George Villiers (1759–1827)
Upbringing and political career
Villiers was the youngest son of
In 1792, Villiers purchased the support of
He was elected unopposed in 1796,
Villiers, indeed, enjoyed considerable favour with the king,[2] who granted him a private bounty of £400 p.a. in 1804 after being compelled to refuse him an office at Windsor Park. He was allowed to hold simultaneous office as a groom of the bedchamber and paymaster, and the king determined to place him in charge of his farms at Windsor as bailiff. Villiers and his family lived at Windsor Old Lodge until 1805, when he was appointed ranger of Cranbourne Chase and he moved into Cranbourne Lodge, newly renovated as his residence. Villiers and his wife were particularly intimate with Princess Amelia, the king's favourite daughter, accounting in part for the Royal favour shown him.[11] With the fall of the Ministry of All the Talents in 1807 and the formation of Portland's government, the Duke of Cumberland vigorously lobbied Portland to grant Villiers the mastership of the Buckhounds or some other office, on the grounds of Villiers having rendered "very serious and important services" to the Royal Family, but was unsuccessful.[2]
In 1809, upon the death of John Fordyce, Surveyor General of the Land Revenues of the Crown, Portland proposed to replace that office and that of the Surveyor General of Woods, Forests, Parks, and Chases, then held by Lord Glenbervie, with a three-man commission (the Commissioners of Woods and Forests), and to make Villiers one of the junior commissioners. This reorganisation of the Crown Lands temporarily halted upon Portland's resignation and the formation of a new government under Spencer Perceval. This created an embarrassing difficulty for Villiers and his interest; George Canning did not choose to serve under Perceval, and Villiers' brother-in-law, the 2nd Lord Boringdon, was Canning's friend. Nor was the proposed appointment of Villiers universally popular; Lord Glenbervie, the proposed senior commissioner, vented his anger at Perceval's nomination of Villiers in his journal:[2]
I know personally that he [Perceval] feels and is vexed at the intriguing, selfish, meddling, mischief-making qualities of Villiers, who by his own teizing, and the illecebrae of his wife has gained a great ascendancy over the royal mind, and has teized his Majesty and the Duke of Portland for that appointment, hoping thereby to smooth the way for his many jobs at Cranborne Lodge and his domineering authority over the Parks and Forest of Windsor.
— Lord Glenbervie, Glenbervie MS Journal, 19 December 1809
Nonetheless, Villiers continued to press his claims to office on Perceval, in a letter of 18 October 1809. He had, he said, turned down a pension of £1,200 p.a. for "reasons...which can never be publicly alluded to"[2] and had received a promise from Portland to replace Fordyce as Surveyor General of the Land Revenues (a post worth £2,000 p.a.); Villiers would, however, be satisfied with the commissionership and £1,000 p.a. in addition, provided that he might retain his office of paymaster. In fact, that office was about to become the engine of Villiers' political destruction.[2] He appears to have received the sinecure offices of registrar of the Vice-Admiralty Court of Gibraltar and marshal of the Vice-Admiralty Court of Antigua around this time.[notes 1]
Scandal and disgrace
The value to the sinecurist of an office like that of Paymaster of Marines lay not so much in the official salary attached to it, but in the lax accounting procedures associated with disbursement of funds, which allowed the official to retain large sums of public money in his own hands for many years until accounts were made up.[12] The office of Paymaster General had been reformed in 1783 to avoid these abuses,[13] but these changes had not yet been extended to the Marines during Villiers' tenure.
He appears to have taken little interest in his official duties both as paymaster and inspector-general, leaving affairs in the hands of Edmund Waters.
Well aware of the parlous state of the office's accounts, Waters retired from the Marine Pay Office in 1807 as an independently wealthy man (only to lose the fortune in his Opera House investments).[15] The lax regime in the Pay Office rattled on, however, until 27 December 1809, when Perceval became aware of the state of Villiers' accounts. Villiers, to his credit, immediately resigned and took responsibility for his official debts.[2] Perceval allowed him to proffer his resignation directly to the king, but Villiers could not face his master; Perceval informed the king of the state of affairs in a letter of 15 January 1810, laying the blame for the situation largely on Waters. Perceval's letter noted that "reports were circulating on the subject to such an extent as to make it impossible to hope that it would not become the subject of Parliamentary observation." By this time, Villiers's accounts had been audited through the year 1804, revealing him to be in arrears by the staggering sum of £280,000 through that point. On the advice of his brother-in-law Boringdon, Villiers offered up all his property to the Crown, although he could not hope to pay off the entire sum found wanting by this means. The episode left him in a condition of nervous prostration, the more so as he by now had five children to support.[16] A letter by "A.B." in Cobbett's Political Register of 27 January 1810 assailed Villiers for his delinquency and estimated that his debt, with interest, might run to £500,000.[17]
Fortunately for Villiers, his case was not to be prosecuted with the utmost rigour. He was to some degree protected by the joint efforts of Boringdon's friends and the
However, his disgrace was not over. After his resignation, Villiers had been replaced by
The final disaster for Villiers occurred in November, when Princess Amelia died. After her death, Villiers and his wife attempted to blackmail the Royal Family by threatening (in a letter to her doctor, Sir Henry Halford) to release some of her correspondence, much to the shock of her sister, Princess Mary.[11] The family finally moved out of Cranborne Lodge in 1812.
