ARMSTRONG, Andrew (1786-1863), of Gallen Priory, King’s County

Armstrong was born at Gallen Priory, the son of a barrister and landowner from an old Scottish Borders family which had settled in County Fermanagh around 1600 and migrated to King’s County in the early eighteenth century.[1]" class="link">[1] His mother was the sister of Frederick Trench, 1^st baron Ashtown, who had represented Maryborough, 1785-90, and Portarlington, 1798-1800, in the Irish parliament, and sat briefly for the latter borough at Westminster in 1801. In 1827 Armstrong inherited his father’s estates in King’s County and Kildare.

Armstrong was appointed receiver-general of stamp duties in Ireland in 1831, and during the late 1830s was an active member of the Liberal Club of King’s County.[1]" class="link">[2] Having received the support of the O’Connellite press, he was returned as a Liberal for the county in February 1841 upon the retirement of Nicholas Fitzsimon, the sitting repeal member, whom Armstrong had proposed at the 1837 general election. His return proved controversial as he was alleged to have resigned the pension he had received following the abolition of his office in 1835 only days before polling.[1]" class="link">[3] Having supported the ministry in the confidence vote, 4 June 1841, he was re-elected at the 1841 general election. He was created a baronet in September 1841 and attended the grand reform banquet given that month for Lord Morpeth in Dublin.[1]" class="link">[4] In June 1842 he gave notice of a proposal to amend the Civil Bill Ejectment Acts which governed the recovery of small tenements from over-holding Irish tenants, but this came to nothing, and from July he paired with James Hamilton for the remainder of the session.[1]" class="link">[5] In 1844 he came under pressure from some of his constituents to declare for the repeal of the union, but urged them instead to ‘perfect the registry of the Liberals’ of the county.[1]" class="link">[6] He voted for the second reading of the Maynooth bill, 18 Apr. 1845, but although he was known to oppose the corn laws, attended few of the divisions on the issue. He did, however, vote for Villiers’s repeal motion, 26 June 1844, and, having been absent from its first and second readings, voted for the third reading of the repeal bill, 15 May 1846.[1]" class="link">[7]

Armstrong was frequently criticised in the Irish liberal press for refusing to vote against Whig ministers, with one of whom he was connected by marriage.[1]" class="link">[8] He had expressed ‘strong opposition’ to the Irish arms bill in 1843, but was characteristically absent from the division which might have referred the measure to a select committee, 19 June, and did not divide on the bill’s second and third readings, 31 May, 9 Aug. 1843.[1]" class="link">[9] He was, however, outspoken in his opposition to Sir Robert Peel’s Irish protection of life bill in June 1846, arguing that ‘trade and manufactures’, coupled with church reform and ‘a full and fair franchise’, would do more to deal with Ireland’s current ‘state of destitution’ than coercion.[1]" class="link">[10] He voted ‘with great reluctance’ for the Whig coercion bill in December 1847 but argued against its continuance in August 1850, claiming that such ‘crude, inapplicable, and vicious legislation’ merely ‘compelled the people to make laws for themselves’ and thus set ‘many of the laws of Parliament at defiance’.[1]" class="link">[11]

Armstrong attended the aggregate meeting in Dublin in January 1847 to discuss famine measures and, having withstood pressure to stand aside at the 1847 general election, was returned unopposed. He supported ‘franchise and land reform’, and warned that ‘good government must be achieved or repeal of the union will soon be echoed from hill and dale’.[1]" class="link">[12] That September he was one of only two non-repealers to sign the resolution of the Irish National Council, which called for ‘a convention’ of Irish members to consider the condition of the country. At that time he was described by the Freeman’s Journal as ‘something warmer in his general politics than a Whig’, and inclined ‘to Federalism’. However, he failed to divide on the second reading of William Sharman Crawford’s tenant right bill, 16 June 1847, and was absent for several other important Irish divisions in December 1847, including those on Roman Catholic relief, a select inquiry into the dissolution of the Irish parliament, and the Irish coercion bill. He also supported the ministry’s aliens bill, passed in response to the Young Ireland rising in May 1848.[1]" class="link">[13] Although he does not appear to have sat on any parliamentary committees, he did join a deputation to the prime minister on the subject of a loan to Irish railways, 30 May 1848, and addressed a cross-party meeting of Irish members on the matter, 8 Mar. 1849.[1]" class="link">[14] He was one of the 50 Irish members who met the prime minister to discuss Irish measures, 18 Apr., and voted for the repeal of the Navigation Acts, 23 Apr. 1849.[1]" class="link">[15] That August he was one of a small number of Irish Liberals who joined repeal MPs in calling for a change in the status of the Irish Church.[1]" class="link">[16]

