The American Cyclopædia (1879)/Granville, George

GRANVILLE, George, Baron Lansdowne, an English author and statesman, born in 1667, died Jan. 30, 1735. He entered Trinity college, Cambridge, at the age of 10, and three years later received the degree of M. A. About the same time he began to write poetry, and on the accession of James II. addressed several pieces of verse to him. During the reign of William and Mary he lived in retirement and wrote several plays, one of which, “Heroic Love,” is highly praised in a passage of Dryden. His “British Enchanters” was performed 40 times. Becoming by the death of his father and elder brother the head of the influential family of Granville, he entered parliament in 1710, and in the same year was appointed secretary of war in place of Walpole. In January, 1712, he was created Baron Lansdowne of Biddeford. Upon the queen’s death he lost his offices, and, on account of his avowed sympathy for the pretender and his participation in the scheme for raising an insurrection in the west of England, was committed to the tower in September, 1715, where he was confined till Feb. 8, 1717. Being suspected again in 1722 of some connection with the Atterbury plot, he retired to France, and returning to England in 1732 published his works in prose and poetry in 2 vols. 4 to.