of commander-in-chief remaining vacant. By letters patent of 20 May 1762 his Irish title was altered to that of Viscount Ligonier of Clonmell in the peerage of Ireland, with remainder and pension of 1,500l. a year to his nephew, Edward Ligonier [see infra]. On 27 April 1763 Ligonier was created Baron Ligonier in the peerage of Great Britain, and on 10 Sept. 1766 became an English earl by letters patent, creating him Earl Ligonier of Ripley, in the county of Surrey, in the peerage of Great Britain. In the same year he attained the rank of field-marshal.
Ligonier was a privy councillor, F.R.S., and governor of the French Protestant Hospital in St. Luke's, London, to which he was elected on the death of the founder, Jacques Gaultier, in 1748. He died on 28 April 1770, in his ninetieth year, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, where is a monument to him, with medallion heads of himself and the five British sovereigns he served under. At his death his English title became extinct. According to some accounts he was married, and left an only daughter, married to a Lieutenant-colonel Graham. But the statement does not appear in Collins's ‘Peerage,’ 1768.
Ligonier was a man of the most chivalrous courage, with all the light-hearted daring of his race. He took part in twenty-three general actions and nineteen sieges without receiving a wound. By his contemporaries his military talents were held in the highest esteem. As with other veterans, a later generation inclined to regard him as obsolete, and as a cover for jobbery among his subordinates. Horace Walpole sneered at ‘the coronet for his aged brows and approaching coffin’ (Walpole, Letters, v. 9; see also Shelburne, Autobiog.), but he was nevertheless a popular hero, deservedly liked and trusted. A portrait of him by Sir Joshua Reynolds, representing a spare-built veteran, with kindly weather-beaten face, mounted on a black charger, is in the National Gallery. Another portrait is in the French Hospital in Shaftesbury Avenue.
Most of Ligonier's papers are among the British Museum Addit. MSS. His autographic memoirs of the military operations of 1742–3, in French, form Addit. MS., French, 22537, ff. 13, 21, 44, 48, 50, 433. Copies of his correspondence with Marshal Saxe in 1747 form Addit. MSS. Fr. 20788 f. 168, 23835 f. 223. His correspondence with Holles, duke of Newcastle, and other celebrities is in Addit. MSS. 32714 to 32795. A number of letters to him from various persons during the period 1759–65 are noted in the Historical MSS. Commission's 9th Rep. pt. ii. p. 479 a. An auction catalogue of his military library, which was sold at the death of his nephew, was printed.
Ligonier, Francis, otherwise François Auguste (d. 1746), colonel of the 13th dragoons and 59th foot (48th) in the British army, next younger brother of the above, entered his brother's regiment, the black horse, in 1720, and was wounded as lieutenant-colonel of it at Dettingen. On 25 April 1745 he was appointed colonel 59th foot, since the 48th, now 1st Northampton regiment. When Colonel James Gardiner [q. v.] fell at Prestonpans, deserted by his men, George II assigned his regiment to Ligonier, swearing he ‘would give them an officer who should show them how to fight.’ Ligonier was appointed colonel 13th dragoons on 1 Oct. 1745, and held the colonelcies of both regiments at the time of his death. He left a sickbed to rally the dragoons of General Henry Hawley's force at Falkirk Muir on 16 Jan. 1746, and contracted a pleurisy, of which he died a few days later. His brother John erected a monument to him in Westminster Abbey, which has disappeared. The inscription on it is given by Maclachlan (Duke of Cumberland's Order-Book, p. 83).
Ligonier, Edward, Earl Ligonier in the peerage of Ireland (d. 1782), lieutenant-general, only son of Colonel Francis Ligonier [see supra], entered as cornet in the 2nd dragoon guards, or queen's bays, in 1752, and obtained his troop in the 7th dragoons (now hussars) in 1757. He was aide-de-camp to Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick at the battle of Minden on 1 Aug. 1759, and brought home the despatches (see Walpole, Letters, iii. 244–5). He was one of the principal witnesses against Lord George Sackville [see Germain, Gorge Sackville, first Viscount Sackville] at his court-martial. On 15 Aug. 1759 he was promoted to captain and lieutenant-colonel 1st foot-guards, a position he held until appointed colonel 9th foot in 1771. He was made aide-de-camp to the king in 1763, and was secretary to Lord Rochford's special embassy to the court of Madrid in that year. On the death of his uncle, Earl Ligonier, in 1770, he succeeded to the Irish viscountcy and pension. He was made a K.B. 17 Dec. 1781, and on 4 July 1776 was created an Irish earl under the title of Earl Ligonier of Clonmell in the peerage of Ireland. He became a major-general in 1775, and lieutenant-general in 1777. Ligonier was twice married. His first wife was Penelope, eldest daughter of George Pitt, earl Rivers. Ligonier fought on her account a duel with swords, in Hyde Park, with the Italian poet Count Alfieri. Ligonier behaved very generously to his opponent when
