Henry Windsor Villiers-Stuart 1827-1895

Victim, Beneficiary and Follower of his Father’s Legacy

 

 

 ~CONTENTS~

 

2

SUMARY OF THE MAIN PRIMARY SOURCES

3

INTRODUCTION

5

Chapter I: BLACKMAIL & BIGAMY

 11

Chapter II:  INTRICACY OF A SECRET MARRIAGE

 

15

Chapter III: AN HEIR TAINTED BY ILLEGITIMACY

23

Chapter IV: AFTERMATH - MAINTAINING A POLITICAL LEGACY

 

31

CONCLUSION

39

 

 

 

~ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS~

 

I wish to gratefully acknowledge the assistance of the following people without whom this dissertation would be the poorer:

 

· Dr W.E. Vaughan, for his insightful advice, guidance, patience and time as my dissertation supervisor.

 

 

· Dr A.P.W. Malcomson, for his kind and generous advice, and for pointing me in the direction of Henry Windsor Villiers-Stuart, as an interesting and unexplored option.

 

 

· My grandmother, Mrs Emily Villiers-Stuart, for her direction and source of information.

 

 

· Ms Carol Quinn of UCC, for kindly permitting me access to the Villiers-Stuart papers and for retrieving the necessary documents.

 

 

· The staff at Trinity College Library and Early Printed Books.

 

 

· My family for proof reading the dissertation.

 

 

· And to all those who helped otherwise.

 

 

 

I declare that this dissertation is of entirely my own work; submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of a BA degree in History, 2007.

A D C Grubb V S

 

 

 

~SUMMARY OF THE MAIN PRIMARY SOURCES~

 

 

The Villiers-Stuart Papers

The Villiers-Stuart papers comprise of roughly 9,500 documents and volumes dating from 1215-1945, relating to the estate, family and political affairs of the FitzGerald, Villiers, Mason, Aland and Villiers-Stuart families of Dromana, Co. Waterford, Viscounts and Earls Grandison and Baron(s) Stuart de Decies.

 

A section of the papers were loaned to the National Library in the late 1960s but then returned to the family with some difficulty in 1995. In the late 1970s the main section of the papers were tackled by the then Dr Dickson of Trinity College and Dr Malcomson of Queens University & PRONI, who routinely took great pains to sift through the contents and compile a calendar of the collection, which is what now appears at: http://www.proni.gov.uk/records/private/villstu.htm

In 1995 the papers were then microfilmed by Waterford library with copies thereafter held at Dungarvan, Lismore and the National Library of Ireland.

 

Finally in 2004 the Villiers-Stuart family permanently parted company with the collection to UCC, where they are now held in the special collections section of the Boole Library. UCC are in the process of procuring the necessary staff to comprehensively organise the papers, so that finally their entirety can be microfilmed and thus accessed by potentially interested scholars. The final third of the papers cannot be readily accessible until this is achieved.

 

However, due to the kind generosity and patience of Carol Quinn, UCC, the author was admitted access to the nineteenth and early twentieth century section of the papers, much of which are still officially out of bounds. The author visited the special collections library on four separate occasions with Carol Quinn having kindly delved into the papers to retrieve what was needed. Prior to this the author also accessed the microfilmed version in both the Waterford Library, Dungarvan and also on occasion the National Library of Ireland.

 

The sections explored by the author were the Stuart and Villiers-Stuart estate and financial correspondence, 1800-1907; letters and papers, 1824-1874, of Henry Villiers-Stuart, 1st Lord Stuart de Decies, concerning general politics, Co. Waterford politics and administration, and family matters and most importantly, similar letters and papers, 1857-1893, of Henry Windsor Villiers-Stuart, MP for Co. Waterford, 1873-1874 and 1880-1885.

 

The 1876 Peerage Case

As this paper demonstrates, possibly the most influential and consequential factor in the life of Henry Windsor, and in the history of the Villiers-Stuart family since 1803, was the secret marriage of 1826. This lead to the unfortunate Peerage Case of 1876, which was never able to conclusively establish what took place surrounding the matrimonial affairs of Lord Stuart de Decies, and his Austrian wife, and still remains a topic of debate over a hundred and seventy five years later within the Villiers-Stuart family.

 

Under the guidance of my supervisor Dr Vaughan, the challenge presented itself to explore the puzzling issues surrounding the legality and validity of the marriage of 1826, and thus the legitimacy of Henry Windsor Villiers-Stuart. To successfully achieve this the author has had to greatly rely on the evidence produced within the captivating and convoluted Peerage case, which amounts to 255 pages. Included within are letters of importance as well as cross-examination of witnesses.  

 

Miscellaneous

The author has also briefly referred to various bundles of legal papers and letters, which like the peerage case have remained in safe keeping at Dromana. Such documents range from the significant and ‘sealed’ correspondence between Lord Stuart and his brother William over the ‘Promise’ in 1840, to correspondence between curious members of the family generations later, and to various correspondence between family members and persons in Austria.

 

Also worthy of inclusion within the Miscellaneous items are the two books of newspaper cuttings, and while highly interesting, they have been quintessential to the composition of this dissertation, providing the author with a valuable insight into contemporary thinking of the period. The collection was compiled most likely under the instruction of Lord Stuart and then his son, Henry Windsor, who had what could be termed colloquially as media agents, whom forwarded on any cutting of interest and relevance to Dromana affairs. These two historically valuable books have only been recently rediscovered at Dromana by the author’s grandmother, Emily Villiers-Stuart.

 

                                                                              

~INTRODUCTION~

&

~PERSPECTIVE OF HENRY VILLIERS-STUART SNR~

 

While this dissertation shall delve into the tribulations and successes of one particular family and character, consistently lingering overhead will be a range of significant and vast subjects including; law, honour, gender and property. Taking these key issues into account will be pertinent in the understanding of a family who may be classed within the nineteenth century political elite of Ireland. In realising this, the personal circumstances that this essay will examine become relevant to the wider picture of the social and political history of Ireland. Before laying out the path of this dissertation, it first becomes necessary to introduce the primary character of this study, followed by the most influential and enigmatic figure of his father.

 

Henry Windsor Villiers-Stuart was born in London on 13 September 1827, under what might be described as an ambiguous state of affairs. Publicly for most of his life he was presented, arguably falsely, as the ‘Honourable’ and heir to his father’s title and estate of Dromana Co Waterford, this before dubiety arose over the clandestine marriage of his parents in 1826. Hence, his life was to assume a most unusual path of intermittent legitimacy and illegitimacy, being privately cast as a ‘younger son’ by his father, while publicly being accepted, without question, as the legitimate heir. Such tribulation lingered until an abandoned Peerage Case in 1876, which effectively failed to class him in either bracket but which removed him of his Peerage.

 

In essence it appears that the subject of his legitimacy, and therefore his parents’ marriage, was one that caused some considerable confusion and evidently was never conclusively established. It is probable that it was a seemingly inappropriate issue to discuss, but one which ultimately came to bare upon his father’s death in 1873, and the Peerage claim which arose three years later. It is this Peerage case which appears to be the main source of light shed on the topic; with little or no evidence elsewhere of correspondence, deliberation or resentfulness between Henry Windsor and his father. It is a subject therefore which appears to have remained confined purely to the past, and only dealt with in 1876 at which point much of the evidence becomes patchy or even non-existent, making for a challenging historical discussion.

 

What is however apparent from Villiers-Stuart’s life, which it seems he derived in some way from his father, was a benevolent like attitude to those who were less fortunate than himself. Whether on his own estate, in parliament, or abroad, be it the labourer of Ireland whose condition he struggled to ameliorate, or even the Fellaheen, the peasant class of Egypt whose plight he reported to parliament, evidently Villiers-Stuart rarely ceased to put the cause of the ‘down trodden’ before any other. Hence, it may be argued that his life of sympathy to the unfortunate, the ‘underdog’ life which he himself lived in many respects due the doubt surrounding his legitimacy, may well have been a factor in the driving force behind his determination to somewhat better the lives of others. In this, one cannot ignore the influence of his father, the celebrated emancipationist, who played a major role in putting the cause of the disadvantaged Irish Catholic to the forefront of society in early nineteenth century Ireland, and who it seems set a precedent for his son.

 

Due to this apparent paternal influence, it is clear that in order to fully comprehend the life of Henry Windsor, a considered understanding of his father is required within the initial reaches of this paper. It would be unbefitting to exclude him from any analysis of a Villiers-Stuart in the nineteenth century, as he appears to have been an individual who was revered, albeit benignly perhaps, as someone who had left his mark on the history of his country, and who, it has was quoted, had his ‘services remembered and cherished by every Catholic mind in Ireland’. The origins of such exaltation bestowed upon Villiers-Stuart can be traced back to 1823, when at the age of twenty, he was being acclaimed for his relief to the poor and his sympathy towards the Catholic cause was becoming increasingly acknowledged.

