office as foreign secretary in 1812, and on 9 April 1813 Stewart was appointed British minister to the court of Berlin, ‘specially charged with the military superintendence, so far as Great Britain is concerned, of the Prussian and Swedish armies.’ He reached the headquarters of the allies at Dresden on 26 April, and signed the formal treaty of alliance between Great Britain, Russia, and Prussia. He was present at Lützen, and was actively engaged at Bautzen; and he took part in Blücher's brilliant cavalry stroke at Haynau on 26 May. ”

“ And lifeless lay upon the common street:
These plagues made no impression on the flock,
And ministers seemed ploughing on a rock. In the five or six years of this dearth, ‘the farmer was ruined, and troops of poor perished for want of bread. Multitudes 200|1698.| deserted their native country, and thousands and tens of thousands went to Ireland, &c. During the calamity, Sir Thomas Stewart laid out himself, almost beyond his ability, in distributing to the poor. He procured sums from his brother, the Lord Advocate, and other worthy friends, to distribute, and he added of his own abundantly. ”

“ On 14 May he received a royal commission appointing him, in the event of Viscount Montgomery of the Ardes declining the charge, to the command of the five regiments in the north of Ireland, and twelve days later he joined the besieging army before Londonderry. In obedience to his instructions Sligo Castle surrendered on 7 July to the Marquis of Clanricarde, and on 23 Aug. he gave his vote at a council of war for defending Drogheda.
After the collapse of the royalist cause in Ireland Stewart seems to have retired to Scotland. ”

“ Intrigue of Stein to get the army straight to Paris, as the Czar wants. The Austrians oppose this: others don't know what they want" (Fournier, p. 361) .]
[Footnote 409: Stewart's notes in "Castlereagh Papers," pp. 541-548. On February 17th Castlereagh promised to give back all our conquests in the West Indies, except Tobago, and to try to regain for France Guadaloupe and Cayenne from Sweden and Portugal; also to restore all the French possessions east of the Cape of Good Hope except the Iles de France (Mauritius) and de Bourbon (Fournier, p. 381) .] ”

“ The investigation which ensued showed that Stewart had taken every reasonable precaution to safeguard the governor-general during his visit; nevertheless, Stewart felt the shock of the tragedy so severely that he was obliged to go to Europe on sick leave. On his return to India in 1875 he was present at the camp of exercise at Delhi in honour of the visit of King Edward VII, then prince of Wales, and in April 1876 was appointed to the command of the Lahore division. ”

“ John Stewart, Earl of Athole, was one of the more respectable of the Scottish nobility of this age. To Queen Mary—whom he had entertained at a hunt in Glen Tilt in 1564—he proved a faithful friend,103 till her fatal marriage with Bothwell, when, although a Catholic, he joined those who crowned her son as king. During the regencies, he lived in dignified retirement, till called upon to make an effort to rescue the young king from the thraldom in which he was held by Morton. A temporary fall of Morton in 1577 left Athole chancellor of the kingdom. ”

“ And what can 23 I do? I’m a Stewart, ye see, and must fend for my clan and family. Then no later by than yesterday there was one of our Stewart lads carried to the Castle. What for? I ken fine: Act of 1736: recruiting for King Lewie. And you’ll see, he’ll whistle me in to be his lawyer, and there’ll be another black mark on my chara’ter! I tell you fair: if I but kennt the heid of a Hebrew word from the hurdies of it, be damned but I would fling the whole thing up and turn minister! ”

“ What sort of material these men would have proved in the hands of the magistrates{181} if Provost Stewart had attempted by their means and the other forces at his command to hold out the city against Prince Charlie seems hardly to be matter of doubt. I was told the following anecdote of a member of the corps, on good authority. Robert Stewart, a descendant of the Stewarts of Bonskeid in Athole, was then a private in the City-guard. When General Hawley left Edinburgh to meet the Highland army in the west country, Stewart had just been relieved from duty for the customary period of two days. ”

“ To protect the life of this man Stewart—which is forfeit already on half-a-dozen different counts if not on this—do you propose to plunge your country in war, to jeopardise the faith of your fathers, and to expose the lives and fortunes of how many thousand innocent persons? ”

“ Few men have taken part in so many important events as did Lord Castlereagh in the quarter of a century that covers his public career; few men have been the victims of such constant and intense unpopularity. ”

“ He was succeeded in the peerage by his grandson Andrew, who was gentleman of the bedchamber to James VI, and governor of Edinburgh Castle, and who in 1615 resigned his title to Sir James Stewart of Killeith, eldest son of James, earl of Arran; Andrew Stewart was subsequently, on 7 Nov. 1619, created Baron Castle Stewart in the peerage of Ireland, and he died in 1632. ”

“ Not only do we ascend to Torthorald’s slaughter of Stewart in 1596, and Stewart’s deadly prosecution of Morton to the scaffold in 1581; but William Stewart was the son of the Sir William Stewart who was slain by the Earl of Bothwell in Blackfriars’ Wynd in 1588. This, however, is the last open murder of one gentleman by another which we have to record as taking place on a street in Edinburgh. ”

“ Stewart, Master Allan, receives the revenues of the Abbey of Crossraguel; his torture by Earl of Cassillis, i. 65-68. Stewart of Minto, his dispute with Sir George Elphinstone, i. 396-398. Stewart of Tarlair, mining by, i. 28. ——, William, stabs Lord Torthorald, i. 415. Stewarts of Coltness; anecdote of the plague, ii. 165; Thomas of, his country-house, 245; his flight to Holland, 448-451. Stewarts of Traquair, and Hay of Yester, feud between, i. 168-170. Stewarton Sickness, a religious fervour so called, ii. 42, 43. Stirling, a parliament held by Regent Lennox at, i. 76 ”

“ A proud man was my father that day, God rest him! and I think he had the cause. I'll never can deny but what Robin was something of a piper," he added; "but as for James More, the de'il guide him for me!"
"One thing we have to consider," said I. "Was Charles Stewart right or wrong? Is it only me they're after, or the pair of us?"
"And what's your ain opinion, you that's a man of so much experience?" said he.
"It passes me," said I.
"And me too," says Alan. "Do ye think this lass would keep her word to ye?" he asked. ”

“ Balfour.”
“How’s it with Alan?” I asked.
“Brawly,” said he. “Andie picks him up at Gillane Sands to-morrow, Wednesday. He was keen to say good-bye to ye, but, the way that things were going, I was feared the pair of ye was maybe best apart. And that brings me to the essential: how does your business speed?”
“Why,” said I, “I was told only this morning that my testimony was accepted, and I was to travel to Inverary with the Advocate, no less.”
“Hout awa!” cried Stewart. “I’ll never believe that.” ”

“ In so far as my riding with you would better your lordship’s defence, I am at your lordships orders; but in so far as it would help to hang James Stewart, you see me at a stick.”
I thought he swore to himself. “You should certainly be called; the Bar is the true scene for your talents,” says he, bitterly, and then fell a while silent. “I will tell you,” he presently resumed, “there is no question of James Stewart, for or against, James is a dead man; his life is given and taken—bought (if you like it better) and sold; no memorial can help—no defalcation of a faithful Mr. David hurt him. ”

“ But the Stewarts, with French approval behind, aimed at the recovery of England no less than Scotland. Windsor might well overdazzle Holyrood. This interest had received many and strong protestations of support from a wide swathe of English nobility and gentry. Lift the victorious army over the border, set it and the young Prince bodily upon English ground, would not great family after great family rouse its tenants, arm them, join the Prince? So at least it seemed to the flushed Stewart hope. ”