(1743 - 1805), e. s. of 1st E. of Massereene; sty. Ld. Loughneagh 1756 - 7 when suc. fa. as 2nd E.; Corpus Camb. 1758; in Paris from 1765 and imprisoned for debt 1770 - 89; m. 1 1789 Marie Anne Barcier (d. 1800), 2 Elizabeth Lane.
1762 - 3 Turin (by May - Oct. 1762 - ), Florence, Naples (Feb. - Mar. 1763), Rome (Mar.), Bologna, Venice (by 29 May)
Once said to be 'the most superlative coxcomb that ever Ireland bred',1 he went to Italy in 1762 with a tutor, Mr Hutchinson, son of the Bishop of Killala. Lord Massereene attended the Academy at Turin. In May 1762 Phelps told Horace Mann that Hutchinson 'who has had the pleasure of being known to you before at Florence' and Massereene were the only remaining English there; 'as to his young Lord he is lively, and does not want sense but does not carry his balast in the right place: he wears lead in his shoes, is always dancing & cutting capers, and famous for breaking thro' all the rules of the Academy'.2 On 8 October the British minister George Pitt wrote from Turin introducing them to Horace Mann in Florence,3 and on 22 October Phelps again wrote to Mann describing Massereene as 'the strangest mixture of a Character I ever met with;' his great passion was dancing, 'which he does not execute ill notwithstanding his figure is the worst calculated for such an exercise', but he also showed a 'determined Obstinacy in never doing anything that he is told is right, and an insensibility of shame after being convicted of the grossest improprieties. Add to these a dirty scandalous Avarice, that would not be pardonable in a miser of threescore' - all of which, wrote Phelps, 'would make me shoot him like a wild Goose if he was a son of mine'.3
In March 1763 they were returning to Rome from Naples, and were expected to proceed to Bologna and Venice in April.4 Hutchinson apparently travelled from Rome to Naples separately with Thomas Tighe, with whom he was in Capua on 4 February.5 In Rome Lumisden wrote that Massereene 'has been laughed at by the Italians, as well as by his own countrymen, on account of his theatrical dancing'.6 In May 1763 they were in Venice, Massereene attending Lord Northampton's official entry as ambassador.7
1. Sketches and Characters, see CP. 2. SP 105/314, f.162 (12 May 1762). 3. SP 105/314, f.317. 4. Seafield mss, gd 248/49/2 (D. Crespin, 11 Mar. 1763). 5. ASN cra 1277. 6. Dennistoun, 1:304. 7. W.B. Compton, History of the Comptons, 187.