John Rawdon, 1st Earl of Moira (17 March 1720 – 20 June 1793), known as Sir John Rawdon, Bt, between 1724 and 1750 and as The Lord Rawdon between 1750 and 1762, was an Irish peer.
Rawdon succeeded his father in the baronetcy in February 1724, aged three. His mother remarried Charles Cobbe, Archbishop of Dublin, and died in childbirth in 1733.
In 1750 he was elevated to the Peerage of Ireland as Baron Rawdon, of Moira in the County of Down. In 1761 he was further honoured when he was made Earl of Moira in the Irish peerage.[1]
Family
Lord Moira married, firstly, Helena Perceval (1718-1746), daughter of John Perceval, 1st Earl of Egmont and Lady Catherine Parker, on 10 November 1741. They had three children:
Lady Charlotte Adelaide Constantia Rawdon (d. 1834), married Hamilton Fitzgerald. In 1800, the royal House of Bourbon being in exile from France, Lady Charlotte's hand was sought in marriage by one of that dynasty's cadet princes, Antoine Philippe d'Orléans, Duc de Montpensier, but he was refused authorisation by Louis, Count of Provence (the future King Louis XVIII), and the marriage did not occur.[6]
Lord Moira died in June 1793, aged 73, and was succeeded by his eldest son by his third marriage, Francis, who had already been created Baron Rawdon in his own right in 1783 and was created Marquess of Hastings in 1816. The Countess of Moira died in April 1808.