Co. Tyrone

<p>Dungannon was a close borough under the control of Thomas Knox, 1st Viscount Northland, who owned the whole of it in fee. He intended it primarily for members of his family, but difficulties arose. His son John, returned at the Union, had been lost at sea before the date of his return,<fn><em>The Times</em>, 6 Feb. 1801. For this reason, John Knox is omitted from the biographical section.</fn> though the news of it came later. Northland substituted Sir Charles Hamilton, third cousin of his principal ally, the Marquess of Abercorn.

<p>Dungannon, in the parish of Drumglass, just south of Lough Neagh, may have been ‘spacious, handsome and well built’, but with declining linen and grain trades it was not reckoned to be particularly prosperous. The whole was the property of the head of the Knox family of Northland House, situated to the east of the town, who was also the lord of the manor. This, since he had succeeded his father in 1818, was the 2nd Viscount Northland, one of the handful of freemen of the borough.