 

It was at that time that Villiers-Stuart publicly made himself available to champion the Catholic cause. On 26 July 1825, in what was characterized as ‘the seed of all the after events’, some wealthy Catholics of Waterford hosted a dinner for twelve Protestant magistrates who had shown considerable affinity towards Catholic Emancipation, at which it was announced that Villiers-Stuart was to be a nominated Liberal candidate in the General Election of 1826 against the Conservative Lord Beresford of Curraghmore. This move initiated what might be termed as an historic alliance between liberal Protestants and the ‘well to do’ Catholics of Ireland. Villiers-Stuart, most likely now influenced by the rhetoric of the Catholic Association, claimed that while Ireland’s seven million inhabitants remained in a state of political servitude, peace and tranquillity would not be forthcoming. He, therefore, assumed what was believed to be the role of the ideal liberal candidate, while a strike at the Beresford’s was seen as nothing less than a strike at the very heart of the Ascendancy.

 

Although the Catholic Emancipation cause succeeded in arousing a surprisingly large amount of support from the Protestant gentry throughout Ireland and Waterford, it nonetheless must have initially raised some eyebrows amongst Villiers-Stuart’s counterparts. Nevertheless, whether Villiers-Stuart courted the Catholic cause for personal political benefit, or as the widespread evidence would indicate, out of genuine sympathy, it was widely remembered that his triumph in the 1826 election, was ‘the prelude to the striking off the shackles of disability from his Catholic fellow countrymen’.

 

Villiers-Stuart’s liberal nature may therefore have elevated his popularity among the Catholics of Ireland, but as one of his obituaries revealed in 1874, by presenting himself as the champion of liberty, he was in some quarters shunned by his own class and furthermore incurred the hostility of the ascendant party [Conservatives]. Yet as his own party, the Whigs, were in power for most of the period from 1830-74, indeed politically his policy was arguably a resounding success, for any hostility received from the Conservatives would have been rather inconsequential.

 

With regard to the accusation that his own class shunned him - it could rather be suggested that Villiers-Stuart simply became an element of the new ‘Establishment’, but not without making himself a pariah of his own class. One has only to refer to a letter franked by Daniel O’Connell in 1838 wherein it was revealed to Villiers-Stuart: ‘it will not be forgotten that you…had to cast away the prepossessions and prejudices of ‘your order’, upon which you waged war’. The latter part of his quote was most likely referring to Villiers-Stuart’s affiliation with his priestly allies, who recklessly encouraged tenants across the board to vote against their landlords. Take for instance Dromana’s larger neighbouring estate - Curraghmore, seat of the Beresford’s, whose power base was to suffer briefly from Villiers-Stuart’s policies. It could be presupposed therefore that it was from his daring and astute political strategy, and the popular effect that it appeared to invoke amongst the majority of the ‘unfortunate class’, which was to essentially shape the political path to liberalism for Henry Windsor, his son.

 

Having emerged from the 1826 election politically triumphant, but perhaps socially wounded, Villiers-Stuart relinquished himself from politics four years later to concentrate partially on the management of his estate, but not before courting trouble at the hands of blackmailers on the continent. It is from here that our attention strays towards his personal life, while remembering to consider the impact of this on his son. As such then, although it is largely through the political spectrum that the nineteenth century Villiers-Stuarts’ are remembered, it is the highly perplexing and ambiguous debate over Villiers-Stuart’s marriage in 1826 that shall be the subject of most importance within this paper. But while focusing the substance of the essay on the intriguing yet largely unfathomable issues surrounding the marriage, it is pertinent that such a subject matter should not outshine the other noteworthy facets of what must be perceived as a remarkable sixty-eight years. It was to be a life in which Henry Windsor was to assume an abundance of different roles, including a significant period of his time absorbed as a Liberal politician.

 

Due to the constraints of length it will not be possible to expand entirely on these subjects, or other stages of Henry Windsor’s life. Those that cannot be assimilated deserve a brief mention. For instance, he was a cadet in the Prince Liechtenstein’s Regiment (The 5th Regiment of Light Horse) of the Austrian Imperial Army 1844-46, to ensign in the 26th (British Regiment), 1846-1847 in the British Army, to then becoming vicar of Bulkington, Warwickshire, 1852, and of Napton Warwickshire, in 1855. Admittedly however, the latter three vocations have produced little or no evidence of note. In 1871 he resigned Holy Orders, having arguably been sufficiently boosted in moral terms, enabling him to stand as a Member of Parliament (MP) for County Waterford from 1873 to 1874. It was at that time that he vacated his seat on his succession to his father’s peerage. He returned as MP for Waterford from 1880 to 1885 with a determination to champion the labourer’s cause in a way that could be compared to his father’s espousal of Catholic Emancipation over half a century earlier. Henry Windsor though was not simply a social activist, but also an author, producing several interesting works including a significant parliamentary report on ‘Egypt After the War’. Indeed, when the Villiers-Stuart papers are accessible in their entirety, his time as a benevolent and somewhat unique landlord will deservedly attract some significant attention from scholars of that subject, while letters in addition to interesting books written on his travels across the continent of America, and the fascinating period of his time spent with the people of Egypt further to his official tour of inspection following the battle of Tel-el-Kebir in 1882, although sadly cannot be committed to this paper, will remain excellent material for further scholarly attention.

 

One already has a perception of the most unusual life that this character experienced. In order to find an explanation for this, it becomes necessary, before discussing his time as an MP and Landlord, to further expand on the analysis of his father, whose personal conviction that Henry Windsor was not to be the heir apparent to his title and estates was largely steadfast until the 1860s. Prior to this, the essay, which, aside from it’s wider context, is essentially a story of a man, a marriage and a son, shall examine the two separate but equally important allegations surrounding the previously mentioned perplexing marriage of Henry Windsor’s parents in 1826. The sequence of this dissertation shall be therefore as briefly follows:

 

Chapter one will examine the first unlikely, yet accusatory issue of the Villiers-Stuart matrimony concerning its bigamous nature. Chapter two will deal with the separate issue as to whether the marriage was invalid, for whilst it may or may not have been, the contemporary evidence was unable to prove otherwise. Chapter three shall explore Henry Windsor’s legitimacy, dealing with the impact of this and his father’s change of opinion. Finally, chapter four will assess his championing of the farm labourer’s cause in the 1880s. In approaching the latter chapter, it should be remembered that the somewhat unique policies in which Henry Windsor pursued may be traced back to the influence of his father, and may also be observed colloquially as a silver lining, which emerged from the loss of his Peerage and his legitimacy, with a probable desire not to be overshadowed by his father before him. While this essay shall examine the above, it will ultimately demonstrate to the reader that honour, property and politics were inseparable in nineteenth century Ireland.

 

.

I

~BLACKMAIL & BIGAMY~

 

The initial concern to be scrutinized is the accusation of bigamy, defined as such when the husband or wife of a prior legal marriage was living at the date of the ceremony, in which case the second ‘marriage’ would therefore be considered bigamous or polygamous. In the Villiers-Stuart case, it was established that firstly Theresia Ott, (Lord Stuart’s* Austrian wife to be) had claimed to be the widow of one Leopold Gersch, an officer in the Austrian Imperial Archer Guard, by whom she had two children.  This usually of course, would have raised no misgivings. However sometime after his marriage in 1826, Lord Stuart reportedly fell into the hands of blackmailers in Vienna, who scheming on behalf of Gersch, claimed that the ‘ex-husband’ was still alive, which indeed he was. It followed then that the newly resurrected Gersch, on hearing that Ott had married an ‘Englishman’ with considerable wealth, began to ‘touch’ Lord Stuart for money. It has been proposed, without due evidence, that his bankbook at this time revealed great sums being transferred to a continental bank, far in excess of normal living expenses.

 

So the blackmailers had convinced Lord Stuart, contrary to Ott’s claim, that Gersch was still alive and that Lord Stuart had therefore entered into a bigamous marriage, which would be concealed at a price. Lord Stuart of course would naturally have been willing to pay to avoid distressing publicity, especially at a time when he had elevated himself in the public eye following his much enunciated support for Catholic Emancipation, and furthermore, contracting a bigamous marriage was treated as felony, and would most likely have been punishable by law.