The untangling of his accounts dragged on until 1819, prolonged by his enemies at the Navy Office and his own fiscal incapacity. At length a balance of £220,000 was found against him, but by this time his career was hopelessly ruined. He left office as a groom of the bedchamber in 1815, but retained his vice-admiralty sinecures until his death.[2] In 1824, he became heir presumptive to the Earldom of Clarendon but died in 1827 without inheriting it.
Marriage and children
On 17 April 1798, George married Theresa Parker. She was a daughter of John Parker, 1st Baron Boringdon and his second wife Hon. Theresa Robinson. Her maternal grandparents were Thomas Robinson, 1st Baron Grantham and Frances Worsley. They had ten children:[10]
- Georgiana Villiers (12 February 1799 – 16 March 1799)
- George Villiers, 4th Earl of Clarendon (27 January 1800 – 27 June 1870)
- Thomas Hyde Villiers (24 January 1801 – 3 December 1832)
- Hon. Charles Pelham Villiers (3 January 1802 – 16 January 1898)
- Lady Sir George Cornewall Lewis, 2nd Baroneton 25 October 1844.
- Frederick Adolphus Villiers (17 February 1805 – 21 November 1806)
- Hon. Edward Ernest Villiers (23 March 1806 – 30 October 1843) was educated at Edith Villiers married Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton and became Lady of the Bedchamber to both Queen Victoria and Queen Alexandra.
- Augustus Villiers (2 March 1808 – 24 March 1808)
- Hon. Henry Montagu Villiers (4 January 1813 – 9 August 1861), Bishop of Durham from 1860 to his death.
- Lt. Hon. Augustus Algernon Villiers, RN (14 April 1817 – 13 July 1843), died unmarried, Knight of Isabella the Catholic
Notes
- ^ Thorne dates these appointments to 1811, but a letter of 27 January 1810 by "A.B." in Cobbett's political register refers to "sinecures at Gibraltar, and in the West Indies," presumably the same.
References
- ^ "Villers, The Hon. George (VLRS776G)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Thorne, R.G. (1986). The House of Commons 1790–1820. Vol. I. Secker & Warburg. pp. 452–453.
- ^ Burney, Frances (1796). Diary and Letters of Madame d'Arblay. Vol. III. p. 180.
- ^ Thorne, R.G. (1986). The House of Commons 1790–1820. Vol. I. Secker & Warburg. pp. 404–405.
- ^ Gazette Issue 13382 published on the 24 January 1792. Page 3 Crown Office January 28, 1792 Members returned to serve in the present Parliament Borough of Warwick
- ^ Stephens, W.B., ed. (1969). A History of the County of Warwick: Volume 8: The City of Coventry and Borough of Warwick. pp. 490–504.
- ^ Sainty, J.C. (1975). "Marine pay department". Office-Holders in Modern Britain: Volume 4: Admiralty Officials 1660–1870. pp. 85–90.
- ^ Lt-Col J.D. Sainsbury, The Hertfordshire Yeomanry: An Illustrated History 1794–1920, Welwyn: Hart Books/Hertfordshire Yeomanry and Artillery Historical Trust, 1994, ISBN 0-948527-03-X, p. 25.
- ^ "No. 13900". The London Gazette. 11 June 1796. p. 556.
- ^ a b Lodge, Edmund (1844). The peerage of the British empire as at present existing. Saunders and Otley. p. 123.
- ^ ISBN 0300070799.
- ISBN 0300068018.
- ^ Guy, Alan James (1985). Oeconomy and discipline: officership and administration in the British army 1714–63. p. 163.
- ^ Flower, Benjamin (1810). "Another Defaulter". Flower's Political Register. VII: 83.
- ^ a b Waters, Robert Edmond Chester (1878). Genealogical memoirs of the extinct family of Chester of Chicheley. Vol. 2. pp. 717–718.
- ^ ISBN 9780521074513.
- ^ William Cobbett, ed. (1810). Cobbett's political register. Vol. 17. pp. 121–128.
- ISBN 9780521074513. Retrieved 30 September 2011.
- ^ Hollis, Christopher (1965). The Oxford Union. Evans.
- Alumni Oxonienses: the Members of the University of Oxford, 1715–1886. Oxford: Parker and Co – via Wikisource.