HYDE, John (?1774-1832), of Castle Hyde, co. Cork

The Hydes of Castle Hyde were a branch of the Berkshire family that owned land at South Denchworth and Kingston Lisle and had supplied Members for the county, Abingdon, St. Germans and Tamworth between 1553 and 1601. Arthur Hyde (d. 1600) had settled in Ireland in the late sixteenth century and received a grant of 12,000 acres of confiscated lands at Carrigoneda, county Cork. His son and namesake (d. 1644) was knighted in 1624 and by 1670 the family were in possession of Castle Hyde. Hyde’s father, a younger son, had in 1763 married a granddaughter of the 1st earl of Bessborough. The same year he replaced his father-in-law Benjamin Burton as Member for county Carlow in the Irish Parliament, where he sat until 1768 before representing county Cork, 1769-76. In 1772 he succeeded his unmarried brother Arthur to Castle Hyde, which at his death in 1797 passed to his elder son John, whom he had provided with a conventional education. Gent. Mag. (1797), i. 172. In 1798 Hyde’s sister Sarah married their second cousin Henry Boyle (1771-1842), who became 3rd earl of Shannon in 1807, an alliance which was reinforced by Hyde’s marriage to another second cousin, Boyle’s first cousin Elizabeth, in 1802.

At the general election of 1820 Hyde was returned unopposed for Youghal, where Shannon, who had been in opposition to government since 1817, remained precariously in control of the representation but under threat from the reviving Devonshire interest. Dublin Evening Post, 18 Mar. 1820. A very lax attender, of whom a radical commentary of 1823 inaccurately stated there was ‘no trace of attendance’, Hyde is not known to have spoken in debate. Black Bk. (1823), 166; Session of Parl. 1825, p. 470. He was present to vote with the Whig opposition to the Liverpool ministry for the restoration of Queen Caroline’s name to the liturgy, 13 Feb., and was granted three weeks’ leave on urgent private business, 14 Mar. 1821. No evidence of parliamentary activity has been found for the next three sessions. Hyde clearly became something of a cypher, and in October 1822 James Abercromby*, after concluding negotiations which ensured the 6th duke of Devonshire’s assumption of electoral control in Youghal, complained from Ireland:

Mr. Hyde said nothing about resigning, which is very odd after he wrote to the people of Youghal to say he should do so, and he did not come to our dinner, which I regard as an act of total abdication. Bessborough mss F1, Abercromby to Duncannon, 14 Oct. 1822.

Hyde voted for Catholic relief, 1 Mar., 21 Apr., and was named to the select committee on the Irish prison laws bill, 2 May 1825. Writing from Sidmouth, Devon, he declined an invitation to attend the Catholic Association’s dinner for the ‘friends of civil and religious liberty’, 24 Jan. 1826. O’Connell Corresp. iii. 224. At that year’s dissolution he made way for Devonshire’s nominee at Youghal. Southern Reporter, 6 June 1826. He did not seek re-election and died in February 1832. He was succeeded by his elder son and namesake, on whose death without issue in 1885 the Irish estates passed to his niece Mrs. Sarah Beck of Derwyn, Monmouthshire, who took the name of Hyde in 1888.