Life
1737-1806; [Lord Macartney; Baron Macartney, later Earl]; b. Lisanoure,
Loughgiel, Co. Antrim, member of a branch of a successful Belfast merchant
family that conformed to the established religion; ed. TCD; Ambassador
to Russia, and Chief Sec. for Ireland [representing the Townshend administration],
1769-72; created earl, 1792; his trade mission (or embassy) to Peking
for George III during 179-294 is recorded in ‘Journal of the Embassy
to China’, printed in John Barrow’s Memoir of Macartney (1807);
with Townshend, he was the butt of the satirical collection Baratariana
(1771) [var. 1772], which bore a oval frontispiece port. of the former
with the caption ‘And bid him go to Hell, to Hell he goes’,
beneath and the motto, ‘In Coelum jufferis ibit’, and with a
string or halter passing between two hands marked North and Bute and left
and right. A satirical engraving of Townshend’s cabinet from Baratariana,
prominently incuding Macartney, appears on the jacket of Bartlett’s
Calendar [op. cit., infra]; successive missions to China included
those of Amherst, 1816-17, and Elgin, 1844-46. RR DNB PI DIW DUB
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Works
Journal to the Embassy to China, incl. in Memoir by John
Barrow (1807); An Account of an Embassy to Russia (1768); A
Political Account of Ireland (1773), reprinted in Barrow; Macartney
in Ireland 1768-72: Tom Bartlett, ed. and intro., A Calendar of
the Chief Secretaryship Papers of Sir George Macartney (PRONI 1978).
Tom Bartlett, ed. and intro., Macartney in Ireland 1768-72: A Calendar of the Chief Secretaryship Papers of Sir George Macartney (Belfast: PRONI [1978]), xlviii, 404, comprising the vast bulk of Macartney’s officialepapers relating to Ireland [and pertaining] to the period of his secretaryship, and shortly after; 17 vols. and some loose papers on deposit in Public Rec. Off., Northern Ireland [PRONI], arranged in haphazard fashion during his lifetime; supplemented by papers in other Northern Ireland, Indian, and American libraries.
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Criticism
H. H. Robbins, Our First Ambassador in China, an account of the life
of George Earl of Macartney (1908).
Peter Roebuck, Macartney of Lisanoure 1737-1806 (Belfast 1983).
Jean Agnew, Belfast Merchant Families in the Seventeenth Century (Dublin: Four Courts Press 1996).
J. Redington, ed., Calendar of the Home Office Papers 1766-69 (1879) [contains some of his papers].
Richard Ryan, Biographia Hibernica: Irish Worthies (1821), Vol. II, pp.389-93.
Tom Bartlett, ed. and intro., Macartney in Ireland 1768-72:
A Calendar of the Chief Secretaryship Papers of Sir George Macartney (Belfast: PRONI [1978]).
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Notes
Library
of Herbert Bell (Belfast) holds Baratariana, A Select Collection of
Fugitive Political Pieces (Dublin 1777)
George McCartney [sic] reported from Belfast in 1707, ‘..
thank God we are not under any great fears here, for ... we have not among
us above seven papists.’ See Loreto Todd, The Language of Irish
Literature (1989).
Macartney regarded with animosity by the chief undertaker, John Ponsonby, who wrote, in correspondence, of his ‘categorical style’. It was chiefly Ponsonby’s control of Ireland through the Revenue Commission and the House of Commons, of which he was Speaker, that the viceroy Townshend was trying to undermine. (See Bartlett, 1978, op. cit. infra, p.xxiii.) Macartney was under attack in the press, notably the Freeman’s Journal, which called him ‘an officious scribe ... of ministerial principles and by family connexion linked to the BUTEAN interest who will not hestitate at the next session to propose any motion, the junto can contrive for their purpose or he devise for their favour’ (FJ, 15 Aug 1769; quoted Bartlett, xxiv). Hnery Grattan wrote;’Macartney, if possible, is more disliked than Lord Townshend. An eternal sneer, a nauseating affection and a listless energy make him (they say) disgusting in general and give him the name of the Macaroni prime minister (in H Grattan, Memoirs of Henry Grattan, Dublin 1839, I, p.162; cited Bartlett, xxxii, ftn.) Ba
Macartney paid but five guineas to one Gorman, a scribe, who presented to him his ‘poetical bagatelle’, as reported with happy surprise in a letter of Charles O’Conor to Archb. Carpenter of Dublin ([10 Jan. 1772; O’Connor, ed. Ward and Ward, Letters, pp.265-66].
The Macartney letterbooks for eleven years in the period 1666-1706 are employed as a documentary basis for much of the analysis in Jean Agnew, Belfast Merchant Families in the Seventeenth Century (Dublin: Four Courts Press 1996).
A portrait of Lord [Geo.] Macartney by Gustav Lundberg was acquired by the Ulster Museum through the Macartney sale, Belfast 1947; see Anne Crookshank, Irish Portraits Exhibition (Belfast: Ulster Mus. 1965).
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)