 

However, as proven by the profoundly convoluted and drawn out case of Queen v Millis in 1854, if the first marriage was not deemed as valid, then it was difficult to later indict a subject for bigamy. In this case Millis had been acquitted, having previously been indicted in the Reg. v Millis case under the statute 10 Geo. 4. 34.  He was a member of the Church of England and had married a woman in Ireland who was either a Roman Catholic or a Presbyterian. A Presbyterian minister had celebrated the ceremony, which was arguably within the law, while cohabitation as man and wife followed for two years afterwards. Subsequently while the first wife was still living, Millis contracted a second and valid marriage in England, but in doing so, was later to be indicted for bigamy. Yet the House of Lords, who were widely criticised for their inconsistent handling of the case, unanimously urged after much debate that the first marriage, having not been celebrated by a minister of the established church, was invalid. Millis was consequently acquitted of his charge, but left his mark on marriage law. As Ireland was not a subject of Lord Hardwicke’s Marriage Act of 1753, the rule as to common law marriage was from then on established.

 

Lord Stuart though would not have required an invalid union to rescue him from bigamy, for it transpired many years after his marriage that he had been severely deceived and that neither Gersch nor Ott had revealed the truth to him.  Although they had cohabited as man and wife, they had never actually been married, so whether Gersch was dead or alive became largely irrelevant. As to why the two had never married, the answer may lie in the fact that Gersch, being an Archer Guard in the Austrian Imperial Army, had to present a large sum of caution money before a marriage could take place. Unfortunately for Gersch, his finances had dissipated to the extent whereby he found it impossible to deposit the caution money required by Austrian Military Law.

 

This detectable accusation of misdemeanour against Gersch and the then Ott is awarded further credence with the observation that Ott had given four descriptions of herself before meeting Lord Stuart.  For instance, on the birth certificate of her first child Leopoldine, in 1821, she was described as the ‘widow of the despatch director’ while on the birth certificate of her second child Emil in 1823, she was reportedly described as ‘single’. In the census sheet of 1805/30 she was described as an ‘imperial royal colonel’s widow’ and finally on her passport to England, which was granted by Prince Paul Esterhazy, the then Austrian ambassador in London, she was described as the ‘widow of a Sicilian colonel’. So as to why Lord Stuart didn’t become suspicious of the Austrian, or even think to consider the consequences of any potential transgression, one can only ponder.

 

Whatever the case, for much of his life Lord Stuart had falsely believed that his marriage was bigamous and reportedly only discovered the truth when Lady Stuart, on her deathbed in 1867, confessed to him that she had never been married to Gersch. This, if true, would most likely mean that Lord Stuart’s marriage was not bigamous as originally believed. However, caution should be exercised when assuming the ‘deathbed confession’ as hearsay, as it was never put into writing. Rather within the family it has been popularly professed that from a seemingly guilty conscience, the then Lady Stuart admitted the deceit to Lord Stuart and he naturally passed the revelation on. Yet although there is no factual evidence for such a supposition, Lord Stuart’s behaviour towards his son after the death of Lady Stuart certainly does indicate that he believed his son to be legitimate from then on.

 

As for Lady Stuart’s behaviour, it would appear that her motives for deception were the interests and marriage prospects of her children by Gersch, for they were falsely then believed to be legitimate, and it is possible that Gersch realised the financial opportunity of extracting money from Lord Stuart by presenting himself as a husband than as an ex-partner. Much of the above though might be judged as speculation, and until further evidence begins to surface, it would be unwise not to attach a minor hint of scepticism to what has already been aptly described as a story of blackmail and family treachery more suited to fiction than fact.

 

Following a close examination of the Peerage Case, it is probable that the House of Lords, despite the lack of evidence, were less suspicious of the monogamous nature of the marriage. What appeared to concern the Peers more was the Catholic marriage of 1826, due to the mixed religious nature of the couple, and the paucity of evidence forthcoming of the marriage ceremony. An investigation of this is therefore required in order to fully comprehend the nature of the accusation of invalidity, which in hindsight might be regarded as the underlying source of Villiers-Stuart’s supposed illegitimacy.

 

 

II

 

~INTRICACY OF A SECRET MARRIAGE~

                    

To examine the marriage itself it becomes necessary to refer back to 1825 and thereafter, when Lord Stuart met Madame de Ott; mother of Henry Windsor. Sometime shortly before 12 January 1826, she travelled from Austria to London to marry him in comparative secrecy. Yet due to the fact that he was courting Catholic Emancipation in 1826, Lord Stuart could scarcely have chosen a more foolish moment and a more unsuitable prospect to marry, and could not have invited a more unique and trouble provoking set of circumstances. Lord Stuart was a Protestant Anglo-Irishman, Ott was a Roman Catholic ‘foreigner’, with the difference in religious affiliation automatically defining the union as a ‘mixed marriage’. Further difficulties were to emerge, especially as he married her in the Roman Catholic Spanish Embassy Chapel, Spanish Place London, under the auspices of a Roman Catholic priest. The latter on its own would most definitely have deemed the marriage void. In addition to the irregularities mentioned, marrying in an embassy chapel held its own problems as there were serious doubts as to whether a union solemnized between a British subject and a foreigner was recognized as legally binding and valid upon the British subject. This made matters more complicated at a period in which the marriage laws of England were highly ambiguous.

 

This all at a time when Lord Stuart would have been publicly well known and with the possibility of provoking accusations over his motives for championing Catholic Emancipation. It would have been difficult for Lord Stuart to deny to his opponents that he supported Catholic Emancipation, not on principle, but because he was under wifely and priestly influence. So clearly the set of circumstances that Lord Stuart confronted himself with, naturally forced his hand in keeping the marriage secret, with the Emancipation card alone making it necessary to marry the Austrian away from Ireland, where incidentally the marriage would have been deemed as valid by a Protestant clergyman. For Lord Stuart though, the most important thing at the time was to conceal his marriage to a Catholic.

 

The well-known Yelverton case, a mixed marriage in Ireland that occurred on August 15 1857, bears a useful resemblance. The parties involved were Theresa Longworth and William Charles Yelverton, he being a Protestant member of the Anglo-Irish ascendancy and she being a Catholic of a lesser social standing. Yelverton reportedly told the curate Fr. Mooney, that he was only going through with the ceremony to satisfy the lady’s conscience, with a later marriage in Scotland being the ‘real’ ceremony, while the two witnesses present were sworn to secrecy and no entry was made in the church register, with Yelverton insisting that the Catholic marriage be kept secret.

 

Likewise, the function of the Villiers-Stuart marriage of 1826 was probably only merely to satisfy Ott’s conscience, she being a devout Catholic, and while it may have been entered into the church registry in Spanish Place, it was never recovered, with the records for that period kept in a seemingly negligent and inconsequential manner. Yet being a clandestine marriage, the ministers performing such unions would presumably have been unreliable and it should probably have been expected then that no record of the marriage was officially recorded. As for the consequence of the Yelverton case, an amendment to the marriage law in Ireland was made which resulted in the Marriage Causes and Marriage Law Amendment Act of 1870. The result being that in Ireland, from then on a mixed marriage before a Catholic priest became valid and lawful, subject of course to the normal provisions of civil law. Previous to this, it was required that for twelve months prior to the ceremony both parties must have been of Roman Catholic faith, but as there was no evidence of Catholicism from Yelverton, the ceremony performed by Mooney did not constitute a valid marriage.

 

Thus the small Embassy chapel at Spanish Place was probably sufficient for satisfying Ott and for keeping the marriage secret, although with all the irregularities attached, Lord Stuart must surely have been aware that his marriage in Spanish Place was to be taken sincerely, but not seriously, apart from the fact that proof of the ceremony would have been needed in the future. This becomes a serious issue of debate when the question arises as to whether there were sufficient numbers of witnesses, the required figure being two, but the evidence only suggests that there was one, that being Ott’s companion. Of note as well, by 1876, none of those who were present at the ceremony were still alive, which meant all that could be drawn from the ceremony after Lord Stuart’s death in 1873 was mere speculation and not the proof that was required.  

 

For an example of a case lacking in proof, which resulted in outright failure, one need only refer to the Lemon v Lemon case of 1840, in which two female subjects each claimed to be the widow of one deceased man. The first of the women was dismissed for failing to produce proof of marriage, furthermore not even reputation of marriage. The second woman was married to the deceased by an unplaced dissenting minister, and with no proof that the two parties married were Protestant Dissenters, or one of them a Protestant Dissenter and the other a Roman Catholic. The claim of the second woman was also therefore rejected, with her marriage simply deemed as unlawful. Hence, it is apparent that proof of marriage was essential, while also important to avoid was a lack of understanding concerning the marriage laws, and therefore the ceremony.

