- George Granville, 1st Baron Lansdowne
George Granville, 1st Baron Lansdown (
9 March 1666 –29 January 1735 ) was an English poet, playwright, and politician who served as a Privy Counsellor from 1712.Early life
Granville was the grandson of
Bevil Grenville , a Royalist commander in theEnglish Civil War . His uncle wasJohn Granville, 1st Earl of Bath , and Monck was another relative; these influences guaranteed that Granville began life as a staunchTory and Jacobite.Still, his early interests were as much literary as political. He entered
Trinity College, Cambridge in 1677. Among his productions while there were poems welcomingMary of Modena when she visited the university. By the mid-1690s, after a period inParis , and another, after theGlorious Revolution , in retirement in England, he had befriendedJohn Dryden and begun to write plays. He wrote an undistignuishedcomedy of manners , "The She Gallants", which was staged unsuccessfully in 1695. His adult plays bear the marks of Dryden's influence. "The Heroick Love" is taken from the first book of "The Iliad ". Granville also followed Dryden in adaptingShakespeare ; "The Jew of Venice" (1701) was a successful updating of "The Merchant of Venice ". Perhaps his greatest success was "The British Enchanters" (1705), a pseudo-operatic extravaganza staged byThomas Betterton 's company.In the opinion of
Samuel Johnson , Granville's nondramatic poetry is slavishly imitative ofEdmund Waller ; some of it, however, was popular in its day. Perhaps Granville's most useful act as regards poetry was the encouragement he gaveAlexander Pope , which Pope remembered with gratitude in the "Epistle toDr. Arbuthnot ".Political life
The death of Granville's parents and uncle in 1701 placed Granville in a position of power which the accession of Queen Anne in 1702 allowed him to employ. With the help of his uncle's family, he was elected MP for Fowey in 1702, and made governor of
Pendennis Castle the following year. In Parliament, he operated in the sphere of Harley, who was an indifferent patron at first. The height of his fame during the Godolphin-Marlborough administration came from his spirited defence ofHenry Sacheverell in 1710.After the fall of the Godolphin government, Granville became MP for Cornwall and was made Secretary of War. In this capacity, he oversaw the passage of important bills on munitions and recruitment. However, his experience in the Tory government was marked by family and legal strife. He expended time and money in an ultimately futile effort to secure the title of
Earl of Bath . Despite some success, his tenure in the War Office was marred by accusations of corruption and expensive contested elections. He was made a Privy Counsellor in 1712.He was created "Baron Lansdown" (Lansdowne) on
January 1 , 1712 in thePeerage of Great Britain . The peerage became extinct on his death.In 1714 Anne was succeeded by the Hanoverian George I, who notably favoured the Whigs. Almost all the Tories who held office under Anne were dismissed, including Lord Lansdown. Embittered, he began a secret correspondence with the Jacobite pretender "James III". This came to nothing, but on
November 3 ,1722 , James created him "Duke of Albemarle", "Marquis Monck and Fitzhemmon", "Earl of Bath", "Viscount Bevil", and "Baron Lansdown of Bideford" in theJacobite Peerage of England. He died in London onJanuary 29 ,1735 , his wife having predeceased him by a few days, and was buried with her inSt Clement Danes onFebruary 3 .References
* [http://www.angeltowns.com/town/peerage/peersl1.htm Peers informations]
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