Francis Rawdon-Hastings, 1st Marquess of Hastings

George IV
Preceded by	Hon. Thomas Maitland
Succeeded by	Alexander George Woodford As Acting Governor
Personal details
Born	(1754-12-09)9 December 1754 Elizabeth Hastings, 13th Baroness Hastings
Military service
Allegiance	Great Britain
Branch/service	British Army
Rank	General
Commands	Commander-in-Chief of India
Battles/wars	American War of Independence War of the First Coalition Anglo-Nepalese War Third Anglo-Maratha War

Francis Edward Rawdon-Hastings, 1st Marquess of Hastings,

Battle of Bunker Hill

Rawdon was posted at

He was appointed

Returning to America in July, while Howe went to his Philadelphia campaign, Rawdon went with Clinton to the New York headquarters. He participated in the battles of the New York Highlands, where on 7 October, Fort Constitution (opposite West Point) was captured. However, this was too late to link up with General Burgoyne at Albany.^[13]

Rawdon was sent to Philadelphia with dispatches and returned to New York for the winter, where he raised a regiment, called the Volunteers of Ireland, recruited from deserters and Irish Loyalists. Lord Edward Fitzgerald, the future United Irish leader and rebel, served as his aide-de-camp.^[14] Promoted colonel in command of this regiment, Rawdon went with Clinton to Philadelphia.^[15] starting out on 18 June 1778, he went with Clinton during the withdrawal from Philadelphia to New York, and saw action at the Battle of Monmouth.^[16] He was appointed adjutant general. Rawdon was sent to learn news of the Battle of Rhode Island.^[17]

In New York, on 3 September 1779, he quarrelled with Clinton, and resigned his position as adjutant general.

He went south to the

Perhaps his most noted achievement was the victory in 1781 at the Battle of Hobkirk's Hill, in which, in command of only a small force, he defeated by superior military skill and determination, a much larger body of Americans.^[20] Thinking (in error) that General Nathanael Greene had moved his artillery away, Rawdon attacked Greene's left wing. Rawdon quickly concentrated his entire force on the American left flank, using the military advantage of local superiority, which forced the American line to collapse and abandon the field in disorder.^[21]

However, Rawdon was forced to begin a gradual retreat to

Rawdon sat for Randalstown, County Antrim, in the Irish House of Commons from 1781 until 1783. In the Irish Parliament, Rawdon associated on most questions with the Patriot party of Henry Grattan and Lord Charlemont. He succeeded his father as 2nd Earl of Moira on 20 June 1793, and thereafter served first in the Irish House of Lords

In an eve-of-the -Rebellion speech to the Lords on 19 February 1798, he appealed for parliamentary reform: for the abolition of the "pocket boroughs" through which the Lords and the Dublin Castle administration effectively nominated two-thirds of the Irish Commons, and an amendment to the Oath of Supremacy to allow Catholics (extended the limited right to vote in 1793 on the same limited and idiosyncratic terms as Protestants) to sit in parliament.^[23][24] In January 1793, he had received the delegates of the Catholic Committee, including as their agent Theobald Wolfe Tone, in London and helped arrange their audience with the king. When rumours followed that Rawdon might replace the Earl of Westmorland as Irish Viceroy, Tone, a United Irishman, approached him in hopes of being appointed his private secretary. In June, Rawdon became godfather to Tone's fourth child, named in his honour Francis Rawdon Tone.^[14]

While alarmed by the drift of the United Irishmen, despairing of reform, toward insurrection, Rawdon denounced the government's policy of coercion. To the king he sought to present evidence collated and supplied by the eminent physician Whitley Stokes and the lawyer William Sampson of the atrocities and tortures visited upon country people by Crown forces as they sought to break-up and disarm the movement.^[25]

In 1796, Tone was asked by his French hosts whether "we might choose a king" for Ireland (the people of the country being "in general very ignorant"). Tone responded that "Lord Moira" was the only person that might conceivably fill such a role, but that he had "blown his reputation to pieces by accepting a command against France". (Tone's larger objection was that the Presbyterians, who he was in no doubt would "direct the public sentiment in framing a government", were "thoroughly enlightened and sincere republicans").^{[26]: 164–165}

After the United Irish risings in the summer of 1798, Rawdon opposed the government's plans to abolish the Irish Parliament and effect a legislative union with Great Britain.^[23] While Governor General of India, in 1814 Rawdon was to offer further evidence an Irish attachment. He headed the list of subscribers in Bengal to the Irish Harp Society formed in Belfast "to revive the Ancient Music of Ireland" by veterans of the patriotic and reform politics of the 1780s and '90s, among them several former United Irishmen.^[27][28]

Prior to leaving for India, in 1812 Rawdon had also used his offices to secure a position—registrar of the Admiralty Prize Court in Bermuda—for Thomas Moore,^[29] the Irish patriotic bard and admirer of the leading United Irishmen ("the ultimi Romanorum of our country").^[30] In addition to Edward Fitzgerald, these was Tone whom Rawson himself described as "The Irish Lafayette".^[31]

British Peer and prime-ministerial candidate

Lord Hastings

After his return from America, Rawdon had been honoured by the king. In March 1783, he was created Baron Rawdon, of

In 1789 his mother succeeded to the barony of Hastings, and Rawdon, an in accordance to his uncle's will, added the surname of Hastings to his own.^[20] From 1801, as Lord Hastings he sat in the United Kingdom House of Lords.

