RAWDON, George (1604-84), of Rawdon Hall, Guiseley, Yorks. and Moira, co. Down.

George Rawdon came from a gentry family long established at Rawdon, near Leeds, where he continued to have landed interests and strong affections throughout his lifetime, generally signing himself as ‘of Rawdon, Yorks’.31Vis. Yorks. 1584-5 and 1612, 565; CSP Ire. 1647-60, pp. 267-8. Rawdon was sent to attend the royal court by his father in the early 1620s, and in 1625, when he was 21, he entered the service of the former secretary of state, the 1st Viscount Conway, and was soon acting as the peer’s secretary and confidant.32CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 54; CSP Dom. 1627-8, p. 496; 1631-3, p. 162. An important part of Rawdon’s remit was the management and supervision of the Conway estates in east Ulster, and it was this that first brought him to Ireland, probably before 1627. For the next 14 years, Rawdon travelled backwards and forwards between Ulster and England, attending the Conway family or acting as their land agent. In 1632, for example, he lodged with the 2nd Viscount Conway at Durham House in Westminster, before journeying to the viscount’s estates in Warwickshire; he had returned to London by the spring of 1633, whence he accompanied Conway to Scotland for the coronation of Charles I in Edinburgh, before returning to Ireland.33CSP Dom. 1631-3, pp. 282, 389, 403; 1633-4, pp. 140-1; CSP Ire. 1633-47, pp. 10, 13. In 1635, when Conway planned to go abroad, he made Rawdon manager of his estate and business affairs by letter of attorney; and in 1636 Rawdon had custody of the Conway children while their father was on naval duty.34CSP Dom. 1635-6, pp. 55, 546; 1625-49, p. 537.

As well as acting as Conway’s factotum in Ireland and England, Rawdon spent the 1630s improving his own position financially and socially. Although his private affairs are difficult to disentangle from those of the Conways in the surviving correspondence, it is clear that Rawdon had already begun to invest in Ireland by the mid-1630s. He was engaged in some business with the Carrickfergus merchant, John Davies* in 1635, and it is likely that he had acquired his own landed estate, at Moira in co. Down, by the same year.35CSP Dom. 1635, pp. 471, 526; Ire. under the Commonwealth, i. 41n. In 1636 Rawdon began an ambitious project to build a new mansion for himself at Brook Hill near Lisburn.36SP16/316, f. 189. By 1640 Rawdon had become rather more financially secure than his master, leasing various manors in Down and Antrim from the Conways in an attempt to offset their accumulated debts of over £3,600.37CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 245. Rawdon’s association with the Conways also brought him into contact with a range of Ulster landowners, such as Viscount Chichester, Lord Grandison, the 1st and 2nd earls of Antrim, Viscount Drogheda and Lord Cromwell.38CSP Ire. 1633-47, pp. 81, 94, 108, 159, 162; CSP Dom. 1635, p. 426. He also made friends with the co. Down planter, Arthur Hill* of Hillsborough, with whom he planned a joint-business venture in 1637, and whose relative by marriage, Ursula Hill (widow of Francis Hill of Castle Eagle), was Rawdon’s first wife.39CSP Ire. 1633-47, pp. 125, 174; CB. Rawdon’s position in Conway’s household gave him privileged access to the English court. In 1636 Sir Robert Harley relied on Rawdon for news from Whitehall, and in the same year Rawdon was sending regular doses of London gossip to Conway in Warwickshire.40CSP Dom. 1635-6, p. 385; 1625-49, p. 530. Rawdon’s usefulness can be seen in the number of requests for help he received in the mid-1630s from those anxious for him to intercede with the great and the good at Whitehall.41SP16/286, f. 9; SP16/343, f. 212; CSP Dom. 1635-6, p. 249.

