His plantations had been pillaged by the enemy, and he left the West Indies a ruined man. During his detention in France he negotiated an exchange of prisoners which released Lord Macartney from his parole; and when in 1781 that nobleman went out to Madras as governor, Staunton accompanied him as secretary.
The first important service he performed in India was a mission in 1782 to Calcutta, to confer with Warren Hastings, whose temper he found ‘somewhat affected by the long opposition he had met in council.’ In the following year, private information having been received from England of the near conclusion of peace with France, he was appointed to negotiate with the Marquis de Bussy and Admiral Suffren for a suspension of hostilities. In September 1783 he was charged with the duty of arresting General James Stuart [q. v.], in command of the Madras troops, who had defied the governor's authority (Thornton, India, ii. 279). Later in the year he was appointed, with two other envoys, to treat with Tippu Sultan. After protracted negotiations, a treaty of peace with the ruler of Mysore was signed on 11 March 1784 (Thornton, ii. 285). Lord Macartney's appreciation of his secretary's services was conveyed in a letter to the court of directors dated Fort St. George, 28 July 1784, and in a private letter of the same date to Charles James Fox, in which the governor wrote: ‘His sagacity and singular talents for public business, his extensive knowledge of most parts of the world, his spirit, integrity, and fidelity, so fully experienced by myself, give me a right to speak of him in high terms.’
In 1784 Staunton returned to England with despatches. The court of directors on 11 April 1785 awarded him a pension of 500l. a year for life, while from the crown he received the honour of an Irish baronetcy (created 31 Oct. 1785). In the same year he entered into possession of his father's estate at Cargin, on paying the balance of the sum for which it had been conveyed for a term of years to Robert French.
Sir George Staunton remained in England without public employment till 1792. He was intimate with Edmund Burke, who sought his advice when threatened, as he wrote, by the malice of ‘the villains who in the India Office and in India have been labouring for the destruction of so large a part of mankind’ (Burke to Staunton, June 1785). In February 1787 Staunton was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, and on 16 June 1790 was made an honorary D.C.L. at Oxford.
In 1792 he was sent with Lord Macartney on a mission to China, being appointed secretary to the embassy and, provisionally, minister plenipotentiary in the event of the ambassador's death. It was also intended that he should eventually take up his residence at Pekin as British minister, but ill-health, on his return to England, prevented his acceptance of the post. In 1797 he published ‘An authentic account of the Earl of Macartney's Embassy from the King of Great Britain to the Emperor of China,’ London, 8vo.
The remainder of his life was saddened by prolonged ill-health, and he died at his London house in Devonshire Street, Portman Square, on 14 Jan. 1801. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, where a monument by Chantrey is erected to his memory. He married, 22 July 1771, Jane, daughter of Benjamin Collins, banker of Salisbury, and M.P. for that city. By her he had two sons: George, born 1775, died in infancy; and Sir George Thomas Staunton [q. v.]
A portrait of Staunton in conference with his chief, Macartney, by Lemuel Abbott [q. v.], is in the National Portrait Gallery, London; an engraving from Engleheart's portrait painted in 1792 appears in the ‘Memoir’ mentioned below.
[Memoir of the Life and Family of the late Sir George Leonard Staunton, bart., edited by his son, Havant, 1823 (for private circulation); Gent. Mag. 1801, i. 183, 189.]
STAUNTON, Sir GEORGE THOMAS (1781–1859), writer on China, only surviving child of Sir George Leonard Staunton [q. v.], Indian administrator, was born at Milford House, near Salisbury, on 26 May 1781. He was educated privately, and became a good classical scholar. In 1792 he accompanied his father to China, under the nominal designation of page to the ambassador. Before embarking, and during the voyage, he studied Chinese under two native Chinese missionaries from the Propaganda College at Naples, and was soon able to speak with fluency and to write in the native character. In an interview with the emperor of China he was the only member of the embassy able to converse in Chinese. During a visit to England in 1797 he kept two terms as a fellow-commoner at Trinity College, Cambridge. On 10 April 1798 he was appointed a writer in the East India Company's factory at Canton. On 14 Jan. 1801 he succeeded his father as second baronet. In 1804 he was promoted to be a supercargo, and in the following year he was the means of introducing vaccination into China by making
