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Egerton  boats on his other canals, and frequently travelled by them. About 1796 he tried steam tugs on them, but without success. He was a stern, but just and good master, and looked well after the housing of his miners, establishing shops and markets for them, and taking care that they contributed to a sick club. His features are said to have strongly resembled those of George III. He was careless in his dress, which is described as 'something of the cut of Dr. Johnson's.' Within doors he was a great smoker, and out of doors as great a snuff-taker. He talked little on any subject but canals, and never wrote a letter when he could avoid it. He despised the ornamental, and once on his return from London finding that some flowers had been planted at Worsley, he 'whipped their heads off, and ordered them to be rooted up.' The money which he devoted to the purchase of the magnificent Bridgewater collection of paintings he probably regarded simply as a good business investment. To avoid the expense of a town establishment, when he visited London, where he had not many friends, he agreed with one of them to be provided for a stipulated sum with a daily dinner for himself and a few guests. Yet he was a liberal donor to national and beneficent institutions, and when he thought his country to be in danger he subscribed 100,000l. to the Loyalty Loan. In politics he took no very active part, generally following the lead of the Marquis of Stafford, He never married, and would not allow a woman servant to wait on him. He died in London, after a short illness, 3 March 1803, and was buried — his funeral being, according to his directions, the simplest possible — in the family vault at Ashridge, his Hertfordshire seat. He has been called 'the first great Manchester man.' The dukedom of Bridgewater died with him. Ashridge was 'among his bequests to his cousin and succesor in the earldom of Bridgewater, General Edward Egerton, and to his nephew, the second Marquis of Stafford, afterwards first duke of Sutherland, he left other estates and much valuable property. His canal property he devolved, under trust, to that nephew's second son, known successively as Lord Francis Leveson-Gower, as Lord Francis Egerton, and as first Earl of Ellesmere, whose article on aqueducts and canals, contributed to the 'Quarterly Review' for March 1844, contains a very interesting account of his benefactor. There is a copy of Bridgewater's elaborate will in the Additional MSS., Brit. Mus., No. 10605.

[History of Inland Navigation, particularly those of the Duke of Bridgewater, 1766; Lord Ellesmere's Essays contributed to the Quarterly Review, 1858; Smiles's Lives of the Engineers, 1861, vol. i., Life of James Brindley; Francis Henry, Earl of Bridgewater's Letter to the Parisians...on Inland Navigation, containing a defence of... Francis Egerton, late Duke of Bridgewater (1719-20); Chalmers's Biog. Dict.; F.Espinasse's Lancashire Worthies, 1st ser. 1874.]  EGERTON, FRANCIS, (1800–1857), statesman and poet, was born at 21 Arlington Street, Piccadilly, London, on 1 Jan. 1800. He was the younger son of George Granville Leveson-Gower, second marquis of Stafford, who was created Duke of Sutherland in 1833, the year of his death, by Elizabeth, countess of Sutherland, only daughter of William Gordon, seventeenth earl of Sutherland. Francis was at Eton from 1811 to 1814, when he proceeded to Christ Church, Oxford. On 6 Aug. 1819 he became a lieutenant in the Staffordshire regiment of yeomanry, and was promoted to a captaincy on 27 Sept. in the same year. He was elected M.P. for Bletchingley, Surrey, 19 Feb. 1822, and commenced his public career as a liberal-conservative of the Canning school. He spoke eloquently in behalf of free trade more than twenty years before Sir Robert Peel had embraced that policy; carried in the House of Commons a motion for the endowment of the catholic clergy, and warmly supported the project of the London University. On 26 June 1826 he became M.P. for Sutherlandshire, was re-elected for that county in 1830, and afterwards sat for South Lancasnire in the parliaments of 1836, 1837, 1841, and until July 1846. In the meantime he had held office as a lord of the treasury (April to September 1827), under-secretary of state for the colonies (January to May 1828), chief secretary to the Marquis of Anglesey, lord-lieutenant of Ireland (21 June 1828 to 30 July 1830), and secretary at war (30 July to 30 Nov. 1830). He was named a privy councillor 28 June 1828, and a privy councillor for Ireland 9 Aug. 1828. At an early age he attempted literature, and in 1823 brought out a poor translation of 'Faust, a drama, by Goethe, and Schiller's song of the Bell.' On the death of his father in 1833 he assumed the surname and arms of Egerton alone, 24 Aug., in the place of his patronymic of Leveson-Gower, and under the will of his uncle, Francis Henry Egerton [q. v.], eighth earl of Bridgewater, became the owner of a property estimated at 90,000l. per annum. At the commemoration at Oxford on 10 June 1834 he was created D.C.L., named a trustee of the National Gallery on 26 Feb. 1835, and rector of King's College, Aberdeen, in October 1838. He spent the winter of 1839 in the East, 