Francis Egerton, 1st Earl of Ellesmere
Francis Egerton, 1st Earl of Ellesmere, KG, PC, PC (Ire) (1 January 1800 – 18 February 1857), known as Lord Francis Leveson-Gower until 1833, was a British politician, writer, traveller and patron of the arts.[1][2] Ellesmere Island, a major island (10th in size among global islands) in Nunavut, the Canadian Arctic, was named after him.
The Earl of Ellesmere
18 February 1857 (aged 57)
11, including:
George Egerton, 2nd Earl of Ellesmere
Hon. Francis Egerton
Hon. Algernon Egerton
Background and education[edit]
Ellesmere was born at 21 Arlington Street, Piccadilly, London, on 1 January 1800, the third son of George Leveson-Gower (then known as Lord Gower) and his wife, Elizabeth Gordon who was 19th Countess of Sutherland in her own right.[a] He was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, and then held a commission in the Life Guards, which he resigned on his marriage.[4]: 4 [b] In October 1803 his father became Marquess of Stafford, having shortly before inherited the considerable wealth (but not the titles) of Francis Egerton, 3rd Duke of Bridgewater, whose will provided that the Bridgewater estates should next pass to Francis, rather than his elder brother George.
Political career[edit]
Lord Francis Leveson Gower, MP[edit]
Egerton entered Parliament in 1822 as member for the pocket borough of Bletchingley in Surrey,[2] a seat he held until 1826. He afterwards sat for Sutherland between 1826 and 1831, and for South Lancashire between 1835 and 1846. In 1835, a parliamentary sketch-writer said of his performance in the Commons: "He hardly ever speaks, and then but very indifferently… His voice is harsh and husky and not very strong. There is no variety either in it or in his gesture. Both are monotonous in a high degree... He is much respected by his own party, both for his personal worth, and for his high family connexions.[7]"
In politics he was a Conservative who - as he later said - 'worshipped' Wellington; on specific policies his views usually led him to support Sir Robert Peel; the most obvious exception being his support of the Ten-Hour movement. In 1823, he was a junior member of the mission of FitzRoy Somerset sent by Wellington to Madrid.[4] : 4 On the religious issues of the day, he held that the state and its institutions should remain Anglican, but that - provided that was done - other sects should be conciliated as far as was then possible. He opposed opening the ancient universities to Dissenters, arguing that they could get equally good education elsewhere; e.g. at London University, whose formation he had supported.[8] In 1825 he was chosen to move the Loyal Address;[9][c] later in the year he made and saw carried a motion for the endowment of the Roman Catholic clergy in Ireland,[2] at a time when the government were pledged to seek the consent of the King before doing so: some suspected he did so at the behest of the government.[11] Appointed a Lord of the Treasury in 1827, he was promoted to Under-Secretary of State for War and the Colonies in February 1828 at the request of William Huskisson, having first to overcome the opposition of his father. When Huskisson resigned in May 1828, Egerton's father insisted upon Egerton's resignation; on Egerton's subsequent account because he thought the Wellington cabinet had lost its more enlightened elements and would now take a hard line against Catholic Relief. Egerton, however, was convinced that Wellington intended some measure of relief and soon rejoined the government;[12][d] in June 1828 he was made a Privy Councillor and appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland,[4] : 39–43 a post he held until July 1830, when he became Secretary at War for a short time[2] during the last Tory ministry. Daniel O'Connell, when alleging duplicity by the subsequent Whig administration, said "I never knew a gentleman more incapable of violating his promise than Lord Francis Leveson Gower"[13] Sutherland was a pocket county of his family and when in 1831 his father supported parliamentary reform but Francis did not, his father presented the seat to a supporter of reform: in 1833 his father was made Duke of Sutherland.[14]
The Bridgewater trust[edit]
His father, however, died within the year, and the estates he had inherited from Francis Egerton, 3rd Duke of Bridgewater passed to Francis, who then took, by Royal Licence, the surname of Egerton. The Bridgewater estates were held under trust and gave an annual income reported to be £90,000,[11] but the trust was drawn up to exclude Egerton from its day-to-day management. The principal assets were the Bridgewater Canal, and the collieries at Worsley, which also served as the headquarters of the canal.
