Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 33.djvu/152

Leveson-Gower LEVESON-GOWER, FRANCIS. [See Egerton, Francis (1800-1857) (DNB00), 1800–1857.]

 LEVESON-GOWER, GEORGE GRANVILLE, first (1758–1833), eldest son of Granville, first marquis of Stafford, by his second wife, Lady Louisa Egerton, daughter of Scroop, first duke of Bridgewater, was born in Arlington Street, London, on 9 Jan. 1758. From his childhood his health was delicate, a circumstance which encouraged a naturally studious disposition, but he made little progress while at school, first at East Hill, near Wandsworth, and afterwards, from 1768 to 1774, at Westminster. On the suggestion of Edmund Burke, he then resided for a time at Auxerre, where he acquired a good knowledge of French, with the Rev. J. C. Woodhouse (afterwards, thanks to this connection, made dean of Lichfield). Eventually, in May 1776, he was entered at Christ Church, Oxford. He became a good Latin scholar, although he gave up the study of Greek, was well acquainted with English, French, and Italian literature, and had a considerable knowledge of chemistry and botany. After leaving Oxford he travelled extensively, in Scotland and Ireland in 1780, in France, Germany, Austria, and the Low Countries in 1781, and in Italy in 1786. Shortly before he came of age he had been elected in September 1778 to represent Newcastle-under-Lyne in Staffordshire in parliament, and was re-elected in 1780, but not in 1784. He re-entered the House of Commons in 1787, sitting for the county of Stafford, and represented it till 1798, when he was called up to the House of Lords as Baron Gower of Stittenham, Yorkshire, the original barony of his family. In 1790, without any previous diplomatic experience, he went as ambassador to Paris, a post of extreme difficulty during the French revolution, and almost the most important in Europe. (For his instructions and despatches see, The Despatches of Earl Gower, 1885.) He only quitted it upon the withdrawal of the embassy in August 1793. His wife, on her journey to England, was brought before the revolutionary tribunal at Abbeville, but after a short detention was released. Subsequently the posts of lord steward and of lord-lieutenant of Ireland were offered to him; but his eyesight being weak he declined them, and in 1799 accepted the post of joint postmaster-general, which he held until 1810. He was one of the leaders in the attack upon the Addington administration in 1804. It was at his residence, Bridgewater House, that the first meeting for organising the attack was held (see, Diary, i. 499). He gave notice of a motion for 30 April in the House of Lords 'on the defence of the country,' but the ministry resigned. In the subsequent separation between Pitt and Lord Grenville he adhered to the latter, and received the Garter in 1806. Though he moved a resolution on 13 April 1807 condemning the king's conduct on the Roman catholic question, which was defeated by 171 votes to 90, he took henceforth little active part in politics.

In 1785 he bad married Elizabeth Sutherland, countess of Sutherland in her own right, and proprietress of the greater part of Sutherlandshire, and in March 1808 he inherited from his maternal uncle, the last Duke of Bridgewater, the Bridgewater canal and estates, and on 26 Oct. of the same year became by the death of his father Marquis of Stafford, and came into possession of the Stittenham estate near York, and the huge estates at Trentham, Staffordshire, Wolverhampton, and Lilleshall in Shropshire. Thus he became, in spite of the many burdens on his estates, as Charles Greville calls him (Memoirs, 1st ser. iii. 19), 'a leviathan of wealth.' He now devoted himself to the patronage of art, probably under the influence of his wife, herself an artist in water-colours of considerable skill, and to the improvement of his estates. He enlarged Bridgewater House, added to its unrivalled collection of paintings, and was one of the first owners of pictures in London who permitted the public to have access to them. He was president of the British Institution, and presented to the National Gallery of Painting the celebrated Doria Rubens, which had cost 3,000l. when bought in Genoa. In 1827 be purchased Stafford House, which bad been begun by the Duke of York, for 7-',000/. (see, Parl. Debates, lviii. 257. 's Diary wrongly gives the price as 80,000l.) and gave it to his eldest son. Lord Gower, with 30,000l. to complete the building, having previously, 27 May 1823, given him on his wedding an estate worth 25,000l. per annum.

The Staffordshire and Shropshire estates had been burdened under a system of leases for lives, to meet the election expenses incurred by the late marquis, a system which, by destroying the enterprise of the tenant and crippling the landlord, had reduced the tenantry to considerable penury and backwardness. Largo outlay and constant care were necessary to restore the buildings, rearrange the holdings, lay out roads, and construct drains. This work absorbed almost the whole of the free rents during twenty