George Granville, 1st Baron Lansdowne PC

Privy Council of England

The Privy Council of England, also known as His Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council, was a body of advisers to the sovereign of the Kingdom of England...

 (9 March 1666 – 29 January 1735) was an English poet, playwright, and politician who served as a Privy Counsellor

Privy Council of the United Kingdom

Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council, usually known simply as the Privy Council, is a formal body of advisers to the Sovereign in the United Kingdom...

 from 1712.

Early life

Granville was the grandson of Sir Bevil Grenville

Bevil Grenville

Sir Bevil Grenville was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons of England between 1621 and 1642. He was a Royalist soldier in the English Civil War and was killed in action at the Battle of Lansdowne.-Backgound:...

, a Royalist commander in the English Civil War

English Civil War

The English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists...

. His uncle was John Granville, 1st Earl of Bath

John Granville, 1st Earl of Bath

John Granville, 1st Earl of Bath PC was an English royalist statesman, whose highest position was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland....

, and George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle

George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle

George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle, KG was an English soldier and politician and a key figure in the restoration of Charles II.-Early life and career:...

 was another relative; these influences guaranteed that Granville began life as a staunch Tory

Tory

Toryism is a traditionalist and conservative political philosophy which grew out of the Cavalier faction in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. It is a prominent ideology in the politics of the United Kingdom, but also features in parts of The Commonwealth, particularly in Canada...

 and 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...

.

Still, his early interests were as much literary as political. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge

Trinity College, Cambridge

Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Trinity has more members than any other college in Cambridge or Oxford, with around 700 undergraduates, 430 graduates, and over 170 Fellows...

 in 1677. Among his productions while there were poems welcoming Mary of Modena

Mary of Modena

Mary of Modena was Queen consort of England, Scotland and Ireland as the second wife of King James II and VII. A devout Catholic, Mary became, in 1673, the second wife of James, Duke of York, who later succeeded his older brother Charles II as King James II...

 when she visited the university. By the mid-1690s, after a period in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, and another, after the Glorious Revolution

Glorious Revolution

The Glorious Revolution, also called the Revolution of 1688, is the overthrow of King James II of England by a union of English Parliamentarians with the Dutch stadtholder William III of Orange-Nassau...

, in retirement in England, he had befriended John Dryden

John Dryden

John Dryden was an influential English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who dominated the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden.Walter Scott called him "Glorious John." He was made Poet...

 and begun to write plays. He wrote an undistignuished comedy of manners

Comedy of manners

The comedy of manners is a genre of play/television/film which satirizes the manners and affectations of a social class, often represented by stock characters, such as the miles gloriosus in ancient times, the fop and the rake during the Restoration, or an old person pretending to be young...

, The She Gallants, which was staged unsuccessfully in 1695. His adult plays bear the marks of Dryden's influence. The Heroick Love is taken from the first book of The Iliad. Granville also followed Dryden in adapting Shakespeare; The Jew of Venice (1701) was a successful updating of The Merchant of Venice

The Merchant of Venice

The Merchant of Venice is a tragic comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1596 and 1598. Though classified as a comedy in the First Folio and sharing certain aspects with Shakespeare's other romantic comedies, the play is perhaps most remembered for its dramatic...

. Perhaps his greatest success was The British Enchanters (1705), a pseudo-operatic extravaganza staged by Thomas Betterton

Thomas Betterton

Thomas Patrick Betterton , English actor, son of an under-cook to King Charles I, was born in London.-Apprentice and actor:...

's company.

In the opinion of Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...

, Granville's nondramatic poetry is slavishly imitative of Edmund Waller

Edmund Waller

Edmund Waller, FRS was an English poet and politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1624 and 1679.- Early life :...

; some of it, however, was popular in its day. Perhaps Granville's most useful act as regards poetry was the encouragement he gave Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...

, which Pope remembered with gratitude in the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot.

