Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 45.djvu/240

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Phipps
232
Phipps

advance. The look-out on the forecastle called out that they would be foul of the three-decker. ‘No matter,’ answered Mulgrave; ‘the oak of Old England is as well able to bear a blow as that of France.’ The Courageux, however, just cleared the jib-boom of the Ville de Paris and passed to windward of her, pouring in a destructive broadside. The big Frenchman, thus cut off, ought to have been detained and captured; but no orders were given, and all the English ships, except the Courageux, passed to leeward of her. Being under Palliser's immediate command, and his colleague at the admiralty, Phipps's evidence at the courts-martial had a strong bias in Palliser's favour [see Keppel, Augustus, Viscount Keppel; Palliser, Sir Hugh]. Afterwards, during the war, he continued to command the Courageux in the Channel fleet under Hardy, Geary, Darby, and Howe, and on 4 Jan. 1781 captured the 32-gun frigate Minerve off Brest after a remarkable engagement; for the heavy weather rendered it impossible for the Courageux to open her lower-deck ports, and thus reduced her force to something like an equality with that of the Minerve. The Courageux was paid off at the peace, and Mulgrave had no further service afloat.

In parliament Phipps continued to represent Huntingdon till 1784, when he was returned for Newark-upon-Trent. In April 1784 he was appointed joint paymaster-general of the forces, and on 18 May a commissioner for the affairs of India, and one of the lords of ‘Trade and Plantations.’ In 1791 ill-health compelled him to resign. On 16 June 1790 he was created a peer of Great Britain as Baron Mulgrave. He was a fellow of the Royal Society and of the Society of Antiquaries, and was ‘principally instrumental in the establishment of the Society for the Improvement of Naval Architecture.’ He collected also ‘a library, the most perfect in England as to all works connected with nautical affairs.’ He died at Liège on 10 Oct. 1792. A bust portrait of Mulgrave, painted by Ozias Humphrey, is in Greenwich Hospital. He married, in 1787, Anne Elizabeth, youngest daughter of Nathaniel Cholmeley of Howsham in Yorkshire. She died the following year in giving birth to a daughter; and Mulgrave dying without male heirs, the English peerage became extinct; the Irish barony descended to his brother Henry [q. v.]

Mulgrave published ‘A Voyage towards the North Pole,’ 1774, 4to (reprinted in Hawkesworth's and in Pinkerton's ‘Collections’). His diary of 1773 was also issued as ‘A Journal of the Voyage’ in 1773, and correspondence between him and Sir John Sinclair in 1795.

[Naval Chronicle (with portrait), viii. 89; Annual Register, 1792, pt. ii. p. 62*; A Voyage towards the North Pole, 1773 (4to, 1774); Beatson's Nav. and Mil. Memoirs; Commission and Warrant Books in Record Office; Trevelyan's Early History of Charles James Fox, pp. 334, 356; Foster's Peerage, s.v. ‘Normanby.’]

J. K. L.

PHIPPS, GEORGE AUGUSTUS CONSTANTINE, second Marquis of Normanby (1819–1890), born on 23 July 1819, was the son of Constantine Henry Phipps, first marquis of Normanby [q. v.], by Maria Liddell, eldest daughter of Thomas Henry, lord Ravensworth. From 1831 to 1838 he was known as Viscount Normanby, and from that time till his father's death as Earl of Mulgrave. On 9 Nov. 1838 he entered the Scots fusilier guards, and was gazetted major in the North Yorkshire militia on 18 Aug. 1846. He resigned his commission in the army in 1847, but remained an officer in the militia till 1853. On 28 July 1847 he was elected M.P. for Scarborough in the liberal interest, and was re-elected in 1852 and 1857. He also acted as one of the liberal whips during the ministries of Lords John Russell, Aberdeen, and Palmerston. He was named comptroller of the household on 23 July 1851, and sworn of the privy council on 7 Aug. of the same year. From 4 Jan. 1853 to February 1858 he was treasurer of the household. In January 1858 he was appointed lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia, and held that office till July 1863, when he returned to England on succeeding to his father's title.

Normanby was appointed a lord-in-waiting by Earl Russell on 8 May 1866, but went out of office with him two months later. On 17 Dec. 1868 he was appointed to the same post by Mr. Gladstone. Exactly a year later he was named captain of the corps of gentlemen-at-arms, and held the office till the spring of 1871. On 8 April 1871 he became governor of Queensland. He seems to have had doubts as to the profitableness of goldmining in that colony, but on 29 April 1873, when he received an enthusiastic reception on his visit to the Gympsie goldfields, declared that the mining industry would be the backbone of Queensland's future (Visit of Governor Normanby to the Gympsie Goldfields, 1873). His three years' term of government in Queensland was a period of marked progress, and his administration gave general satisfaction.

On 5 Sept. 1874 Normanby was appointed successor to Sir George Bowen as governor of New Zealand. He arrived at Auckland on