WESTENRA, Hon. John Craven (1798-1874), of Sharavogue, King’s co. of The Lodge, Berks. of 13 Conduit Street, London, Mdx.

Westenra was born at Walsh Park, county Tipperary, the residence of his maternal grandfather. One of seven children of William Warner Westenra, 2^nd Baron Rossmore, he grew up mostly in England and enjoyed a liberal upbringing, his father’s conduct to his children being described as ‘ever marked with more of brotherly confidence than parental control’.1Freeman’s Journal, 19 May 1831. Elevated to the Irish peerage in 1801, his father championed the cause of Catholic emancipation and spearheaded a campaign to reform the representative peerage in Scotland and Ireland, serving as lord lieutenant of county Monaghan, 1832-8.2G.E.C., Complete Peerage, xi. 181-2; HP Commons, 1790-1820, v. 518; Gent. Mag. (1842), ii. 423. He also sat for County Monaghan in both the Irish and United Kingdom parliaments, 1800-1. Westenra’s eldest brother, Henry Robert (1792-1860), sat for Monaghan almost uninterrupted between 1818 and 1842, and it was said in 1831 that no Irish family had ‘produced more advocates for the people and their rights’.3HP Commons, 1820-32, vii. 696-700; Freeman’s Journal, 19 May 1831. Westenra’s grandfather, Henry, sat for Monaghan borough, 1771-6, 1796-1800, and his great-grandfather, Warner, sat for Maryborough, 1730-60: E. Johnston-Liik, History of the Irish Parliament 1692-1800 (2002), vi. 528-31.

In 1823 Lord Rossmore expressed ‘high hopes’ of returning Westenra for King’s County at the next election, but the plan came to nothing. In 1830 Westenra proved unwilling to challenge the sitting members, each of whom supported reform, but in 1831 he contested the county in order to ‘remove the stigma of a close borough’ from the constituency. Having been persuaded to express explicit support for the reform bill and ‘the Independent interest’, he resigned after the first day’s polling, citing ‘undue influence’ exercised by the county’s aristocracy.4HP Commons, 1820-32, iii. 798-9; Freeman’s Journal, 7, 19, 24 May, 10 June 1831. He was requisitioned by the Protestant freeholders to stand again in 1832, but stood aside for a repeal candidate, (whom he then proposed), stating that ‘he had no ambition to gratify but that of establishing … the political independence of his native county’.5H.R. Westenra to D. O’Connell, 30 Nov. 1832: O’Connell Correspondence, ed. M.R. O’Connell, iv. 472-3; Freeman’s Journal, 1, 29 Dec. 1832.

In 1835 Westenra was returned as a Reformer pledged to ‘oppose the oppressive impost of tithes’, his father having assured O’Connell that upon his two sons ‘Ireland may depend to the last spark’.6Parliamentary Test Book (1835), 169, quoting Freeman’s Journal, 6 Jan. 1835; A. Macintyre, The Liberator. Daniel O’Connell and the Irish Party 1830-1847 (1965), 59; Lord Rossmore to D. O’Connell, 13 Dec. 1834: O’Connell Correspondence, v. 229-301. He does not appear to have spoken in debate, but supported the ministry on the address, 4 Feb. 1836, divided in favour of the Irish municipal corporations bill, 8 Mar. He backed the government motion on Irish tithes, 3 June, and was one of only 18 members to go further by supporting of Sharman Crawford’s motion for their complete abolition, 1 July. Along with three other members of his family, he joined O’Connell’s General Association in September 1836.7MacIntyre, Liberator, 194; Standard, 12 Sept. 1836. Early the following year he lent his support to the improvement of communication between Great Britain and Ireland via the construction of a railway from Gloucester to Fishguard.8Standard, 11 Feb. 1837. He was re-elected for King’s County unopposed in 1837 as a supporter of Whig ministers although ‘not bound to them’.9Freeman’s Journal, 15 Oct. 1838. He voted against the government on Spring Rice’s proposals for the abolition of church rates, 15 Mar. and 23 May 1837, and divided in favour of the second reading of the controverted elections bill, 27 Nov. 1837. He considered the ballot to be of the first importance to Ireland, arguing that ‘the rent is the landlord’s but the vote is the tenant’s’, and voted for it, 2 Feb. 1838 (and would do so again, 21 June 1842). That month he served on the select committee on the Ipswich election petition.10Freeman’s Journal, 2 July 1841; PP 1837-38 (173) x. 339. Westenra sought definitive answers to what he regarded as the ‘three great questions’ of tithes, the poor law and municipal reform, and in October 1838 justified his support for the Whigs, telling his constituents that they were ‘the only ministry that I ever saw or heard of who have a real determination to do anything like justice in Ireland’.11Freeman’s Journal, 15 Oct. 1838. In January 1839 he joined those condemning the assassination of Lord Norbury in King’s County, but defended the local Catholic clergy against the charge that they had exacerbated the violence.12Freeman’s Journal, 24 Jan. 1839. He opposed a motion for a committee of the House to consider the corn laws, 18 Mar. 1839, supported the government over its Canadian policy, 7 Mar., and backed Lord John Russell’s endorsement of the conduct of the Irish administration, 19 Apr. 1839.

