on 1 Jan. 1829, and led to his immediate recall, though he continued to hold the office of lord-lieutenant till March. Anglesey's general attitude, and especially his latest action, had made him very popular in Ireland, and the day of his departure was kept as a day of mourning in Dublin. The door seemed to be closed more firmly than ever against catholic emancipation; but the Duke of Wellington had been gradually breaking down the king's resistance, and on 5 Feb. the relief bill was announced from the throne.
When Lord Grey became prime minister, Anglesey was again made lord-lieutenant, on 23 Dec. 1830; but the agitation for repeal had now taken the place of that for emancipation, and he at once found himself at war with O'Connell. ‘Things are now come to that pass that the question is whether he or I shall govern Ireland,’ Anglesey wrote, a month later, when it had been determined, after a long consultation with the law officers, to arrest O'Connell. O'Connell thought it best to plead guilty, but the war between them continued, and by July O'Connell was writing: ‘I wish that ridiculously self-conceited Lord Anglesey were once out of Ireland. I take him to be our present greatest enemy.’ The lord-lieutenant had to ask for stringent coercion acts, which were distasteful to a section of the whig cabinet, and the renewal of which was in fact the cause of its break-up in 1834. But before that time Anglesey had left Ireland. He was succeeded by Lord Wellesley as lord-lieutenant in September 1833. The most satisfactory work of his viceroyalty was the establishment of the board of education, in which he took an active part. This brought him into close relations with Archbishop Whately.
When Lord John Russell formed his ministry in 1846, Anglesey became for the second time master-general of the ordnance, on 8 July, and remained so till 27 Feb. 1852. It was during his tenure of the office that the letter of the Duke of Wellington to Sir John Burgoyne drew general attention to the defenceless state of our coasts, but little came of it at the time. He was made field-marshal on 9 Nov. 1846, and lord-lieutenant of Staffordshire on 9 Nov. 1849. He had been lord-lieutenant of Anglesey since 21 April 1812. After holding the colonelcy of the 7th light dragoons for more than forty years he exchanged it for the horse-guards, on 20 Dec. 1842.
He died at the age of eighty-six, on 29 April 1854, and was buried in the family vault in Lichfield Cathedral. His portrait was painted by Lawrence, and a copy of it (by W. Ross) is in the United Service Club. He was tall, with a courteous bearing; impetuous, but not wanting in shrewdness and judgment. He was no speaker, but he showed his readiness in repartee on a well-known occasion. At the time of Queen Caroline's trial a mob of her sympathisers, who knew he was no friend of hers, insisted on his cheering her. He complied, and gave: ‘The Queen, and may all your wives be like her!’
He had married (25 July 1795) Lady Caroline Elizabeth Villiers, third daughter of the Earl of Jersey, by whom he had three sons and five daughters; but in 1810 she obtained a divorce, and he then married Charlotte, daughter of Earl Cadogan, the divorced wife of Henry Wellesley, afterwards Lord Cowley, by whom he had three sons and three daughters. The third son of the second marriage, George Augustus, is separately noticed.
His eldest son by his second marriage, Lord Clarence Edward Paget (1811–1895), was educated at Westminster School, and joined the navy in 1827. He served as a midshipman on board the Asia at Navarino. He was captain of the Princess Royal, of 91 guns, in the expedition to the Baltic in 1854, and during the blockade and bombardment of Sebastopol in 1855; he also took part in the expedition to Kertch and Yenikalé (medals, Sebastopol clasp, and fourth class of the Medjidie). He attained flag rank in 1858, and was made a rear-admiral of the red in 1863, vice-admiral in 1865, admiral in April 1870, and was placed on the retired list in 1876. From 1859 to 1866 he was secretary to the admiralty in Lord Palmerston's second administration, and from 28 April 1866 to 28 April 1869 was commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean. He was a privy councillor, and became a G.C.B. in May 1886. He represented Sandwich in the liberal interest from 1847 to 1852, and from 1857 until he took command in the Mediterranean in 1866. He died at Brighton on 22 March 1895. He married, in 1852, Martha Stuart, daughter of Admiral Sir Robert Otway, G.C.B., by whom he left issue. Lady Clarence Paget died at Brighton on the day after her husband's death.
Anglesey's second son by his second marriage was Lord Alfred Henry Paget (1816–1888), for many years equerry and clerk-marshal of the royal household. He was educated at Westminster School, became a lieutenant in the blues on 14 March 1834, purchased an unattached company on 20 Oct. 1840, and exchanged into his father's regiment, the 7th hussars, in which he served for several years; he rose finally to the rank of general on the retired list in 1881. He was chief equerry to the queen and clerk-marshal from July
