Lord Farnham
(1799-1868)
2 July 1861

Volume 4, page 152, sitting number 4677.

Henry Maxwell was born on 9 August 1799, the son of Reverend Henry Maxwell, 6th Baron Farnham and Lady Anne née Butler. On 3 December 1828 he married Anna Frances Esther Stapleton, daughter of Sir Thomas Stapleton, 12th Lord Le Despenser and 16th Baronet Stapleton of the Leeward Islands. 

Educated at Trinity College, Dublin, Maxwell represented County Cavan in the House of Commons from 1824 until he succeeded his father on 19 October 1838, when he became the 7th Baron Farnham. He was a genealogist specialising in royal descents and armorial quarterings. He served as an Irish representative peer from 1839 until his death at the age of 69 in 1868. He and his wife were killed in the Abergele train disaster in North Wales, when a passenger train collided with a run-away cargo truck loaded with paraffin. The resulting explosion and fire killed 32 passengers, leaving the bodies so charred that the majority were beyond recognition. Lord Farnham's remains were only identifiable by the crest engraved on his watch. The accident was the worst railway disaster in Britain up to that date.

An obituary appeared in the Dublin Evening Mail (24 August 1868). 'The late Right Hon. Henry Maxwell Lord Farnham was one of the most widely respected noblemen in the North of Ireland, and his death will be extensively lamented throughout the country, and more especially in the county of Cavan. Born in Dublin on the 9th of August, 1799, he was the eldest son of Henry, sixth Lord, by Lady Anne Butler, eldest daughter of Henry Thomas, second Earl of Carrick. He was a staunch supporter of the Irish Church Establishment and its interests, and a liberal subscriber to almost all its charitable and religious societies, especially those of a Protestant and Evangelical character, although he was remarkably free from bigotry.

'He was a Knight of St Patrick, and represented the county of Cavan in successive Parliaments, from 1824 to 1838. [...] In 1830 he married Hon Anna Frances Esther Stapleton, youngest daughter of 22nd Lord Le Despenser, a family which arrived in England in the train of William the Conqueror, and whose name is derived from the office of its founder held at Court as dispenser.'

[For two Silvy portraits of Lady Farnham, see page 108 of this section.]