Lieutenant-Colonel John Blaquiere, 1st Baron de Blaquiere (15 May 1732 – 27 August 1812), was a British Army officer and politician who served as the Chief Secretary for Ireland from 1772 to 1776.
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Background
Blaquiere was the fifth son of Jean de Blaquiere, a French merchant who had emigrated to England in 1685, and his wife Marie Elizabeth de Varennes.
Career
Blaquiere at first served in the British Army, in the Dragoons (later renumbered the 17th Dragoons), where he achieved the rank of lieutenant colonel. In 1771 Blaquiere was appointed Secretary of Legation at the British Embassy in Paris, a post he held until 1772. The latter year Lord Harcourt, the British Ambassador in Paris, was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and Blaquiere joined him as Chief Secretary for Ireland. He was admitted to the Privy Council of Ireland the same year and made a Knight Companion of the Order of the Bath two years later. He was awarded an honorary LLD from Trinity College Dublin in 1773.
Blaquiere was to remain Chief Secretary until 6 December 1776. He had been elected to the Irish House of Commons for Old Leighlin in 1773, a seat he held until 1783. After representing Enniskillen for a few months in 1783, he sat than for Carlingford from 1783 to 1790, for Charleville from 1790 to 1798 and for Newtownards from 1798 to the Act of Union in 1801. Blaquiere was created a Baronet, of Ardkill in the County of Londonderry, on 16 July 1784, and raised to the Peerage of Ireland as Baron de Blaquiere, of Ardkill in the County of Londonderry, on 30 July 1800, for his support for the Act of Union. Lord de Blaquiere also sat as a Member of the British House of Commons for Rye from 1801 to 1802 and for Downton from 1802 to 1806.