is supported by no satisfactory evidence, and on many points is distinctly contradicted. It is of course quite probable that Douglas called his attention to the gap in the French line; but Rodney's whole career shows him as a man quick to see an opportunity, prompt to seize it, and tenacious to an extreme degree of his dignity and authority; while, according to Hood, Douglas—though unquestionably an able and brave officer—had neither fortitude nor resolution sufficient to open his lips in remonstrance against any order which Rodney might give (ib. p. 106; Mundy, ii. 303).
When the ships were refitted, Rodney proceeded with the fleet to Jamaica, and was still there, on 10 July, when he was summarily superseded by Admiral Hugh Pigot [q. v.], who had sailed from England before the news of the victory had arrived. That the whig government should supersede Rodney—whose conduct at St. Eustatius Burke had denounced—was natural; but the news of the victory showed them that they had made a mistake, and they did everything in their power to remedy it. On 22 May the thanks of both houses of parliament were voted to him; on 19 June he was created a peer by the title of Baron Rodney of Stoke-Rodney; and on 27 June the House of Commons voted him a pension of 2,000l., which in 1793 was settled on the title for ever. The committee of inquiry into the St. Eustatius prize affairs was discharged, and, when he arrived in England in September, he was received with unmeasured applause.
Rodney had no further service, and during his last years he lived retired from public life. He was sorely straitened for money; he was worried by lawsuits arising out of the St. Eustatius spoil; and his health was feeble. He suffered much from gout, which, it was said, occasionally affected his intellect, though it did not prevent his writing very clear notes in the margin of his copy of Clerk's ‘Essay.’ He died suddenly on 23 May 1792, in his house in Hanover Square. Rodney was twice married. First, in 1753, to Jane (d. 1757), daughter of Charles Compton, brother of the sixth earl of Northampton. By her he had two sons: George, who succeeded as second baron; and James, who was lost in command of the Ferret sloop of war in 1776. He married secondly, in 1764, Henrietta, daughter of John Clies of Lisbon, by whom he had issue three daughters and two sons, the elder of whom, John, is noticed below; the younger, Edward, born in 1783, died, a captain in the navy, in 1828. Lady Rodney survived her husband many years, and died in 1829 at the age of ninety.
According to Wraxall, who claimed ‘great personal intimacy with him,’ Rodney's ‘person was more elegant than seemed to become his rough profession; there was even something that approached to delicacy and effeminacy in his figure.’ In society he laid himself open to the reproach of ‘being glorieux et bavard, making himself frequently the theme of his own discourse. He talked much and freely upon every subject, concealed nothing in the course of conversation, regardless who were present, and dealt his censures as well as his praises with imprudent liberality. Throughout his whole life two passions—the love of women and of play—carried him into many excesses. It was believed that he had been distinguished in his youth by the personal attachment of the Princess Amelia, daughter of George II’ (Historical Memoirs, ed. Wheatley, i. 223–4).
A portrait of Rodney, by Reynolds, is in St. James's Palace; a copy of it, presented by George IV, is in the painted hall at Greenwich, and was engraved by W. Dickinson. Another small oval portrait by Reynolds was engraved by P. Tomkins and J. Watson in 1762. Another portrait, by Gainsborough, has been engraved by Dupont. A portrait by H. Baron was engraved by C. Knight and Green. A miniature by W. Grimaldi has also been engraved (see Bromley).
Rodney's elder son by his second wife, John Rodney (1765–1847), born on 27 Feb. 1765, affords a striking example of the abuse of favouritism. On 18 May 1778, at the request of Admiral John Byron [q. v.], he was admitted as a scholar in the Royal Academy at Portsmouth (Byron to the secretary of the admiralty, 20 April 1778, in Admiral's Despatches, North America, 7; secretary of the admiralty to Hood, 24 April 1778, in Secretary's Letters, 1778; Commission and Warrant Book). On 28 Oct. 1779 he was ordered to be discharged from the Academy, at Sir George Rodney's request, but not to any ship, ‘as he has not gone through the plan of learning, or been the usual time in the Academy’ (Minute on Sir G. Rodney's letter of 26 Oct. in Admiral's Despatches, Leeward Islands, 7). He was then entered on board the Sandwich, carrying his father's flag, and in her was present at the defeat of Langara, off Cape St. Vincent, at the relief of Gibraltar, and in the action of 17 April 1780. On 27 May his father, writing to the boy's mother, wrote with a customary exaggeration: ‘John is perfectly well, and has had an opportunity of seeing more service in the short time he has been from England than has fallen to the lot of the oldest captain in the navy. … He is now gone on a cruise in one of my frigates’