 

Of further interest to this discussion is a letter written by Ott’s companion, Catherine Schwarzel, which denotes that bizarrely it was not until nearly seven years after 1826 that Lady Stuart was to realise that the Catholic marriage was invalid. According to Schwarzel this ‘unexpected discovery’ and the possibility of her children being declared illegitimate had caused much distress for the then Mrs Villiers-Stuart. This, however, is a revelation that should be treated with slight suspicion, but perhaps bizarrely she never thought to question Lord Stuart about the marriage, or that Lord Stuart for some reason decided not to reveal the truth to her about the authenticity of the Catholic ceremony. However, a second marriage that took place in Scotland in 1827, which also reveals scant evidence, would surely have raised suspicions, unless of course she had in fact known that the London marriage was invalid, but that she was certain, without realising the predicament of the 1826 marriage, that the later Scottish marriage had validated it.  

 

Before proceeding, the question should be posed as to why the 1826 marriage was deemed invalid, excluding the fact that there was little or no proof of its occurrence. The answer is found quite simply when one refers back to Lord Hardwicke’s Marriage Act of 1753, which attempted to reduce the number of clandestine marriages. It was deemed pertinent that for a marriage to be considered legitimate, the ceremony had to be first carried out by a Church of England clergyman, with a proper record kept. A clergyman of the Established church could naturally not carry out a union within a Roman Catholic chapel so one has to assume that a Catholic priest and none other undertook the marriage of 1826.

 

As mentioned, in referral to Lord Stuart’s wife, it may be presumed initially that when a foreigner such as Ott had no knowledge of English marriage laws, no sympathy in legal terms would expect to be forthcoming. However, when one refers to the case of Wright v Elwood (date not given but presumed sometime after 1753) where a marriage was solemnized under a false name, it was suggested that for the marriage to be judged unlawful and invalid, both parties had to be aware that it was unlawful. In this case one of the parties was unaware of a false name being used, and therefore the marriage was concluded to be valid. If that argument had been replicated in the Villiers-Stuart case, whereby Ott, ignorant of English marriage laws, language and customs, and naturally coming to England with the intent purpose and desire of having a valid Catholic marriage, then it could well be asserted that as one of the subjects was not aware that the union was unlawful, the marriage itself might have been deemed as valid. Yet even Lord Stuart, in 1826 still a young man, only recently of age and having just returned from residence in a Roman Catholic country, (Austria) may well have been of the belief that he was doing no wrong, or even violating the laws of his country.

 

Yet, the fact that he went to the trouble of performing a further marriage in Scotland, which was valid and legal, would of course indicate the he was initially doubtful of the validity of his first marriage, or rather realised that a second ‘real’ ceremony was needed to legalise the marriage as a whole. In fact as already indicated it was highly likely that his marriage of 1827 was simply an attempt to conform to the Act of 1753 (that lasted until 1836), which required Catholics to be either married twice (A private wedding and a public Anglican one) or just once (in an Anglican church). The fact that Lady Stuart reportedly kept the marriage certificate of 1826 in her possession until her death in 1867 would indicate that the Catholic marriage was of great importance to her, and this as suggested may well have been the reason why Lord Stuart went ahead with a Catholic marriage initially.

 

On further examination, aside from the fact that the 1826 marriage was not the ‘real’ ceremony, it is also likely that Lord Stuart’s apparent laissez faire attitude to the first marriage may have been influenced by his political stature of the time. One only has to look at the example of the Marquis of Donegall to see why. He, like Lord Stuart, was a politically influential figure of the period and in 1822, in order to validate an unlawful marriage that he had entered into, he simply sought to pass an Act of Parliament declaring such a marriage to be valid.

 

The Donegall case arose when it had been discovered that a legal technicality judged the marriage, which had been carried through in a hasty and secretive manner, to be invalid, but not before the birth of seven children and a period of marriage stretching back twenty-five years!  It was eventually a change in the law that spared the blushes of the Marquis and Marchioness of Donegall, and permitted Lord Belfast to become the legitimate heir once again. The reaction to such an embarrassment was met by an amendment to the 1753 act, passed in the summer of 1822, which validated all cases of marriage that had been solemnized by licence before the passing of this Act  ‘where the parties shall have continued to live together as husband and wife until the death of one of them, or until the passing of this Act’. What is most significant here is that Donegall clearly had a considerable sway in parliament, especially among his fellow peers. This becomes apparent when revealed that the amendment to the bill had been accepted by 122 votes to 20. So the question arises then as to whether Lord Stuart had optimistically felt that he would somehow be able to gather the same level of support as the Marquis of Donegall, and validate his troublesome and complicated marriage, if the need were to arise.

 

Although much earlier, another useful comparison can be found in the case of George IV, who illegally married a Catholic by the name of Maria Fitzherbert. Somewhat like Lord Stuart, he was determined to keep his marriage secret, and realised that in the public eye, his priority was not his wife, but that of his reputation. Similarly, George IV must have realised that he was entering into a false union, with the 1701 Act of Settlement making it clear beyond doubt that his heir could not be a ‘Popish Prince’. It was also argued that the King’s mistress, as with Ott, would naturally have taken clerical advice if in doubt about a proposed marriage, and it is unlikely that Ott, as with Maria Fitzherbert, would have agreed to a secret marriage without first ensuring that her church would regard it as valid.

 

Yet in the case of Ott, it is highly likely that she was completely ignorant of the marriage laws of England and most likely remained in full confidence of Lord Stuart, arguably of course not realising that the bigamous element of the marriage would be later revealed. Interestingly despite all the uncertainty over the legality and validity of the Villiers-Stuart marriage, there appears to be no evidence to suggest that any effort was made to avail of the Legitimacy Declaration Act of 1858, which provided the means for determining the soundness of a matrimonial union and also the legitimacy of any offspring which, as will be noted later, Lord Stuart and later his son evidently never availed of. Yet it could very well be argued that Lord Stuart harboured complete confidence in the leniency held by the laissez faire marriage Laws of Scotland, which was not encompassed within the stringent Marriage Act of 1753.   

 

The Scottish marriage law essentially admitted the validity of marriage contracted according to any form between persons of marriageable age, in any place, and without witnesses, provided that there was sufficient evidence to substantiate the fact that the parties had taken each other for husband and wife, and that the marriage was followed by cohabitation, which of course the Villiers-Stuart case conformed to. Furthermore, Scottish marriage law required merely a civil contract, demanding only the deliberate consent of both parties for its completion, provided it took place seriously, deliberately and with genuine purpose immediately to establish the relation of husband and wife. Effectively then a marriage could have been made without the use of any precise ceremony or solemnity. Furthermore it was not necessary that consent be delivered before witnesses either publicly or privately and may have been sufficiently attested by writings, which were not in need of public record. As a result, it was not necessary to procure a great deal of evidence for the Scottish marriage, or largely as well for the unknown and only speculative Irish marriage of 1833, rather it was proof of the 1826 marriage in England, that was encompassed by the stringent Act of 1753, which it was felt Villiers-Stuart would need to obtain if he wished to convince the House of Lords as to his legitimacy, and thus to resume his Peerage is 1876.

 

 

III

 

~AN HEIR TAINTED BY ILLEGITIMACY~

 

As suggested within the initial reaches of this essay, it would appear from the manner in which Villiers-Stuart pursued his life, that his father had entertained at least some level of personal apprehension as to his son’s legitimacy. Such doubt first surfaced not long after the 10 May 1839 when Villiers-Stuart senior was to assume the title of 1st Baron Stuart de Decies of Dromana to him and his male heir. Being under the erroneous belief as to his marriage, the then Lord Stuart wrote to his younger brother William, the letter dated 10 January 1840, which contained what is known as the ‘Promise’, to settle the Dromana Estate on his brother William and not upon his own son. Lord Stuart, declaring that Henry Windsor born from his Catholic marriage in 1826, be brought up as a younger son and that he be ‘divested by the circumstances of his birth to all legal claim to be considered heir at law’.

 

At this stage, Lord Stuart’s view was most likely influenced by the perceived bigamous element of his marriage. The marriage law of the time stated that children born under such circumstances, if in England were considered illegitimate, even if both parties, or at any rate one of them, may have contracted the union in perfectly good faith and in ignorance of the impediment of the marriage. Significantly however this Matrimonium Putativum, as it was termed, was recognised by the Scottish law, which rendered the children of such a union legitimate, even though the marriage itself may have been null. In essence then, a marriage that depended for its validity on the law of Scotland had the effect of legitimizing any child born to the parties before the date at which the Scottish marriage was contracted. The fact that Villiers-Stuart was born from the convoluted marriage of 1826 in London and that Lady Stuart may not have entered into the marriage in perfectly good faith, most likely deemed him illegitimate in the eyes of Lord Stuart.

