Du Pre Alexander, 2nd Earl of Caledon
Du Pré Alexander, 2nd Earl of Caledon KP (14 December 1777 – 8 April 1839), styled The Honourable Du Pré Alexander from 1790 to 1800 and Viscount Alexander from 1800 to 1802, was an Irish peer, landlord and colonial administrator, and was the second child and only son of James Alexander, 1st Earl of Caledon.
Education and inheritance
He was educated from 1790 to 1796 at
He had received a commission as an
Governorship
In July 1806 he was appointed Governor of the
Less than three years after his departure, in March 1814, an open letter was written defending his record as governor. The writer, Colonel Christopher Bird, Deputy Colonial Secretary at the Cape (subsequently Colonial Secretary), was well qualified to speak, although his partisanship on Lord Caledon's behalf is unconcealed. In another part of the Caledon Papers, Lord Caledon's own appraisal of his governorship of the Cape is to be found. It occurs in the course of a letter which he wrote to the Prime Minister, the 2nd Earl of Liverpool, in 1818 stating his claims to be given a peerage of the United Kingdom: '... The administration of the colonial government during my residence there for a term of four years, was more than usually arduous, in consequence of my being the first civil governor after the capture of the settlement, and from there being no records of a former British government in any of the public offices at The Cape. ... I hope I shall be excused for stating that, upon my own responsibility and under the most embarrassing circumstances, occasioned by the loss of four British frigates which were to have protected the convoy, I detached 2,000 infantry to co-operate with the force from India in the reduction of the Mauritius. In a letter from Lord Minto [Governor General of India] upon that occasion, he acknowledges the public service I rendered, not only as relating to the fall of the Mauritius, but adds that it was to the co-operation I afforded he was indebted for the means of moving against Java. ...'.[4]
"Rotten borough"
Other political correspondence in the Caledon Papers, in this case during the governorship years, relates to Lord Caledon's relations with the government at home and, in particular, to the parliamentary conduct of the two members,
He sold the borough in 1820 to his cousins Josias du Pré Alexander and James Alexander.
Marriage and Tyttenhanger
Lord Caledon married Lady Catherine Yorke, daughter of Philip Yorke, 3rd Earl of Hardwicke and Lady Elizabeth Lindsay, on 16 October 1811 in St. James' Church, Westminster, and had issue:
- James Du Pre Alexander, 3rd Earl of Caledon(27 July 1812 – 30 June 1855)
With this marriage the Caledon family effectively inherited Tyttenhanger House near St Albans, Hertfordshire, which had belonged to the 3rd Earl of Hardwicke's grandmother, Katherine Freeman, the sister and heiress of Sir Henry Pope Blount, 3rd and last Baronet.[4] Sir Henry died in 1757 without issue, leaving his sister Katherine, the wife of Rev. William Freeman, his heir. She left an only daughter, Catherine, who married Charles Yorke, second son of Philip Yorke, 1st Earl of Hardwicke, whose son Philip, 3rd Earl of Hardwicke, on his death in 1834, left four daughters, to the second of whom, Catherine, the wife of the 2nd Earl of Caledon, came the manor of Tyttenhanger.
The Royal Tyrone Militia was disembodied in 1816 at the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars and Lord Caledon arranged for a large mansion and two other houses in Caledon to be used as the headquarters and barracks for the permanent staff of the regiment. He also provided work for the men as weavers or as labourers on his estate. When the permanent staff was reduced in 1822 he selected for discharge the senior sergeants who could claim a pension, and arranged for the younger corporals and drummers to join the new police force in the Province of Munster. He encouraged the remaining staff to put money into a savings bank to support their families in the event of further reductions. He remained colonel of the regiment until the end of his life, when he was succeeded by his eldest son.[5]
Lord Caledon was invested as a
Lady Caledon died on 8 July 1863, having bequeathed Tyttenhanger to her daughter-in-law Jane, with an entail upon her four children and, according to one source, the estate descended to her eldest son James Alexander, 4th Earl of Caledon, who died in 1898. His widow became lady of the manor and held it in trust for her children.[7] Other sources indicate that Tyttenhanger was the home of Lady Jane Van Koughnet, the daughter of the 4th Earl of Caledon, and her husband, Commander E. B. Van Koughnet, until her death in 1941.[8] The house was sold in 1973.
References
- ^ Stuart, John (1819). Historical Memoirs of The City of Armagh. Newry: Alexander Wilkinson. p. 557.
- ^ QM John Core, Historical Record of the 2nd (now 80th), or Royal Tyrone Fusilier Regiment of Militia, from the Embodiment in 1793 to the Present Time, Omagh: Alexander Scarlett, 1872/Uckfield: Naval & Military Press, 2015, ISBN 978-1-84342-484-0: 'List of officers', facing p. 1; pp. 26, 60.
- ^ War Office, A List of the Officers of the Militia, the Gentlemen & Yeomanry Cavalry, and Volunteer Infantry of the United Kingdom, 11th Edn, London: War Office, 14 October 1805/Uckfield: Naval and Military Press, 2005, ISBN 978-1-84574-207-2.
- ^ a b Summary of the Caledon Papers, Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, A. P. W. Malcomson
- ^ Core, pp. 69–74.
- ^ Great Houses of Ireland, Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd and Christopher Simon Sykes (Laurence King, London 1999)
- ^ Page, William, ed. (1908). "Parishes: Ridge". A History of the County of Hertford. Vol. 2. London. pp. 386–392. Retrieved 3 July 2019 – via British History Online.
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: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ Anonymous (1892). Hertfordshire County Homes: Descriptive Accounts of the Principal Family Mansions in Hertfordshire. illustrated by F. G. Kitton. St Albans: Hertfordshire Standard Office.