Rawdon had returned to Ireland by the summer of 1639, and the following year he was elected to the Irish Parliament as MP for Belfast.42CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 220; McGrath, Biographical Dict. While resident in Dublin in 1640-1 he continued to manage Conway’s affairs.43CSP Ire. 1633-47, pp. 245, 247. With the onset of the Irish rebellion in October 1641 Rawdon became a full-time soldier, and soon acquired a reputation for skill at arms. When Lisburn was suddenly attacked by Sir Phelim O’Neill’s forces in early November 1641, Rawdon, who commanded a troop in Viscount Conway’s regiment, led a counter-attack, and the Irish were ‘so manly charged ... that they were beaten out of the town’.44CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 351; 1647-60, pp. 360-1. In revenge, O’Neill burnt down Rawdon’s ‘fine house at Brook Hill’ on the following day.45Warr in Ire. ed. Hogan, 12-13. In 1642-4 Rawdon served with his regiment in the Ulster army commanded by Major-general Monro, and joined the majority of the Ulster Protestants in rejecting the cessation of arms of September 1643, and with it the authority of the marquess of Ormond as the king’s new lord lieutenant. As a result, Rawdon also became distanced from his friends in the Conway family, who remained loyal to the king. Early in 1644, Viscount Conway’s regiment was reassigned to Arthur Hill, and Rawdon was promoted to major, and was stationed in the border area around Armagh.46Bodl. Carte 12, f. 173. When Monro’s forces engaged the earl of Castlehaven’s Irish army later in that year, Rawdon again proved his worth: ‘after a smart bout with the Irish horse ... [he] put them to retreat.47Warr in Ire. ed. Hogan, 40. In 1645 Rawdon joined Monro’s advance into western Ulster and Connaught, and in early 1646 he had returned to Belfast, where he attended Parliament’s Ulster commissioners, Sir Robert King*, Arthur Annesley* and William Beale.48CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 402; Bodl. Carte 17, f. 104.

Despite his service in the British forces in the north of Ireland, and his high-level contacts with the parliamentarian commanders in Ulster, Rawdon retained some sympathies with Ormond. His rejection of the cessation of arms of 1643 was clearly made with some reluctance, as he called the renewal of hostilities in Ulster ‘the fatal day for this kingdom’.49CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 262. In August 1644 Rawdon greeted news of possible negotiations between king and Parliament in England with enthusiasm, and he maintained amicable relations with Ormond’s commanders on the Ulster/Leinster border.50Bodl. Carte 12, ff. 204, 334. In the early months of 1646, Rawdon became involved in Parliament’s attempts to persuade Ormond to abandon his negotiations with the Confederate Irish, acting as an agent between Belfast and Dublin. In early April Ormond demanded that the Ulster commissioners reply to his letters sent in January, adding that Rawdon had told his ally, Sir Maurice Eustace, that they had indeed been received at Belfast.51Bodl. Carte 17, f. 104. In the same month, Rawdon was again in correspondence with Eustace, and through him advised Ormond to strike a deal before Parliament won the English civil war.52Bodl. Carte 17, f. 137. Soon afterwards, Rawdon was sent by the Ulster commissioners to convey letters to Ormond at Dublin, as part of the attempt to persuade the king’s lord lieutenant not to make peace with the Confederates.53CSP Ire. 1633-47, pp. 522-3. But it was already too late. Under increasing military pressure, Ormond had agreed a peace treaty with the Irish in March 1646, although it was not made public until the following August.