 

Yet it has also been charged that in exceptional circumstances a special Parliamentary Act or a bishop could provide legitimation if convinced that before the birth of the child the parents had been through a form of marriage which was invalid through a technical flaw, or if the parents could demonstrate that they were unaware of the existing consanguinity or wedlock. This, Lord and Lady Stuart could have done, due to the time spent abroad in Catholic Austria. Such wedlock had been termed a ‘putative marriage’, and in order to afford means to persons about whose legitimacy doubts might be entertained, the ‘Legitimacy Declaration Act’ was passed on 2 August 1858.

 

Yet the doubt surrounding Lord Stuart’s marriage, and more importantly in this case surrounding his son’s legitimacy, does not appear to have been universally acknowledged, or rather perhaps Lord Stuart naturally held no desire to publicly reveal this. It seems surprising however that Villiers-Stuart’s entry into the army and clergy did not raise any suspicions, with Lord Stuart encouraging him to pursue such a vocation in addition to entering him into the church, surely being an indication that he was rather filling the role of a younger son and not that of heir to Dromana and the Peerage. This however does not seem to have been publicly grasped or queried, for right up until his father’s death in 1873, Villiers-Stuart was widely acknowledged as the ‘Honourable’.

 

Further evidence of what might be termed as Lord Stuart’s detachment towards his son’s status was evident once again in 1865 when Villiers-Stuart was to be married to Mary, second daughter of the Venerable Ambrose Power, Archdeacon of Lismore. Rather than being present at the wedding, Lord and Lady Stuart were instead entertaining themselves on the continent with their daughter and son-in-law Sir Charles and Lady Cuffe. Such apparent indifference towards his son’s marital affairs would scarcely have been in keeping if he had been considered as legitimate heir to the title and estates.

 

Despite this, it would also appear that, peculiarly, Lord Stuart did not harbour an entirely consistent stance towards his son, which in indicating the level of ambiguity entertained over the subject, may also suggest that the above evidence has been over interpreted or that perhaps Lord Stuart was in two minds as to whether he could possibly conceal his son’s illegitimacy. Evidence for this may be apparent with the insertion of ‘Windsor’, among Villiers-Stuart’s Christian names, which seems to have taken place around 1850 or thereabouts. Windsor was the family name of the heiress who brought Cardiff into the Bute family. Although not fitting with the sequence of events, this adoption of Windsor by Villiers-Stuart should be viewed as nothing more than an assertion by Lord Stuart of his son’s legitimacy and perhaps more importantly in this case, of the transfer to him of his father’s by-now-remote rights to the succession of the Bute estates, but not without the Marquess of Bute’s Estate Bill in 1853 causing further confusion.

 

Within the Act, Lord Stuart was said to have declared a decree of no issue, which was essentially a statement of his son’s inappropriate standing as legal heir. Yet it was later claimed that Lord Stuart was away on the continent at the time of the Act and therefore could not have made such a declaration, while furthermore the Marquis of Bute was reportedly disenchanted by the rumour of Lord Stuart’s bigamous marriage. If this was the case then doubts must surface as to the authenticity of the Act and the motives of the Marquis of Bute, who naturally would also have been less than enthralled at the idea of an illegitimate heir being in line to his vast estates and title. This is only a speculative assumption though, and is merely an attempt to shed some additional light on the manner in which Lord Stuart viewed his son.

 

Any such dilemma that Lord Stuart experienced over discerning the legitimacy of his son was seemingly disposed of in 1867, after his wife’s apparent deathbed confession. Yet in the same year was the fascinating and rather well known Breadalbane case of Campbell v Campbell, which was a successful attempt to prove the legitimacy of a son. It was disclosed that a Scotchman, John Campbell, serving in the British Army had in 1780 eloped with the wife of an Englishman and lived with her continuously until 1806. The English husband died in 1784. The effect of the judgement of the House of Lords in 1867 was to declare the legitimacy of the descendants of a son born in 1788 to the parties whose marriage was in question. In other words a relationship, which was illicit in the beginning, could mature into a legal marriage, by general repute and conduct, and thereby legitimatise the children of the couple. Once Campbell’s grandson was deemed legitimate, the case took a further successful twist in 1871, which will be observed later.

 

Returning to the deathbed confession and thereafter, it is probably more likely than being influenced by a case in Scotland, that Lord Stuart’s seemingly remorseful treatment of his only son emanated more for personal reasons, with the actual turning point reportedly occurring in 1869 after Lord Stuart experienced a second and more serious heart attack. It was thereafter, having entered into a probably more humble mental state following his ill health, that he was filled with remorse for his treatment of his son. Yet in addition, the deathbed confession had probably opened up to him the possibility of making amends without wounding the feelings of the now deceased Lady Stuart, for although she may well have deceived him over her previous marriage, it transpired that he was highly forgiving of her and probably did not wish to instigate unhappiness and hardship on her Austrian children of whom he was reportedly most fond.

 

So following the death bed confession and his apparent change of heart, Lord Stuart wrote to his brother William in 1870, requesting that that he be relieved from the ‘Promise’ of 1840, which he felt he ought never have made. Two years later, according to a Magistrate named Ussher for the county of Waterford, further evidence had been advanced when he was in the company of Lord Stuart, whereby Lord Stuart made a statutory declaration confirming his marriage with the mother of Henry Windsor, and of the legitimacy of Henry Windsor and his sister. Additionally The Times later suggested that Lady Cuffe, the sister of Henry Windsor, had purportedly proven that she and her brother had always been treated as legitimate, how this was proved though was not revealed.

 

There may have been an attempt to confer to the 1858 Legitimacy Declaration Act, but this was before the turning point of 1869, and moreover there is absolutely no evidence of Villiers-Stuart, like his father, attempting to avail of this. The process, which was carried out in two stages, asserted that:

 

‘Any natural-born subject of the Queen, or any person whose right to be deemed a natural-born subject depends wholly or in part in his legitimacy or on the validity of a marriage, being domiciled in England or Ireland, may apply by petition to the Court of Divorce and Matrimonial causes, praying the Court for a decree declaring that the petitioner is the legitimate child of his parents, and that the marriage of his father and mother was a valid marriage’.

 

Leaving this aside, further weight might be added to the argument by referring to 1872, whereby Lord Stuart entered into an elaborate and successful negotiation to have his son made Vice-Lieutenant of County Waterford on the grounds that his own failing health disabled him from exercising the Lieutenancy. Consequently Villiers-Stuart became Vice-Lieutenant of the county in 1872, while also holding his previous position as a Deputy Lieutenant. From this it may be argued that Lord Stuart must have felt giving such status to his son would help him secure his claim as the legitimate heir, despite the previous agreement or ‘Promise’ with Lord Stuart’s brother, William, in 1840.

 

Upon the death of Lord Stuart in December 1873, it would seem that the tide had turned for Villiers-Stuart as he assumed without question his father’s title, being publicly acknowledged as the 2nd Baron Stuart de Decies. This signified that whatever doubt was initially held within the halls of Dromana about his legitimacy, was certainly not entertained publicly. Moreover, after he assumed the title of Lord Stuart de Decies it was reported that he had a conversation with his cousin, the son of William Villiers-Stuart, from which it appears that he understood that his cousin would not oppose him before the Committee for Peerages. But after Villiers-Stuart’s case had been opened and his witnesses examined In July 1876 and all the circumstances made public, it emerged that Mr Arnold White (Queen Victoria’s private solicitor) acting on behalf of the eldest son of William Villiers-Stuart, interviewed Villiers-Stuart’s solicitor, Benjamin Greene Lake, and intimated that his client felt conscientiously bound to produce the two letters containing the ‘Promise’ of 1840.  

 

Colonel Villiers-Stuart and his solicitor appear to have taken the view that as Lord Stuart had been, until a late period of his life, under the impression that his son was illegitimate and had not treated him as his heir, it was not right that the committee should be lead to believe that he had from an early age always treated Henry Windsor as his legitimate son and heir. The Colonel’s motives however, probably stemmed from the umbrage held by the Castletown (Kilkenny) Villiers-Stuarts’ who reportedly harboured resentment at the withdrawal of the ‘Promise’ and their consequent loss of the Dromana Estates.

 

As for the Peerage Case itself, the lack of evidence coupled with the ponderously suspicious and unsympathetic examination of events by the House of Lords was to affiliate Villiers-Stuarts’ consequent claim with only a remote chance of success. To dispel any doubts over the bigamous element of the marriage, clear evidence was required from Austria, with witnesses needed to testify that Gersch and Ott had not been married, which would have judged both of Ott’s Austrian children illegitimate. Significantly the important witnesses in Austria declined at the last moment to give essential evidence. Villiers-Stuart would have nonetheless been required to conclusively prove that his mother had not been married to Gersch, thereby in all probability ruining the lives of his half sister and brother, Leopoldine and Emile, as well as the extended family in Austria where status was reportedly of greater virtue.

