Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 17.djvu/299

 Ellis was sworn a member of the privy council. At the general election in March 1761 he was returned with Wilkes for the borough of Aylesbury, and resigning the post of vice-treasurer wns appointed secretary at war on 17 Dec. 1762 in the place of Charles Townshend. Upon the formation of the Rockingham ministry in July 1765 Ellis resided the latter office, and again became joint vice-treasurer of Ireland, a post which he held until September 1766, when he was succeeded by Isaac Barré. At the general election in March 1768 Bills was elected one of the members for Petersfield, and though he strongly protested against Lord North's motion for the repeal of the American tea duty on 5 March 1770 (ib. xvi. 874), he was for the third time appointed joint vice-treasurer of Ireland on 21 April following. In the early months of 1771 Ellis took the principal part in the proceedings in the House of Commons against Lord Mayor Crosby [q. v.] and Alderman Oliver for obastructing the execution of the orders of the house, and it was upon his motion that they were both committed to the Tower (ib. vol. xvii, passim). At the general election in October 1774 he was returned for his old constituency of Weymouth, and having resigned the office of vice-treasurer in March was appointed treasurer of the navy on 12 June 1777. Ellis was again returned for Weymouth at the general election in Sentember 1780, and at the close of Lord North's administration became on 11 Feb. 1782 the secretary of stale for America, in the place of Lord George Germaine, who upon his retirement was created Viscount Sackville. His tenure of this office, which was the last he ever held under the crown, was brief, for he resigned upon the accession of Lord Rockingham to power in the following month. He continued, however, to take a considerable part in the debates of the house, and in May 1783 spoke against Pitt's resolution forreform (ib. xxiii. 864-5). He was again returned for Weymouth in March 1784, and twice in 1789 proposed Sir Gilbert Elliot for the speakership without success (id. xxvii. 905-6, xxviii. 149-50). He failed to secure a seat at the general election in June 1790, but was returned for Petersfield at a bye election in April of the following year. Ellis, who had supported the coalition ministry, continued to oppose Pitt until 1793, when, alarmed at the progress of the French revolution, he acceded from the opposition. On the Duke of Portland becoming secretary of state in Pitt's administration Ellis was created, on 13 Aug. 1794, Baron Mendip of Mendip in the county of Somerset with remainder in default of issue to the heirs male of his sister Anne, the wife of Henry Agar of Gowran. No speech of his in the House of Lords is reported in the 'Parliamentary History.' He died at his house in Brook Street, Hanover Square, on 2 Feb. 1802 in his eighty-ninth year, and was buried at Westminster Abbey on the following Sunday in the north transept. Ellis married, first, on 18 Nov, 1747, Elizabeth, the only daughter of the Hon. Sir William Stanhope, K.B., second son of Philip, third earl of Chesterfield. She died on 1 Aug. 1761. In her right he acquired the possession of Pope's villa at Twickenham, which bad been bought by her father after Pope's death in 1744. On 20 July 1765 he married, secondly, Anne, the eldest daughter of Hana Stanley of Paultons, near Romsey, Hampshire. She survived him nearly two years, and died at Twickenham on 7 Dec. 1803, in her seventy-ninth year. There were no issue of either marriage, and the barony of Mendip, in accordance with the special limitations of the patent, descended to his sister's grandson, Henry Welbore Agar, second Viscount Clifden, who thereupon assumed the additional surname of Ellis. Junius spoke of Ellis in no flattering terms, and referred to him as 'little mannikin Ellis' and 'Grildrig' (Bohn's edit. i. 288, 349); and Maculay, in his 'Sketch of William Pitt,' sneers at him as 'an ancient placeman, who had been drawing salary almost every quarter since the days of Henry Pelham' (Miscellaneous Writings, 1860, ii. 316). His neighbour, Horace Waipole, was never tired of jeering at him; at one time he calls him Fox's 'Jackal,' and at another 'Forlorn Hope Ellis.' 'Wisdom,' he writes to the Countess of Ossory, 'I left forty years ago to Welbore Ellis, and must not pretend to rival him now when he is grown so rich by the semblance of it' (, Letters, vii. 264 ), and again, 'Connections make themselves, whether one will or not, but nobody can make one be a minister against one's will, unless one is of as little consequence as [Welbore] Ellis' (ib. viii. 169). In his amusing comparison of Barrington's character with that of Ellis, Walpole states that the latter 'had a fluency that was precise too, but it was a stream that flowed so smoothly and so shallow that it seemed to design to let every pebble it passed over be distinguished' (Memoirs of the Reign of George II, ii. 142). But though Ellis was not possessed of any great talents, he was readily recognised as a useful man in the house. When he entered parliament he attached himself to Henry Fox, afterwards Lord Holland, who upon becoming secretary of state in 1765 stipulated that some higher