Westenra acquired some business interests, sitting on the provisional committee of a company formed in 1840 to supply water to London.13PP 1840 (354) xii. 159 [22]. Having opposed Stanley’s Irish registration bill, 26 Mar. 1840, and backed the ministry over its policy towards China, 9 Apr. 1840, he supported Lord Morpeth’s Irish registration bill, 23 Feb., 28, 29 Apr. 1841, and opposed Lord Sandon’s motion condemning the reduction of duty on foreign sugar, 18 May. He backed the Liberal ministry in a confidence vote, 4 June, and, after helping to secure the return of a second Liberal for King’s County in February 1841, his parliamentary conduct was deemed ‘unobjectionable’.14Freeman’s Journal, 22 Feb. 1841. He was therefore re-elected unopposed for King’s County at the 1841 general election and duly supported the Liberal government when the amendment on the address was carried against the ministry, 27 Aug. 1841.15Freeman’s Journal, 2 July 1841.

Westenra’s first wife, Lady East, a sister of Hylton Jolliffe MP for Petersfield, had died in London in December 1838 and he remarried at Worthing in July 1842.16Morning Post, 2 Apr. 1834; Freeman’s Journal, 21 Dec. 1838; R.B. Mosse, The Parliamentary Guide (1836), 228-9. Shortly afterwards he inherited ‘immense’ estates in Monaghan and King’s County from his father, who also bequeathed him his paintings ‘of favourite dogs, horses, &c., and hunting pictures’.17Royal Cornwall Gazette, 29 July 1842; Standard, 23 Dec. 1843, quoting Britannia. In spite of his position as a landed proprietor he supported a motion to reconsider the question of corn importation, 16 Feb. 1842, and backed a motion to revise customs duty on livestock, 23 May 1842. He paired in favour of committees of the House to consider Irish grievances, 12 July 1843, the state of Ireland, 23 Feb. 1844, and Irish Church temporalities, 12 June, but refused all invitations to commit himself to repeal.18Freeman’s Journal, 6 Aug. 1844; Belfast News-letter, 9 Aug. 1844. He paired in support of the reduction of duty on colonial sugar, 14 June 1844, and voted for the third reading of the Maynooth College bill, 21 May 1845, but his enthusiasm for parliamentary life appears to have waned by this time.19Morning Post, 17 June 1844. Despite having supported a revision of the corn laws in February 1842, he was one of only 30 MPs (16 of whom represented Irish constituencies) who did not vote in any of the divisions on the corn importation bill.20Morning Post, 26 Jan. 1844; The Times, 19 May 1846. He also failed to vote on the second reading of the Irish coercion bill, 26 June 1846, which precipitated the resignation of Peel’s ministry. He encountered personal misfortune in September 1846 when he accidently discharged his fowling piece while hunting, killing his close friend, Amos P. Doolan of Derry House, Shinrone. Although a verdict of accidental death was quickly returned by a coroner’s jury, Westenra left Ireland for England to assuage the ‘agony of mind’ the tragedy had caused him.21Morning Post, 26 Sept. 1846; Freeman’s Journal, 28 Sept. 1846.