Armstrong was a moderate attender at Westminster, participating in 66 of the 219 divisions in the 1849 session.[1]" class="link">[17] He regularly attended Lord John Russell’s parliamentary dinners during 1850-2, and was among the 90 MPs who assembled in June 1850 to pay tribute to Lord Palmerston’s ‘independent policy’.[1]" class="link">[18] He supported the third reading of the Irish franchise bill, 10 May 1850, and backed Palmerston over the Don Pacifico affair, 28 June. Having voted for the repeal of the malt tax, 5 July 1850, he opposed Disraeli’s motion on agricultural distress, 14 Feb. 1851, and divided in favour of Russell’s opposition to the equalisation of the borough and county franchises, 20 Feb. 1851. Although he had campaigned against the privileges of the Irish Church, presenting petitions against the ecclesiastical titles bill and voting against its second reading, 25 Mar., he was criticised in the Irish liberal press for absenting himself from other divisions which affected ‘the stability of ministers’.[1]" class="link">[19] He gave steady support to the ministry in its battles with the ‘Irish Brigade’, voting with the government on Irish stamp duties, 7 Apr., income tax, 9 Apr. 1851, and assessed taxes, 11 Apr. He was absent from the division on an inquiry into the state of Ireland, 8 Apr., supported the ministry on the Ceylon question, 29 May, and was one of only four Irish members to side with the ministry on the savings banks vote, 25 June 1851. After opposing the motion critical of Lord Clarendon’s Irish administration, 19 Feb. 1852, he was among the minority that backed Russell on the militia bill, 20 Feb. Having been being denounced by the Freeman’s Journal for ‘retaining in office the No Popery Government’, he attempted to redeem himself with the electors by signing the memorial calling for relief on debts owed by Irish poor law unions, 29 Mar. 1852. He also voted for the second reading of Sharman Crawford’s tenant right bill, 5 May, and opposed the Conservative ministry’s Irish coercion bill, 18 June 1852.[1]" class="link">[20]

Although he faced financial difficulties, (selling a portion of his landholdings in the encumbered estates commission court during 1850-2), Armstrong ‘stated his determination to contest his seat to the last’ at the 1852 general election.[1]" class="link">[21] The electorate was not, however, well-disposed towards him, and he was accused by the Freeman’s Journal of having been ‘at the head of every Whig division, voting on almost every occasion with a sustained indifference to the interests or the wishes of his constituents’.[1]" class="link">[22] Despite expressing support for tenant-right at the Queen’s County election meeting he was not selected as a candidate, the Freeman’s Journal concluding that he had ‘rewarded the Whigs with that constant devotion which is treason to the people’.[1]" class="link">[23]

He therefore retired from politics and thereafter involved himself in the promotion of the Clara and Portumna Railway.[1]" class="link">[24] He died at Chester, where he had recently taken up residence, in January 1863, and was interred in Chester cemetery.[1]" class="link">[25] He was succeeded by his eldest son, Edmund Frederick (1836-99), a Church of Ireland clergyman.[1]" class="link">[26] In 1882 his youngest son, Charles Nesbit (1858-1948), married Helen Porter Mitchell of Victoria, who later became world famous as the opera singer, Dame Nellie Melba.[1]" class="link">[27]

[1]" class="link">[1] Morning Post, 2 Feb. 1863; Gent. Mag. (1863), i. 392-3. One of his forebears had fought with Charles II at Worcester in 1651 and been captured by Parliamentary forces. His father, grandfather and great-grandfather had each served as high sheriff of King’s County: Burke’s Peerage (99^th edn., 1949), 75.

