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Tag Archives: 1830 United Kingdom General Election


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Death of Lord George Augusta Hill

Lord George Augusta Hill, Anglo-Irish military officer, politician and landowner, dies in Ramelton, County Donegal, on April 6, 1879.

Hill is the posthumous son of Arthur Hill, 2nd Marquess of Downshire, and his wife Mary, Marchioness of Downshire, granddaughter of Samuel Sandys, 1st Baron Sandys. He is born on December 9, 1801, three months after his father’s death by suicide.

Hill enters the British Army in May 1817, initially a cornet in the Royal Horse Guards, promoted to lieutenant in 1820. He transfers to the 4th Royal Irish Dragoon Guards as a captain in 1825. In April 1830, he becomes aide-de-camp to Sir John Byng, Commander-in-Chief of the forces in Ireland, at the rank of major, but on July 6 he takes half-pay.

Hill is proposed as a candidate for MP for Carrickfergus in the 1826 United Kingdom general election, but withdraws in favor of Sir Arthur Chichester, stating that he had been unaware of the nomination. In the 1830 United Kingdom general election, he is elected MP for Carrickfergus, unseating Chichester. His brother, Arthur Hill, 3rd Marquess of Downshire, is a minor landowner in Carrickfergus.

Although Hill is considered a friend of the Tory government of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, when elected, he is absent from the vote of confidence on November 15, 1830, which causes the government to fall. Thereafter he supports the government of Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey, and its Reform Bill, like his brothers. Due to ill health, he does not contest the 1832 United Kingdom general election, instead supporting his brother, Lord Marcus Hill, who is elected for Newry.

Hill serves as Comptroller of the Household to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, 1833–34, and as High Sheriff of Donegal in 1845.

In 1838, Hill purchases land in Gweedore (Irish: Gaoth Dobhair), a “district” in northwest County Donegal in the west of Ulster, and, over the next few years, he expands his holdings to 23,000 acres. He himself describes the condition of the local population as “more deplorable than can well be conceived.” According to the schoolmaster, Patrick McKye, they are in the “most needy, hungry and naked condition of any people.” Among other improvements, he builds a port, Bunbeg Harbour, to encourage fishing, improves the roads and other infrastructure, and constructs The Gweedore Hotel to attract wealthy tourists.

However, Hill’s attempts to reform local farming practices, in particular, his suppression of the rundale system of shared landholding, proves unpopular and controversial. While his reforms may have protected Gweedore from the worst effects of the Great Famine of the 1840s, as the local population did not decrease, as it did elsewhere in Ireland, his attitude to the famine is uncompromising and unsympathetic:

“The Irish people have profited much by the Famine, the lesson was severe; but so were they rooted in old prejudices and old ways, that no teacher could have induced them to make the changes which this Visitation of Divine Providence has brought about, both in their habits of life and in their mode of agriculture.”

Hill’s book Facts from Gweedore (1845) provides an account of conditions in Gweedore and seeks to explain and justify Hill’s agricultural reforms. It runs to five editions and plays a large part in the bitter public debates about the effects of Irish landlordism. In June 1858, he gives evidence to a House of Commons select committee on Irish poverty. The committee is critical of his actions.

Hill is twice married, to two sisters, daughters of Edward Austen Knight, brother of Jane Austen. On October 21, 1834, he marries Cassandra Jane Knight (1806–42). They have four children:

  • Norah Mary Elizabeth Hill (December 12, 1835 – April 24, 1920)
  • Captain Arthur Blundell George Sandys Hill (May 13, 1837 – June 16, 1923)
  • Augustus Charles Edward Hill (March 9, 1839 – December 9, 1908)
  • Cassandra Jane Louisa Hill (March 12, 1842 – August 16, 1901)

On May 11, 1847, Hill marries Louisa Knight (1804–89), niece and goddaughter of Jane Austen. She had moved to Ulster after Cassandra’s death to look after the children. The marriage prompts a parliamentary investigation into the legality of a marriage between a widower and his deceased wife’s sister. They have one son:

  • George Marcus Wandsbeck Hill (April 9, 1849 – March 22, 1911)

Hill dies at his residence, Ballyare House, in Ramelton, County Donegal, on April 6, 1879. He is buried at Conwal Parish Church in Letterkenny, alongside his first wife.


