STEWART, Randolph, Visct. Garlies (1800-1873).

This Member’s father, a distinguished naval officer and political follower of the younger Pitt, had (as Lord Garlies) represented Saltash, 1790-95, Cockermouth, 1805-6, and Haselmere, 1806, before succeeding as 8th earl of Galloway in November 1806. HP Commons, 1790-1820, v. 271-2. His mother, a sister of the 1st marquess of Anglesey, preferred living in London to Galloway House, their family seat on Wigtownshire’s Machars peninsula, and most of Garlies’s childhood was spent in England. He travelled on the continent after leaving Oxford, returning in January 1826 to take over the management of the 79,000-acre family estates in Kirkcudbright and Wigtownshire from his ailing father, who wished to spend less time there. NLS, Galloway mss Acc. 6604/1, Galloway to Young, 2 Feb., to Garlies, 24 Nov., 3, 5 Dec., Vizard to Garlies, 27 Feb., Garlies to Galloway, 30 Nov. 1826, Young to Vizard, 20 Mar. 1827. Garlies was disqualified, as the eldest son of a Scottish peer, from representing the Wigtown Burghs on his family’s interest, but his return was assured through an exchange of seats negotiated in May 1825 with the 1st earl of Lonsdale, who 20 years earlier had obliged his father similarly. Lonsdale mss, A. Stewart to Lonsdale, 23 May 1825. He was accordingly returned in absentia for the Lowther borough of Cockermouth at the general election of 1826, and afterwards took a town house in Hanover Street for the parliamentary session. Lonsdale mss, Garlies to Lowther, 11 June; Cumb. Pacquet, 13 June; Galloway mss Acc. 6604/1, Galloway to Garlies, 3 Dec. 1826.

Of a retiring disposition, Garlies was lax in his parliamentary attendance and made no reported speeches in the House. At his father’s request, in the winter of 1826-7 he and their London attorney William Vizard sought to adjust provisions made for his sisters and others, that overencumbered their entailed estates (he was appointed to the investigative committee on Scottish entails, 27 Feb. 1829). Galloway mss Acc. 6604/1, Galloway to Garlies, 5 Dec. 1826, 20 Mar. 1827. He was free to vote independently of the Lowther ‘ninepins’, and did so for Catholic relief, 6 Mar. 1827, and again for Catholic, 6, 30 Mar. 1829, and Jewish emancipation, 5 Apr., 17 May 1830. When arrangements were made for him to take over the lord lieutenancies of Kirkcudbright and Wigtownshire from his father in November 1828, he dealt adroitly with his rivals for the post, Sir Andrew Agnew* and Sir William Maxwell*. Wellington mss WP1/930/13; 944/7, 8; 947/15; 1050/23; Galloway mss Acc. 6604/1, Agnew to Garlies, 7 Nov., Garlies to Maxwell, 11, 16, 17 Nov. 1828. He presented Wigtown’s petition against the Scottish gaols bill, 14 May 1829. That October, at his parents’ behest and against his better judgement, he sought patronage for his former tutor John Perkins, for whom he had little respect. Galloway mss 6604/1, Lord and Lady Galloway to Garlies, 28, 29 May 1830; Wellington mss WP1/1050/23. He brought up a Wigtown petition against the proposed additional tariff on spirits, 14 May, and voted against the Galway franchise bill, 25 May, and abolishing the death penalty for forgery, 7 June 1830. Although peeved by his tardy application, the Lowthers again returned him for Cockermouth at the general election that summer. Lonsdale mss, Lowther to Lonsdale, 18, 20, 24 July, Lonsdale to Lowther, 18, 20, 24 July 1830. He now spent much time at Titness Lodge, near Sunninghill, Berkshire, with Lady Caroline Stewart and at the Travellers’ Club. NLW, Ormathwaite mss FG1/5, pp. 122, 124, 131-2.

The Wellington ministry listed him among their ‘friends’, but he was absent when they were brought down on the civil list, 15 Nov. 1830. He presented a reform petition from Wigtown, 3 Feb., and voted for the Grey ministry’s English reform bill at its second reading, 22 Mar. 1831. He presented an anti-slavery petition from New Woodstock, 29 Mar. The arrangement with the Lowthers lapsed at the dissolution precipitated by the reform bill’s defeat, 19 Apr. In December 1831 and January 1832, he declined offers of a peerage conditional on his support for the government’s reform bills in the Lords. Galloway mss Acc. 6604/1, J. Stewart to Garlies, 20 Dec. 1831, 3 Jan. 1832. Though subsequently expected to contest Wigtownshire, Garlies did not stand for Parliament again. Westmld. Advertiser, 2 Apr., 7 May 1831; I.G.C. Hutchinson, Pol. Hist. Scotland, 8.

His courtship of the duke of Beaufort’s daughter Blanche, whom he married in 1833, had his family’s approval but was initially forbidden by the duchess of Beaufort, because he was a strict Episcopalian and refused to espouse Evangelicalism. Galloway mss Acc. 6604/1, Lady Galloway to Garlies, 3, 4 Sept., 17 Nov. 1832, 2 Jan. 1833, duchess of Beaufort to same, 3 Oct. 1832, 10 Jan. 1833, Beaufort to same, 20 Dec. 1832. After succeeding his father as 9th earl of Galloway in 1834, he consistently supported the Conservatives in the Lords, where he sat by virtue of his British barony of Stewart. ‘In feeble health’, he relinquished both his county lord lieutenancies by 1851 and died at Galloway House in January 1873, survived by his widow (d. 1885) and 11 of their 13 children. His will was confirmed at Wigtown with personalty sworn under £40,000, 17 Sept. 1873. The Times, 3, 4 Jan., 10 Oct.; Galloway Advertiser, 9 Jan. 1873. He was succeeded in the peerage and estates by his eldest son Alan Plantaganet Stewart (1835-1901), Conservative Member for Wigtown 1868-73, on whose death without issue they passed to his second son Randolph (1837-1920).