After the failure of his embassy to Ormond, Rawdon became agent to Westminster on behalf the Ulster army, working with Arthur Hill. He had arrived at Chester on 26 April, and by June had begun to lobby the Star Chamber Committee of Irish Affairs at Westminster.54CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 464. During the months that followed, Rawdon obtained money to buy horses for Hill’s regiment, and made his own requests for the repayment of sums he had paid for the defence of Ulster earlier in the 1640s.55CSP Ire. 1633-47, pp. 464, 473, 490, 526-7. By October Rawdon had been joined in London by Hill and the Ulster commissioner, Sir Robert King, among others, who took in hand the allocation of supplies bound for Ulster and Connaught.56CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 532. Rawdon was still in England in February 1647, when the Derby House Committee of Irish Affairs sent him to attend Sir Thomas Fairfax*, with an urgent request for two more New Model regiments to be sent to Ireland.57CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 525. The absence of Rawdon and Hill gave their Ulster rival, John Davies*, the opportunity to stir up trouble, and he reported to Sir Philip Percivalle* in January 1647 that ‘the whole country is incensed against Arthur Hill and George Rawdon and are inclined to write to the committee to require them to their charges’.58HMC Egmont, i. 353. Davies’s complaints do not seem to have been shared by others in Ulster: in February, when the officers of the province chose a number of agents ‘for the British forces in these parts’ to attend the Westminster committees, they once again included Rawdon.59HMC Egmont, i. 356.

Rawdon had returned to Ulster by 5 March 1647, and resumed his command.60Bodl. Carte 20, f. 396. Despite his continuing desire for a permanent settlement with the king, in 1648 Rawdon refused to join General Monro and the Ulster Scots in accepting the Engagement, siding instead with the parliamentarian forces under Colonel George Monck*. When Monck surprised the Scottish garrison at Carrickfergus, he was closely supported by Rawdon, who marched to nearby Belfast, ‘and entered the town without the knowledge of any except the governor, Colonel Maxwell, who had given his private consent thereunto’, thus ensuring the capture ‘of both garrisons in one morning without loss of blood’.61HMC 7th Rep. 52-3. Rawdon continued to serve in Ulster in early 1649, but the execution of the king and the success of the royalist forces under Ormond further south soon eroded his support for Parliament, and at the beginning of July he resigned his commission. Although he accepted his resignation, Monck was mystified by Rawdon’s behaviour, and warned him that ‘your quitting will not be so favourably taken as if you had continued your command and kept all right’.62Rawdon Pprs. 177. In fact, Rawdon was not merely retiring: he had already opened private negotiations with Ormond, and on 28 July 1649 he signed a bond for £1,000, promising his future loyalty to the Stuart cause in Ireland.63Bodl. Carte 25, f. 87. The defeat of Ormond’s forces at the battle of Rathmines, just five days later, and the victories of Oliver Cromwell* in the following months, made this a potentially disastrous miscalculation.

In the early years of the commonwealth, Rawdon did his best to conceal his royalist sympathies. He was active as a revenue commissioner for Ulster as early as September 1651, serving alongside Cromwellian soldiers such as Colonel Robert Venables*.64Ire. under the Commonwealth, i. 41. He was again involved in this commission during 1652, and continued to serve in the government of the province – as revenue commissioner, assessment commissioner and justice of the peace – at least until the end of the decade.65SP28/83, f. 3; SP28/84, ff. 296, 300; SP28/85, f. 47; Ire. under the Commonwealth, ii. 658, 671; SP63/287, f. 6; An Assessment for Ire. Rawdon’s local importance helped him to build bridges with the Conway family: in the early 1650s he advised his old patrons on ways to avoid the sequestration of their Irish estates, and, by 1653, he was acting as the 2nd Viscount’s attorney.66SP63/282, f. 108; CSP Ire. 1647-60, pp. 394-5. In the early months of 1654 Rawdon managed to secure the payment of the military arrears owed to Colonel Edward Conway (who would soon succeed his father as 3rd Viscount) and in September 1654 he married Dorothy, Conway’s sister.67CSP Ire. 1647-60, pp. 496, 498; SP63/285, f. 243. Rawdon remained closely associated with Arthur Hill, and he and his new wife became regular visitors at Hillsborough.68SP63/282, f. 95; SP63/285, ff. 249, 253; SP63/286, ff. 48, 129; SP63/287, f. 6; CSP Ire. 1647-60, pp. 542, 622-3, 633. Rawdon also maintained a correspondence with his old commander from the late 1640s, George Monck, and his brother-in-law, Dr. Thomas Clarges*.69Rawdon Pprs. 178, 179-80, 195. Other connections in the later 1650s included James Traill*, Ralph King* and former Ulster royalists including Colonel Marcus Trevor and Viscounts Chichester, Montgomery of the Ards and Claneboy.70CSP Ire. 1647-60, pp. 591, 622, 650; SP63/287, ff. 52, 71v, 147v, 148v.