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Birth of James Patrick Mahon, Journalist, Barrister & Parliamentarian

Charles James Patrick Mahon, Irish nationalist journalist, barrister, parliamentarian and international mercenary, is born into a prominent Roman Catholic family in Ennis, County Clare, on March 17, 1800.

Mahon, the eldest of four children, is the son of Patrick Mahon of New Park, who took part in the Irish Rebellion of 1798, and Barbara, a considerable heiress and the only daughter of James O’Gorman of Ennis. He studies at Clongowes Wood College, where he is one of the earliest pupils, and at Trinity College Dublin, where he takes his BA in 1822 and his MA in law in 1832. Following his father’s death in 1821, he inherits half the family property and becomes a magistrate for Clare.

In 1830, Mahon marries Christina, the daughter of John O’Brien of Dublin. She is an heiress and has property valued at £60,000 in her own right, which gives him the resources to seek election to parliament. The couple spends little time together, and she dies apart from him in Paris in 1877. They have one son who dies in 1883.

In 1826, Mahon joins the newly formed Catholic Association. He encourages fellow member Daniel O’Connell to stand for election at the 1828 Clare by-election. O’Connell’s election, in which Mahon plays a large role, persuades the British Government to pass the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829, which finalises the process of Catholic Emancipation and permitted Roman Catholics to sit in the British Parliament.

As a result, when Mahon is elected for Clare at the 1830 United Kingdom general election, he is entitled to take his seat. However, during the election campaign he quarrels with O’Connell, and after his election he is unseated for bribery. He is subsequently acquitted, and stands again at the 1831 United Kingdom general election, but is defeated by two O’Connell-backed candidates, one of whom is his old schoolfriend Maurice O’Connell, Daniel O’Connell’s son. He gives up on politics, becomes deputy lieutenant of Clare, and captain of the local militia.

Mahon becomes a barrister in 1834, but the following year, he leaves for Paris. There he associates with Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, becoming a favourite at Louis Philippe‘s court and working as a journalist. He travels the world, spending time in both Africa, where he befriends Ferdinand de Lesseps, engineer of the Suez Canal, and South America, before returning to Ireland in 1846.

At the 1847 United Kingdom general election, Mahon is elected for Ennis, and declares himself a Whig in favour of Irish Repeal. However, he opposes the Young Irelanders, and narrowly loses his seat at the 1852 United Kingdom general election.

Following his defeat in the 1852 election, Mahon returns to Paris, then travels on to Saint Petersburg, where he serves in the Imperial Bodyguard. During this period, he journeys through lands from Finland to Siberia. He then travels across China, India and Arabia. His finances largely exhausted, he serves as a mercenary in the Ottoman and Austrian armies before returning to England in 1858. Late that year, he leaves for South America, where he attempts to finance the construction of a canal through Central America.

After exploits abroad Mahon returns to Ireland in 1871 and is a founding member of the Home Rule League. Nearly ruined by his ventures, he even ends up at the Old Bailey as a consequence of his dealings, but is acquitted. He is defeated in Ennis at the 1874 United Kingdom general election, and also at the 1877 Clare by-election. Finally, he wins the 1879 Clare by-election and holds the seat at the 1880 United Kingdom general election.

Mahon is a close associate of Charles Stewart Parnell, who he successfully nominates for the leadership of the League in 1880, but is dropped in 1885 as a party candidate because of his age and his tendency to vote with the Liberal Party in Parliament. He is also embroiled in a court case disputing the will of his son.

Parnell personally ensures Mahon is a candidate at the 1887 County Carlow by-election, which he wins at the age of 87 as a Liberal. By this point, he is the oldest MP in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom. He dies at his home in South Kensington, London on June 15, 1891 while still in office.

Mahon had served alongside William O’Shea as an MP, and the two were close friends. He introduced him and Katharine O’Shea, his wife, to Parnell. After Parnell is named in the O’Sheas’ divorce case in 1890, Mahon splits with Parnell, siding with the Irish National Federation. However, Parnell attends Mahon’s funeral in Glasnevin Cemetery a few months later.

(Pictured: Caricature of James Patrick Mahon by Sir Leslie Matthew Ward under the pseudonym “Spy” published in Vanity Fair in 1885)