taste, every thing unfinished and dirty, grand plans for the future, nothing pleasant nor even comfortable at present". Commensurate with the family's rising fortunes, Castlereagh moved to realise some of these "grand plans". In 1803, he choose the architect George Dance to design a Classical Regency replacement of the west wing with new receptions rooms. A number of the present furnishings reflect Castlereagh's career, including a portrait of the French emperor, and chairs elaborately embroidered for the delegates who redrew the map of Europe at Vienna. In the Year of Liberty, 1798 During the three-day "Year of Liberty" in Ards and north Down, 10 to 13 June 1798, Mount Stewart was briefly occupied by the United Irish insurgents. In the wake of the court martials that followed, the wife of the local Presbyterian minister, James Porter, appeared at the house with her seven children to plead for his life. Together with her younger sister, Lady Elizabeth, then dying of tuberculosis, Lady Londonderry was tearfully persuaded. (She had often received Porter at Mount Stewart and in correspondence with the United Irishwoman Jane Greg had referred to herself as a "republican countess"). But Londonderry was to see to it that Porter, convicted on uncertain evidence of having consorted with the rebels, was hung outside his church and home at Greyabbey. Other offenders (David Bailie Warden who commanded the local rebels in the field, and the Reverend Thomas Ledlie Birch who urged them to "drive the bloodhounds of King George, the German king, beyond the seas"), were allowed American exile. Porter's offence may have been to have serially lampooned Londonderry in a popular satire of the landed interest, Billy Bluff. Porter caricatured the master of Mount Stewart as Lord Mountmumble, an inarticulate tyrant who has a dog shot for the temerity of barking. Irish country seat of the Vane-Tempest-Stewarts Castlereagh inherited his father's title in 1821, but within the year took his own life. The next owner of the house was his half-brother, Charles, 3rd Marquess of Londonderry (1778–1854) who had served as ambassador to Vienna and Berlin. He married Lady Frances Anne Vane-Tempest, the greatest heiress of her time, in appreciation of which he styled himself Robert Vane and ordered a further enlargement of the house replacing what remained of its 18th century fabric. Controversially in 1847, while spending £15,000 on the refurbishment, the Marquess of Londonderry gave just £30 to local