Charles Vane, 3rd Marquess of Londonderry

The Most Honourable The Marquess of Londonderry KG, GCB, GCH, PC
Portrait of Sir Charles Stewart by Sir Thomas Lawrence, 1812
Tenure	1822–1854
Predecessor	Robert Stewart
Successor	Frederick Stewart
Born	(1778-05-18)18 May 1778 Mary Street, Dublin
Died	6 March 1854(1854-03-06) (aged 75) Londonderry House, London
Buried	Longnewton, County Durham
Spouse(s)	1. Catherine Bligh 2. Frances Vane
Issue Detail	1 Frederick 2 George, Frances, Adolphus, & others
Father	Robert Stewart, 1st Marquess of Londonderry
Mother	Lady Frances Pratt

Charles William Vane, 3rd Marquess of Londonderry, KG, GCB, GCH, PC (born Charles William Stewart; 1778–1854) was an Anglo-Irish nobleman, a British soldier and a politician. He served in the French Revolutionary Wars, in the suppression of the Irish Rebellion of 1798, and in the Napoleonic wars. He excelled as a cavalry commander in the Peninsular War (1807–1814) under John Moore and Arthur Wellesley (became Wellington in 1809).

On resigning from his post under Wellington in 1812, his half-brother Lord Castlereagh helped him to launch a diplomatic career. He was posted to Berlin in 1813, and then as ambassador to Austria, where his half-brother was the British plenipotentiary at the Congress of Vienna.

He married Lady Catherine Bligh in 1804 and then, in 1819, Lady Frances Anne Vane, a rich heiress, changing his surname to hers, thus becoming Charles Vane instead of Charles Stewart. In 1822 he succeeded his half-brother as 3rd Marquess of Londonderry, inheriting estates in the north of Ireland where, as an unyielding landlord, his reputation suffered in the Great Famine. It was a reputation he matched as a coal operator on his wife's land in County Durham. In opposition to the Mines and Collieries Act of 1842, he insisted on his right to use child labour.