Despite having become a director of the London and Manchester Railway in 1845, and a year later joined the management committee of the Larne, Belfast and Ballymena Railway, Westenra did not participate in the division on Lord George Bentinck’s Irish railways bill, 16 Feb. 1847.22Leicester Chronicle, 9 Aug. 1845; PP 1846 (495) xii. 547 [7]. He also sat on the provisional committees of the Thetford, Bury St. Edmunds and Newmarket Railway and the Great North Junction Railway: Morning Post, 4 Oct. 1845; Belfast News-letter, 31 Oct. 1845. Nevertheless, he was returned again for King’s County without opposition at the 1847 general election, this time offering more conditional support for the Whig ministry.23B. Walker, ‘Politicians, Elections and Catastrophe: The General Election of 1847’, Irish Political Studies, 22:1 (2007), 1-34, at 25. Although ‘of the pure Whig school’, he was one of the first non-repealers to join the Irish National Council in September 1847, but does not appear to have contributed towards its deliberations.24Freeman’s Journal, 28 Sept., 7 Oct. 1847. He took no part in the divisions on the Irish coercion bills in 1847-9 and did not divide at all in the 1849 session.25Hampshire Telegraph, 20 Oct. 1849. He was routinely absent from controversial divisions in 1850-2, being one of the ‘disgracefully numerous’ Irish representatives who failed to vote on the ecclesiastical titles bill.26J.H. Whyte, The Independent Irish Party, 1850-9 (1958), 179; Freeman’s Journal, 12 May 1851. Thereafter he became increasingly unpopular with the independent electors of King’s County, being castigated for not having had ‘the courage to take their side with the penal-law ministry, nor the honesty to vote against them’, and accused on account of his absence of showing either ‘hostility or indifference’ to William Sharman Crawford’s tenant-right bill, 5 May 1852.27Freeman’s Journal, 21 Feb., 8 May 1852. Charged with having ‘scarcely ever troubled the House of Commons’ in recent years, and with little hope of being returned against the ‘independent’ interest, he retired at the 1852 general election citing ill health.28Freeman’s Journal, 11 June 1852; Morning Post, 3 July 1852; The Times, 5 Mar. 1852.

Westenra was an active magistrate and took a leading part in the investigation of serious crimes, including several agrarian murders.29Freeman’s Journal, 22 Oct. 1847; Morning Chronicle, 4 Jan. 1860. He was himself directly affected by the social unrest which took place in his neighbourhood in the aftermath of the Famine, his and his wife’s lives being threatened in 1847 and 1858.30Freeman’s Journal, 31 Dec. 1847, 15 Jan. 1858; Morning Post, 7 May, 8 July 1858. His land agent was fired upon in December 1852: Morning Post, 11 Dec. 1852. He also suffered financial losses in these years and sold some of his lands in King’s County in the incumbered estates court in April 1853.31Morning Chronicle, 18 Apr. 1853.

Westenra was a keen yachtsman and was for many years master of the King’s County and Ormond hunts. A popular and influential member of the Irish Turf Club, he was one of the foremost horse trainers and breeders in Ireland.32Isle of Wight Observer, 2 July 1859; Mosse, Parliamentary Guide, 229; P.F. Meehan, The Members of Parliament for Laois and Offaly (Queen’s and King’s Counties), 1801-1918 (1983), 128. He was largely responsible for having Edward Ruthven MP expelled from the club for misconduct in 1837, see Examiner, 20 Aug. 1837. He died after a short illness at Roscrea in December 1874 and was buried in Ettagh church yard. He was survived by his second wife and his daughter, Mary Anne Wilmot (1847-94), who had married Francis Hastings, the only son and heir of the 13^th earl of Huntingdon, in 1867.33Belfast News-letter, 7 Dec. 1834; Pall Mall Gazette, 8 Dec. 1874; Morning Post, 8 Dec. 1874; Meehan, Members of Parliament for Laois and Offaly, 128; Standard, 22 May 1885; Huddersfield Daily Chronicle, 18 Dec. 1894.