George Bubb Dodington, 1st Baron Melcombe PC (1691 – 28 July 1762) was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 politician and nobleman.

Christened simply George Bubb, he acquired the surname Dodington around the time his uncle George Dodington

George Dodington

George Dodington was a Whig politician under the patronage of Edward Russell, 1st Earl of Orford.Dodington represented Charlemont in the Irish House of Commons from 1707 to 1713. He served as Secretary to the Treasurer of the Navy during the reign of William III, and in 1707-1708 was Secretary to...

 died in 1720 and left him his estate. Enormously rich, he became a friend of Frederick, Prince of Wales

Frederick, Prince of Wales

Frederick, Prince of Wales was a member of the House of Hanover and therefore of the Hanoverian and later British Royal Family, the eldest son of George II and father of George III, as well as the great-grandfather of Queen Victoria...

, who took advantage of their acquaintance to obtain loans that helped clear his debts, and, on being thrown out of St James's Palace by his father, King George II

George II of Great Britain

George II was King of Great Britain and Ireland, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg and Archtreasurer and Prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire from 11 June 1727 until his death.George was the last British monarch born outside Great Britain. He was born and brought up in Northern Germany...

, moved into a London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 house belonging to Dodington. Dodington is said to have been involved in a spy-ring, collecting valuable information about Jacobite

Jacobitism

Jacobitism was the political movement in Britain dedicated to the restoration of the Stuart kings to the thrones of England, Scotland, later the Kingdom of Great Britain, and the Kingdom of Ireland...

 activities. In 1761, following the accession of Frederick's son to the throne as George III, he was created Baron Melcombe.

His diary

Diary

A diary is a record with discrete entries arranged by date reporting on what has happened over the course of a day or other period. A personal diary may include a person's experiences, and/or thoughts or feelings, including comment on current events outside the writer's direct experience. Someone...

, published posthumously in 1784 by Henry Penruddocke Wyndham

Henry Penruddocke Wyndham

Henry Penruddocke Wyndham MP JP FSA FRS, was a British Whig Member of Parliament, topographer and author.-Background:Wyndham was born on 4 June 1736, the eldest surviving son of Henry Wyndham of St Edmund's College, Salisbury, and his wife Arundel Penruddocke, daughter of Thomas Penruddocke of...

, is a valuable historical source.

He is depicted in William Hogarth

William Hogarth

William Hogarth was an English painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, social critic and editorial cartoonist who has been credited with pioneering western sequential art. His work ranged from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of pictures called "modern moral subjects"...

's 1761 engraving Five Orders of Periwigs

Five Orders of Periwigs

The Five Orders of Periwigs is a 1761 engraving by William Hogarth. It contains several levels of satire. First, and most clearly, it lampoons the fashion for outlandish wigs in the mid to late 18th century...

.

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