George Stone

Life
?1708-1764; b. London, ed. Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford; chaplain of lord lieutenant, Duke of Dorset, Dublin; Dean of Ferns, 1733; Dean of Derry, 1734; Bishop of Ferns and Leighlin, 1740; bishop of Kildare and dean of Christ Church, 1743; Bishop of Derry, 1745; Archbishop of Armagh, March 1747; Lord Justice and member of Irish Privy Council, April. 1747; supported claim of Crown to surplus revenues against Henry Boyle, 1749-53; claim succeeding in 1751 and renewed in 1753 with Irish Commons rejecting Crown right;

emerged as virtual dictator of Ireland with dismissal of Crown servants opposed to Bill; figures as Cardinal Lapidario in Baratariana; on Boyle becoming Earl of Shannon his power waned; excluded from Regency, 1756; restored 1758; shared power with Shannon (Boyle) and Ponsonby; Lord Justice in April 1758, with Shannon and Ponsonby; carried down govt. in 1764; d. London; Bishop Stone is a sternly Govt. prelate and autocratic in J. A. Froude’s Two Chiefs of Dunboy (1889). ODNB DIB

[ top ]

Criticism
The Adventures of a Bishop: A Phase in Irish Life, a Personal and Historical Narrative by Charles Frederick D’Arcy (London: Hodder & Stoughton 1934), in which his reputation is defended, citing calumnies reported in James Stuart’s History of Armagh where they are called ‘foul aspersions’; Stone is said here to have spoken long and eloquently against the bill to impose further restrictions on Catholic priests in Ireland, at the third reading in the House of Lords, 29 Jan. 1756. (D’Arcy, p.229f.)

[ top ]

Commentary

Patrick O’Kelly, History of Ireland [...] 1692 [to] 1855 (Dublin: Goodwin 1855) - remarks on Stone:

‘The same page of Plowden which gives us the refined principles of the Earl of Chesterfield, and patriotism of Dr. Lucas, introduces the amusing and degrading picture of the Protestant Primate of Armagh: so great and partial were the words of his adherents and admirers, that he was called “the beauty of Holiness.” Primate Stone was the name of that great man of Armagh.’ (p.25.)

‘There was then in Ireland a certain description of person who professed themselves at all times enemies by principle and persecutors by disposition of their Catholic countrymen. They were ready instruments in the hands of the ambitious prelate to whose intrigues were attributed by Lord Clare, on the union, all the animosities which had so long disturbed parliamentary debates. This was Primate Stone, whose policy, at all time Machievelian [sic], kept the Irish Catholics in continual apprehensions in Penal-laws and persecution, from the failure of their appeal to have their restrictions removed. [...] The disappointments felt by the Catholics for the rejection of their bill was not of long continuance. The deaths of Stone the Primate and the Earl of Shannon, in December 1764, put an end to the system pursued against them.’ (p.36.)

—Available online; accessed 20.09.2024.

James Kelly, [entry on] ‘lord lieutenancy’, in The Blackwell Companion to Irish Literature, ed. W. J. McCormack (Oxford 1999; 2001): ‘The most threatening development in these years for domestic political stability was the encouragement given the ambitious Ponsonby family by the duke of Devonshire. This did not excite especial concern until the late 1740s, when the Ponsonbys, now allied with the primate, George Stone, endeavoured to take Henry Boyle’s place as the leading Undertaker interest in the Irish House of Commons. They received the opportunity they craved with the reappointment of the duke of Dorset to the lord lieutenancy in 1750, but his decision to place his confidence in the Ponsonby-Stone interest inaugurated a period of instability in Irish politics, which served only to make British politicians acutely aware of the power exercised by leading Irish politicians and the weaknesses of current arrangements as far as the security of the Anglo-Irish nexus was concerned. The upshot was that they began to reassess the role of the lord lieutenant in the Irish administration.’ (p.359.)

[ top ]