Rawdon’s emergence as a key player in Ulster politics during the 1650s attracted renewed hostility from John Davies. Rawdon had to defend himself and Conway against Davies’s attempt to increase their assessment rates in 1656, and in 1657 he complained that the ‘meddling tongue’ of Davies was causing divisions among the magistrates of co. Antrim.71CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 594; SP63/287, f. 6v. Rawdon also came into conflict with the Antrim planter, Sir John Clotworthy*, over land allocated to him as part of their pre-1649 arrears.72CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 541. Rawdon’s land-grant in the barony of Massereene, co. Antrim – 2,000 acres were awarded to him in late 1656 in return for arrears of £1,163 – caused a bitter dispute with Clotworthy, the major landowner in the barony, despite attempts by Arthur Hill and Arthur Annesley* to arbitrate in 1657.73SP63/287, f. 6v; CSP Ire. 1647-60, pp. 619-20, 641, 659. As late as 1658 Clotworthy was still refusing to allow Rawdon ‘quiet possession’ of his Massereene estate, and in the spring of that year he took the case to the law-courts.74CSP Ire. 1647-60, pp. 661, 666. One reason for tension between Rawdon and men such as Davies and Clotworthy was opposition to the Presbyterian ministers. In February 1658 Rawdon told Conway that ‘the Scots’ Presbytery ... are very troublesome, and under pretence of their being godly men get encouragement at Dublin which they make not the thankful use they ought to do. They esteem me one of the horns against the Kirk’.75SP63/287, f. 153v. Unlike Clotworthy, who had championed the Presbyterians in Ulster since the early 1630s, Rawdon shared the allegiance to the Church of Ireland of Viscount Conway, and in 1658 engineered the replacement of the Baptist minister of Lisburn with the former royal chaplain, Dr Jeremy Taylor.76Seymour, Puritans in Ire. 171-3.

In the 1650s Rawdon’s energies were largely confined to the affairs of Ulster, but he also kept an eye on developments elsewhere. In March 1657 – during the controversy over the Humble Petition and Advice – he advised Conway to send presents to Henry Cromwell* and Lord Broghill (Roger Boyle*).77CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 631. In early April Rawdon travelled south to Dublin, where he awaited events in the company of Arthur Hill, Viscount Chichester, Sir Charles Coote*, Sir Hardress Waller*, and Sir John Clotworthy.78CSP Ire. 1647-60, pp. 633-4. In May the Old Protestants at Dublin greeted news of the continuing high levels of assessment with dismay, and at the end of the month, as news broke of Cromwell’s refusal of the crown, Rawdon took his leave of Henry Cromwell at Phoenix Park and returned north.79CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 635. In 1657-8 Rawdon was involved in attempts to reduce the assessment tax and to secure arrears owed to officers who had served in Ireland before 1649: issues which drew the Old Protestant community still more tightly together.80CSP Ire. 1647-60, pp. 634, 658, 660. With his wide political connections, Rawdon was an obvious choice as MP for Antrim, Down and Armagh for Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament in 1659. He duly travelled to London, and on 1 April was appointed to the committees for Irish and Scottish affairs.81CJ vii. 623a-b. In later weeks he worked with Thomas Clarges in an attempt to secure an act for the payment of pre-1649 arrears, continuing a collaboration with Clarges that dated back to February 1658.82Rawdon Pprs. 179-80; CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 662.

