Granville, George, Lord Lansdowne

(1667-1735)

   Born in Yorkshire and educated in France, he graduated M.A. from Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1679. He was member of Parliament several times and succeeded Walpole as secretary of war in 1710. The following year he was created a peer of Great Britain with the title of Lord Lansdowne, Baron of Bideford, Devon. He fell out of favor when George I succeeded to the throne (1714) and, being suspected of having sympathies with the Jacobite cause, was imprisoned for two years in the Tower of London. Released in 1717, he settled at Longleat, Wiltshire. He died in London and was buried in a vault in the chancel of St. Clement Danes, London. His wife, who had died a few days before him, was buried in the same vault. His publications: translations of some of the orations of Demosthenes; several tragedies, comedies, and one opera, The British Enchanters (1706); A Collection of Poems (1701); and Granville's Works (1732). Some of his poems: "Poems to the King ( James II)," "Beauty and Law, a Poetical Pleading," "To Myra, Loving at First Sight," "The Progress of Beauty," "Essay on Unnatural Flights in Poetry."

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). Samuel Johnson's Lives of the English Poets, 1779-1781 (http://www2.hn.psu.edu/Faculty/KKemmerer/poets/preface.htm). The National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk).