154 FORBES. criminals, but to erect platforms, castles, fortifications, and towns, and to furnish the same with ordnance and ammunition, necessary for the defence of those islands : and 10th December, it was ordered by the House of Peers, that he should have leave to be absent from the service of that House, to attend his said government; but in June following he resigned this commission. In 1731, he commanded the Cornwall, a third rate of eighty guns; and, in April 1733, was appointed his ma jesty's plenipotentiary to the court of Muscovy, in which embassy he embarked 9th May, and arrived at Peters burgh, 21st June: during his residence at which court, he was constituted, 11th May, 1734, rear-admiral of the white flag, and receiving his commission 25th June, was recalled from his embassy; the Czarina, at his audience of leave, expressing a great sense of his lordship's merits, and her satisfaction in his being sent to her court, pre sented him with a diamond ring of great value from her own finger, with her picture enriched with diamonds, and six thousand rubles in specie. On 17th December, 1734, he was made rear-admiral of the red; from which, 30th April, 1786, he was advanced to be vice-admiral of the blue; and in June 1738, appointed commander-in-chief of a squadron of ships designed for the West Indies, which he not long after resigned. At his death, he was senior admi ral of the British navy. In 1741, his lordship was returned member of parliament for the boroughs of Air, Irwin, &c. in Scotland; was one of his majesty's privy council; and governor of the counties of Westmeath and Longford, which he resigned in 1756, and was succeeded in that of Longford, by his eldest son on 8th October. He married Mary, eldest daughter of William, the first Lord Mountjoy, and relict of Phineas Preston, of Ardfallah, in Meath, Esq. and died at the advanced age of eighty, on the 29th of October, 1765, leaving issue by his lady, (who died on the 4th of October, 1755,) one daughter and two sons.
