William Carr Beresford Viscount Beresford

Beresford, a leading political dynasty of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Tristram Beresford (b. 1574) came to Ireland as manager for the Irish Society of the Londonderry Plantation. The family settled in Coleraine. His son Sir Tristram Beresford (d. 1673), knighted in 1665, sat in the Irish parliaments of 1634 and 1661–5. Sir Marcus Beresford (1694–1763) married the daughter and only heir of the 3rd earl of Tyrone and was permitted to perpetuate the title by becoming viscount and then earl of Tyrone. George de la Poer Beresford (1735–1800) was created marquis of Waterford in 1789. However it was George's younger brother John Beresford (1738–1805) who attained national eminence. In the late 1730s and 1790s Beresford formed part of a powerful trio of Irish ministers who directed the government of Ireland under successive lords lieutenant. His position as chief commissioner of the revenue from 1780 brought control of extensive patronage, and his unobtrusive style may have given him more influence with the British prime minister, William Pitt, than either of the other two leading Irish office holders, John Foster and John Fitzgibbon.

The continuing political eminence of the Beresford clan in the early 19th century confirmed the status of the Waterford election of 1826, when a freeholders' revolt co‐ordinated by local Catholic Association activists allowed Henry Villiers Stuart to defeat Lord George Beresford by a large margin, as a landmark in the campaign for Catholic emancipation, and in the rise of popular politics.

William Carr Beresford Beresford, Viscount 1768-1854, British general. He served with distinction in Egypt (1801-3) and participated (1806) in the capture of Cape Colony (later Cape Province , South Africa) from the Dutch. He captured Buenos Aires in 1806 but held it only briefly before it was retaken by Jacques de Liniers . Beresford occupied Madeira (1807) and for a time was governor of the island. Joining Arthur Wellesley (later duke of Wellington) in Portugal (1808), he successfully reorganized the Portuguese army and was prominent throughout the Peninsular War . Created viscount in 1823, he was master general of ordnance in Wellington's cabinet from 1828 to 1830.