of the critical nature of the situation than those of Grattan and Charlemont.
At the grand convention of volunteers held in Dublin in November 1783, he played a prominent and picturesque part as a delegate from county Derry. Accompanied by his nephew, the notorious George Robert Fitzgerald [q. v.], and attended by a troop of dragoons, he proceeded from his diocese to Dublin with all the pomp and ceremony of a royal progress. Dressed entirely in purple, with diamond knee- and shoe-buckles, with white gloves fringed with gold lace, and fastened by long gold tassels, he entered Dublin seated in an open landau, drawn by six horses, caparisoned with purple trappings, and passed slowly through the principal streets to the Royal Exchange, where the delegates of the volunteer companies were assembled. He was doubtless disappointed at not being elected president, but he showed no resentment. He advocated the incorporation of the catholics in whatever scheme of reform was adopted, and his suggestion that the convention should allow itself to be guided by the practical experience of Flood saved the proceedings from degenerating into a mere farce. His conduct was as far removed as possible from that of an ambitious demagogue or a would-be leader of an armed rebellion. He wisely counselled—unfortunately without success—that the convention should dissolve itself before Flood introduced his bill into the House of Commons. After the dissolution of the convention Hervey was the recipient of many laudatory addresses from the principal volunteer companies in the north, and his replies, especially that to the address of the Bill of Rights Battalion, seem to have alarmed the government so much that they even contemplated the advisability of arresting him (Add. MSS. 33100 f. 461, 33101 f. 29, 77). But with the collapse of the volunteer movement Hervey ceased to take any active interest in Irish politics. He voted by proxy for the Act of Union, and there is extant a curious letter from him to Pelham, dated Venice, 16 June 1798, in which he attributes what success the rebellion had to the tithe grievance, and advocates the endowment by the state of nonconformist ministers as the best remedy for Irish disaffection. His health seems to have been indifferent, and what time he did not spend in superintending the arrangement of his art treasures at Downhill and Ballyscullion appears to have been passed chiefly on the continent. At a late period of his life he became enamoured of the Countess Lichtenau, the mistress of Frederick William II of Prussia, and his letters to her reveal a shameless disregard of his profession and ordinary morality (see also Memoirs of Lady Hamilton, pp. 112–26; Life of Grattan, iii. 116). In 1798 he was arrested by the French in Italy, and confined for a time in the castle of Milan. A valuable collection of antiquities which he was on the point of transmitting to England was seized at the same time. A remonstrance, signed by 345 artists of different nations, was presented to Citizen Haller, administrator of the finances of the army of Italy, and the collection was redeemed for the sum of 10,000l., under an arrangement with the directory; but within a week after the payment of the money it was again plundered, and the whole dispersed. Hervey died at Albano on 8 July 1803 (see Lord Cloncurry, Personal Recollections, p. 191). His body was brought to England in April 1804, and interred in the church of Ickworth, near Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, the ancient seat of the Herveys. There is no monument to his memory inside the church; but an obelisk erected by the inhabitants of Derry, to which the Roman catholic bishop and resident dissenting minister had alike contributed, stands in the park. According to Sir Jonah Barrington, Hervey's personal appearance was extremely prepossessing. He was rather under the middle size, but well built. His character betrayed all the eccentricity for which his family was remarkable, and which had given rise to the saying that God had created men, women, and Herveys. John Wesley, who spent a Sunday with him in 1775, was much impressed by the ‘admirable solemnity’ with which he celebrated the Lord's Supper. Charlemont, who had better opportunities for knowing him, describes him as a bad father, a worse husband, a determined deist, very blasphemous in his conversation, and greatly addicted to intrigue and gallantry (Lecky, Hist. of England, vi. 334–5).
He succeeded to the barony of Howard de Walden through his grandmother in 1799. He married very early (1752), against the wishes both of his own and his wife's family, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Jermyn Davers, and sister and heiress of Sir Charles Davers, bart.; she died on 16 Dec. 1800, having had two sons, Augustus John, lord Hervey (d. 1796), and Frederick William, fifth earl and marquis of Bristol (1769–1859), and three daughters.