 

The Breadalbane Case appears to be a neat comparison here, whereby, John Campbell of Glenfalloch died and was succeeded by the eldest son and heir who now claimed the honours and dignities of his family as the nearest male heir of another John the first, John the fifth Earls’ of Breadalbane; the petitioner desiring to command a seat in the House as Earl of Breadalbane and Holland in addition to other illustrious titles. The question in the resulting Peerage Case of 1872 was of pedigree and the claim to be the nearest heir male of the Breadalbane family, title and estates, with Campbell, the claimant, also demanding the right to vote in respect of a Peerage. The evidence, unlike in the Stuart de Decies Peerage Case, was deemed throughout to have been satisfactory, while significantly it was stated by the Lords that ‘we have evidence at your lordships bar by which the whole history of the father of the claimant was traced’. So unlike Villiers-Stuart, the Breadalbane claimant had gathered the necessary evidence, and therefore ‘most satisfactorily established his title’.

 

Villiers-Stuart, unlike Campbell, had to come to grips with the complicated marriage of his parents fifty years previous. Although being able to prove without difficulty that Lord and Lady Stuart had lived as man and wife, the crucial issue persisted for the House of Lords of there being absolutely no evidence of a cogent favour for the marriage of 1826. This was to be an ever-persisting issue in determining the legitimacy of Villiers-Stuart, for without any proof of the marriage before his birth, it was judged near impossible to prove his legitimacy. Of added hindrance to the claim therefore was the fact that by 1876 all four subjects involved and present from the 1826 ceremony were deceased, and as the marriage had been carelessly registered with no record remaining, the task of proving Villiers-Stuart’s legitimacy was to be bereft of much hope.

 

There was also the matter of Villiers-Stuart’s cousin playing an increasingly hostile part in the case, with it being feared that were the proceedings to fail, his cousin would be liable to adduce a claim for all the Dromana settled estates. Furthermore in the event of being proved illegitimate, he would at the very least have incurred, in addition to unwelcome publicity, a higher rate of succession duty on his father’s estate. This asserted from the Succession Duty Act of 1853, that estates which passed from father to son incurred a duty at a rate of 1%, but this figure rose to 10% on estates that passed from father to remote relations, including illegitimate children. Other than the enormous cost of continuing with the Peerage case, the succession duty alone would have inflicted serious financial distress upon Villiers-Stuart. Consequently he was left with no real option but to withdraw his petition to succeed as 2nd  Baron Stuart de Decies, and to allow the hard won barony to expire quietly.

 

Yet in an ironically melancholic fashion and in what must have occasioned some confusion at the time, having abandoned the peerage case of 1876, Villiers-Stuart was still widely addressed, not from his own doing, as ‘Stuart de Decies’.  For instance, in 1876 the estate bankers in London, Coutts and Co, addressed him with the title he had assumed while the well-known Thom’s Directory recorded him in 1878 as 2nd Baron Stuart de Decies. However, by the 1880 edition he was known simply as Henry Villiers-Stuart Esq. Furthermore, his 1880 candidature for parliament referred to him rather sheepishly and quite incorrectly as the ‘Honourable’ while finally it was not until the same year that he ceased to be known locally and on his estate, as Lord Stuart. It was at this time, which was to mark a further turning point in Villiers-Stuarts life, veering away from the social distractions to resume his Liberal candidacy, and concentrate on the issues that were arguably more important to his life.

 

 

             

IV

 

~AFTERMATH: MAINTAINING A POLITICAL LEGACY~

Championing the farm labourers’ cause, 1880-1885

 

‘No measure of land reform for Ireland, however ably devised, can be considered complete or perfectly satisfactory which does not deal with the condition of the farm labourers of Ireland with a view to ameliorate it’.

&

‘The dwellings and food of the Irish labourers are a disgrace to humanity, and if returned I shall do all in my power to remedy this evil’

 

 

By the time Henry Windsor Villiers-Stuart had emphatically declared the above in March 1880, the Peerage issue was probably a matter of irrelevance confined to the past. It shall therefore be the intent of this chapter, to exhibit that of greater importance and significance to Villiers-Stuart’s life, was not so much to be a social Peer, but rather a social activist, a landlord voice, rather than just a landlord. Whilst demonstrating this, the author shall heed caution by not attempting to breach too far into the enormous subject of politics and land issues in nineteenth century Ireland, but rather merely to endeavour to illustrate the unexplored and somewhat unique example of Villiers-Stuart as a social activist, a politician, who like his father fifty five years before him, more than often put the cause of the ‘down trodden’ ahead of any other. The remainder of this study is therefore based on the assumption that Villiers-Stuart was undoubtedly influenced by the remarkable life which he led up to the abandonment of the Peerage case, the comparative ‘underdog’ life in some respects, assimilated with an already benevolent and sympathetic like attitude that he most likely inherited and cultured from his father, the well-known emancipationist.

 

In 1873, Villiers-Stuart, aided by his liberal candidature and the close affiliation he held with his father’s political legacy, had been elected to Parliament uncontested after the Curraghmore candidate de la Poer had resigned. His victory of that year would not have been surprising, as general elections until 1880 produced a substantial proportion of landlords, of those who were returned. Not to be down played though, his triumph purportedly caused wild scenes of celebration, an indication of the high esteem in which he was held. Having put such ceremony on hold to contest his late fathers peerage, he vacated his seat in 1874, with the intention, albeit unsuccessfully as shown, to assume the Peerage of Stuart de Decies.

 

By 1880 however, Villiers-Stuart had put such reverberations behind him, once more successfully returning to the House of Commons, having obtained 1751 of the 3135 votes from Co Waterford, while defeating the Home Ruler Blake as well as the Conservative Lord Beresford. His victory this time was probably more significant, as firstly he was to remain in power with the Liberals’ for five years, and secondly, he was elected at a time when the Land League, having organised itself into an effective tool for land agitation, was adamant that the electorate should no longer consider returning landlords’ to parliament. Testament to Villiers-Stuart’s success, this call by the Land League was taken relatively seriously, for not even one Home Rule candidate elected in 1880 was said to have been a landlord.

 

Nonetheless, Villiers-Stuart was quick to diplomatically support the Land League policies but carefully refrained from going as far as backing the agitation that ensued.  The former was not an approach to be taken lightly, as the Land League was essentially opposed to landlords’ remaining in existence at all, and Villiers-Stuart, no matter how sympathetic his policies, would naturally have been held within that bracket as well.  Such apparent radicalism from the Land League however had not deterred the Waterford electorate from voting for the Liberal candidate. So like his father before him, Villiers-Stuart was elected as a Liberal MP, with a likely determination not to be overshadowed by his father’s political proficiency before him, but at the same time, similar to his father, he was evidently willing to adopt the cause of a ‘down trodden’.  

 

While Villiers-Stuart was to closely associate himself with the issues of civil and religious liberty, an extension to the principles of self-government, and essentially a limited measure of Home Rule, it was rather his enigmatic championing of the labourers cause or cottiers as they were sometimes called, which he was to be politically remembered for. Worthy of inclusion, the labourers had no vote until 1885, which in itself dispels any accusations that Villiers-Stuart was only intent on courting their cause for personal political success. Instead they were effectively forced into relying on political scraps, and on the benevolence of candidates such as Villiers-Stuart. Furthermore, they were too like small farmers to be consciously separated from the tenant farmer in parliament.

 

What was more likely of greater issue for Villiers-Stuart was that the labourer, described as a submerged class in the post famine era of Ireland, was without doubt the most disadvantaged and poorest group in Irish society. They were left with the worst houses, and although their wages had improved, the increase failed to keep up with the hike in agricultural prices. This was further aggravated by an over-supply of labour relative to the demand as a result of the massive growth in population, industrial decline and the attempts of farmers to economize in the face of lower prices. Additionally, it was not uncommon for the labourer to be simply given a reduced wage but to be provided with a cabin, or otherwise a tally of wages owed to the labourer, with the sum deducted from the total rent that was due. So while the tenant farmer complained of testing rents, the plight of the agricultural labourer was on a different scale, and probably therefore in the eyes of Villiers-Stuart, merited a great deal more attention.

 

Thus, what was probably of added impulsion to Villiers-Stuart was that advocates of land reform had previously largely ignored the labourer’s plight, with them receiving little if any parliamentary attention before 1880. This of course had only been exasperated due a tendency to concentrate strongly on the relationship between landlords and tenants, with the plight of the labourers having been seemingly jilted somewhat. This adopts an added relevance when considered that in the mid nineteenth century and thereafter, 70% of the male agricultural labour force consisted of labourers’, presenting Villiers-Stuart with an adequate number of discontented supporters, while in Waterford, more than half the occupied males in 1881 were engaged in farming, as labourers’.    

