Browne, Robert Dillon (1809–50), repeal MP, was born in 1809, the only son of Arthur Browne, landowner of Turin Castle and Glencorrib, near Shrule, Co. Mayo and his wife Mary Kirwan. He was a member of the Neale branch of the Brownes, and a distant cousin of Lord Kilmaine. He was elected repeal MP for Mayo on 6 May 1836, defeating a liberal and was unopposed at the 1837 and 1841 general elections, largely due to the influence of Archbishop John MacHale (qv). Peel's chief whip listed Browne in 1839 among a small group of Connacht MPs who took their lead from MacHale rather than Daniel O'Connell (qv). In 1838 he joined a small group of English radicals in all-out opposition to the whig government's tithe reform legislation as insufficiently far-reaching. (O'Connell, however, supported it as a compromise.) A well-known duellist who always carried a pistol, Browne allegedly pointed it at MPs who coughed during one of his speeches, leading O'Connell to remark that his leaden pills were a wondrous cure for coughing.
Browne inherited the family estate at Glencorrib in 1841 and was one of the few protestant landlord repeal MPs. As such he had symbolic value and often accompanied O'Connell at public events, such as O'Connell's 1841 visit to Belfast to show protestant support for repeal. During the visit some enthusiastic local activists suggested Browne should stand as repeal candidate for Belfast, while Belfast tories ridiculed his dissipation, impecuniosities, and perceived subservience to O'Connell. During the 1843 repeal campaign Browne was head repeal inspector for Connacht and presided over local arbitration courts.
Although not untalented (he was a powerful public speaker and a witty storyteller), Browne was addicted to sherry, and sometimes had to borrow a suit of clothes to wear in the house of commons. His reckless financial behaviour also gave cause for concern: T. M. Ray (qv) complained to O'Connell in September 1846 that Browne's publisher had sent the repeal association the bill for printing copies of Browne's speech against the coercion legislation despite O'Connell having provided money for the publication. He was widely seen as one of the more disreputable members of O'Connell's ‘tail’, and was believed to value his parliamentary position as membership of an excellent club, with an accompanying immunity from seizure for debt.
As a political dependent of MacHale, Browne echoed his patron's intransigent opposition to any legislation that MacHale saw as compromising catholicism, even declaring catholicism and Irish nationality interchangeable despite his own membership of the Church of Ireland. Browne took his opposition to the 1845 charitable bequests bill to the point of near-total political isolation. He followed this by opposing the proposed Queen's Colleges on principle (O'Connell temporised before opposing them on grounds of expediency), adding that secular education endangered religion. Thomas Davis (qv) declared privately that repeal protestants must stand firm on the education issue to guard against a ‘MacHale and Browne government’. The Young Irelanders despised Browne for his personal dissipation and viewed him as one of several O'Connellite protestants who aggressively supported catholic policies from expediency or personal instability. They also suspected the O'Connellites were using him as a stalking-horse to attack them. John Mitchel (qv) described Browne as ‘a great Repealer, but a bloated bon vivant and insolvent debtor’; he quoted Davis as joking that ‘no man ought to be member for May-owe, but the man who can't pay!’ After the Young Irelanders had withdrawn from the repeal association in July 1846, refusing to support a resolution disavowing physical force in principle as well as in practice, Browne made a speech praising famous rebels of the past. The Nation commented that if the resolution meant anything he, too, should have been expelled from the association.
Browne was one of a number of leading repealers who in October 1846 asked O'Connell to petition the new whig government to prohibit exports of provisions from Ireland. O'Connell refused on the grounds the government should be given time to show its hand and that such action might encourage riots to block the transport of food from one district to another within Ireland. During the famine Browne did his best to relieve his tenants, further burdening an already heavily-indebted estate. With the repeal party disintegrating Browne was suspected of attempting to ingratiate himself with the whigs, and was denounced as a placehunter for opposing famine relief proposals advanced by opposition MPs; he replied that supporting such proposals might bring back the tories.
During his last election campaign in 1847, George Henry Moore (qv) criticised Browne for voting against Bentinck's Irish railways bill; Browne responded with the questionable claim that his action had been approved by O'Connell (then conveniently dead), who had publicly supported the bill. Browne held the second seat in the two-seat Mayo constituency polling 254 votes against Moore's 504; the next highest candidate received 53 votes.
He married Anne Blake of Glenloe, Co. Galway, daughter of Dr Henry Blake; they had three sons. Browne died mid-1850 and his estate was sold in the encumbered estates court. He embodied the weaknesses of O'Connellite ‘Old Ireland’, with some of the qualities of a Charles Lever (qv) hero, but with many characteristics of Thackeray's Barry Lyndon.