Henry Dillon, 13th Viscount Dillon

Henry Augustus Dillon-Lee, 13th Viscount Dillon (1777–1832), was an Irish politician, soldier and writer. Despite being a Protestant, he supported Catholic emancipation in Ireland and wrote on the topic. He sat as MP for Harwich in England in the last parliament of Great Britain and the first parliament of the United Kingdom. In the second parliament of the United Kingdom he sat for County Mayo in Ireland. Through his daughter Henrietta, he was ancestor to Clementine Hozier (the wife of Winston Churchill) and to the Mitford sisters.

Henry Augustus Dillon-Lee
Viscount Dillon
Detail from the portrait below
Tenure	1813–1832
Predecessor	Charles, 12th Viscount Dillon
Successor	Charles, 14th Viscount Dillon
Born	28 October 1777 Brussels, Austrian Netherlands
Died	24 July 1832(1832-07-24) (aged 54) London, England
Spouse(s)	Henrietta Browne ​ (m. 1807)​
Issue Detail	Henrietta, Charles, Constantine, & others
Father	Charles, 12th Viscount Dillon
Mother	Henrietta Maria Phipps

He was the colonel of a regiment and wrote on military subjects. He wrote fiction publishing two historical novels.

Birth and origins

Family tree

Henry Augustus Dillon-Lee with wife, parents, and other selected relatives. Constantine 1st Baron Mulgrave 1722–1775 Lepell Hervey Henry 11th Viscount 1705–1787 Charlotte Lee d. 1794 Henrietta- Maria Phipps 1757–1782 Charles 12th Viscount 1745–1813 Marie Rogier d. 1833 Arthur Dillon 1750–1794 Henry Augustus 13th Viscount 1777–1832 Henrietta Browne 1789–1862 Charles Henry 14th Viscount 1810–1865 Theobald Dominick 15th Viscount 1811–1879 Arthur Edmund 16th Viscount 1812–1892 Ellen Adderly 1809–1896 Harold Arthur 17th Viscount 1844–1932 Conrad Adderly Dillon 1845–1901 Ellen Louisa Dashwood d. 1917 Legend XXX Subject of the article XXX Viscounts Dillon

Henry Augustus was born on 28 October 1777 at Brussels, then the capital of the Austrian Netherlands. He was the eldest son of Charles Dillon-Lee and his first wife Henrietta Maria Phipps. His father was the 12th Viscount Dillon, who had in 1767 conformed to the established religion.

Henry Augustus's mother was the daughter of Constantine John Phipps, 1st Baron Mulgrave. Her family was Anglo-Irish. Thus both parents were Protestants and part of the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland. They had married in 1776 at Brussels. Henry Augustus had one sister, Frances Charlotte.

Early life

Henry Augustus's mother died in 1782 when he was four. In 1787 his father remarried to Marie Rogier of Mechelen, who was an actress in Brussels and had been his mistress before he married Henry's mother. Henry Augustus had three half-siblings, a brother and two sisters, who were born from his father's second marriage.

Henry Augustus was brought up by his uncle Constantine Phipps, 2nd Baron Mulgrave. In 1794, when Dillon-Lee (i.e. Henry Augustus) was 17, he was made the 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. On 21 October 1795 Dillon-Lee immatriculated at Christ Church, Oxford.

In 1799, aged 22, he contested and won a by-election caused by the death of Richard Hopkins MP for Harwich Borough, County Essex. This was during the 18th and last parliament of Great Britain, summoned in 1796 to meet at Westminster on 12 July 1796. It continued without a general election as the 1st Parliament of the United Kingdom, 1801–1802. He sat therefore until 29 June 1802 when parliament was dissolved.

In the general election of 1802 he was elected for one of the two seats for County Mayo 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 101st Regiment of Foot. He owned the regiment and hired out its services to the British army under a letter of service.