 

So despite the unattractive reality of receiving no votes from the labourer, there was sufficient incentive for Villiers-Stuart to champion their cause having declared in his election address that his principle concern was ‘the amelioration of the condition of the labouring class’. Additionally they were still far worse off than the tenant farmers had ever claimed to be and could be thrown out of their cottages within a few weeks notice.

 

Furthermore, by 1880 and thereafter, Villiers-Stuart had come to represent the traditional landlord view that the tenant farmers had long proven to be remiss in their employment and housing of the labourers’ with the cottiers’ essentially suffering more at the hands of the farmers than of the landlords’. Consequently Villiers-Stuart appeared to publicly separate himself from the tenant farmer, even isolating himself somewhat to side with the less fortunate labourer.

 

Thus Villiers-Stuart, who had on occasion been charged by his political opponents with breaking his election pledges, on finding that Gladstone’s [Liberal leader] 1881 Land Act had no mention of the labourer’s plight in it, gave notice of a resolution that the Act could not be considered complete or satisfactory ‘unless it dealt with the question of the labourers’. As a result, an amendment to clause twenty of the Land Bill was moved by Villiers-Stuart and then passed, which empowered the land commission to advance to a ‘tenant whose holding does not exceed half an acre, and who is a labourer, the whole of the price of his holding, or 90%’. Yet not satisfied with the 1881 Land Act, he openly questioned as to why the tenant farmer’s grievances were attended to so generously, but that of the labourer was treated in a half-hearted manner, later declaring the legislation as having ‘merely mocked the unfortunate class, presenting them with only vague promises of future consideration’.

 

This therefore must have been a prompting factor for Villiers-Stuart, who on 18 August 1882, produced his first notable political contribution, by introducing and successfully piloting through the House of Commons the Labourer’s Cottages and Allotments Bill, which became law. Included in the Act was an extension to the provision of the existing ‘labourers Acts’ with regards to the provisions of accommodation for labourers on estates, by giving added powers to the district councils concerning the improvement in all aspects of cottages and allotments.

 

In an acknowledgement of the effort channelled into the labourers cause, it was declared that no member of the House of Commons other than Villiers-Stuart had taken more pains in the passing of the bill. The cottiers were furthermore to receive added recognition through the Labourers’ Act of 1883, which authorized Boards of Guardians to build cottages for labourers and to let them with a plot of land attached, at a rent that would pay the interest on the money borrowed for this purpose. Although described as modest in its contribution, the Act essentially laid the ground for more generous legislation in later years. As for Villiers-Stuart’s contribution, he was responsible for an amendment to the Act, to which incidentally was supported by the Home Rule leader Charles Stewart Parnell, that contained a clause enacting penalties against neglect in carrying out the orders of the Commissioners to build labourers cottages.

 

Villiers-Stuart’s attempt to champion the labourers’ cause was not a matter of simplicity, having been confounded by the isolated opposition to labourers’ cottages by other landlords. For instance, Lord Cloncurry evicted labourers on his estate in both Kildare and Limerick, contributing to an increasing wedge between landlord and labourer. Cloncurry, like other landlords, may well have argued that the blame for this should lie with the rent reducing farmers. Whatever the case, it did not run well with Parnell, who used it as a licence to declare to the labourers’ of Ireland that the Committee on the labourers Act might not produce immediate results due to landlord interests stonewalling progress and making life difficult for the labourer. Parnell however was probably more fearful of landlords influencing and splitting labourers’ from the land movement, rather than them actually restricting improvement. Furthermore, he may have equally feared that Villiers-Stuart’s actions were leaving the farmers resolutely unimpressed, as aside from being pressurised with bad prices and arguably in some cases unfair rents, they were probably fearful that labour agitation would result in a rising up against them.

 

Yet nonetheless, if, as it has been suggested that Parnell’s criticism was directed at Villiers-Stuart amongst others, it was hardly well founded, as aside from the evidence of his reaction to the labourers’ cause, Villiers-Stuart was praised as ‘the first voice raised in Parliament on behalf of the down-trodden Irish Agricultural labourer, and that it is due to his efforts that something is to be done for the labourers’ by the Irish land bill’.

 

Furthermore in 1884, in an example of his own personal contribution, it was declared that any labourer of Waterford and Southern Ireland, wishing to become members of Villiers-Stuart’s Southern Labour League were to choose a delegate who was to communicate with Villiers-Stuart. The League reportedly gathered noticeable support in Waterford, Tipperary, Cork, Clare and Limerick with Villiers-Stuart dedicating much his time and effort to the cause. For instance, at his own expense, he arranged a conference, the object of which was to draw up a list of grievances and to come up with the best method of obtaining redress and of improving the condition and prospects of the labourer. Villiers-Stuart also went to the effort of inviting both Parnell and the Land League figurehead, Michael Davitt.

 

Yet such efforts did not spare Villiers-Stuart a wave of criticism from the Parliamentary Party, who were quite probably threatened from the progress in support being made by him. For instance, Home Rule MP William O’Brien stated openly in his home town of Mallow in 1884 that ‘any Labourers’ Act passed by Villiers-Stuart or anyone else could never in itself be anything but a temporary palliative for the labourers and that the final solution could only lie in an end to landlordism’. Furthermore, the United Ireland in January 1886 cynically accused Villiers-Stuarts’ championing of the labourers’ cause as an attempt to distract them from the national cause while it was argued in the same year that the agricultural labourers’ and the tenant farmers’ had managed to maintain a united agrarian front against the efforts to divide them.  

 

Interestingly however, the same paper had admitted two years previously that Villiers-Stuart had gone as far as to champion them in the Bessborough Commission, during the 1881 Land Act; and during the debates on his very own Labourers’ Cottages’ & Allotments’ Act of 1882 and finally in T.P O’Connor’s Labourers’ Bill of 1883, all of which has reluctantly prompted the Decies Old Waterford Society to declare that ‘Villiers-Stuart’s parliamentary record on the labour question could compare favourably with that of any of the Irish Parliamentary party, if not perhaps surpassing it’.

Ultimately, it was the comparative inactivity of labourers’ in the Land War, and the widespread indifference of Land League organizers towards the grievances of labourers’, which reflected not only the unimportance but also the disaffection of the labouring class and ultimately prompts one to question whether the famous Land League slogan of ‘Land for the people’, was really just a transfer of power, rather than an administering of justice. It was essentially this anomaly, which led the Villiers-Stuart into the path of the labourer. Indeed, aside then from championing the labourers’ cause in Parliament, Villiers-Stuart was equally arduous on a practical level, in particular on his own estate where it was not unknown for the cause of the labourer to receive considerable attention. So arguably, like in politics, the labourers’ on his estate were to benefit from both his political and personal policies, with Villiers-Stuart, possibly the only politician and landlord in Ireland to have championed the labourer’s cause with such enthusiasm and endeavour on both a personal and ultimately political level.

 

~CONCLUSION~

 

Having relinquished himself from politics in December 1885 as the enigmatic champion of labourers’ rights, Villiers-Stuart followed in the footsteps of his father. He lived out the final tens years of his life in the management of his estate and essentially extended the policies he pursued in parliament to the labourers’ and indeed the tenants’ of Dromana. In doing so he was venerably described as one of the most lenient landlords in Ireland’, who frequently reduced rents whilst refusing to force his tenants to pay when they were financially struggling.

 

The end to Villiers-Stuart’s illustrious life came about suddenly on 12 October 1895 when he drowned close to Villierstown quay, not far from Dromana. When reportedly in feeble health and wearing a cumbersome coat, he fell off his boat and into the deep and murky waters of the river Blackwater, sinking at once. His assistants failed to recover his body. Along with his premature departure, he took with him a most remarkable life that has provided the author with long and interesting hours of research, delving into largely untouched and fascinating material, which is sure to warrant continued attention at a future stage.

 

The drama that evolved from the accusations of bigamy and invalidity and the consequent treatment and influence placed on Henry Windsor Villiers-Stuart by his father, did arguably contain a silver lining as this essay has exhibited. If not for Villiers-Stuart, then certainly for the labourers’ of late nineteenth century Ireland. Similar to many Irish Catholics at the beginning of the same century, the labourers’ arguably only benefited from the consequent sympathy and interest bestowed on them by Villiers-Stuart and his father, whose contributions to the land and social issues of nineteenth century Irish history cannot be underestimated.

