Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 03.djvu/413

Bathurst 1775 in his ninety-first year, and was buried in its church. He had married (6 July 1704) his cousin Catherine, daughter of Sir Peter Apsley, and had issue four sons and five daughters. She died on 8 June 1768, aged 79, and was buried at Cirencester. Lord Bathurst's working life covered three parts of the eighteenth century, and from youth to age he sought the society of wits and poets. Pope addressed to him the third of his ‘Moral Essays,’ that on the use of riches. Pope and Swift corresponded with him, and Congreve and Prior were his friends. When Sterne became a familiar figure in fashionable life, Lord Bathurst introduced himself to him, and Sterne drew his admirer's portrait in the third of his ‘Letters to Eliza,’ 1775, pp. 5–9. In the closing days of Lord Bathurst's life Burke, in moving certain resolutions for conciliation with America (22 March 1775), drew attention, in words which have been much admired, to the fact that the aged peer's life was conterminous with the development of England's colonial prosperity. Lord Bathurst's name and his letters are of frequent occurrence in J. J. Cartwright's selections from the ‘Wentworth Papers,’ and the letters which passed between him and Pope are in the third volume of the latter's correspondence (8th vol. of Works, 1872), pp. 321–65. Many of the references to this vivacious peer show his love of gardening.

[Baker's Northamptonshire, ii. 202–3; Campbell's Chancellors, v. 433–36; Walpole's Letters, i. p. cxviii, 176, 334; Stanhope's History, vi. 33–34; Annual Register (1775), Characters, pp. 22–25; Lady M. Wortley Montagu's Letters, i. 484–91.]  BATHURST, BENJAMIN (1784–1809), diplomatist, born in London on 14 March 1784, was the third son of Henry Bathurst [q. v.], bishop of Norwich. He is worthy of notice on account of his mysterious death. At an early age he was employed in diplomatic missions, holding at one time the post of secretary of legation at Leghorn. In 1809, when acting as envoy to the court of Vienna, Bathurst was returning to England with important despatches. He left Berlin with passports from the Prussian government, and travelled towards Hamburg without a servant. On the road he disappeared. The only clue to his fate was a portion of his clothing discovered near Lützen. The prevailing idea was that Bathurst was assassinated by French soldiers for the sake of the despatches, but his death remains a mystery. He married, 25 May 1805, Phillida, daughter of Sir William Pratt Call, by whom he had one daughter.

[European Magazine, lvii. 67; Foster's Peerage; Memoirs of Dr. Bathurst, by Mrs. Thistlethwaite, 1853.]  BATHURST, HENRY (1714–1794), second, lord chancellor, was the second but eldest surviving son of Allen, first Earl Bathurst, and was born on 2 May 1714. He matriculated at Balliol College, Oxford, 14 May 1730, and graduated B.A., according to Foss, in 1733. He was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1736, becoming K.C. in Jan. 1745–6. Through the influence of his family he sat in parliament for Cirencester from April 1735 to April 1754, allying himself with the opposition until the death of Frederick, prince of Wales, when he ranked with the supporters of the Pelham ministry. His attachment to the former party was rewarded by the offices of solicitor-general (1746) and attorney-general (1747) to the prince, and on Lord Hardwicke's recommendation his support of the Pelhams was acknowledged by his appointment as a judge of the common pleas on 2 May 1754. On the sudden death of Charles Yorke the great seal was entrusted to three commissioners on 21 Jan. 1770, of whom Justice Bathurst was the second, and to the surprise of the world he was in the following year, on 23 Jan. 1771, created lord chancellor and raised to the peerage as Baron Apsley, whereupon it was remarked that three judges who were unequal to the discharge of their duties were superseded by the least competent of the three. This high office he retained until June 1778, when he was called upon to resign so that Lord North's cabinet might be strengthened by the presence of Thurlow; but Earl Bathurst—for he succeeded to the earldom on his father's death in 1775—again became a member of the ministry in November 1779 as lord president of the council, and continued in that position until Lord North's fall in 1782. After this event he gradually withdrew from public life, and died at Oakley Grove, near Cirencester, on 6 Aug. 1794. His first wife, whom he married on 19 Sept. 1754, was Anne, daughter of Mr. James and widow of Charles Philips, and she died on 8 Feb. 1758. In the next year, on 7 June 1759, he took to wife Tryphena, daughter of Thomas Scawen of Northamptonshire; by her, who died at Abb's Court, Surrey, on 2 Dec. 1807, he had issue two sons and four daughters. The ‘Case of the unfortunate Martha Sophia Swordfeager’ (1771), an unhappy woman who was apparently entrapped into a pretended marriage, is attributed to the pen of Lord Bathurst, and the work on the ‘Law