[3] King George II appointed him Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin in 1746 but the chapter successfully argued that the Crown was not the patron, and he was dispossessed.
[9][2][10] He sat in the Irish House of Lords until 1784, when he was excluded by Act of Parliament after being tried and convicted of corruption for soliciting a bribe of £200 from the applicant in a court case that was pending before the House.
[11][12] The scandal was exacerbated by the fact that it came less than two years after the Irish Lords had regained final appellate jurisdiction from the British House of Lords.
[13] In 1741 Strangford married Mary, daughter of Anthony Jephson, MP for Mallow and his second wife Hannah Rogerson.
They had six children: Mary-Anne (1745–1823) and Anne-Philippa (1749–1830), both unmarried; Robert, Philip, and Frances, who all died young; and finally Lionel (1753–1801), who also took holy orders before succeeding as 5th Viscount.