George Granville, 1st Baron Lansdowne

George Granville, 1st Baron Lansdowne PC (9 March 1666 – 29 January 1735) was an English poet, playwright, and politician who served as a Privy Counsellor from 1712.

Origins

Granville was the son of Bernard Granville, the fourth son of Sir Bevil Grenville (1596-1643) of Bideford in Devon and Stowe in the parish of Kilkhampton in Cornwall, a heroic Royalist commander in the Civil War. (The family changed the spelling of its name in 1661 from "Grenville" to "Granville", following the grant of the titles Baron Granville and Earl of Bath). His uncle was John Granville, 1st Earl of Bath (1628-1701) whose half-first-cousin was George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle, who both played leading roles in the Restoration of the Monarchy to King Charles II in 1660. He was heir male of William Henry Granville, 3rd Earl of Bath (1692-1711), the 19-year-old son of his first cousin Charles Granville, 2nd Earl of Bath (1661–1701), lord of the manors of Bideford in Devon and of Stowe, Kilkhampton, Cornwall. These connections guaranteed that Granville began life as a staunch Tory and Jacobite.

Career

His early interests were as much literary as political. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge in 1677. Among his productions while there were poems welcoming Mary of Modena when she visited the university. He spent time in Paris and after the Glorious Revolution of 1688, which brought down the Jacobites, he lived for a while in retirement in England. By the mid-1690s he had befriended John Dryden and begun to write plays. He wrote an undistinguished comedy of manners entitled 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 Homer's Iliad. Granville also followed Dryden in adapting Shakespeare and Granville's 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 by Thomas Betterton's company.

In the opinion of Samuel Johnson, Granville's non-dramatic poetry is slavishly imitative of Edmund Waller. However some of his poetry was popular in its day. Perhaps Granville's most useful act as regards poetry was the encouragement he gave to Alexander Pope, which Pope remembered with gratitude in his Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot.

Political life

The death of Granville's parents and of his uncle the 1st Earl of Bath 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 of Henry Sacheverell in 1710.

After the fall of the Godolphin government, Granville became MP for Cornwall, and on 28 September 1710 he 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 was the heir male to the senior line of the Granville family following the death without progeny in 1711 of his cousin William Granville, 3rd Earl of Bath. He was not in succession to the earldom and was in recognition raised to the peerage on 1 January 1712 as "Baron Lansdown of Bideford" in the Peerage of Great Britain. 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.

In 1714 Queen Anne was succeeded by the Hanoverian King George I, who 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 Old Pretender "James III". On 6 October 1721 James, who refused to recognise his peerage "Baron Lansdown" bestowed by Queen Anne, created him "Lord of Lansdown"," Viscount [ ]" and "Earl of Bath" in the Jacobite Peerage of England, with remainder to his heirs male. On 3 November 1721 James created him "Duke of Albemarle", "Marquis Monck and Fitzhemmon", "Earl of Bath", "Viscount Bevel", and "Baron Lansdown of Bideford" in the Jacobite Peerage of England, which supposed titles had no legal validity in the Kingdom of Great Britain. One of these titles referred to his family's supposed descent (officially confirmed to the 1st Earl of Bath by warrant of King Charles II in 1661) from Richard I de Grenville (d.post 1142) of Neath Castle, one of the Twelve Knights of Glamorgan and a brother and follower of Robert FitzHamon the Norman conqueror of Glamorgan. The titles Monck and Albemarle referred to the fact that the 1st Earl of Bath had been granted reversion of his cousin Monck's Dukedom of Albemarle, should the Duke have died without male progeny. The title "Lansdown" referred to Lansdown Hill near Bath in Somerset where his grandfather Sir Bevil Grenville had met his heroic death at the Battle of Lansdown in 1643. The titles created on 3 November 1722 were with remainder to the heirs male of his body, whom failing to his brother, Bernard Granville, and the heirs male of his body.

Marriage

On 15 December 1711 in the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields in Westminster, London, he married (as her 2nd husband) Mary Villiers, the daughter of Edward Villiers, 1st Earl of Jersey (1656–1711) and the widow of Thomas Thynne, 1st Viscount Weymouth.

Death and burial

He died in London on 29 January 1735, his wife having predeceased him by a few days, and was buried with her in the Church of St Clement Danes on 3 February 1735. He left no male progeny, and thus at his death the Barony of Lansdowne became extinct. His Jacobite titles, such as they were, were inherited by his nephew Bernard Granville, son of his brother Bernard. The younger Bernard died in 1776, when the Jacobite peerages created on 3 November 1721 became extinct, while those created on 6 October 1721 passed to his heir male.