Henry Dillon, 13th Viscount Dillon

Henry Augustus Dillon-Lee
Viscount Dillon
Portrait by John Hoppner
Tenure	1813–1832
Predecessor	Charles, 12th Viscount Dillon
Successor	Charles, 14th Viscount Dillon
Born	28 October 1777 Brussels
Died	24 July 1832 London
Spouse(s)	Henrietta Browne
Detail Issue Henrietta, Charles, Constantine, & others
Father	Charles, 12th Viscount Dillon
Mother	Henrietta Maria Phipps

Henry Augustus Dillon-Lee, 13th Viscount Dillon (1777–1832), was an Irish peer, soldier, writer, and MP for Harwich in England and County Mayo in Ireland. He wrote about Catholic emancipation in Ireland, about military subjects, and also published two historical novels.

Birth and origins[]

Henry Augustus was born on 28 October 1777 at Brussels, then the capital of the Austrian Netherlands. He was the elder of the two children and the only son of Charles Dillon-Lee and his first wife Henrietta Maria Phipps.^[1] His father, the 12th Viscount Dillon, had conformed to the established religion.^[2] His mother was the only daughter of Constantine John Phipps, 1st Baron Mulgrave, an Anglo-Irish family. Thus both parents were Protestants and part of the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland. They had married in 1776 at Brussels.^[3]

He appears below as the elder of two siblings:

1. Henry Augustus (1777–1832)
2. Frances Charlotte (1780–1819), married Thomas Webb, Baronet^[4]

Early life[]

His mother died in 1782^[6] when Henry Augustus was only four. In 1787 his father remarried to Marie Rogier of Mechelen,^[7] who had been an actress in Brussels and had been his father's mistress before he married Henry's mother.^[8] He had three half-siblings from his father's second marriage, which are:

In 1794, when he was 17 years old, Henry Augustus was made a Colonel of a regiment in the newly created Catholic Irish Brigade, an unlikely employment for a Protestant, that was due to his family's military connection to the Irish Brigade. This Catholic Irish Brigade lasted four years, being dissolved in 1798.

He went to England where, in 1799, aged 22, he was a Member of Parliament for County Harwich in Essex. In 1802 he became an MP for County Mayo (knight of the shire) in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom.

In 1805 he raised a new regiment in Ireland, called the Duke of York's Irish or the 101th Regiment of Foot. He owned the regiment and hired out its services to the British army under a letter of service.

Marriage and children[]

In February 1807, Henry Augustus Dillon-Lee married Henrietta Browne, sister of Dominick, 1st Baron Oranmore and Browne, daughter of Dominick-Geoffrey Browne, by Margaret, daughter of George Browne, 4th son of the 1st Earl of Altamont. The marriage took place at Castle MacGarrett near Claremorris, County Mayo, Ireland. The Brownes were an Anglo-Irish and Protestant family.^[13]

Henry Dillon-Lee, Viscount Dillon, by John Hoppner

Augustus and Henrietta had ten children:

1. Henrietta Maria (1807–1896), married Edward John Stanley, 2nd Baron Stanley of Alderley and campaigned for better education for girls^[b]
2. Charles Henry (1810–1865), born in Dublin, died at Ditchley, Oxford; succeeded his father as 14th Viscount^[17]
3. Theobald Dominick (1811–1879), the 15th Viscount Dillon, who died childless and was succeeded by his brother^[18]
4. Arthur Edmund Denis (1812–1892), married Ellen Adderley and succeeded his brother as the 16th Viscount Dillon^[19]
5. Constantine (1813–1853), who emigrated to New Zealand^[20]
6. Robert George Lee (1817–1822), who died young^[21]
7. Margaret Frances Florence (1818–1885), who was a maid of honour to her majesty and married the geologist William John Hamilton^[22]
8. Gerald Normanby (1823–1880), married Louisa FitzGibbon, daughter of Richard Hobart FitzGibbons, 3rd Earl of Clare, and changed his surname to hers^[23]
9. Louisa Anne Rose (1825–1902), married the Hon. Spencer-Cecil Ponsonby of Bessborough^[24]
10. Helena Matilda (born 1827)^[25]

Breaking my own horse (H. A. Dillon) by James Gillray, 1803

Later life, death, and timeline[]

His regiment was ordered to Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, to where he also took his wife and where his eldest child was born in 1807.^[14]

On 9 November 1813 his father died at Loughglinn, County Roscommon, and was buried in the Dillon Vault at Ballyhaunis.^[26][27] Henry succeeded as the 13th Viscount Dillon, at the age of 36.

