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 233, 1641-3 p. 181). A diary kept by him during this campaign still exists (Harcourt Papers, i. 129), but the entries are brief and uninteresting. On the outbreak of the Irish rebellion in 1641, he was appointed, with the rank of colonel and with a commission as governor of the city of Dublin, to conduct a detachment of foot into that kingdom for the relief of the protestants there. He arrived in Dublin on 31 Dec., but finding that in the meanwhile Sir Charles Coote had been appointed governor by the lords justices, some time elapsed before he was invested with the government of the city. During the winter he exerted himself energetically in repelling the rebels, but being mortally wounded during an attack on the castle of Kilgobbin, co. Dublin, he was removed to Merrion, where he died on the day following, 27 March 1642. He married Anne, daughter of William, lord Paget, who afterwards married Sir William Waller. In consideration of his services in Ireland his widow received a parliamentary grant on 3 Aug. 1648 of the lands of Corbally in co. Dublin, formerly in possession of Luke Netherville, an attainted rebel. In the south corridor at Nuneham there is a good picture of Harcourt, beneath which hangs a framed and illuminated manuscript, two lines of which run: Holland first prov'd his valour; Scotland stood His trembling foe, and Ireland drank his blood.  HARCOURT, SIMON, first (1661?–1727), the only son of Sir Philip Harcourt of Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire, kt., by his first wife, Anne, daughter of Sir William Waller of Osterley Park, Middlesex, kt., was born at Stanton Harcourt, and was educated at a private school kept by Mr. Birch at Shilton, near Burford, Oxfordshire, where Robert Harley, afterwards earl of Oxford,_ and Thomas Trevor, afterwards lord chief justice of the common pleas, were among his contemporaries. At the age of fifteen he was sent to Pembroke College, Oxford, where he graduated B.A. on 21 Jan. 1678. On 16 April 1676 he was admitted a student of the Inner Temple, and, having been called to the bar on 25 Nov. 1683, was appointed recorder of Abingdon. In 1688 his father died, and Simon succeeded to the family estates, which were then in a very embarrassed condition. At the general election in February 1690 he was returned to parliament in the tory interest for the borough of Abingdon, for which constituency he continued to sit until the dissolution in April 1705. Harcourt made his maiden speech in the House of Commons on 9 April 1690, during the debate on the Recognition Bill (Parliamentary Hist. v. 582). On the 26th of the same month he spoke against the Abjuration Bill (ib. pp. 596-7), and two days afterwards he protested against the proposed suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act (ib. pp. 606-7). In 1696 Harcourt refused to sign the voluntary association of the commons for the defence of the king, and in the same year strenuously opposed the bill of attainder against Sir John Fenwick (ib. pp. 1016-17, 1032, 1067-70, 1136-9). On 14 April 1701 Harcourt was selected by the House of Commons to impeach Lord Somers at the bar of the House of Lords for his share in the partition treaty of 1698 (ib. p. 1246). He served as chairman of the committee appointed to direct the proceedings, and conducted the several conferences between the two houses, but the impeachment was ultimately dropped. On 30 May 1702 he was appointed solicitor-general in the place of Sir John Hawles, and was knighted by Queen Anne on 1 June following (, v. 178, 180). He accompanied the queen to Oxford, where he was created a D.C.L. on 27 Aug., and in the same year was elected to the bench of the Inner Temple. Harcourt supported the bill, which was introduced in the first session of the new parliament, for preventing occasional conformity, and in July 1703 took part in the prosecution of Defoe at the Old Bailey for the publication of his anonymous tract, 'The Shortest Way with the Dissenters.' In the same year he became chairman of the Buckinghamshire quarter sessions. In 1704 he took part in the debates on the constitutional case of Ashby v. White, and his resolution asserting the exclusive right of the House of Commons to take cognisance of all matters relating to the election of their members was adopted after some slight alterations by the house (Parliamentary Hist. vi. 264-267).

At the general election in May 1705 Harcourt was returned to parliament for the borough of Bossiney, Cornwall, and on 5 April 1706 was made a deputy-lieutenant for the county of Oxford, and about this time acted as chairman of the Oxfordshire quarter sessions. He was appointed a commissioner for the union with Scotland on 8 April 1706, and it was owing greatly to his dexterity in drafting the Ratification Bill that it passed with so little opposition through both nouses in the following year. He succeeded Sir Edward Northey as attorney-general on 25 April 1707, but