and it was thought not impossible to attach him to the government. It was already rumoured, in 1802, that he was willing to take office under Addington, and in consequence he was almost defeated at the general election, when his Southwark seat was assailed by Sir Thomas Turton, a follower of Pitt. Pitt is said to have recommended Addington to secure Tierney as the most useful supporter he could have, and on 1 June Tierney became treasurer of the navy in Addington's ministry, and was sworn of the privy council. His re-election for Southwark was not opposed. He quitted office with Addington in May 1804. In August of the same year Pitt made him the offer of the Irish chief-secretaryship, which he refused. Greville was told twenty years later that Tierney, though willing to serve, wished to do so without a seat in the House of Commons, as he was not yet prepared to commit himself to an open parliamentary support of a leader whom he had so often attacked. Pitt, however, insisted on a full support, and the matter fell through (Greville Memoirs, 1st ser. i. 14). On 30 Sept. 1806 he returned to office as president of the board of control; but he was now ousted by Turton, his former opponent, from the representation of Southwark, and contented himself with sitting for Athlone. At the next general election he was returned for Bandon Bridge, in 1812 for Appleby, and from 1818 till he died he was M.P. for Knaresborough.
Tierney returned to opposition when Lord Grenville quitted office, and year by year he became more and more prominent in his party's ranks. His undaunted tenacity, his knowledge of business, his readiness in debate, his clearness of expression gave him great claims to the leadership of his party in the House of Commons. But the old soreness which arose in 1798 had not wholly passed away, and he was not in Grenville's confidence. He laboured, too, as did Whitbread, under the heavy social disadvantage among his party of being only sprung from the mercantile class. By unsparing use of his wealth he had forced his way into parliament, but the aristocratic whigs shrank from serving under him, and he advanced to the front rank only by the death or retirement of his contemporaries. When George Ponsonby [q. v.] died in 1817 he became the acknowledged leader of the opposition; but his followers were insubordinate, and early in 1821 a difference of opinion on the question of the insertion of the queen's name in the liturgy led to a feud so open that he refused to act as leader any longer. In 1827 he favoured the coalition with Canning, and in May he joined the administration as master of the mint. On Canning's death Goderich is said to have offered him the chancellorship of the exchequer, but this is doubtful (Life of Herries, i. 174); and the personal efforts he made to thwart Herries's chances of obtaining the post seem inconsistent with his having had it offered to himself already. It was on his suggestion and through his negotiation that Althorp was selected for the chairmanship of the finance committee, and was thus set on his way to be leader of the House of Commons in 1830. Tierney quitted office with Goderich in January 1828, and thereupon his political career closed. He died suddenly on 25 Jan. 1830 at his house in Savile Row, London. He married Miss Miller of Stapleton in Gloucestershire on 10 July 1789, and by her had a large family.
Had Tierney been the contemporary of men less brilliant than Pitt, Burke, Fox, and Sheridan, his reputation as a debater would have stood very high. His logic was strong, his wit ready, and his sagacity great. His sarcasms and sneers, uttered in tones and phrases equally cutting, were much dreaded by his opponents, and for years he fought the uphill battle of hopeless opposition, and fought it admirably, when his more famous contemporaries retired from it. Yet because of the social obscurity of his origin the whigs would neither trust nor reward him; he only held office for about three years in his whole life and was a member of a whig ministry for but a few months, and then only in subordinate position.
In the National Portrait Gallery there is a bust of him, dated 1822, by William Behnes.
[Walpole's Hist. of England, i. 310; Stanhope's Life of Pitt; Pellew's Life of Sidmouth; Lord Colchester's Diaries; Gent. Mag. 1830, pt. i. pp. 268, 295, 386; Correspondence of Earl Grey and Princess Lieven, i. 423.]
TIERNEY, MARK ALOYSIUS (1795–1862), Roman catholic historian, born at Brighton in September 1795, was sent at an early age to the school directed by the Franciscan fathers at Baddesley Green, Warwickshire, from which he was transferred in 1810 to the college of St. Edmund at Old Hall, near Ware. After passing through the usual course of classical studies with distinguished success, he was ordained priest in 1818, and for some time afterwards he remained in the college as a professor (Ward, Hist. of St. Edmund's College, p. 206). Then he was appointed one of the assistant priests at Warwick Street, London, whence he was removed to Lincoln's Inn Fields.
