She was the third wife of John Rawdon, 1st Earl of Moira,[1] in Dublin an opposition peer in the Ascendancy Parliament, and on his County Down estate an "improving landlord".

[4] In 1798, following the Battle of Ballynahinch, fought largely on the Moira demesne, the government suspected her of assisting rebels and their sympathisers escape summary justice.

On her husband's County Down estate (Monalto in the parish of Moira) she professed to feeling herself "exiled": "I hate the North, I detest Ballynahinch" (the nearest market town).

[5] She preferred Moira House in Dublin, the Irish capital, where, having established her liberal credentials as a critic of the American War, she hosted the Whig opposition and the literary avant garde.

Among her guests were Henry Grattan, leader of the Patriot party in the Irish Commons; Charles James Fox, his English counterpart;[6] the radical MP William Todd Jones for whom voters had defied their landlord, the Moiras’ county neighbour, the Marquess of Hertford;[7] and John Philpot Curran, star counsel in the cause of reform and Catholic emancipation.

Writers included the young lyricist Thomas Moore, the Irish-language scholar and bardic antiquarian, Joseph Cooper Walker, and the English philosopher and novelist William Godwin.

In a dinner invitation to Wolfe Tone and Thomas Russell both, in 1792, fresh from their role in establishing the Belfast and Dublin societies of United Irishmen, Lady Moira wrote:[7]As for making a democrat of me that, you must be persuaded, is a fruitless hope: for, to keep my Manche and Clarence arms, it is more probable I should turn Amazon and, having the blood of Hugh Capet in my veins, am, from nature, a firm aristocrat ...

She compared the actions of government troops to Robespierre's reign of terror, and suggested they undermined the deference to rank in a people already driven to extremes by material distress.

She assisted tenants who suffered at the hands of the troops,[18] and, not only then, but also in 1803 when Thomas Russell attempted to again raise the United Irish standard in the county, was suspected by government agents of helping rebels and their sympathisers escape summary justice.

[20]An Aristocrat of the genuine Breed no currish Cross in my Race, I loved the People & thought it my duty to protect & serve them, I shou'd [sic] not, nor do I chuse [sic] to be tyrannized by the mob having never had the least inclination to practice tyranny over those who were subject to my influence, I am loyal & national - but I sigh when I behold those who never had a Great Grandfather, to whom the Noble Feudal feelings of grateful attachment to a faithful Follower & the Indulgence of the power to protect & Serve are unknown - talking of the People pretending to despise & govern them, & pretending to Airs of Consequence & the Exertion of Force, devoid of Prudence.