After the dissolution of the third protectorate Parliament, Rawdon made a rare visit to his Yorkshire estates, and then travelled north, meeting Monck at Dalkeith on 22 June before returning to Ulster by sea.83Rawdon Pprs. 195. The nature of Rawdon’s Scottish mission remains uncertain, although the timing suggests there may have been an attempt to co-ordinate Irish and Scottish responses to the collapse of the protectorate. In the months after his return to Ireland Rawdon took little part in politics, perhaps heeding a warning from Conway of the dangers now that ‘the unsettlement and divisions [in London] increase daily, and the whole game is like to be played between the Fifth-Monarchy men ... and between commonwealth-men’.84Rawdon Pprs. 198-9. He was elected to represent co. Antrim in the General Convention which met in Dublin in March 1660.85Clarke, Prelude to Restoration, 170. Rawdon was clearly an influential figure in this assembly, and he was disappointed not to be chosen as one the official delegates sent to the Rump Parliament later in the month.86CSP Ire. 1647-60, pp. 718-9. Whether Rawdon was in contact with Monck at this stage is uncertain, but he was certainly aware of Sir Charles Coote’s own approaches to Charles II, and told Conway he was hopeful that ‘Scotland are of the same mind’.87CSP Ire. 1647-60, pp. 719. Rawdon eventually travelled to London, as agent of the Irish army, and in early May 1660 he joined Clotworthy, Aston and a number of former royalists in signing a letter to Ormond, telling him that, although the Old Protestants supported the Restoration, they feared they would lose out once the king returned, and asking for guarantees that forfeited lands would not be returned to the Irish rebels.88CCSP v. 12, 22; Clarke, Prelude to Restoration, 295.

After the Restoration, Rawdon continued to be prominent in Irish affairs. He was reappointed to the Irish army in October 1660, and held a militia commission until his death.89HMC Ormonde, o.s. i. 241-337; ii. 187-226. In February 1661 he was included in the general pardon secured by the earl of Mountrath (Sir Charles Coote).90CSP Ire. 1660-2, p. 188; HEHL, Hastings MSS, HAP 20/9. In the Irish Parliament which convened in 1661, Rawdon sat as MP for Carlingford, co. Louth, rather than for an Ulster constituency, apparently as a result of his mismanagement of the elections for cos. Down and Belfast, where a rival party led by John Davies secured most of the available seats.91Rawdon Pprs. 200-1. Rawdon’s friends, like his enemies, remained much the same after 1660 as before.92CSP Dom. 1664-5, p. 257; CSP Ire. 1663-5, p. 528. He continued to be close to the Conways, whose landed interests he continued to protect, and to the Hills, who remained useful political allies.93CSP Dom. 1667, p. 535; 1670, pp. 124, 366; 1672, pp. 90, 184, 617; Rawdon Pprs. 200-4; CSP Ire. 1663-5, passim. Rawdon he was created a baronet in 1665 through the intercession of George Monck, recently created 1st duke of Albemarle.94CSP Ire. 1663-5, pp. 528-9; CSP Dom. 1664-5, p. 257. In the late 1660s the social set at Moira included the earls of Antrim and Donegal, and the 2nd Viscount Massereene (Sir John Skeffington*).95CSP Ire. 1666-9, p. 106. Rawdon used his contacts to push for the rights of the 1649 officers throughout the 1660s and 1670s.96HMC Ormonde, o.s. i. 247; CSP Ire. 1663-5, p. 95; 1666-9, pp. 5, 21, 52, 102, 305; Stowe 208, f. 386. His support for the restoration of the crown and the Church of Ireland made him acceptable to successive regimes in Dublin: from 1673 he served as a privy councillor at Dublin, and in the early 1680s was one of the few veterans of the civil wars and interregnum still trusted by Ormond.97Rawdon Pprs. 273-4; Add. 4293, f. 28v. Rawdon died in August 1684 and was buried at the parish church of Lisburn. Of his seven sons, six predeceased him.98Rawdon Pprs. 15-16, 273-4; Add. 4293, f. 28v. The sole survivor, Sir Arthur Rawdon, became an influential government figure under William III and Queen Anne. His descendants became Barons Rawdon and earls of Moira in the eighteenth century, and marquesses of Hastings in 1816.99CB.