Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 27.djvu/41

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been ‘dragooned’ into the treaty, the directors thought fit to sanction Hobart's policy. These differences did not, however, prevent a cordial co-operation between the governors of Fort William and Fort St. George against Tippoo Sahib, the sultan of Mysore; and when Lord Hobart, in the exercise of his discretionary powers, countermanded an expedition fitted out by Sir John Shore against the Spanish settlement of Manilla, the latter warmly applauded his conduct, and privately declared that with the experience he had gained he was admirably qualified to fill the post of governor-general. But the order for his recall shortly after arrived, and amid the regrets of the inhabitants of Madras, who were much attached to him for his uncompromising opposition to usury and corruption, he sailed for England in August 1798. In consideration of his services, and in compensation for his disappointment in not succeeding to the governor-generalship, which was the sole inducement that had taken him out to India, the company conferred on him an annual pension of 1,500l.

On 23 May 1798 he was made clerk of the common pleas in the Irish exchequer court, and on 30 Nov. following he was summoned to the House of Lords as Baron Hobart of Blickling. He was chiefly occupied during 1799 with Lord Auckland in arranging the details of the Act of Union, and spoke and voted in its favour in the House of Lords. He was strongly opposed to catholic emancipation as part of the union scheme, but he seems to have been in favour of a liberal endowment of the catholic clergy. In March 1801 he was appointed secretary of state for the colonial and war department in the Addington administration. A circular letter issued by him in August 1803 deprecated any extensive volunteer movement, and gave great offence. In June 1804 Hobart Town, Tasmania, was founded and named after him. Addington resigned in May 1804. In November 1804 he succeeded his father in the peerage, and joined Pitt's administration as chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster on 14 Jan. 1805, but with Sidmouth resigned in the following July, in consequence of Pitt's attitude over the Melville affair. From February 1806 to May in the following year he held the office of joint postmaster-general in the ‘All the Talents’ administration, but without a seat in the cabinet, an exclusion which he resented. On the formation of the Liverpool ministry in 1812 he was appointed president of the board of control for Indian affairs, and continued to hold this post till his death. From 23 May to 23 June 1812 he also held the chancellorship of the duchy of Lancaster. His most important speech was probably that on the renewal of the East India Company's charter on 9 April 1813, which was remarkable for the liberality of its tone. He died on 4 Feb. 1816, in consequence of being thrown from his horse in St. James's Park. He married first, on 4 Jan. 1792, Margaretta, daughter and coheiress of Edmund Bourke, esq., of Urrey, and widow of Thomas Adderley, esq., of Innishannon, co. Cork, who died in 1796, and by her had a daughter, Sarah Albinia Louisa, who married Frederick John, first earl of Ripon; secondly, on 1 June 1799, Eleanor Agnes, daughter of William Eden, first lord Auckland, who died childless in 1851. He was succeeded by his nephew, George Robert Hobart, fifth earl of Buckinghamshire. His portrait was painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence.

[Doyle's Official Baronage; Burke's Peerage; Irish Parliamentary Debates; Buckingham's Courts and Cabinets of George III, vol. iii.; Grattan's Life of Henry Grattan; Lecky's Hist. of England; Memoirs of the Life of Sir John Shore, Baron Teignmouth; Mill's British India; Asiatic Annual Register; Parliamentary Papers relating to the Affairs of the Carnatic, No. 2; Addit. MSS. 13470, 33108, 33109, 33112; Parliamentary History and Debates; the published correspondence of the Marquis Cornwallis, Lord Auckland, Lord Castlereagh, and Lord Colchester; Pellew's Life of Lord Sidmouth, and Hist. MSS. Comm. Reports, vi. 406, viii. 296, xi. 426 (Earl of Dartmouth's MSS.)]

R. D.

HOBART, VERE HENRY, Lord Hobart (1818–1875), governor of Madras, son of the Hon. and Rev. Augustus Edward Hobart (later Hobart-Hampden), afterwards sixth earl of Buckinghamshire, by Mary, daughter of John Williams, was born 8 Dec. 1818, at Welbourn, Lincolnshire. He went to Dr. Mayo's school at Cheam, Surrey. In 1836 he was elected to an open scholarship at Trinity College, Oxford, proceeded B.A. 3 Dec. 1840, and was appointed in the same year to a clerkship in the board of trade. In 1842 he accompanied Sir H. Ellis as secretary on a diplomatic mission to the emperor of Brazil, and about 1850 began to write many political articles upon Irish questions. In 1849, on his father's accession to the earldom, he succeeded to the courtesy title of Lord Hobart. In 1854 he became private secretary to Sir George Grey [q. v.], who was then secretary of state for the colonies, but resigned this post in 1855 in order to be free to oppose the continuance of the Crimean war. He advocated peace in a striking letter to the ‘Times’ of 22 Feb. of that year. In 1861 he was pro-