Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 44.djvu/383

 17 Jan. 1751 on account of the approbation given to the subsidy treaties, but his amendment was defeated by 203 votes to 74 (ib. xiv. 792–8, 827); and on 22 Feb. following he strongly protested against the grant of a subsidy to the elector of Bavaria (ib. xiv. 954–63). On the morning after the death of Frederick, prince of Wales, the principal members of the opposition met at Egmont's house, but the meeting broke up without forming any plans for the future (, Memoirs of the Reign of George II, 1847, i. 80–1). Egmont made ‘a very artful speech’ in favour of Sir John Cotton's amendment for the reduction of the army in November 1752 (ib. i. 213–15; Parl. Hist. xiv. 1111–1118). In January 1753 he proposed an amendment to the address, and again urged the necessity of reducing the army (ib. xiv. 1276, 1281–5). On 7 Feb. 1754 he opposed the bill for extending the mutiny act to the East Indies ‘in a very long and fine speech’ (ib. xv. 250–60;, Letters, ii. 368). At the general election in April 1754 he was returned for Bridgwater, where he defeated George Bubb Dodington [q. v.]; and at the opening of the new parliament in November 1754 he took part in the debate on the address, but did not ‘think it absolutely necessary to offer any amendment’ (ib. xv. 365–70). He is said to have been offered the treasurership of the household, but was so overpowered by the violence of Charles Townshend's attack during the debate on the mutiny bill in December 1754 that he ‘excused himself from accepting the promised employment’ (, Memoirs of the Reign of George II, i. 420–2). He was sworn a member of the privy council on 9 Jan. 1755. In October 1756 he refused the Duke of Newcastle's offer of the leadership of the House of Commons with the seals of secretary of state, as the object of his ambition was an English peerage. Towards the close of 1760 Egmont had an interview with Bute and ‘begg'd earnestly to go into the House of Lords’ (, Diary, 1784, p. 421). At the general election in March 1761 he was returned both for Ilchester and Bridgwater, and elected to sit for Bridgwater. On 7 May 1762 he was created Baron Lovel and Holland of Enmore in the county of Somerset, and took his seat in the House of Lords for the first time on the 10th of the same month (Journals of the House of Lords, xxx. 262). He moved the address in the lords at the opening of the session on 25 Nov. 1762 (Parl. Hist. xv. 1236–8), and two days afterwards was appointed joint paymaster-general with the Hon. Robert Hampden. He resigned this post on his appointment as first lord of the admiralty on 10 Sept. 1763. In December following he presented a memorial to the king for the grant of the island of St. John, where he proposed to revive the system of feudal tenures. Though Egmont seems to have persuaded the council to suffer him to make the experiment, the folly of the undertaking was subsequently exposed by Conway, and Egmont was obliged to relinquish his cherished scheme. Egmont is said to have been one of the agents in the secret negotiations for the destruction of the Rockingham ministry, which were set on foot almost immediately after the close of the session in June 1766. But he disapproved of Chatham's foreign policy, and, finding that ‘one man was to have more weight than six,’ resigned his post at the admiralty in August 1766, shortly after Rockingham's downfall (, Memoirs of the Reign of George III, 1845, ii. 360). In the following summer he refused office on the ground that he could not take any part in an administration of which Chatham was a member. In November 1768 Egmont ‘made a warm and able speech against riots, and on the licentiousness of the people,’ and declared that ‘the Lords alone could save the country; their dictatorial power could and had authority to do it’ (ib. iii. 278–9). He died at Pall Mall on 4 Dec. 1770, aged 59, and was buried at Charlton, Kent, on the 11th of the same month. Egmont was a talented and ambitious man with great powers of application and a large stock of learning. He was a successful pamphleteer, a fluent and plausible debater, and ‘a very able though not an agreeable orator’ (, Royal and Noble Authors, 1806, v. 323). According to Walpole, he was never known to laugh, though ‘he was indeed seen to smile, and that was at chess’ (Memoirs of the Reign of George II, i. 36). Like his father, whom he assisted in collecting the materials for the ‘Genealogical History of the House of Yvery’ (London, 1742, 8vo), he was an enthusiastic genealogist, and on points of precedence his authority was unimpeachable (, Memoirs of the Earl of Charlemont, 1810, p. 63). When scarce a man it is said that he had a scheme for assembling the Jews and making himself their king (, Memoirs of the Reign of George II, i. 35 n.) He was a strenuous advocate for the revival of feudal tenures, and so great was his affection for bygone times that, when building a residence at Enmore, near Bridgwater, he ‘mounted it round and prepared it to defend itself with crossbows and arrows, against the time in which the fabric and use of gunpowder shall be forgotten’ (,