ARCHDALL, Mervyn (1763-1839), of Castle Archdall, Lisnarick, co. Fermanagh of 16 Waterloo Place, London

Archdall entered the reformed Commons as ‘an aging, one-armed’ army veteran, whose grandfather and father had sat for Fermanagh on the family interest since 1731.1HP Commons, 1820-1832, iv. 92; E. Johnston-Liik, History of the Irish Parliament 1692-1800 (2002), iii. 103-6. Archdall had been wounded in 1801 leading a cavalry charge in the Egyptian campaign, for which he received a pension of £400, and which in addition to his pay as an unattached general officer, provided him with £593 per annum: Freeman’s Journal, 9 Aug. 1839. The Archdalls had been one of Fermanagh’s ‘premier families since the days of the Plantation’, their estate of more than 30,000 acres rivalling that of the earl of Enniskillen, the county’s leading proprietor.2P. Livingstone, The Fermanagh Story. A Documented History of the County Fermanagh from the Earliest Times to the Present Day (1969), 447; Johnston-Liik, History of the Irish Parliament, iii. 105. A ‘rugged conservative’, Archdall had served as grand master of the Orange Order in 1818-22, and remained a prominent Orangeman.3Livingstone, Fermanagh Story, 448; R. Hawkins, ‘Archdale (Archdall), Mervyn’, Dictionary of Irish Biography, i. 139-40. After being returned for the ninth time since 1802, he was by 1831 one of the two most ‘senior of the Irish members’ at Westminster.4The Picture of Parliament, containing a biographical dictionary of the Irish Members (1831), 8. Identified as one of the party’s ‘violent Ultras’, he had provided ‘a very independent support’ to Sir Robert Peel’s Conservatives, but by 1832 had long been an inactive member of the Commons.5Hawkins, ‘Archdale (Archdall), Mervyn’, 140; HP Commons, 1820-1832, iv. 92.

In October 1832 Archdall presided over a local vestry meeting under the new Tithe Composition Act, at which he took the opportunity to condemn ‘Catholic agitation’ and restate his opposition to reform.6Freeman’s Journal, 8 Oct. 1832. He was returned for Fermanagh without opposition at the general election.7Enniskillen Chronicle, 13, 20, 27 Dec. 1832. However, he did not arrive in London for the parliamentary session until late March and returned to Ireland three months later, having joined the minority of 78 who divided against the second reading of the Irish Church bill, 6 May, paired against Grant’s bill to remove Jewish disabilities, 22 May, and voted for striking out the appropriation clause of the Irish Church bill, 21 June.8Freeman’s Journal, 26 Mar., 22 June 1833; Standard, 24 May 1833; Morning Post, 26 June 1833. He appears to have taken little part in the 1834 session, other than voting against Daniel O’Connell’s repeal motion, 29 Apr. 1834, and is not known to have spoken in debate or served on any committees after 1832.

When, in May 1834, Archdall retired ‘on account of his advanced years’ to make way for his nephew, he was ‘the father of the Irish portion of the House’, perhaps his sole achievement in a parliamentary career that had spanned more than three decades.9Standard, 29 May 1834; Impartial Reporter, 5 June 1834. He did, however, remain active in politics, attending a meeting at Dungannon to support the king’s dismissal of Melbourne’s ministry, 19 Dec. 1834, and presenting himself at the ‘Great’ Protestant meeting in Dublin in January 1837.10The Times, 25 Dec. 1834; Morning Post, 27 Jan. 1837. He was a generous benefactor of the Irish Church in his local parish of Derryvollen, and led the way amongst the landowners of Fermanagh by building a chapel on his demesne, thus prompting the establishment of a Church Accommodation Society in the county in February 1834.11Standard, 6 Sept. 1838, quoting Dublin Evening Post; Livingstone, Fermanagh Story, 232.

Archdall enjoyed ‘remarkably good’ health into old age.12Archdall’s five siblings all lived to between 75 and 89 years of age: Examiner, 21 May 1864. However, having ‘amused himself shooting rabbits’ in July 1839, he died suddenly the following day after ‘the bursting of a blood vessel in the brain’. He was remembered as ‘a gallant soldier, a good landlord … and a staunch Conservative’.13Standard, 30 July 1839, quoting Dublin Warder; Impartial Reporter, 1 Aug. 1839. Having no male heir, he made provisions in his will for his two ‘reputed’ children, but left his residual estates to his brother Colonel William Archdall (1768-1857). In 1863 these passed via the latter’s son to another brother, Edward Archdall, of Riversdale, who had served as high sheriff of Fermanagh in 1813, and whose eldest son, Mervyn Edward Archdall, had sat for County Fermanagh since his uncle’s retirement in 1834.14HP Commons, 1820-1832, iv. 93; Gent. Mag. (1839), ii. 315-6; Livingstone, Fermanagh Story, 448.