as ambassador, was granted a pension of 2,000l. a year on retiring from the foreign office (Walpole, Journal of the Reign of King George III, ii. 595; Parl. Hist. xxiii. 549). It appears that he already enjoyed another pension of 3,000l. a year, which had been granted to his father for two lives, and secured on the Irish establishment. He was appointed a member of the committee of the privy council for the consideration of all matters relating to trade and foreign plantations on 5 March 1784. He died at Grantham House, Putney Heath, Surrey, on 20 July 1786, and was buried on the 27th at Chiswick in Middlesex. He married, on 17 Aug. 1780, Lady Mary Jemima Grey Yorke, younger daughter and coheiress of Philip, second earl of Hardwicke; she died at Whitehall on 7 Jan. 1830, aged 72. By her he left two sons: Thomas Philip, who succeeded his father in the barony of Grantham and his maternal aunt in the earldom of De Grey [see Grey, Thomas Philip de, Earl de Grey]; and Frederick John (afterwards first Earl of Ripon) [q. v.]
Grantham was ‘a very agreeable, pleasing man’ (Walpole, Letters, viii. 258), and ‘possessed solid though not eminent parts, together with a knowledge of foreign affairs and of Europe’ (Wraxall, Hist. and Posthumous Memoirs, 1884, ii. 357). A folio volume of about one hundred pages, containing notes by Grantham while in office (1766–1769), is preserved at Wrest Park (Hist. MSS. Comm. 1st Rep. App. p. 8). Portions of his correspondence have been preserved in the manuscript collections of the Duke of Manchester (ib. p. 13), the Countess Cowper (ib. ii. App. p. 9), the Earl of Cathcart (ib. ii. App. p. 26), the Earl of Bradford (ib. ii. App. p. 30), Sir Henry Gunning (ib. iii. App. p. 250), and the Marquis of Lansdowne (ib. iii. App. p. 146, v. App. pp. 241, 253, 254, vi. App. p. 238). Other portions will be found among the Egerton and the Additional MSS. in the British Museum (see Indices for 1846–7, 1854–75, 1882–7, and 1888–93). A mezzotint engraving of Grantham by William Dickinson after Romney was published in 1783.
[Walpole's Letters, 1857–9, iii. 476, vii. 236, 406, 465–6, viii. 249, 415, 419, ix. 62; Walpole's Memoirs of the Reign of George III, 1894, i. 42–3, iv. 176; Political Memoranda of Francis, fifth Duke of Leeds (Camden Soc. publ.), 1884, pp. 19, 73, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 82; Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice's Life of William, Earl of Shelburne, 1875–6, iii. 222–389; Diaries and Correspondence of James Harris, first Earl of Malmesbury, 1844, i. 524–5, 526–7, 528–39, 541–2, ii. 1, 7–26, 28–38, 41; Jesse's George Selwyn and his Contemporaries, 1843–4, iii. 15–17, 33–6; Whitaker's History of Richmondshire, 1823, ii. 122–3; Lysons's Environs of London, 1792–1811, ii. 217–18; Collins's Peerage of England, 1812, vii. 292; Burke's Peerage, &c., 1894, pp. 674, 1189; G. E. C.'s Complete Peerage, iv. 80; Grad. Cantabr. 1823, p. 401; Alumni Westmon. 1852, p. 546; Gent. Mag. 1786 ii. 622, 1830 i. 90; Official Return of Members of Parliament, ii. 130, 142; Foster's Yorkshire Pedigrees.]
ROBINSON, THOMAS (1749–1813), divine, was born at Wakefield, Yorkshire, on 10 Sept. 1749, in the house adjoining that in which Archbishop Potter was born. His father, James Robinson, was a hosier there. He was sent at an early age to the grammar school of his native town, whence he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, as a sizar in 1768. In April 1771 he was elected a scholar of his college, in 1772 he graduated as seventh wrangler (M.A. 1775), in October of the same year he was made a fellow of his college, and in 1773 he gained one of the members' prizes for a Latin essay. In or about 1772 he was ordained to the joint curacies of Witcham and Wichford in the Isle of Ely, but from 1773 to 1778 he was afternoon lecturer at All Saints', Leicester, and chaplain to the infirmary. In 1778 he was appointed to a lectureship newly founded in St. Mary's Church, Leicester. Later on in the same year he was made vicar of St. Mary's. The state of Leicester at the time, and the improvement wrought in it by Robinson, are forcibly described by Robert Hall in a eulogium delivered before the Auxiliary Bible Society at Leicester, shortly after Robinson's death, and subsequently printed. At St. Mary's in 1784 Robinson commenced the series of discourses on sacred biography by which he is best known. The earliest appeared in the ‘Theological Miscellany’ of 1784, and the whole series was eventually printed under the title of ‘Scripture Characters’ (1793, 4 vols. 12mo; 10th edit. 1815; abridgment, 1816). He wrote also ‘The Christian System Unfolded, or Essays on the Doctrines and Duties of Christianity’ (1805, 3 vols. 8vo), and some shorter pieces. A collective edition of his ‘Works’ was published in 8 vols. London, 1814. Robinson died at Leicester on 24 March 1813, and was buried on the 29th in the chancel of St. Mary's, his funeral sermon being preached by Edward Thomas Vaughan [q. v.], who published a memoir of Robinson, with a selection of his letters, in 1815. He was twice married. By his first wife, who died in 1791, he had a son Thomas (1790–1873) [q. v.], master of the Temple. His second wife, whom he married in 1797, was the widow
