VILLIERS STUART, William (1804-1873), of Dromana, co. Waterford of 120 Park Street, Grosvenor Square, London, Mdx. of Castletown, co. Kilkenny

Villiers Stuart was a great-grandson of John Stuart, 3^rd earl of Bute (1713-92), Prime Minister, 1762-3, and a maternal descendant of Sir Edward Villiers (c.1585-1626), half-brother of George Villiers, the ill-fated duke of Buckingham. He was orphaned in 1809 by the death of his father and shortly afterwards his mother, from whom his elder brother Henry (MP for County Waterford 1826-29, 1830-1) inherited 30,000 acres at Dromana.1The Assembled Commons; or, parliamentary biographer (1838), 217; HP Commons, 1820-32: Henry Villiers Stuart. For the Grandison inheritance, see A.P.W. Malcomson, The Pursuit of the Heiress: Aristocratic Marriage in Ireland 1740-1840 (2006), 93-6.

After a short military career, Villiers Stuart became engaged in Waterford politics by campaigning for tithe reform. At the 1832 general election, he questioned the integrity of John Matthew Galwey, the repeal candidate for County Waterford, by revealing the latter’s pledge to vote for the whig candidate Robert Power.2Freeman’s Journal, 8 Dec. 1832. Spoken of by Daniel O’Connell as an ideal ‘Anti-Tory’ candidate, he was elected unopposed for the county at a by-election in September 1835.3The Times, 2 Dec. 1834, 1 Sept. 1835; Bristol Mercury, 26 Sept. 1835. Regarded as a steady supporter of Lord Melbourne ‘both in and out of the House of Commons’, he was a leading member of the Friends of Liberal Principles in Ireland.4Pall Mall Gazette, 12 Nov. 1873; Freeman’s Journal, 13 Jan. 1840. In January 1837 he seconded the address in answer to the king’s speech, arguing that a conciliatory policy towards Ireland involving an Irish poor law and corporate reform might convince his countrymen that ‘a complete and binding union’ with Great Britain afforded the best guarantee of equal rights.5Hansard, 31 Jan 1837, vol. xxxvi, cc.25-8. Two months later, he attended the king’s levee at which a petition recommending a satisfactory settlement of the Irish tithe question was presented.6Bristol Mercury, 11 Mar. 1837.

Returned unopposed in 1837 and 1841, he became an active committee member, serving on inquiries to consider the administration of the Royal Dublin Society (1836), the revision of standing orders (1837), the ecclesiastical and manor courts (1837), the civil list (1837-8), and pensions (1837-8).7PP 1836 (445) xii. 335; PP 1837 (367) xiii. 303; PP 1837 (489) xiii. 323, 361; PP 1837-8 (700) xxiii. 481; PP 1837 (412) vi, 145; PP 1837 (494) xv. 1; PP 1837-8 (648) xvii. 1; PP 1837-8 (22) (263) (621) xxiii. 27, 55, 59. He later participated in investigations of the West Indian colonies (1842), and medical charities in Ireland (1843), sat on the petitions committee (1843) and attended a special committee to coordinate the response of the Houses of Lords and Commons to an assassination attempt upon the queen (1842).8PP 1842 (479) xiii, 1; PP 1843 (412) x, 1; Hansard, 9 Feb. 1843, vol. lxvi, cc.310-2; Hansard, 31 May 1842, vol. xlii, cc.1014-8. In 1845 he served on the committee on railway bills and projects, while at the same time promoting the construction of a railway line from Cork to Waterford, and in 1847 he was appointed to the general committee of elections.9PP 1845 (620) xxxix, 7; Hansard, 21 Jan. 1847, vol. lxxxix, c.207; PP 1847 (6) xlvi, 329. Morning Chronicle, 27 Oct. 1845.