[1]" class="link">[2] Freeman’s Journal, 15 Oct. 1838.

[1]" class="link">[3] Morning Post, 9 Feb. 1841; The Times, 27 Feb. 1841. It was believed that Armstrong, having refused a sum of £500 as compensation, had, ‘after much solicitation’, succeeded in procuring a pension of £150 per annum from the incoming Whig government: The Times, 25 Feb. 1841.

[1]" class="link">[4] The Times, 25 Aug. 1841; Freeman’s Journal, 15 Sept. 1841.

[1]" class="link">[5] Morning Post, 13 June 1842; Freeman’s Journal, 12 July 1842.

[1]" class="link">[6] Freeman’s Journal, 6 Aug. 1844; Morning Chronicle, 8 Aug. 1844.

[1]" class="link">[7] Morning Post, 26 Jan. 1846; Examiner, 28 Feb. 1846.

[1]" class="link">[8] In 1833 his brother-in-law had married the daughter of earl Granville: Gent. Mag. (1848), ii. 207.

[1]" class="link">[9] Sheffield & Rotherham Independent, 22 July 1843.

[1]" class="link">[10] Hansard, 18 June 1846, vol. 87, cc. 637-40; Preston Guardian, 20 June 1846.

[1]" class="link">[11] Hansard, 12 Aug. 1850, vol. 113, c. 1024.

[1]" class="link">[12] Belfast News-letter, 19 Jan. 1847; Daily News, 28 June 1847; Freeman’s Journal, 9 Aug. 1847; B. Walker, ‘Politicians, Elections and Catastrophe: The General Election of 1847’, Irish Political Studies, 22:1 (2007), 1-34 at 25, citing King’s County Chronicle, 11 Aug. 1847 and Tipperary Vindicator, 17 July 1847.

[1]" class="link">[13] Freeman’s Journal, 4, 12 May 1848.

[1]" class="link">[14] Standard, 31 May 1848; Daily News, 10 Mar. 1849.

[1]" class="link">[15] Belfast News-letter, 27 Apr. 1849.

[1]" class="link">[16] Freeman’s Journal, 20 Aug. 1849.

[1]" class="link">[17] Freeman’s Journal, 17 Oct. 1849.

[1]" class="link">[18] The Times, 25 Feb., 24 June 1850; Standard, 3 Mar. 1851, 9 Mar. 1852.

[1]" class="link">[19] Freeman’s Journal, 12 Sept. 1849, 5 Mar., 10, 19, 21 May 1851; J.H. Whyte, The Independent Irish Party, 1850-9 (1958), 178.

[1]" class="link">[20] Freeman’s Journal, 14 Apr. 1851; PP 1852 (585) vi. 1 [453-5]; Freeman’s Journal, 8 May 1852.

[1]" class="link">[21] Morning Chronicle, 5 Mar. 1850, The Times, 28 June 1852; Morning Chronicle, 10 May 1852 (quoting Leinster Express).

[1]" class="link">[22] Morning Post, 29 Mar. 1852; Freeman’s Journal, 11 June 1852.

[1]" class="link">[23] Freeman’s Journal, 21, 25 June, 1 July 1852; Whyte, The Independent Irish Party, 52; Freeman’s Journal, 25 May 1852.

[1]" class="link">[24] Morning Post, 18 Oct. 1860.

[1]" class="link">[25] Cheshire Observer & General Advertiser, 7 Feb. 1863.

[1]" class="link">[26] The Times, 31 Jan. 1863. In 1854, Edmund had been arrested and fined for several acts of vandalism in the neighbourhood of Hammersmith: Standard, 2 June 1854.

[1]" class="link">[27] P.F. Meehan, The Members of Parliament for Laois and Offaly (Queen’s and King’s Counties), 1801-1918 (1983), 129.