Writings, travels and art patronage[edit]
Ellesmere's claims to remembrance are founded chiefly on his services to literature and the fine arts.[2] Before he was twenty he printed for private circulation a volume of poems, which he followed up after a short interval by the publication of a translation of Goethe's Faust, one of the earliest that appeared in England;[52] a further volume containing some translations of German lyrics and a few original poems[2] soon followed.[53] Egerton's translation of Faust ( which predates the publication of Faust (part two) by Goethe) was criticised by a subsequent translator as betraying incomprehension of the original and having sacrificed Goethe's sense and artistic judgement to Egerton's preference for a pretty rhyme. The Examiner seized on this, asking 'Why did he not learn German, and translate into prose?'.[54]
Other literary translations by Egerton included Wallenstein's Camp,[55] Hernani, and Catherine of Cleves[56] (from the elder Dumas's Henri III et sa cour): although these were published they had been originally made for use in Egerton's private theatricals.[57] In 1831, Egerton put on in a private theatre at Bridgewater House (his town house) a production of his Hernani in which both he and Fanny Kemble appeared; Queen Adelaide and 'most of the Royal Family' attended.[58] Egerton took the chair at the farewell dinner given by the Garrick Club to Charles Kemble when the latter retired from the stage.[59]
A persistent sufferer from gout and lumbago,[60] he spent the winter of 1839 in Rome for his health (and that of his eldest son), and in the spring and summer of 1840 visited the Holy Land, Egypt,[61] and Greece[62] subsequently recording his impressions in Sketches on the Coast of the Mediterranean (1843).[63] He published several other works in prose and verse,[2] including a translation of Raumer's History of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, illustrated by original documents:[k] a review in Fraser's Magazine spoke favorably of it and of Egerton's oeuvre to date.[64] When in 1838 he became rector of King's College, Aberdeen, the official speech of welcome claimed that even ignoring his illustrious birth, his literary reputation would still give him a good claim to the post;[65] however Egerton eventually withdrew his literary works and forbade their re-printing. He was the first president of the Camden Society.[66]
As an admirer of the Duke of Wellington, he became very interested in the historical writings of the Prussian military theorist General Carl von Clausewitz (1789–1831). He was involved in the discussion that ultimately compelled Wellington to write an essay[67] in response to Clausewitz's study of the Waterloo campaign of 1815. Ellesmere himself anonymously published a translation of Clausewitz's The Campaign of 1812 in Russia (London: J. Murray, 1843), a subject in which Wellington was also deeply interested.[68]
Lord Ellesmere was a munificent and yet discriminating patron of artists. To the collection of pictures which he inherited from his great-uncle, the 3rd Duke of Bridgewater, he made numerous additions,[2] [l] and he built a gallery to which the public were allowed free access. Lord Ellesmere served as president of the Royal Geographical Society and as president of the Royal Asiatic Society (1849–1852), and he was a trustee of the National Gallery.[2] He also initiated the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, by donating the Chandos portrait of Shakespeare.
On 18 June 1822, at St George's, Hanover Square he was married to Harriet Catherine Greville,[70] a daughter of Charles Greville (1762–1832), a great-great-granddaughter of the 5th Baron Brooke. The Archbishop of York officiated and the Duke of Wellington (whose private secretary was a brother of the bride)[71] was one of the witnesses.
They had eleven children, including:
In 1846 he was raised to the peerage as Earl of Ellesmere, of Ellesmere in the County of Salop, with the subsidiary title Viscount Brackley, of Brackley in the County of Northampton.[73] Viscount Ellesmere and Baron Brackley had been subsidiary titles of the Earls of Bridgewater until the extinction of that title in 1829.
When in town, the family lived at Bridgewater House, St. James' Park; their country seats were Oatlands,[m]
which Egerton rented until 1843; Worsley, (from 1837) where Egerton later replaced the existing hall (described as neither commodious for the family, nor agreeable to his Lordship's taste[75]) at a cost of £100,000. After leaving Oatlands, their Surrey seat was Hatchford Park, Cobham, Surrey, where Lady Ellesmere laid out the gardens.[76] Her mother, Lady Charlotte Greville (née Cavendish-Bentinck) died at Hatchford Park on 28 July 1862, aged 86.[71]
Francis died on 18 February 1857 at Bridgwater House, St. James' Park; and was succeeded by his first son, George. On the extinction of the senior line of the Dukedom of Sutherland in 1963, his great-great-grandson, the fifth Earl, succeeded as 6th Duke of Sutherland.