 

 

 

This essay has realised Henry Windsor Villiers-Stuart’s contribution to Irish history while demonstrating once again the link between; law, honour, property and politics in nineteenth century Ireland. In doing so the paper has also awarded the reader a glimpse into one of the many interesting parts of Henry Windsor’s life that has remained largely unexplored. Beginning with the intriguing issues of his father’s bizarre marriage to the then Madame Ott, the essay has incorporated the numerous twists and turns, which led to the great Peerage claim of 1876. The loss of Dromana’s last title, Baron de Decies, may be harshly attributed to the ‘hot Ott’, as the Austrian has been humorously branded by the family. Indeed her affiliation with the Villiers-Stuart family and the circumstances that she experienced may at first glance prompt one to sympathise with the Austrian. Yet after closer examination, the issues surrounding the union of 1826 were probably far from innocent. For one, she was thirteen years his senior and secondly she most likely used this seniority to lull the young emancipationist, who may have felt himself more advanced in age and tact than was the case.

 

Ultimately, the issues of Henry Windsor Villiers-Stuart’s life that have been dealt with within this paper have presented a series of challenging circumstances that leave many more questions than answers, questions that bare little hope of being answered today. As this paper has shown, all that the historian can do is to discuss, speculate and wrangle the available evidence in an attempt to make a clouded picture that bit more transparant. Indeed, if more evidence were forthcoming, the subject itself may even warrant a thesis or short book to be produced at some stage, for the character and life of Henry Windsor Villiers-Stuart can be described as nothing short of unique.

 

 

~SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY~

 

 

~MANUSCRIPT SOURCES~

 

Stuart de Decies Peerage Case (London, 1876).

 

Villiers-Stuart papers [MS 24699 I/8].

 

Villiers-Stuart papers [MS 24690-24692].

 

Villiers-Stuart papers [T/3131/1/6/1-24].

 

Villiers-Stuart papers [T/3131/I/9/16].

 

Villiers-Stuart papers [T/3131/L/93].

 

Villiers-Stuart papers [T/3131/1/6/1-24].

 

Villiers-Stuart papers [MS 24639 G/23: P/20].

 

Villiers-Stuart papers [MS 24698 I/8 P/47].

 

Villiers-Stuart papers [MS 34699 I/8: P/47].

 

Yelverton Marriage Case – Thelwall v Yelverton, (London: 1861).

 

~NEWSPAPERS~

 

Clonmel Chronicle

 

Irishman

 

Irish Times

 

Northern Whig

 

Ramsay’s Waterford Chronicle

 

Times

 

United Ireland

 

  Waterford Citizen

 

Waterford Mail

 

 

 

~PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS~

 

House of Commons Papers, Return of Commissions in Army, with or without Purchase Commencement of Crimean War, No 45, p.XL.139, 1856.

 

House of Commons  parliamentary papers, Return of Lord Lieutenants of Irish Counties, Paper Number 264,365, 1831.

 

House of Commons Parliamentary Papers Vol xxxii – Royal Commission on the Laws of Marriage. 1867-68.

 

~WORKS OF REFERENCE~

Burke, Sir Bernard, Burke’s landed gentry of Ireland, 4th Ed (London, 1958).

 

Collection of the Public General Statutes passed in the Third Year of the Reign of his Majesty, King George IV (Dublin, 1822).

 

Collection of the Public General Statutes passed in the Twenty-fourth  and Twenty-fifth years of the reign of Queen Victoria (London, 1861).

 

Collection of the Public General Statutes passed in the Third Year of the Reign of his Majesty, King George IV (Dublin, 1822).

 

Law Reports – The Public General Statutes passed in the Thirty Third and Thirty Fourth Years of Queen Victoria, 1870 Vol V (London, 1870).

 

Statutes Revised, 13 & 14 VICT to 22 & 23 VIXT Vol VI (1850-1859).

 

Thom’s Almanac and Official Directory of the United Kingdom and Ireland, (Dublin, 1879 & 1880).

 

~CONTEMPORARY WORKS~

 

Burn, Richard., Burns Ecclesiastical Law Vol II (London, 1765).

 

Clarke, C., & Finnelly, W., Law Reports of Cases decided in the House of Lords 1843 & 1844, Vol X (London, 1844).

 

Crawford, G., & Dix, Edward., Reports cases argued and ruled on the circuits in Ireland, during the years 1839-1840 Vol I, (Dublin, 1840).

 

Davitt, Michael., The Fall of Feudalism in Ireland (London, 1904).

 

Dicey, A.V., A Digest of the Law of England with reference to the Conflict of Laws (London, 1896).

 

Eversley William., & Craies, William., The Marriage Laws of the British Empire (London, 1910).

 

Hammick, James., Marriage Law of England (London, 1887).

 

Mackenzie, Therese Muir., Dromana - The memoirs of an Irish family (Dublin, 1920).

 

Mair, Robert Henry., Debrett’s House of Commons and Judicial Bench 1880 (London, 1880).

 

Morgan, Hector Davis., The Doctrine and Law of Marriage, Adultery and Divorce Vol 1 (Oxford, 1826).

 

Phillmane, Sir Robert., The Ecclesiastical law of the Church of England Vol I (London, 1895).

 

Wyse, Thomas., Historical Sketch of the Late Catholic Association of Ireland of Ireland Vol I (London, 1829).

 

 

~MODERN WORKS~

 

Barlow, Montague., ‘The Economic Legislation of the year 1906’, The Economic Journal Vol 17 No 65 (March 1907), pp 121-122.  

 

Clarke, Samuel., Social Origins of the Land War (Princeton, 1979).

 

Colin R Chapman., Marriage Laws, Rites, Records & Customs (London, 1996).

 

Donnelly, James., Landlord and Tenant in Nineteenth Century Ireland (Dublin, 1973).

 

Eversley, William., Domestic Relations (London, 1951).

 

Fitzpatrick, David., ‘The Disappearance of the Irish Agricultural Labourer, 1841-1912’, Irish Economic & Social History Vol II (1980), pp 82-87.

 

Hinde, Wendy., Catholic Emancipation (Oxford, 1992).

 

Hoppen, K.T., Ireland since 1800 (London, 1999).

 

Irvine, Valerie., The King’s Wife – George IV and Mrs Fitzherbert, (London, 2005).

 

Kelleher Kahn, Helena., ‘The Yelverton Affair – A Nineteenth Century Sensation’, History Ireland Vol 13 No.1, (Jan/Feb 2005), pp 21-25.

 

Lane, Padraig G., ‘Villiers-Stuart: A Landlord Voice on Farm Labourers in the 1880s’, Decies Journal of the Waterford Archaeological & Historical Society No 60 (2004), p.181

 

Lyons, F.S.L., Charles Stewart Parnell (London, 1977).

 

Maguire, W.A ., Living Like a Lord – The Second Marquis of Donegall 1769-1844 (Belfast, 2002).

 

Malcomson, A.P.W., The Pursuit of the Heiress – Aristocratic Marriages in Ireland 1740-1840 (Belfast, 2006).

 

Moody, T.W., Davitt and Irish Revolution 1846-82 (Oxford, 1891).

 

Munson, James.,  Maria Fitzherbert – The secret Wife of George IV (London, 2001).

 

Nolan, Power & Cowman (eds)., Waterford History and Society (Dublin, 1992).

 

O’Ferrell, Fergus., Catholic Emancipation (Dublin, 1985).

 

Outhwaite, R.B., Clandestine Marriage in England 1500-1850 (London, 1995).

 

Power, Dermot., The Ballads and Songs of Waterford from 1847 (Waterford, 1992).

 

Reynolds, James A., Catholic Emancipation Crisis in Ireland1823-1829 (London, 1955).

 

Stone, Lawrence., Uncertain Unions: Marriage in England 1660-1752 (Oxford, 1992).

 

Vaughan, W.E., Landlords and Tenants in mid-Victorian Ireland (Oxford, 1994).

 

Vaughan, W.E., ed, A New History of Ireland Vol V – Ireland under the Union, 1801-70 (Oxford, 1989).

 

Walker, Brian M., Parliamentary Election Results in Ireland, 1801-1922 (Dublin, 1978).

 

Whyte,J.H., ‘Landlord influence at Elections in Ireland, 1760-1885’, English Historical Review, Vol 80 (1965), pp.758-759.

 

Whyte, J.H., ‘The Influence of the Catholic Clergy on Elections in Nineteenth Century Ireland’, English Historical Review, Vol 75 (1960), pp.239-259.

 

~ON-LINE SOURCES~

 

http://justis.com/document.aspx?doc=aYqdoZeJm0WYuuf0iXGtnZmsnXmsmJaZi4Gdm&relpos=0 (accessed 18 Mar. 2007)

http://www.spanishplace.hemscott.net/pages/parish_history.htm (accessed 15 Mar. 2007)

http://www.parlipapers.chadwyk.co.uk (accessed 16 Jan. 2007

& 21 Jan. 2007).