Georgia after he had settled these financial troubles ; but two events changed his purpose. On 15 Sept. 1743 he married Elizabeth, the only surriving daughter and the heiress of Sir Nathan Wright. She brought him a much-needed fortune, including Cranham Hall in Essex, which was his home for the rest of his days.
Soon afterwards, while Oglethorpe was raising troops for the defence of the colony, the Jacobite insurrection of 1746 broke out. He at once received orders to join General Wade, and to take with him the soldiers whom he had raised. He joined Wade at Hull, and accompanied him in his march into Lancashire, where he and his men were transferred to the force which, under the Duke of Cumberland, harassed the retreating Jacobites. It is not unlikely that Oglethorpe's hereditary associations with the house of Stuart laid him open to suspicion. An absurd story found currency in later days to the effect that Oglethorpe was detected on the eve of Culloden in treasonable correspondence; that he therefore fled, and fortified himself as an armed rebel at his country seat in Surrey. It is certain that if Oglethorpe had any treasonable designs, of which there is no proof, they had been effectively anticipated. When, in December 1745, the Duke of Cumberland returned to London, having, as he believed, crushed the rebellion, he lodged a charge of misconduct, accusing Oglethorpe of having lingered on the road in his pursuit of the retreating Jacobites. A court-martial followed, and Oglethorpe was acquitted, but his career as a soldier was at an end, and he did not return to Georgia. For eight years longer he sat in parliament. The utter collapse of opposition while Pelham was prime minister had relaxed the bonds of party discipline; the cause of the whigs was too triumphant, that of their opponents too hopeless, for either to insist on obedience. Oglethorpe was able to take up that position of a freelance which his keen and ready sympathy and his independent temper made congenial to him. He had plainly cast behind him all lingering attachment to the house of Stuart. An attitude of sturdy independence towards Hanoverian ministers and a tendency to look with disfavour on all authority of which they were the centre were all that remained of his hereditary Jacobitism. We find him twice supporting measures whereby foreign protestants might enjoy full civic rights in the colonies, and doing his best to limit the arbitrary powers granted to courts-martial. In 1754 Oglethorpe was defeated in the contest for the representation of Haslemere, for which he had sat in parliament for thirty-two years. Thenceforth he disappeared from public life. In 1752 the trustees of the Georgian colony had resigned their patent, and Georgia had become a royal province. For many years longer, however, Oglethorpe filled a prominent position in social life in London. He won Dr. Johnson's regard by the support which he gave his 'London' upon its appearance in 1738, and increased it by the stand he made against slavery in Georgia. In return, Johnson wished to write Oglethorpe's life. He was the friend of Walpole, Goldsmith, Boswell, Burke, and Hannah More, keeping to the last his boyish vivacity and diversity of interests, his keen sense of personal dignity, his sympathv with the problems of life, his earnestness of moral conviction. His name is enshrined in the well-known couplet of Pope —
One, driven by strong benevolence of soul,
Shall fly like Oglethorpe from pole to pole
(Imitation of Horace, ep. ii.)
On 1 July 1785 Oglethorpe died at Cranham. As if he was at once to become by an appropriate fate a hero of legend, he was described in two contemporary accounts as 102 and 104 ; but, though his age is not mentioned on his monument, there seems no reason to doubt the accuracy of the record which makes him eighty-nine. A monument, with an extravagantly long inscription, was erected in Cranham Church to Oglethorpe and his widow, who died on 26 Oct. 1787. The Cranham estates descended to the Marquis de Bellegarde, the grandson of one of Oglethorpe's sisters. A three-quarter-length portrait of Oglethorpe in armour, engraved in mezzotint by T. Burford, is in the print-room at the British Museum. Another, engraved by S. Ireland, is mentioned by Bromley.
[Mr. Robert Wright has gathered together all that can be known of Oglethorpe in an admirable biography. Mach of the material, especially that relating to Georgia, is still in manuscript. See, however, A True and Historical Narrative of the Colony of Georgia, 1741, and Account of the Colony of Georgia, 1741, both of which are reprinted in Force's Tracts, Washington, 1836, and Notes and Queries, 3rd ser. x. 63, where private letters — one from Oglethorpe — describe Georgia in 1738; Bosweirs Life of Johnson, ed. Hill, i. 127 ; Walpole's Letters ; Hannah More's Letters; Southey's Life of Wesley; Franklin's Memoirs, i. 162; Nichols's Lit. Anecd. ii. 19-22 ; Elwin and Courthope's Pope, iii. 392 ; Lecky's England in the Eighteenth Century, i. 600-3; Gent. Mag. for 1785 and 1787.]
