and his ‘great pecuniary moderation.’ Soon after his return home Macartney was addressed by General Stuart in terms that led to a challenge from Macartney. The duel took place in Hyde Park on 8 June 1786, and Macartney was severely wounded (Gent. Mag. 1786, pt. i. p. 523).
Macartney took his seat in the Irish House of Peers in 1788, was made custos rotulorum of Antrim, a trustee of the linen manufacture, a member of the Irish privy council, and a colonel of yeomanry. In 1792 he was created Earl Macartney and Viscount Macartney of Dervock in the peerage of Ireland.
The exactions and acts of injustice perpetrated by the Chinese on English subjects had at this time become so notorious that it was decided to send an embassy to Pekin. Macartney was selected for the post of plenipotentiary. The embassy was equipped with some magnificence, and embarked in the Lion, 64 guns, Captain Erasmus Gower, 26 Sept. 1792. On his arrival Macartney was graciously received. He managed to evade the necessity of doing homage to the emperor in Chinese fashion. Subsequently, at Yuen-Ming-Yuen, he was again admitted to the imperial presence. The embassy collected much information, but permission to have a British minister resident in China was declined. The embassy was sumptuously entertained by the Chinese viceroy at Canton in December 1793, and in September 1794 arrived home from Macao. In 1795 Macartney was sent to Italy on a confidential mission to Louis XVIII of France, then an exile at Verona, with orders to reside near the king. He remained at Verona until Louis XVIII removed to Germany in the following year. Some of his confidential letters at this time have been published in ‘Confidential Letters of the Rt. Hon. Wm. Wickham’ (London, 1870), vol. i. On his return Macartney was created Baron Macartney of Parkhurst, Sussex, and of Auchinleck, Kirkcudbrightshire. On 30 Dec. 1796 he was appointed governor of the newly captured colony of the Cape of Good Hope, which he resigned on account of ill-health in November 1798. On the same ground he declined the presidency of the board of control subsequently offered him by the Addington cabinet. Macartney, who had been several years a martyr to the gout, died at Chiswick, 31 May 1806, aged 69.
Macartney married, 1 Feb. 1768, the Lady Jane Stuart, second daughter of John Stuart, third earl of Bute, K. G. She died in 1828, aged 86. He bequeathed the whole of his property after the death of his widow to his niece Elizabeth Hume, and to her children. Her eldest son assumed the name of Hume-Macartney.
In person Macartney was of middle height, with a placid face and distinguished and agreeable manners. A portrait of him, in conference with his secretary, Sir George Leonard Staunton [q. v.], painted by Lemuel F. Abbott [q. v.], is in the National Portrait Gallery. Few public servants have left office with purer hands than Macartney. He had scholarly tastes, and possessed a fine library, which with his manuscripts was sold in 1854 (see Gent. Mag. 1854, i. 283). Many important manuscripts are now in the British Museum, including much correspondence, both public and private, while he was in India. Other Indian letters are noted in ‘Hist. MSS. Comm.’ 9th Rep. pt. ii. pp. 330–340. Macartney was author of ‘An Account of an Embassy to Russia’ (printed for private circulation in 1768), ‘A Political Account of Ireland’ (1773), and ‘Journal of the Embassy to China,’ all of which are published in the second volume of Barrow's ‘Memoir.’ A cenotaph was erected to him in Lissanoure Church, with an epitaph by George Henry Glasse [q. v.], which is given in the ‘Gent. Mag.’ 1806, pt. i. p. 475.
[Burke's Extinct Peerage, under ‘Macartney;’; Sir John Barrow's Some Account of the Public Life of Earl Macartney, London, 1807, 2 vols.; Gent. Mag. 1806, pt. i. pp. 387, 475, 556; Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. viii. 211; Hist. MSS. Comm. 3rd, 5th, and 9th Reports, pt. ii.; authorities cited. See also Mill's Hist. of India, ed. Wilson, vols. iv. and v.; Papers relating to the Carnatic, presented to the House of Commons in 1803; Annual Registers and Parl. Hbassy, under dates; Colonel Wilks's Hist. Sketches of South of India.]
MACAULAY, AULAY (1758–1819), miscellaneous writer, born in 1758, was the eldest son of John Macaulay, by his second wife. Zachary Macaulay [q. v.] was his brother and Lord Macaulay his nephew. He graduated M.A. at Glasgow in 1778, and while in residence there contributed to ‘Ruddiman's Magazine,’ under the signature ‘Academicus.’ After acting for three years as tutor to the sons of Mr. J. F. Barham at Bedford, he took holy orders, and obtained a curacy at Claybrooke, Leicestershire. He remained there until 1789, when he became rector of Frolesworth, but resigned that living in 1790. He had been admitted in 1785 at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, but his name does not appear in the ‘Graduati Cantabrigienses.’ In 1793 he went on a tour