Lord Dillon lived with his wife and children in Florence, Italy in the late 1810s and in London in the 1820s where he seems to have had an affair with the writer Eliza Rennie.^[28] and where wrote his two historical novels, Maltravers, published in 1822, and Rosaline de Vere, published in 1824.

He died on 24 July 1832 in London and was buried in the All Saints Church at Spelsbury.^[29] He was the first Dillon to be buried in Spelsbury. His widow died thirty years later at the Hotel Windsor, Paris, 18 March 1862, aged 73.

Works[]

Henry Dillon's published works include:

• Short View of the Catholic Question (London: J. Debrett, 1801), 32 pages
• Letter to the Noblemen and Gentlemen who Composed the Deputation from the Catholics of Ireland on the Subject of their Mission (London: J. Budd, Crown and Mitre, 1805), online at Google Books, 56 pages
• A Commentary on the Military Establishments and Defence of the British Empire (Dillon publisher: Printed by Cox, Son, and Baylis ... for E. Kerby, 1811)
• The Tactics of Ælian: Comprising Military Systems of the Grecians (London: E. Kerby, 1814), online at Google Books
• Discourse upon the Theory of Legitimate Government (Florence, 1817), online at Google Books, 89 pages
• The Life and Opinions of Sir Richard Maltravers: an English Gentleman of the Seventeenth Century, Volume 1 (London: G. and W.B. Whittaker, 1822), online at Google Books Corvey CME 3-628-48097-3; ECB 345; EN2 1822: 29; NSTC 2D13576; OCLC 35663915.
• The life and opinions of Sir Richard Maltravers: an English gentleman of the seventeenth century, Volume 2 (London: G. and W.B. Whittaker, 1822), online at Google Books
• Rosaline de Vere, Volume 1 (London: Treuttel and Würtz, Treuttel junior and Richter, 1824), online at Internet Archive Corvey CME 3-628-48547-9; ECB 502; EN2 1824: 29; NSTC 2D13577; OCLC 12423730.
• Rosaline de Vere, Volume 2 (London: Treuttel and Würtz, Treuttel junior and Richter, 1824), online at Internet Archive

Also: various works of jurisprudence.

Notes, citations, and sources[]

Notes[]

Citations[]

Sources[]

• Brown, Michael; Power, Thomas P. (2005). Converts and Conversion in Ireland 1650–1850. Dublin: Four Courts Press. ISBN 1-85182-810-9.
• Burke, Bernard; Burke, Ashworth P. (1909). A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Peerage and Baronetage, the Privy Council, Knightage and Companionage (71st ed.). London: Harrison. OCLC 28297274.
• Cokayne, George Edward (1916). Gibbs, Vicary (ed.). The complete peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, extant, extinct, or dormant. 4 (2nd ed.). London: St Catherine Press. OCLC 228661424. – Dacre to Dysart
• Debrett, John (1828). Peerage of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. 2 (17th ed.). London: F. C. and J. Rivington. OCLC 54499602. – Scotland and Ireland (for Dillon)
• Debrett, John (1838). Courthope, William (ed.). Debrett's Complete Peerage of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (22nd ed.). London: F. C. and J. Rivington. OCLC 315551200.
• La Tour du Pin, Henriette-Lucy, Marquise de (1913a). Journal d'une femme de cinquante ans (in French). 1 (7th ed.). Paris: Librairie Chapelot. OCLC 1047408815.
• La Tour du Pin, Henriette-Lucy, Marquise de (1913b). Journal d'une femme de cinquante ans (in French). 2 (7th ed.). Paris: Librairie Chapelot. OCLC 1047478749.
• Morgan, Henry James (1903). Types of Canadian Women. 1. Toronto: William Briggs. OCLC 1158061117.
• Sunstein, Emily W. (1989). Mary Shelley, Romance and Reality. Boston: Little, Brown & Company. ISBN 0-316-82246-9.
• Sutherland, Gillian (2004). "Stanley (née Dillon-Lee), Henriette Maria, Lady Stanley of Alderley (1807–1895)". In Matthew, Colin; Harrison, Brian (eds.). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 52. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 210–211. ISBN 0-19-861402-0.

External links[]

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Henry Dillon