In 1839 he and Thomas Wyse, Member for Waterford city, brought in a bill to facilitate funding for the city’s fever hospital.10PP 1839 (296) v. 527. A consistent supporter of Irish institutional reform, he voted alongside O’Connell on issues such as municipal corporations, tithes and church appropriation, and the Irish poor law, supported inquiries into the Irish administration, church temporalities, and the general state of Ireland and voted for the Whig ministry in the confidence votes of 31 Jan. 1840 and 4 June 1841. A desire to place Ireland’s steadily shrinking electorate on the same footing as that of England became a particular interest. Speaking on the Irish registration bill in 1840, he explained that Irish opposition to the measure was based upon a desire to ‘abolish the evils’ of the current system ‘without curtailing the franchise’. He argued that the costs involved in annual registration would impede acquisition of the franchise by an already apathetic electorate, and recommended that ‘the indefinite wording of the [Irish] Reform Act as to the qualification of voters’ be altered instead. He also supported wider electoral reforms such as the ballot, 1837 and 1842, and extensions to the franchise in Feb. 1838. In 1844, he spoke out over the distribution of Irish appointments, arguing that there was ‘a strong feeling that Irishmen did not get that fair share of patronage’.11Hansard, 19 May 1840, vol. liv, cc.328-9, 16 Apr. 1844, vol. lxxiv, c.26. He, of course, voted in favour of the Maynooth grant, 30 June 1845, and the Catholic Relief bill, 24 Feb. 1847, but opposed O’Connell on the House’s acceptance of the Chartist petition, 3 May 1842. As a supporter of free trade he voted to amend the corn laws in 1842, but was absent from the third reading of the repeal bill in May 1846. He also followed the Liberal line on the reintroduction of income tax, church rates and church leases, and university reform.

Described by O’Connell as ‘a well-formed man of comely appearance’, Villiers Stuart was said to be ‘much liked in the House of Commons’. In Ireland, however, his liberal reputation came to be questioned.12Freeman’s Journal, 13 July 1843; Daily News, 19 Aug. 1847. In July 1843 he had voted in favour of the arms bill, restricting their possession in Ireland, and his subsequent reply to an invitation to attend the repeal meeting in Waterford, in which he admitted the legitimacy of Irish grievances whilst repudiating repeal, attracted strong criticism. Speaking at the meeting, O’Connell discussed Villiers Stuart’s ‘political delinquency’ at length, accusing him of deceiving his constituents and, after declaring that ‘there was not so bad a politician in the whole county’, suggesting that his constituents should withdraw their support for him.13Freeman’s Journal, 13 July 1843. Suitably chastened, the following month Villiers Stuart joined a number of repealers in signing an address to the people of Great Britain demanding recognition of the right of the Irish people to an equal participation in religious and educational arrangements.14Morning Chronicle, 10 Aug. 1843. By 1847, however, his whig sympathies were viewed with increasing suspicion and at the general election he retired on the hustings in the face of a challenge from two repealers, who had unexpectedly came forward. His decision to withdraw ‘sooner than engage in the exertions of a contest’ was, commented the Daily News, ‘only too characteristic of the Irish liberals’. While Villiers Stuart was ‘extremely popular with all who [knew] him’, he did not, it was asserted, ‘appear to be formed of that stuff of which an Irish liberal member must be formed’. Apparently lacking the ‘resolution and energy’ and ‘strong qualities of personal ascendancy’ considered necessary for the difficult game of public life in Ireland, he retired into private life.15Daily News, 19 Aug. 1847.

In addition to the £20,000 presented to him by his brother on his marriage in 1833, Villiers Stuart also acquired an estate at Castletown, co. Tipperary as his wife’s inheritance. An expectation that he would inherit the Dromana estate suffered a setback in 1839, however, when his brother revealed that he had secretly married some years earlier.16His brother’s promise that William’s family would inherit Dromana lapsed at his death, and in 1874 the estate passed to Henry’s son. Malcomson, Pursuit of the Heiress, 164-6. He remained an active member of local society, attaining the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the Waterford militia, and died in Dublin in November 1873.17Freeman’s Journal, 24 Feb. 1855; The Examiner, 8 Dec. 1839; Belfast News-letter, 14 Nov. 1873. Both his sons and grandsons eschewed political life for military careers, though his nephew, the Hon. Henry Windsor Villiers Stuart (1827-95), sat as a Liberal for County Waterford from 1873-4 and 1880-5.