Фредерик Стюарт, 4-й маркиз Лондондерри: Жизнь и судьба ирландского аристократа.

19th century Irish marquess

Frederick William Robert Stewart, 4th Marquess of Londonderry (1805–1872), styled Viscount Castlereagh from 1822 to 1854, was a British nobleman and Tory politician. He was briefly Vice Chamberlain of the Household under Sir Robert Peel between December 1834 and April 1835.

He served under the Duke of Wellington as a Lord of the Admiralty from 1828 to 1830 and under Sir Robert Peel as Vice Chamberlain of the Household from December 1834 to April 1835. On 23 February 1835, he was sworn of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom. He was one of the Members of Parliament for County Down from 1826 until 1852. From 1845 until 1864 he was Lord Lieutenant of Down. In 1856 he was made a Knight of the Order of St Patrick.

In 1838, Count Gérard de Melcy, the husband of the Italian operatic singer Giulia Grisi, discovered a letter written to Giulia by Frederick Stewart, and the two men fought a duel on 16 June of that year. Lord Castlereagh was wounded in the wrist; the Count was uninjured. After the duel, Grisi left her husband and began an affair with Lord Castlereagh. Their son, George Frederick Ormsby (1838–1901), was born in November 1838 and brought up by his father. By 1852, he "had fallen out with his father, the 3rd Marquess of Londonderry over their views on the land question [and] was obliged to retire because of these differences". Frederick Stewart married Lady Elizabeth Frances Charlotte Jocelyn, widow of Viscount Powerscourt and daughter of Robert Jocelyn, 3rd Earl of Roden, at the British Embassy in Paris on 2 May 1846. There were no children from the marriage. In 1855 his wife converted to Roman Catholicism. He succeeded his father in 1854 as the 4th Marquess of Londonderry. He built Scrabo Tower as a monument to the memory of his father. In 1857 he and his wife attended the ceremony of the laying of the foundation stone.

In 1862 Londonderry was diagnosed as mentally ill. He was secluded in a mental institution at White Rock Pavilion in Hastings. He died there on 25 November 1872, aged 67 and was buried in the Newtownards Priory. His wife, the dowager Marchioness of Londonderry died on 2 September 1884, aged 70, and was buried with him in the double grave in the priory. As he had no legitimate children, he was succeeded in the marquessate by his half brother, George Vane Tempest, 2nd Earl Vane. This had the effect that the fortunes of the Stewart and the Vane side of the Londonderry family were reunited in a single hand.