TALBOT, Hon. William (1710-82), of Hensol, Glam.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1715-1754, ed. R. Sedgwick, 1970
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

1734 - 14 Feb. 1737

Family and Education

b. 16 May 1710, 1st surv. s. of Charles Talbot, 1st Baron Talbot of Hensol, and bro. of Hon. John Talbot. educ. Eton 1725-8; Exeter, Oxf. 1728, D.C.L. 1736; L. Inn 1728. m. 21 Feb. 1734, Mary (‘is and will be worth above £70,000’), da. and h. of Rt. Hon. Adam de Cardonnel, M.P., of Bedhampton Park, Hants, 1s. d.v.p. 1da. (separated 1742).1 suc. fa. 14 Feb. 1737; cr. Earl Talbot 19 Mar. 1761, Baron Dinevor, with a sp. rem. 17 Oct. 1780.

Offices Held

Lord steward of the Household 1761-d.; P.C. 25 Mar. 1761; lord high steward of England at George III’s coronation 22 Sept. 1761.

Biography

In March 1734 Talbot was elected a trustee of the Georgia Society, of which he became a common councillor from March 1737 to March 1738, when he resigned. Standing as a Whig for Glamorgan in 1734 on the interest of his father, the lord chancellor, whose wife had inherited an estate in the county, he won the seat from the hitherto dominant Tories. In February 1735, when Sir William Wyndham moved that a committee be appointed to examine the ordinances of the navy, Talbot voted against the Administration, ‘which was much taken notice of’. After succeeding to the peerage he refused, March 1738, to sign two applications to the Government from the Georgia Society, ‘because he would not apply to Sir Robert Walpole for anything’.2 In 1747 he and Sir Francis Dashwood were commissioned by the Prince of Wales to invite the Tories to ‘coalesce and unite’ with him;3 in 1749 they were among the friends for whom Bubb Dodington obtained promises of places on the Prince’s accession, Talbot being put down for master of the jewel office;4 and on George III’s accession they were both given high office by Bute, who made Talbot lord steward. On the occasion of his appointment Horace Walpole wrote of him:

This Lord had long affected a very free spoken kind of patriotism on all occasions. He had some wit, and a little tincture of a disordered understanding, but was better known as a boxer and a man of pleasure than in the light of a statesman. The Duchess of [Beaufort] had been publicly divorced from her husband on his account, and was not the only woman of fashion who had lived with him openly as his mistress. He was strong, well-made, and very comely, but with no air, nor with the manners of a man of quality.5

He died 27 Apr. 1782.

Ref Volumes: 1715-1754

Author: Eveline Cruickshanks

Notes

  • 1. N. and Q. (ser.2) i. 326; Walpole to Mann, 18 July 1742.
  • 2. HMC Egmont Diary, ii. 66, 154, 372, 469, 483-4.
  • 3. Owen, Pelhams, 312-15.
  • 4. Dodington Diary, 6-7; Add. 47097/8.
  • 5. Mems. Geo. III, i. 36.