Viscount Dillon


Viscount Dillon, of Costello-Gallen in the County of Mayo, is a title in the Peerage of Ireland. It was created in 1622 for Theobald Dillon, Lord President of Connaught. The Dillons were a Hiberno-Norman landlord family from the 13th century in a part of County Westmeath called 'Dillon's Country'. His great-grandson, the seventh Viscount, was a supporter of the Catholic King James II of England and was outlawed after the Glorious Revolution. He founded 'Dillon's Regiment' of the Irish Brigade in the French Army, which was supported by the Wild Geese and achieved success at Fontenoy in 1745.
However, his son Henry, the eighth Viscount, managed to obtain a reversal of the outlawry in 1694 and later served as Lord Lieutenant of County Roscommon. His younger brother, Lieutenant-General Arthur Dillon, was given the French title of Count Dillon in 1711 and was also created "Viscount Dillon" and "Earl of Dillon" by James Francis Edward Stuart, the Jacobite claimant to the throne. His son Henry, the eleventh Viscount, was a Colonel in the French Army, but Dillon's Regiment was disbanded in 1793 due to the turmoils of the French Revolution. His son Charles, the twelfth Viscount, notably represented Westbury in Parliament and conformed to Anglicanism in 1767. His son Henry Augustus, the thirteenth Viscount, sat as a Member of Parliament for Harwich and County Mayo. His great-grandson, the nineteenth Viscount, was a Brigadier in the Army. the title is held by the latter's great-grandson, the twenty-second Viscount, who succeeded his father in 1982.

Viscounts Dillon (1622)

The heir presumptive is his first cousin, Thomas Arthur Lee Dillon

In France

Being of foreign origin, the Dillons needed to be reconnus nobles en France as noblesse d'origine etrangère and maintenus nobles. They were maintenus nobles in 1759. They were further acknowledged as being of extraction chevaleresque, having been noble since 1347, and so allowed to the :fr:Honneurs de la Cour|Honneurs de la Cour by the King of France in 1750, 1769, 1770, 1775, 1777, 1785 and 1788.