Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 42.djvu/226

Rh accepted the post of a lord of the treasury on the formation of Lord Rockingham's first administration in July 1765, and was admitted to the privy council on 23 Dec. 1767. In spite of his former friendship with Wilkes, Onslow on 14 April 1769 moved that Wilkes's fourth election for Middlesex was null and void, and on the following day carried a resolution by a majority of fifty-four that Colonel Luttrell ‘ought to have been returned’ (, Parl. Debates, i. 360-86). On 14 July 1769 he was accused in the ‘Public Advertiser’ by Horne Tooke (then the Rev. John Horne, vicar of Brentford) of having accepted 1,000l. to procure a place for a person in America. Onslow denounced the story as ‘a gross and infamous lie from beginning to end,’ and brought an action for libel against Tooke (, Junius, 1814, i. 186-96). The trial took place before Mr. Justice Blackstone at Kingston on 6 April 1770, and Onslow was nonsuited. It was tried again before Lord Mansfield at Guildford on 1 Aug. following, when Onslow obtained damages for 400l.; but judgment was arrested by the court of common pleas in Easter term 1771, on technical grounds (, Reports, iii. 177-188). On 25 Jan. 1770 Onslow opposed Dowdeswell's resolution that the House of Commons was bound on matters of election ‘to judge according to the law of the land and the known and established law and custom of parliament’ (Parl. Hist. xvi. 790-1). In the same session he introduced a bill taking away all privileges of parliament from the servants of members, which, with the aid of Lord Mansfield in the House of Lords, became law (10 Geo. III, c. 50). During the debate on Serjeant Glynn's motion for an inquiry into the administration of criminal justice on 6 Dec. 1770 Onslow warmly defended Baron Smythe, whose conduct had been attacked by Sir Joseph Mawbey (Parl. Hist. xvi. 1235-8). When the members of the House of Commons were turned out of the House of Lords on 10 Dec. 1770, Onslow, in retaliation, immediately proposed that the House of Commons should be ‘cleared of strangers, members of the House of Lords, and all,’ but he did not move for a committee to inspect the journals of the House of Lords, as is stated in Walpole's ‘Memoirs of the Reign of George III’ (iv. 218). This motion was made by Dunning, and Onslow voted against it (, Parl. Debates, ii. 148-56). On 7 Feb. 1771 Onslow opposed Sir George Savile's attempt to bring in a bill for ‘more effectually securing the rights’ of electors (ib. ii. 248-9, 251). In the same session he took an active part with his cousin, (1731-1792) [q.v.], in excluding strangers from the gallery of the House of Commons, and in calling the printers of newspapers to the bar of the house for publishing the debates (ib. ii. 258, 377, 378, 380-1, 384, 388, 389, 393, 396, 397, 445, 455). In April 1772 Onslow supported a motion for leave to bring in a bill for the relief of protestant dissenters, and strongly advocated the propriety of granting them relief in the matter of subscription (Parl. Hist. xvii. 433-4). He was created Baron Cranley, in the county of Surrey, on 20 May 1776, and took his seat in the House of Lords on the following day (Journals of the House of Lords, xxxiv. 740). On 8 Oct. in the same year he succeeded his cousin Richard as fourth Baron Onslow and Clandon, and on the 30th of the same month was sworn in as lord-lieutenant of Surrey. He spoke for the first time in the House of Lords on 16 April 1777, when he urged that some provision should be made for the discharge of the king's debts, and ‘launched into encomiums of the personal and political virtues of the sovereign’ (Parl. Hist. xix. 163-4). Resigning his seat on the treasury board, Onslow was appointed comptroller of the household on 1 Dec. 1777. On 13 May 1778 he voted against the attendance of the House of Lords at Chatham's funeral, though he ‘formerly used to wait in the lobby to help him on with his great-coat’ (, Letters, vii. 65). In December 1779 Onslow became treasurer of the household, but resigned that office on his appointment as a lord of the bedchamber in September 1780, a post which he retained until his death. He appears to have spoken for the last time in the House of Lords on 19 March 1788, when he supported the third reading of the East India Declaratory Bill (Parl. Hist. xxvii. 247-8). Onslow was one of the Prince of Wales's friends who were sent on that extraordinary mission to Mrs. Fitzherbert, to tell her that the life of the prince was in imminent danger, and that only her immediate presence could save him (, Memoirs of Mrs. Fitzherbert, 1856, pp. 118-19). He was also present at the marriage of the prince to Mrs. Fitzherbert in December 1785 (, Hist. of England, 1887, v. 88-9). Onslow was in the royal coach, in his capacity of lord-in-waiting, when the king was mobbed on his way to open parliament, on 29 Oct. 1795 (Diary and Correspondence of Lord Colchester, 1861, i. 2-3; George the Third, his Court and Family, 1821, ii. 243-250). Tierney's motion in the House of Commons for an inquiry into Onslow's conduct with regard to the manner in which the act to provide for the defence of the realm had been carried into effect in the county of