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 of 1562–3, 1572, 1588, and 1592, and Liskeard borough in those of 1584 and 1586. Richard, the second son, was M.P. for Totnes 1562–3.

[Collins's Peerage, ed. Brydges, v. 321–8; Prince's Worthies of Devon (ed. 1810), p. 345; Fuller's Worthies of England, Devon, p. 270; Metcalfe's Book of Knights, p. 71; Boase and Courtney's Biblioth. Cornub. p. 130; Polwhele's Hist. of Devon, i. 257; Cal. State Papers, Dom. Ser. 1547–80, p. 94; Returns of Members of Parlt.] 

EDGCUMBE, RICHARD, first (1680–1758), only surviving son of Sir Richard Edgcumbe of Mount-Edgcumbe, M.P. for Cornwall, was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge (M.A. 1698), and in 1697 wrote some elegant Latin verses on the occasion of the return of William III to England (printed in the collection entitled ‘Gratulatio Academiæ Cantabrigiensis de Reditu Serenissimi Regis Gulielmi III post Pacem et Libertatem Europæ feliciter Restitutam, Anno MDCXCVII’). In 1701 he was returned for Cornwall; in Dec. 1701 for St. Germans; and in 1702 for Plympton, for which borough he sat until 1734, when he was returned for both that constituency and Lostwithiel. He chose the latter, but was re-elected for Plympton in 1741 and held the seat until his elevation to the peerage next year. On 22 June 1716 Edgcumbe was made a lord of the treasury, and again on 11 June 1720. On 3 April 1724, with Hugh Boscawen, viscount Falmouth, he accepted the offices of vice-treasurer, receiver-general, treasurer of war and paymaster-general of his majesty's revenues in Ireland. Edgcumbe was one of Walpole's most trusted subordinates. He managed the Cornish boroughs for him; and in 1725 Lord Carteret made, through Edgcumbe, overtures to the premier which were accepted (, Walpole, ii. 488–90). On the fall of Walpole he was raised to the peerage to prevent his being examined by the secret committee concerning the management of the Cornish boroughs (Horace Walpole's Letters, ed. Cunningham, i. 156), the actual date of his creation being 20 April 1742. Edgcumbe was appointed chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster in December 1743, and in the following January lord-lieutenant and custos rotulorum of the county of Cornwall, and sworn of the privy council. On the outbreak of the rebellion of 1745 he was one of the twelve noblemen who were commissioned to raise a regiment of foot at the public expense. He was made major-general in Feb. 1755. On 24 Jan. 1758, having resigned the office of chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, he was appointed warden of the king's forests beyond Trent. He died on 22 Nov. 1758, and was succeeded by Richard, his eldest son by his wife, Matilda, daughter of Sir Harry Furness. Though he was corrupt with the political corruption of the age, Edgcumbe seems to have been in other respects a worthy person, and Horace Walpole laments him as ‘one of the honestest and steadiest men in the world’ (ib. iii. 193). He is said to have been popular with George II because he was shorter than that diminutive monarch (, Memoirs, ed. Croker, i. 93n.)

[Collins's Peerage, 5th ed. vii. 353–4; Boase and Courtney's Bibliotheca Cornubiensis, i. 130, iii. 1167.] 

EDGCUMBE, RICHARD second (1716–1761), was the second son of Richard, the first baron [q. v.] He entered the army, and ultimately rose to the rank of major-general, but saw little service. He represented the borough of Plympton from 1742 to 1747, and of Lostwithiel from November 1747 to 1754, when he was returned for the borough of Penryn. In December 1755 he was appointed a lord of the admiralty, but resigned his seat on that board in November 1756 on being constituted comptroller of his majesty's household, when he was also sworn of the privy council. (His accounts for 1759–1760 are in the British Museum Addit. MS. 29266.) In 1758 he succeeded as second baron on the death of his father, and on 23 Feb. 1759 he was constituted lord-lieutenant and custos rotulorum of the county of Cornwall. He died unmarried on 10 May 1761. By his mistress, Mrs. Ann Franks, alias Day, he was the father of four children, and he made Horace Walpole her trustee (Walpole's ‘Short Notes’ in Cunningham's edition of the Letters, i. p. lxxi, and Lord Edgcumbe's will proved P.C.C. May 1761). The connection was the subject of a sufficiently dull satire entitled ‘An Epistle from the Hon. R[ichard] E[dgcumbe] to his dear Nanny [Day],’ said to be by Charles Jones, and published in 1752 by R. Sim, near St. Paul's. Mrs. Day subsequently became Lady Fenouilhet, and her portrait by Reynolds, painted in 1760, is in the possession of Lord Northbrook (, Catalogue Raisonneé of the Works of Sir J. Reynolds).

Dick Edgcumbe, for so he was invariably styled, was one of the choicest spirits of his time. He was the close friend of Horace Walpole, George Selwyn, and ‘Gilly’ Williams, and numerous passages in ‘Horace Walpole's Letters’ prove him to have been a man of wit (especially vol. ii. of Cunningham's edition, pp. 415, 506, 512). But he threw away his life at the gambling-table (ib. iii. 396, 402, 474–5). Of his poetic works all that remain are two sets of verses, ‘The Fable of the Ass, Nightingale, and Kid,’ and an ‘Ode to Health,’ preserved in