Henrietta Browne, Viscountess Dillon

Marriage and children

In February 1807 at Castlemacgarrett, 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 Browne ancestral Castle MacGarrett near Claremorris, County Mayo, Ireland. The Brownes of Mayo were an Anglo-Irish, Protestant family. Henrietta's niece was married to George A. Lawrence, author of Guy Livingstone.

Henry Augustus and Henrietta had ten children:

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

Henry Dillon-Lee, Viscount Dillon, by John Hoppner

Later life, death, and timeline

Dillon-Lee's regiment was ordered to Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, to where he also took his wife and where his eldest child was born in 1807.

Ditchley House, inherited from the Earl of Lichfield (Lee). (Later used in Downton Abbey as "Mallerton")

On 9 November 1813 his father died at Loughglinn House, County Roscommon, and was buried in the Dillon Vault at Ballyhaunis. Henry succeeded as the 13th Viscount Dillon, at the age of 36, he also inherited Ditchley House, inherited from the Earl of Lichfield (Lee family). Lord Dillon, as he now was, 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, and where he wrote his two historical novels, Maltravers, published in 1822, and Rosaline de Vere, published in 1824.

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

Dillon died on 24 July 1832 in London and was buried in the All Saints Church at Spelsbury. 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.

Timeline
Age	Date	Event
0	1777, 28 Oct	Born in Brussels
4	1782, 1 Aug	Mother died
9–10	1787	Father remarried to Marie Rogier
21	1799, 10 Apr	Wins by-election for Harwich
29	1807, Feb	Married Henrietta Browne at Castle MacGarrett near Claremorris, County Mayo, Ireland
36	1813, 9 Nov	Father died at Loughglinn, County Roscommon, Ireland, buried at Ballyhaunis
42	1820, 29 Jan	Accession of King George IV, succeeding King George III
54	1832, 24 Jul	Died in London, buried in Spelsbury

Works

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 and references

Sources

• Brown, Michael; Power, Thomas P. (2005). Converts and Conversion in Ireland 1650–1850. Dublin: Four Courts Press. ISBN 1-85182-810-9. – Snippet view
• Burke, Bernard; Burke, Ashworth Peter (1915). A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Peerage and Baronetage, the Privy Council, Knightage and Companionage (77th ed.). London: Harrison. OCLC 1155471554.
• Cokayne, George Edward (1916). Gibbs, Vicary (ed.). The complete peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, extant, extinct, or dormant. Vol. IV (2nd ed.). London: St Catherine Press. OCLC 228661424. – Dacre to Dysart
• Debrett, John (1828). Peerage of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Vol. II (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.
• Foster, Joseph (1891). Alumni Oxonienses: the Members of the University of Oxford, 1715–1886. Vol. I. Oxford: Parker and Co. OCLC 318845. – Abbay to Dyson
• Fryde, Edmund Boleslaw; Greenway, D. E.; Porter, S.; Roy, I., eds. (1986). Handbook of British Chronology. Royal Historical Society Guides and Handbooks, No. 2 (3rd ed.). London: Offices of the Royal Historical Society. ISBN 0-86193-106-8. – (for timeline)
• House of Commons (1878). Return. Members of Parliament – Part II. Parliaments of Great Britain, 1705–1796. Parliaments of the United Kingdom, 1801–1874. Parliaments and Conventions of the Estates of Scotland, 1357–1707. Parliaments of Ireland, 1599–1800. London: His/Her Majesty's Stationery Office. OCLC 13112546.
• La Tour du Pin, Henriette-Lucy, Marquise de (1913a). Journal d'une femme de cinquante ans [Diary of a Woman in her Fifties] (in French). Vol. I (7th ed.). Paris: Librairie Chapelot. OCLC 1047408815.
• La Tour du Pin, Henriette-Lucy, Marquise de (1913b). Journal d'une femme de cinquante ans [Diary of a Woman in her Fifties] (in French). Vol. II (7th ed.). Paris: Librairie Chapelot. OCLC 1047478749.
• Morgan, Henry James (1903). Types of Canadian Women. Vol. I. 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. Vol. 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