Charles Dillon, 14th Viscount Dillon


Charles Henry Dillon-Lee, 14th Viscount Dillon;, was an Irish and English landowner. He lived in Ditchley, Oxfordshire, England and was represented in Ireland by his agent Charles Strickland.

Birth and origins

Charles was born on 20 April 1810 in Ely Place in Dublin. He was the second child and the eldest son of the ten children of Henry Augustus Dillon-Lee and his wife Henrietta Browne. His father was the 13th Viscount Dillon of Costello-Gallen. The Dillons were a widespread Old English family that had settled in Connacht and Leinster and descended from Sir Henry Dillon who had come to Ireland with Prince John in 1185. Charles's mother was the eldest daughter of Colonel Dominick Geoffrey Browne, M.P. for Mayo and sister of Lord Oranmore and Browne. His parents married in 1807.
He appears below among his siblings as the second child:
  1. Henrietta Maria, campaigned for better education for girls and married Edward John Stanley, 2nd Baron Stanley of Alderley.
  2. Charles, the subject of this article;
  3. Theobald Dominick, became the 15th Viscount Dillon, died childless and was succeeded by his brother;
  4. Arthur Edmund Denis, married Ellen Adderley and succeeded his brother as the 16th Viscount Dillon;
  5. Constantine Augustus, emigrated to New Zealand;
  6. Robert George Lee, died young;
  7. Margaret Frances Florence, became a maid of honour to her majesty and married the geologist William John Hamilton.
  8. Gerald Normanby, married Louisa FitzGibbon, daughter of Richard Hobart FitzGibbons, 3rd Earl of Clare, and changed his surname to hers.
  9. Louisa Anne Rose, married the Hon. Spencer-Cecil Ponsonby of Bessborough; and
  10. Helena Matilda.

Marriage and children

On 1 February 1833 Charles married Lydia Sophia Story, daughter of Philip Laycock Story and his wife Lydia Baring. She was a granddaughter of Sir Francis Baring, founder of the London merchant house of Barings. They married in Tusmore House, Oxfordshire, England, at that time the home of his father-in-law. They had two daughters:
  1. Ethelred Florence, stayed unmarried; and
  2. Geraldine Lee Frances, married Captain Charles Augustus Drake Halford in 1859.

    Viscount and landlord

Charles became the 14th Viscount Dillon at his father's death on 26 July 1832. He inherited Irish and English lands. The Irish lands were the ancestral lands owned by the family since Theobald Dillon, 1st Viscount Dillon in the 17th century. They lay in north-eastern Connacht and in western Leinster. The land in England was in Oxfordshire and had been acquired more recently by the marriage of the 11th Viscount to Charlotte Lee, daughter of the 2nd Earl of Lichfield in 1744 and the inheritance that followed in 1776 at the death of the 4th Earl of Lichfield.
According to the Legacies of British Slave-Ownership at the University College London, Dillon was awarded a payment as a slave trader in the aftermath of the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 with the Slave Compensation Act 1837. The British Government took out a £15 million loan with interest from Nathan Mayer Rothschild and Moses Montefiore which was subsequently paid off by the British taxpayers. Dillon was associated "T71/888 Montserrat claim no. 15", he owned 128 slaves in Montserrat and received a £1,977 payment at the time.
From 1845 to 1849 Ireland suffered the Great Famine. Lord Dillon's Irish estates lay in some of the worst affected areas. Despite living in England and being an absentee landlord in Ireland, he and his estate manager Charles Strickland, who lived at Loughglinn, seem to have been humane and seem to have helped the tenants rather than evicting them. A large stained-glass window in the baptistery of the Cathedral of the Annunciation in Ballaghaderreen, County Roscommon commemorates Lord Dillon for his fairness as a landlord during the great famine.This window was donated by his wife. Another stained-glass window in a chapel on the south side of the cathedral commemorates his agent Charles Strickland.
When Lord Dillon's Mayo tenants were discriminated against at the market of Bellaghy in County Sligo, his agent Charles Strickland built the town of Newtown Dillon in County Mayo next to the county border. The first houses being completed in 1846. The town soon took the name of Charlestown in honour of Charles Strickland.

Death and succession

On 18 November 1865 Lord Dillon died aged 55 at Ditchley, the family's country house near Charlbury in Oxfordshire. The title passed to his younger brother Theobald Dominick, who became the 15th Viscount Dillon.
A monument to the memory of the 14th Viscount with full length effigy in white marble was erected in All Saints church, Spelsbury, Oxfordshire. This work is signed by the sculptor Charles Francis Fuller, who worked in Florence.