William Fitzwilliam, 4th Earl Fitzwilliam

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William Fitzwilliam, 4th Earl Fitzwilliam : biography

30 May 1748 – 8 February 1833

If any injury has been done to you, if any blow has been aimed at your political character and reputation, it is I who have attempted it; revenge yourself on me, renounce me, but assist in saving your country—I will retire, I will make any extirpation or atonement that can satisfy you—you are younger, more active, more able than I am, you can do more good. If my…renunciation of the world will restore you to the public service, God forbid I should hesitate a moment.

Fitzwilliam wrote to the Duke of Devonshire on 28 February that his recall:

…is a subject of the greatest pain and mortification to me, because it must be the cause of the most complete separation between the Duke of Portland and myself. Either I have been the most wild, rash, unfaithful servant to the Crown and to England, or he has abandoned in the most shameful manner his friend, and his friend’s character, for pursuing generally a system of measures that has been the perpetual theme of his conversation, and the subject of his recommendation for years back. It is painful, a trying task to submit to a separation from a man I have loved so long and so much; but I must submit to it, for I will not abandon my character to the disgraceful imputations that must attach upon it if I do not justify it by charging him with the most shameful dereliction of his friend that ever was experienced by a faithful and a tried one.Smith, p. 200.

On 6 March Fitzwilliam said in a letter to Lord Carlisle that it was his removal of Beresford and his friends for their "maladministration" and not Emancipation that was his downfall. Pitt was determined to use the Bill as an excuse to get rid of the Whig government in Ireland, spurred on by "secret, unavowed, insidious informations" and breaking the terms of the coalition agreed with the Duke of Portland. The claim that he had breached the agreement was merely the excuse needed to get rid of him due to the resentment by the Ascendancy at their loss of power. He instead claimed his administration had been a success, enjoying widespread popularity amongst the Irish and granted by the Irish House of Commons "the largest supplies that have ever been demanded". Fitzwilliam urged Lord Carlisle to show this to "as many persons as you shall think proper".Historical Manuscripts Commission, The Manuscripts of the Earl of Carlisle, preserved at Castle Howard (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1897), pp. 704–711. On 9 March Fitzwilliam said in a letter to James Adair: "Here I am, abandoned, deserted and given up—an object of the general calumny of administration, for they must abuse me to justify themselves". After hearing reading in government newspapers that his recall was due to Emancipation, Fitzwilliam wrote to Lord Carlisle on 23 March and said that the Catholic question entered for nothing into the real cause of my recall" and that he acted within the bounds of the agreement decided on 15 November. He said repeated requests for instructions to the Cabinet on the bill had been ignored whilst they had responded almost at once to the dismissal of Beresford and his friends. The visit of Beresford to London and the prospect of a "change in system" in Ireland made the Cabinet recall him. The Duke of Portland had been seduced into altering "all his former opinions respecting the politics of this country" and he was now Pitt’s instrument. Pitt had used the situation to abandon the coalition agreement with the Whigs that the Irish administration be under the Home Secretary, the Duke of Portland. Pitt had resumed control of it and handed it back to the corrupt Ascendancy.Historical Manuscripts Commission, pp. 713–721.

Fitzwilliam left Ireland on 25 March, the Dublin streets silent and decked in mourning. Grattan said although they were silent and unhappy there "Never was a time in which the opposition here were more completely backed by the nation, Protestant and Catholic united".Smith, p. 207. The two letters to Lord Carlisle were published in Dublin and then in London (without Fitzwilliam’s knowledge) in a pirated and a somewhat altered state under the title A Letter from a Venerated Nobleman, recently retired from this country, to the Earl of Carlisle: explaining the causes of that event. The publication shocked many of Fitzwilliam’s friends and brought forth their condemnation. Fitzwilliam was unrepentant, writing to Thomas Grenville on 3 April that the Duke of Portland "has been bewildered, and in his confusion has been led into irretrievable error; but that error is of a nature never, I fear, to be got over: he has been induced to abandon his principles, and give up his friend, his firm, his steady his staunch supporter. … [He] suffered himself to be the dupe of cunning and design, has been made the instrument of his own and my disgrace—a disgrace of a nature most gratifying to our common enemies. [I am resolved] to separate myself altogether from every sort of intercourse with the man with whom I have passed so many years of my life in the most intimate, cordial, unsuspecting friendship".Smith, pp. 205–206.