Political life

The death of Granville's parents and uncle in 1701 placed Granville in a position of power which the accession of Queen Anne

Anne of Great Britain

Anne ascended the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland on 8 March 1702. On 1 May 1707, under the Act of Union, two of her realms, England and Scotland, were united as a single sovereign state, the Kingdom of Great Britain.Anne's Catholic father, James II and VII, was deposed during the...

 in 1702 allowed him to employ. With the help of his uncle's family, he was elected MP for Fowey

Fowey (UK Parliament constituency)

Fowey was a rotten borough in Cornwall which returned two Members of Parliament to the House of Commons in the English and later British Parliament from 1571 to 1832, when it was abolished by the Great Reform Act.-History:...

 in 1702, and made Governor of Pendennis Castle

Governor of Pendennis Castle

The Governor of Pendennis Castle was a military officer who commanded the fortifications at Pendennis Castle, part of the defenses of the River Fal and Carrick Roads. Originally fortified under Henry VIII, defenses in the area were intermittently maintained through World War II. The office of...

 the following year. In Parliament, he operated in the sphere of Harley

Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Mortimer

Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer KG was a British politician and statesman of the late Stuart and early Georgian periods. He began his career as a Whig, before defecting to a new Tory Ministry. Between 1711 and 1714 he served as First Lord of the Treasury, effectively Queen...

, who was an indifferent patron at first. The height of his fame during the Godolphin

Sidney Godolphin, 1st Earl of Godolphin

Sir Sidney Godolphin, 1st Earl of Godolphin, KG, PC was a leading English politician of the late 17th and early 18th centuries...

-Marlborough

John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough

John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, Prince of Mindelheim, KG, PC , was an English soldier and statesman whose career spanned the reigns of five monarchs through the late 17th and early 18th centuries...

 administration came from his spirited defence of Henry Sacheverell

Henry Sacheverell

Henry Sacheverell was an English High Church clergyman and politician.-Early life:The son of Joshua Sacheverell, rector of St Peter's, Marlborough,...

 in 1710.

After the fall of the Godolphin government, Granville became MP for Cornwall

Cornwall (UK Parliament constituency)

Cornwall is a former county constituency covering the county of Cornwall, in the South West of England. It was a constituency of the House of Commons of England then of the House of Commons of Great Britain from 1707 to 1800 and of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom from 1801 to 1832...

, and on 28 September 1710 he was made Secretary of War. In this capacity, he oversaw the passage of important bills on munitions and recruitment. However, his experience in the Tory government was marked by family and legal strife. He expended time and money in an ultimately futile effort to secure the title of Earl of Bath

Earl of Bath

Earl of Bath was a title that was created five times in British history, three times in the Peerage of England, once in the Peerage of Great Britain and once Peerage of the United Kingdom...

. Despite some success, his tenure in the War Office was marred by accusations of corruption and expensive contested elections. He was made a Privy Counsellor in 1712.

He was created Baron Lansdown (Lansdowne) on 1 January 1712 in the Peerage of Great Britain

Peerage of Great Britain

The Peerage of Great Britain comprises all extant peerages created in the Kingdom of Great Britain after the Act of Union 1707 but before the Act of Union 1800...

. The peerage became extinct on his death.

In 1714 Anne was succeeded by the Hanoverian

House of Hanover

The House of Hanover is a deposed German royal dynasty which has ruled the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg , the Kingdom of Hanover, the Kingdom of Great Britain, the Kingdom of Ireland and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland...

 George I

George I of Great Britain

George I was King of Great Britain and Ireland from 1 August 1714 until his death, and ruler of the Duchy and Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg in the Holy Roman Empire from 1698....

, who notably favoured the Whigs. Almost all the Tories who held office under Anne were dismissed, including Lord Lansdown. Embittered, he began a secret correspondence with the Jacobite pretender "James III"

James Francis Edward Stuart

James Francis Edward, Prince of Wales was the son of the deposed James II of England...

. This came to nothing, but on 3 November 1722, James created him "Duke of Albemarle", "Marquis Monck and Fitzhemmon", "Earl of Bath", "Viscount Bevil", and "Baron Lansdown of Bideford" in the Jacobite Peerage

Jacobite peerage

After the deposition by the English parliament in February 1689 of King James II and VII from the thrones of England and Ireland , he and his successors continued to create peers and baronets, which they believed was their right...

 of England. He died in London on 29 January 1735, his wife having predeceased him by a few days, and was buried with her in St Clement Danes

St Clement Danes

St Clement Danes is a church in the City of Westminster, London. It is situated outside the Royal Courts of Justice on the Strand. The current building was completed in 1682 by Sir Christopher Wren and it now functions as the central church of the Royal Air Force.The church is sometimes claimed to...

on 3 February.