supporter of the Hanoverian succession, and ‘never in his whole life held any sort of correspondence with the Pretender or his followers’ (Hist. MSS. Comm. 11th Rep. pt. v. p. 329). There is no record in the ‘Parliamentary History’ of any of his speeches, but between 1696 and 1723 he appears to have signed no fewer than thirty-five protests in the House of Lords. Macky, in his description of Dartmouth, written about 1707, says: ‘He sets up for a critick in conversation, makes jests, and loves to laugh at them; takes a great deal of pains in his office, and is in a fair way of rising at court; is a short, thick man of fair complexion;’ while Swift, in the ‘Examiner’ for 1 Feb. 1711, writes: ‘My Lord Dartmouth is a man of letters full of good sense, good nature, and honour; of strict virtue and regularity in his life, but labours under one great defect—that he treats his clerks with more civility and good manners than others in his station have done the queen’ (Swift, Works, iii. 436). An engraved portrait of Dartmouth as lord privy seal is in Burnet's ‘History of my own Time’ (ed. 1823, i. opp. p. 9). He married, in July 1700, Lady Anne Finch, third daughter of Heneage, first earl of Aylesford, by whom he had six sons—viz. (1) George, viscount Lewisham, who represented Great Bedwin, Wiltshire, in the House of Commons from 1727 to 1729, and died on 29 Aug. 1732, having married Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of Sir Arthur Kaye, bart., of Woodsome, Yorkshire, by whom he left an only surviving son, William Legge [q. v.], who succeeded his grandfather as the second earl of Dartmouth; (2) Heneage Legge [q. v.]; (3) William Legge, who died an infant; (4) Henry Bilson-Legge [q. v.]; (5) Edward Legge [q. v.]; (6) Robert Legge, who died an infant—and two daughters: (1) Barbara Legge, who married, on 27 July 1724, Sir Walter Bagot, bart., and (2) Anne, who married, in October 1739, Sir Lister Holt, bart., of Aston, Warwickshire, and died in 1740. Lady Dartmouth died on 30 Nov. 1751, and was buried in the Dartmouth vault of Trinity Church in the Minories on 7 Dec. following.
Among the manuscripts at Patshull House, Wolverhampton, are a number of letters written by Dartmouth to Queen Anne, with replies written in the queen's hand, several letters from Harley, written by him while in the Tower to Dartmouth, and the extracts taken by Dartmouth from the minutes of the privy council relating to the duel between the Duke of Hamilton and Lord Mohun (Hist. MSS. Comm. 11th Rep. pt. v. pp. v, viii, 292–330). The original copy of Burnet, in the margin of which Dartmouth made his caustic annotations, is also preserved at Patshull House. The notes were printed for the first time in the Oxford edition of the ‘History of his own Time’ (1823, 8vo, 6 vols.). Some of Dartmouth's letters are preserved at the British Museum (see Index to the Addit. MSS. 1854–75). Dartmouth's town house was situated in Queen Square (now known as Queen Anne's Gate), Westminster. The adjoining Dartmouth and Lewisham Streets were named after him. Dartmouth House, Blackheath, is still in existence, though modernised.
[Burnet's Hist. of his own Time, 1833; Luttrell's Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs, 1857, vols. iv. v. vi.; Swift's Works, 1814; Lord Stanhope's Reign of Queen Anne, 1872; Rogers's Protests of the Lords, 1875, vol. i.; Gent. Mag. 1750, p. 570; Hasted's Hist. of Kent, ‘Hundred of Blackheath,’ 1886, pp. 244–245; Collins's Peerage, 1812, iv. 120–2; Burke's Peerage, 1890, p. 376; Doyle's Official Baronage, 1886, i. 516; Grad. Cantabr. 1823, p. 289; Alumni Westmon. 1852, pp. 27–8, 166, 216, 351, 555, 556, 571, 573; Haydn's Book of Dignities, 1851.]
LEGGE, WILLIAM, second Earl of Dartmouth (1731-1801), younger son of George Legge, viscount Lewisham, by his wife Elisabeth, daughter and heiress of Sir Arthur Kaye, bart., of Woodsome, Yorkshire, and grandson of William Legge, first earl of Dartmouth [q. v.], was born on 20 June 1731. His father died on 29 Aug. 1732, and his mother, who subsequently became the second wife of Francis, seventh baron North afterwards first earl of Guilford, died on 21 April 1745. He was educated as a town-boy at Westminster School, and matriculated at Trinity College, Oxford, on 14 Jan. 1749, where he was created M.A. 21 March 1751, and D.C.L. 28 April 1756. He succeeded his grandfather as second Earl of Dartmouth on 15 Dec. 1750, and upon his return from a foreign tour with Frederick (afterwards Lord) North, took his seat in the House of Lords on 31 May 1754 (Journals of the House of Lords, xviii. 270). At the beginning of George III's reign Dartmouth is said to have applied for the office of lord of the bedchamber, and to have been rejected by Bute, 'lest so sanctimonious a man should gain too far on his majesty's piety' (Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of George III, i. 416). On 30 March 1763 he attacked the Cider Bill 'with decency and propriety' (ib. i. 263), and voted in the minority against it—the first occasion on which the lords were ever known to have divided on a money bill (Parl. Hist. xv. 1310). On 21 Feb. 1764 he condemned Brecknock's 'Droit le Roi' in terms
