M.P. for Honiton and (June 1728) one of the commissioners of the customs, who died on 17 July 1731 (Hist. Reg. Chron. Diary, p. 36). His mother, Sir Walter's second wife, whom he married in 1691, was Gwen, daughter and coheiress of Sir Robert Williams, bart., of Penrhyn. William Yonge was chosen to represent Honiton on 4 Feb. 1714–15, and he served the borough in five successive parliaments; for though chosen for Ashburton in 1734 and Tiverton in 1727 and 1747, he each time preferred to sit for Honiton, and was five times re-elected there upon his accepting places. In 1754 he made way at Honiton for his son George, and sat for Tiverton. He entered the house as an official whig, his gaze being always intently fixed upon the prospect of securing office, and he soon succeeded in making himself extremely useful to Sir Robert Walpole, ‘who caressed him without loving him and employed him without trusting him.’ As Walpole's lieutenant he took an active part in preparing for the impeachment of Atterbury in May 1723, and was rewarded by a commissionership of the revenue in Ireland; while on 21 March 1724 he was appointed one of the commissioners of the treasury in Great Britain in the room of Richard Edgcumbe (ib. 1724, p. 17). On 27 May 1725, upon the re-establishment of the order of the Bath, he was the thirty-third of the thirty-six knights appointed to a stall, and he was frequently twitted thenceforth about the ostentation with which he displayed his ‘ribbons’ (ib. p. 23). During the short interregnum of Walpole's long tenure of supreme power, upon the death of George I, Yonge was turned out of his commissionership. The new king, George II, had been in the habit, as Hervey informs us, of calling him ‘Stinking Yonge,’ and had ‘conceived and expressed such an insurmountable dislike to his person and character that no interest nor influence was potent enough at this time to prevail with his majesty to continue him.’ Sir Robert advised his ‘creature’ upon this disgrace to be patient, not clamorous, to submit, not resent or oppose; to be as subservient to the court in attendance, and give the king his assistance in parliament as constantly and assiduously as if he were paid for it, telling him and all the world, what afterwards proved true, that, whatever people might imagine, Yonge was not sunk; he had only dived, and would yet get up again. This prediction was soon verified, for on 18 May 1728 Yonge was appointed, together with Byng (Lord Torrington), Norris, Wager, and others, one of the commissioners for executing the office of lord high admiral (ib. 1728, p. 28); and on 8 May 1730 he was reinstated as a commissioner of the treasury in the room of Sir Charles Turner (ib. 1730, p. 36). Early in 1731 appeared a little tract called ‘Sedition and Defamation Display'd: in a Letter to the Author of the Craftsman,’ in the ‘dedication’ to which Pulteney is attacked with insulting vigour. Pulteney assumed that the pamphlet was by John Hervey (Lord Hervey) [q. v.], who had recently ‘ratted’ from the opposition and obtained a post from Walpole, and wrote ‘A Proper Reply,’ which resulted in a duel; but there seems very good reason for believing with Coxe that the body of the tract was really written by Yonge, whose authorship was positively affirmed by Lord Hardwicke (cf. Coxe, Sir Robert Walpole, i. 363 n.; Stebbing, Verdicts of History Reviewed, 1887, p. 218; manuscript note in Brit. Mus. copy of Sedition and Defamation Display'd). Yonge did not give any sustained literary help to his chief, but his support was invaluable in the house, and Walpole is said to have been able to speak from notes taken from him and from those taken by no one else. In May 1735 he was appointed to the important post of secretary at war. He supported Walpole with undiminished energy at the period of his downfall. When, after the Christmas recess of 1741–2, Pulteney moved for a secret committee of twenty-one to inquire into the state of affairs and report to the king, Yonge made one of his greatest oratorical efforts. When the debate was over, Pulteney, who always sat on the treasury bench, cried in admiration to Sir Robert, ‘Well, nobody can do what you can.’ ‘Yes,’ replied Walpole, ‘Yonge did better.’ In his ‘Grub upon Bub’ (1741), Hanbury Williams had alluded to Yonge's capacity in answering questions and extinguishing tiresome claims.
Yonge was elected a member of the dominant whig stronghold at White's Club in 1743. He incurred the displeasure of the Bedford faction, but he had managed to conciliate the Pelhams, and he not only hung on in office, but he was in May 1746 appointed joint vice-treasurer of Ireland, the rival candidate, Lord Torrington, having been pacified with a fat pension (Walpole Corresp. i. 401). In the same year he was one of the committee for managing the impeachment of Lord Lovat. The obstructions placed by the law in the way of the prisoner's securing an adequate defence were a source of disquietude to fair-minded people, and in May 1747, amid