Inheriting

In 1797 it was rumoured briefly that Rawdon would replace Pitt as Prime Minister. There was some discontent with Pitt over his policies regarding the war with France. Additionally, Pitt's long tenure in office had given him ample opportunity to annoy various political grandees, including but not limited to The Duke of Leeds and Lords Thurlow and Lansdowne.

In mid-May, a combination of these various figures, coupled with a handful of Members of Parliament, proposed to make Rawdon the Prime Minister. Having fought in the American War and having led an expedition to Quiberon, he commanded widespread respect. His relationship with the Prince of Wales also established him as a potential rival to Pitt, who was supported strongly by George III.^[39]

The prime motivation for the plan of having Rawdon become Prime Minister was to secure peace with France, the plotters had come to believe (somewhat unfairly) that Pitt was an obstacle to this objective. But their plan collapsed barely a month later in mid-June because of a lack of support from the political establishment. Additionally, when Rawdon wrote to the King to propose the change of chief ministers, the monarch ignored him. Thus the proposal came to nothing.^[39]

He became

Through the influence of the Prince-Regent, Moira was appointed

Hastings employed Sita Ram, a Bengal draftsman to record his 1814-15 (seventeen month) inspection of British possessions. Resulting in over 230 watercolours of locations in India.^[46]

Anglo-Nepalese War

In May 1813, the British declared war against the

After raids by

Rawdon was active diplomatically, protecting weaker Indian states. His domestic policy in India was also largely successful, seeing the repair of the Mughul canal system in Delhi in 1820, as well as educational and administrative reforms, and encouraging press freedom.^[48] He confirmed the purchase of Singapore from the Sultan of Jahore, by Sir Stamford Raffles, in January 1819.

His last years of office were embittered by a then-notorious matter, the affairs of the W. Palmer and Company banking house. The whole affair was mixed up with insinuations against Lord Hastings, especially charging him with having shown favouritism towards one of the partners in the firm. He was later exonerated but the experience embittered him.^[48]

He also became increasingly estranged from the East India Company's Board of Control (see Company rule in India). He resigned in 1821 but did not leave India until early 1823.^[48]

Death

Rawdon was appointed

• He was awarded the
  freedom of the city of Dublin in recognition of his service in America.^[49]
• Loyalists whom he rescued from the
  Siege of Ninety-Six during the American Revolution were resettled by the Crown and granted land in Nova Scotia. They named their township Rawdon
  in his honour.
• Hastings County, Ontario, and three of its early townships were named after him, by Loyalists who were resettled in Upper Canada after the American Revolution.^[50]
• HMS Moira was named in his honour in 1805, as was the Moira River in Ontario, Canada.
• Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier (1796–c.1848), an Irish Royal Navy officer and polar explorer, was named for him; Lord Moira (as he was at the time) was a friend of Crozier's family.^[51]
• The Hastings River in New South Wales is named after him, as is Rawdon Island, within the River. The township of Huntingdon in the Hastings Valley is also associated with him.

Family

On 12 July 1804, at the age of 50, he married

• Flora Elizabeth Rawdon-Hastings (11 February 1806 – 5 July 1839), lady in waiting to Queen Victoria's mother, the Duchess of Kent, died unmarried.
• Hon. Francis George Augustus (1807–1807), died in infancy.
• George Augustus Francis Rawdon-Hastings, 2nd Marquess of Hastings (4 February 1808 – 13 January 1844)
• Sophia Frederica Christina Rawdon-Hastings (1 February 1809 – 28 December 1859), married John Crichton-Stuart, 2nd Marquess of Bute, mother of John Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute.
• Selina Constance Rawdon-Hastings (1810 – 8 November 1867), married Charles Henry and had children.
• Adelaide Augusta Lavinia Rawdon-Hastings (25 February 1812 – 6 December 1860), married Sir William Murray, 7th Baronet of Octertyre.

Through his brother, the Hon. John Theophilus Rawdon, he was uncle to Elizabeth, Lady William Russell.^[52]

In popular culture

• The character of Rawdon Crawley in William Makepeace Thackeray's 1847–1848 novel Vanity Fair is named after him.
• He appears as Francis Rawdon Hastings, the Second Earl of Moira, in
  Stephanie Barron
  's 2006 novel Jane and the Barque of Frailty.

Portraits

• 
  Marquess of Hastings by Hugh Douglas Hamilton (c. 1801)
• 
  Marquess of Hastings, Governor-General of India by Joshua Reynolds (c. 1812)
• 
  Francis Rawdon, Marquess of Hastings. Engraving. Fisher, Son & Co, London. 1829
• 
  Francis Rawdon, Marquess of Hastings by Henry Raeburn. 1813
• 
  portrait by Gilbert Stuart, c. 1796

References