Thomas Grosvenor (1764–1851)

Field Marshal Thomas Grosvenor (30 May 1764 – 20 January 1851) was a British Army officer and politician.

Grosvenor was the third son of Thomas Grosvenor, MP, and his wife, Deborah, daughter and coheir of Stephen Skynner of Walthamstow, Essex. His father was the only brother of Richard Grosvenor, 1st Earl Grosvenor. Like his father, Grosvenor was educated at Westminster School (admitted November 1773). On 1 October 1779, he was appointed an ensign in the 1st Regiment of Foot Guards; he became a lieutenant and captain in 1784, and captain and lieutenant colonel on 25 April 1793. As a subaltern, he commanded the Bank of England picket during the Gordon Riots in 1780. He served with his battalion in Flanders in 1793, and again in Holland, in the retreat to Bremen in 1794–5, and in the expedition to Den Helder in 1799. He was promoted to brevet colonel in 1796 and to major general on 29 April 1802, and he held brigade commands in the west of England and in the London district during the invasion alarms of 1803–5.

Grosvenor commanded a brigade in the 1807 Copenhagen expedition, and in the disastrous 1809 Walcheren expedition, when he was second in command of Sir Eyre Coote's division. He was appointed colonel of the 97th (Queen's Own Germans) Regiment of Foot in 1807, and in February 1814 was transferred to the 65th (2nd Yorkshire, North Riding) Regiment of Foot, with which he remained until his death. He became a lieutenant general in April 1808, and a general in August 1819.

The Grosvenor family had great influence with the corporation and guilds of the freeman-franchise of the City of Chester, for which Grosvenor's father was Member of Parliament from 1755 to 1795. Following the latter's death, Grosvenor was MP for the city from 1795 to 1826. A Whig, he began by supporting Pitt's ministry, but later he supported the opposition. In May 1802, he opposed the suppression of bull-baiting. In 1826, he vacated the seat in favour of his cousin, The Hon. Robert Grosvenor, and was returned instead for the scot and lot borough of Stockbridge. He retired from parliament at the 1830 general election.

Grosvenor was for many years a keen supporter of horse racing, and won the Epsom Oaks in 1807 and 1825. He married first, on 6 April 1797, Elizabeth (died 26 July 1830), daughter of Sir Gilbert Heathcote, 3rd Baronet, and second, on 15 October 1831, Anne, youngest daughter of George Wilbraham of Delamere Lodge, Cheshire, at one time MP for Cheshire. There were no surviving children from either marriage. On 9 November 1846 (the fifth birthday of the Prince of Wales) Grosvenor and Sir George Nugent, the two senior generals in the army, and the Marquess of Anglesey, their junior, were created field marshals. Grosvenor died at his residence, Mount Ararat, Richmond Hill, Richmond-upon-Thames, Surrey, on 20 January 1851. After his death, his widow kept a school in a cottage in the grounds; Mount Ararat was demolished about 1897.

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