Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 44.djvu/97

 Bolton was three times married: first, on 7 July 1679, to Margaret (d. 1682), only daughter of George, lord Coventry, by whom he left no issue; secondly, to Frances (d. 1696), daughter of Sir William Ramsden, bart., by whom he had two sons, Charles [q. v.] and Harry, successively dukes of Bolton, and two daughters; thirdly, in 1697, at Dublin, to Henrietta Crofts, youngest natural daughter of James Scot, duke of Monmouth, by Eleanor, younger daughter of Sir Robert Needham of Lambeth, and sister of Jane Myddelton [q. v.], the famous beauty (see Post Boy, 23 Jan. 1722). By his third wife, who became a lady of the bedchamber to the Princess of Wales in 1714, and survived until 27 Feb. 1730, he had a son, Lord Nassau Paulet, who represented successively the county of Southampton and the borough of Lymington in parliament (1714–1734). He was on 9 Oct. 1723 appointed auditor-general of Ireland, and on 27 May 1725 created a K.B. He died on 24 Aug. 1741, leaving one son and two daughters.

Dr. Radcliffe, the celebrated physician, was popularly supposed to have been ‘desperately in love’ with the third wife of the second duke, and ‘he declared, said the gossips, that he would make her son his heir, upon which the Duke of Bolton is not at all alarmed, but gives the old amorist an opportunity to make his court’ (Wentworth Papers, p. 97). The portrait of the third duchess by Kneller was engraved by Smith in 1703.

[Brydges's Peerage; G. E. C.'s Complete Peerage; Luttrell's Brief Historical Relation, passim; Boyer's Reign of Queen Anne, 1735, passim; Lady Cowper's Diary; Wentworth Papers; White Kennett's Wisdom of Looking Backwards, p. 362; Swift's Works, ed. Scott; Duke of Marlborough's Letters and Despatches, v. 26; Spence's Anecdotes, p. 285; Pope's Works, ed. Elwin and Courthope, vii. 184; Bromley's Catalogue of British Portraits.] 

PAULET or POWLETT, CHARLES, third (1685–1754), eldest son of Charles, second duke [q. v.], by his second wife, Frances, daughter of Sir William Ramsden, was born on 3 Sept. 1685. He was educated at a private school in Yorkshire, and appears to have been a turbulent youth. In 1700 his master, Dr. Robert Uvedale, wrote to his father to inform him that young Lord Winchester refused to be governed, absented himself from school, and by no persuasion would be prevailed upon to follow his studies, ‘but takes what liberty hee thinks fitt upon all occasions’ (Hist. MSS. Comm. 11th Rep. App. vii. 151). He subsequently travelled in company with the young Earl of Shaftesbury, returning to England in August 1704 (, v. 460), and afterwards serving as a volunteer in Portugal. He sat in parliament successively for Lymington (1705–8), Hampshire (1708–10), and Carmarthen (1715–17). He was appointed a lord of the bedchamber to the Prince of Wales in 1714, and on 3 April 1717 he was summoned by writ to the House of Lords, under the title of Lord Basing. The writ was thus framed in error for Lord St. John of Basing, one of the Duke of Bolton's titles, and the error was held by the lords to constitute a new creation. The Paulet family thus obtained a barony in fee, but the title became extinct on the death of the third duke without legitimate issue in 1751. In April 1717 Lord Basing was constituted colonel of the royal regiment of horse-guards. On his father's death in 1722 he succeeded to the dukedom. In the same year (10 Oct.) he was elected a knight of the Garter, and was created warden of the New Forest and lord lieutenant of Hampshire. In 1725 he was appointed constable of the Tower of London, and was one of the lords justices during the king's visit to Hanover. He was an early and persistent opponent of Sir Robert Walpole, and was disappointed at not getting more lucrative appointments on the death of George I. In spite of his opposition, he retained those that he had until 1733, an anomaly explained by Hervey as due to the fact of Bolton being ‘such a fool.’ In June 1733 Walpole made a resolve to divest him of all his places; his regiment was given to Argyll, the lord-lieutenancy of Hampshire to Lord Lymington, and the governorship of the Isle of Wight to the Duke of Montagu. Some acrimonious questions were asked in the House of Commons, but no very keen regret was probably felt if Hervey's comments upon him may be taken to represent the views of a majority. ‘The duke,’ he says, ‘was a dissatisfied man, for being as proud as if he had been of any consequence, besides what his employments made him, as vain as if he had some merit, and as necessitous as if he had no estate, so he was troublesome at court, hated in the country, and scandalous in his regiment.’ The last epithet may be taken in some measure to apply to his private life, the duke being a notorious buck and gallant about town, until in the summer of 1728 he was fascinated by the charms of Lavinia Fenton [q. v.], the theatrical singer, who had taken the town by storm as Polly Peachum. The duke's subjugation is said to have been effected during her delivery of the song ‘Oh! ponder well, be not severe.’ Swift wrote on 8 July 1728 that the duke had settled