Mags GarganIreland’s Czar: Gladstonian Government and the Lord Lieutenancies of the Red Earl Spencer, 1868-86 by James H. Murphy
Felix M Larkin
Spencer Dock, in the heart of Dublin’s redeveloped docklands area, bears the name of the Lord Lieutenant who opened it in 1873.
This was John Poyntz Spencer, 5th Earl Spencer – known as the ‘Red Earl’ because of his enormous red beard – and he served twice as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, 1868–74 and 1882–5. His involvement in Irish affairs is the subject of this important new book by James H Murphy, of DePaul University, Chicago.
Murphy’s purpose in writing about the Red Earl is to redress what he sees as an imbalance in the historiography of 19th Century Ireland.
His view is that disproportionate attention has been given to opposition politicians and groups, whether of the constitutional or revolutionary brand. Assessments of those who actually had responsibility for governing Ireland in the 19th Century largely remain to be written.
Monarchy
In a previous book, Abject Loyalty (Cork University Press, €29.00/£23.00 pb), published 2001, James Murphy explored the monarchy and Ireland, and now he turns to the office of Lord Lieutenant and specifically to one of the most significant holders of that office.
The office had a dual character: on the one hand, the monarch’s representative in Ireland; on the other, the head of the Irish executive in Dublin Castle – though day-to-day operations and political accountability generally devolved to the Chief Secretary. Murphy argues that the failure to maintain a clear distinction between these roles, particularly during Spencer’s second period as Lord Lieutenant, politicised the Lord Lieutenancy and, by extension, the monarchy in the eyes of Irish nationalists.
He contends that the monarchy might otherwise have been a force binding Ireland and Britain together, even after Home Rule – as it has held the Commonwealth together up to the present day.
Spencer’s approach to Ireland mirrored that of his political mentor, Gladstone. He believed in firm government – coercion as deemed necessary to preserve law and order – but accompanied by real reform in the areas of land, education, religion and infrastructure.
Allegations
His second Lord Lieutenancy was marred at the outset by the Phoenix Park murders, and then by allegations of miscarriages of justice (for example, the Maamtrasna murder trial) and accusations of covering up a homosexual ring in Dublin Castle (leading the egregious Tim Healy to suggest that Spencer should be advanced in the peerage to “Duke of Sodom and Gomorrah”).
His second period in office was, however, notably successful in reducing the level of political violence in Ireland.
Like Gladstone, Spencer eventually came to accept that nothing short of Home Rule would reconcile the Irish to the British Empire. The alternative would be even more despotic government, and coercion always offended the sensibilities of the British Liberal Party.
Coercion was, as Murphy points out, a source of tension between Spencer and Gladstone, for the latter was invariably reluctant to accept the necessity for it and loath to defend it in Westminster against the often scathing criticism of Irish nationalist MPs – leaving Spencer to take the brunt of their abuse, without a right of reply in the House of Commons, since he was a peer.
On the subject of coercion, Murphy wryly observes that “post-independence Ireland, through its various Offences against the State Acts, normalised measures that in the 19th Century would have been considered as amounting to coercion”.
Objective
He concludes, therefore, that political indignation at coercion in 19th Century Ireland “needs to be read as a judgment more of perceptions of the legitimacy of the State than any objective measure of the severity of coercion itself”.
The Red Earl was a modest man, with an aristocratic sense of duty. His wife, Charlotte, was a woman of great beauty and charm, and thus a considerable asset to him in discharging his ceremonial functions as Lord Lieutenant. She was known in Ireland as “Spencer’s Faery Queen”.
Their marriage was childless, and he was succeeded in the earldom by a much younger half-brother whose great-granddaughter was Diana, Princess of Wales.