Halifax left Ireland in 1763, popular and respected, and George III. gave him the garter. When in England he attempted to break away from his mistress by entering into an engagement to marry a wealthy woman, but Mary Ann soundly rated him when she heard of it, and he meekly broke the engagement to please her. This was the man who had ruled Ireland!
A great Smithson
As the result of royal favour the vacant viceroyalty was secured by Hugh Percy, Earl of Northumberland, later to become the first duke of the third creation. Northumberland was a great Smithson, but an indifferent Percy, and it was only his wife's name and family that carried him into London society and into the presence of George III. A man of vast wealth, and wedded to a woman with a passion for power, the viceroyalty of Ireland was the position they both craved for, and when powerful friends helped the Earl and Countess of Northumberland towards their goal, they entered with zest and enthusiasm into the task of governing Ireland. Lady Northumberland was a lady of the bedchamber to the queen soon after her marriage, an appointment maliciously described by Lady Townshend as due to the fact that the queen, who was ignorant of the English language, was anxious to learn the vulgar tongue, Lady Northumberland, she declared, being the most suitable person in the circumstances.
During their two years' reign in Dublin Castle the viceroy and his wife entertained on a regal scale. Their position had been a doubtful one in London, where society found it difficult to forget the old Smithson in the new Percy, but in Dublin the earl and countess led society without fear of any rivals. The countess, more ambitious than proud, utilized her wealth to maintain her supremacy. Dublin Castle was almost daily the scene of a great party, command performances at the theatres very common, and altogether the easily purchased homage of the people was accepted greedily, and created a growing appetite for more. Then in 1765 Lord Northumberland was abruptly dismissed from office, and the Earl of Hertford appointed. Returning to London in a passion, Northumberland sought out the king and his ministers, demanding an explanation. The 'explanation' took the shape of a dukedom, and both husband and wife were content.
Lord Hertford soon tired of Dublin, and his wife induced him to seek an early release from his distasteful task, and the home Government sent Lord Townshend to replace him.
A new era
The appointment of George, first Marquis Townshend, to the viceroyalty marked a new era in Irish history. Ever since the days of the Duke of Dorset's first term of office Dublin had been progressing. The Irish Parliament, though for the most part consisting of 'provincial imbeciles,' to use Chesterfield's words, was gradually attracting to it some of the most gifted Irishmen, and London, which affected to despise it, was perturbed by the reports coming from the Irish capital. One viceroy expressed his amazement at the wealth of genius in Dublin; another confirmed it. To convince the world, a great race of Irishmen was arising. Edmund Burke was a power in London; Grattan, a young man, was renowned in his own circles in Dublin; Henry Flood, in the Irish House of Commons, was winning his reputation for eloquence; and a few years later Richard Brinsley Sheridan was to gain fresh laurels for the name of Irishman. Goldsmith was at his zenith when Townshend came to Ireland in 1767. Others whose names are now forgotten achieved the not-to-be-despised if brief fame that talent is proud of and genius despises. Dublin was quickly losing its mean appearance. An orgy of building had transformed the districts now known as Grafton Street, Sackville Street, Merrion Square, and St. Stephen's Green. In Dame Street Trinity College and the Irish Houses of Parliament, the latter having been built in 1729 on the site of Chichester House, gave the thoroughfare an imposing appearance.
But the most important change lay in the people themselves. The English influence was, of course, paramount, and those who wished to be considered fashionable aped London manners, but slowly and surely there was an awakening of the national spirit; the so-called English colony was beginning to realize the danger of allowing themselves to be subject to the caprices of a Government in London ignorant of Irish affairs. They clamoured for legislative independence, and if their motives were purely selfish and local, yet on the whole they benefited Ireland. Irish trade was being handicapped by English ministers anxious to gain the suffrages of the great trading towns of Bristol and London, and they attempted to impose restrictions on Ireland through the medium of the Dublin Parliament. But the descendants of the Elizabethan and Cromwellian 'undertakers' would have none of it. Their idea was that all Irish affairs should be under the control of the Irish Parliament because they were the Parliament.
The eloquence and statesmanship of Grattan and his great contemporaries has gained a not undeserved fame for the Irish Parliament as it existed from 1760 to the Union, but in the fullest meaning of the word it was never a Parliament, even in the sense that the mother of Parliaments in London was falsely supposed to represent England. The majority of the Irish members were party hacks returned in their master's interests to vote without conscience. Religion entered into everything, but in the sixties of the eighteenth century the problem that confronted the English ministry was the position of the 'undertakers.' The latter were now the paramount power in Ireland; they formed the ascendancy, and from their ranks came all the high officers of state and the men who carried out the policy of England. But time taught its lessons, and the Anglo-Irish ignored London—even defied it—and when in 1767 Lord Townshend was sent to Dublin, it was with the undisguised object of crushing the 'undertakers' and regaining for England the chief authority in Ireland. For the first time in the history of Ireland a resident viceroy was appointed.
Breaking the Irish Parliament