Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 55.djvu/81

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general, and directed to take command of the British forces in Portugal and proceed with them to Minorca; and, landing on 7 Nov., compelled the Spanish forces, numbering three thousand seven hundred, to capitulate without the loss of a man. In recognition of his services he was on 8 Jan. 1799 invested with the order of the Bath, and the same year he was appointed governor of Minorca. Shortly afterwards he was ordered to Malta, where he captured the fortress of La Valette. He died at Richmond Lodge on 25 March 1801. By his wife Louisa, second daughter and coheir of Lord Vere Bertie, he had two sons, the eldest of whom, Charles [q. v.], became Baron Stuart de Rothesay.

[Gent. Mag. 1801, i. 374; Anderson's Scottish Nation.]

T. F. H.

STUART, Sir CHARLES, Baron Stuart de Rothesay (1779–1845), eldest son of Sir Charles Stuart [q. v.], general, by Louisa, second daughter and coheir of Lord Vere Bertie, was born on 2 Jan. 1779. Having entered the diplomatic service, he became joint chargé d'affaires at Madrid in 1808, and, being in 1810 sent envoy to Portugal, was created Count of Machico and Marquis of Angra, and knight grand cross of the Tower and Sword. On 20 Sept. 1812 he was made G.C.B. and a privy councillor. He was minister at the Hague 1815–16, ambassador to Paris 1815–30, and ambassador to St. Petersburg 1841–45. On 22 Jan. 1828 he was created Baron Stuart de Rothesay of the Isle of Bute. He died on 6 Nov. 1845. His portrait, painted by Baron Gérard, belonged in 1867 to his daughter, the Marchioness of Waterford (Cat. Third Loan Exhib. No. 80). By his wife Elizabeth Margaret, third daughter of Philip Yorke, third earl of Hardwicke [q. v.] he had two daughters—Charlotte (d. 1861), wife of Charles John, earl Canning [q. v.], and Louisa (d. 1891), wife of Henry, third marquis of Waterford.

[Gent. Mag. 1846, ii. 91–2; G. E. C[okayne]'s Complete Peerage.]

T. F. H.

STUART, DANIEL (1766–1846), journalist, was born in Edinburgh on 16 Nov. 1766. He was descended from the Stuarts of Loch Rannoch, Perthshire, who claimed kinship with the Scottish royal family. His grandfather was out in the '15 and his father in the '45. In 1778 Daniel was sent to London to join his elder brothers, Charles and Peter, who were in the printing business. The eldest, Charles, soon left it for play-writing, and became the intimate friend of George Colman; but Daniel and Peter lived together with their sister Catherine, who in February 1789 secretly married James (afterwards Sir James) Mackintosh [q. v.] She died in April 1796. Daniel Stuart assisted Mackintosh as secretary to the Society of the Friends of the People, whose object was the promotion of parliamentary reform. In 1794 he published a pamphlet, ‘Peace and Reform, against War and Corruption,’ in answer to Arthur Young's ‘The Example of France a Warning to Great Britain.’

Meanwhile, in 1788, Peter and Daniel Stuart undertook the printing of the ‘Morning Post,’ a moderate whig newspaper, which was then owned by Richard Tattersall [q. v.], and was at a low ebb. In 1795 Tattersall disposed of it to the Stuarts for 600l., which included plant and copyright. Within two years Stuart raised the circulation of the paper from 350 a day to a thousand, and gradually converted it into an organ of the moderate tories. He had the entire management almost from the first. By buying in the ‘Gazetteer’ and the ‘Telegraph,’ by skilful editing and judicious management of the advertisements, and by the engagement of talented writers, he soon made the ‘Morning Post’ the equal of the ‘Morning Chronicle,’ then the best daily paper. Mackintosh, who wrote regularly for it in its earlier days, introduced Coleridge to Stuart in 1797. Coleridge became a frequent contributor, and when, in the autumn of 1798, he went to Germany, Southey supplied contributions in his place. On Coleridge's return it was arranged that he should give up his whole time and services to the ‘Morning Post’ and receive Stuart's largest salary. Stuart took rooms for him in King Street, Covent Garden, and Coleridge told Wordsworth that he dedicated his nights and days to Stuart (Wordsworth, Life of Wordsworth, i. 160). Coleridge introduced Lamb to Stuart; but Stuart, though he tried him repeatedly, declared that he ‘never could make anything of his writings.’ Lamb, however, writes of himself as having been closely connected with the ‘Post’ from 1800 to 1803 (‘Newspapers thirty-five years ago’). Wordsworth contributed some political sonnets gratuitously to the ‘Morning Post,’ while under Stuart's management. In August 1803 Stuart disposed of the ‘Morning Post’ for 25,000l., when the circulation was at the then unprecedented rate of four thousand five hundred a day.

Stuart had meanwhile superintended the foreign intelligence in the ‘Oracle,’ a tory paper owned by his brother Peter, and in 1796 he had purchased an evening paper, the ‘Courier.’ To this, after his sale of the ‘Morning Post,’ he gave his whole attention.