FITZROY, George, Lord Euston (1715-47).

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1715-1754, ed. R. Sedgwick, 1970
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

12 Apr. 1737 - 1747

Family and Education

b. 24 Aug. 1715, 1st surv. s. of Charles Fitzroy, 2nd Duke of Grafton, ld. chamberlain of the Household to George I and George II, by Henrietta, da. of Charles Somerset, Mq. of Worcester, sis. of Henry, 2nd Duke of Beaufort; bro. of Lord Augustus Fitzroy. educ. Eton 1728. m. 10 Oct. 1741, Lady Dorothy Boyle, da. and coh. of Richard, 4th Earl of Cork [I] and 3rd Earl of Burlington, s.p.

Offices Held

Biography

Lord Euston, whose father was recorder of Coventry, stood unsuccessfully for the town at a by-election in February 1737. Returned for it two months later, he was absent from the division on the Spanish convention in 1739 but voted with the Administration on the place bill in 1740. No further votes of his are recorded. In October 1741 he married Lady Dorothy Boyle, ‘a girl of the softest temper, vast beauty, birth and fortune’, whom he treated with the utmost brutality, till her death on 2 May 1742, in the words of her mother, delivered her ‘from extremest misery’.1 He was on the worst terms with the Duke of Grafton who, Horace Walpole wrote to Mann (29 June 1743),

is so unhappy in his heir apparent, that he checks his hand in almost everything he undertakes. Last week he heard a new exploit of his barbarity. A tenant of Lord Euston in Northamptonshire brought him his rent, and the Lord said it wanted three and sixpence: the tenant begged he would examine the account, that it would prove exact - however, to content him, he would willingly pay him the three and sixpence. Lord E. flew into a rage and vowed he would write to the Duke to have him turned out of a little place he has in the post office of thirty pounds a year. The poor man, who has six children, and knew nothing of my Lord’s being on no terms of power with his father, went home and shot himself.

In August of that year he

forced himself to the Duke of Grafton’s house ... threw himself at his feet, professed great remorse for his past conduct, and promised an entire reformation for the time to come. But the Duke told him he had tried him too often to be deceived any more and that God was his witness that no man ever loved his son more tenderly, and seen him lost with greater pain, but that was over now; that he attempted in vain to move the bowels of a father who had long since looked upon himself to have no son.2

In the autumn of 1744 he eloped to Italy with a Miss Nevill ‘of a very ancient family in Lincolnshire, with eleven thousand pounds for her fortune, and a celebrated beauty’,3 giving her a promise of marriage,4 which he never fulfilled. He was put up for Coventry in 1747, but before the election he died, 7 July, aged 31, to the relief of his father.5

Ref Volumes: 1715-1754

Author: Eveline Cruickshanks

Notes

  • 1. Walpole to Mann, 22 Oct. 1741 and 22 July 1744.
  • 2. Lady Hertford to Ld. Beauchamp, 4 Dec. 1743, Northumberland mss.
  • 3. HMC Denbigh, v. 257.
  • 4. Add. 29601, f. 206.
  • 5. Pelham to Hartington, n.d., Devonshire ms.