the 7th of April 1648. He was the son of Edmund, 2nd earl of Mulgrave, and succeeded to that title on his father’s death in 1658. At the age of eighteen he joined the fleet, to serve in the first Dutch war; on the renewal of hostilities in 1672 he was present at the battle of Southwold Bay, and in the next year received the command of a ship. He was also made a colonel of infantry, and served for some time under Turenne. In 1680 he was put in charge of an expedition sent to relieve the town of Tangier. It was said that he was provided with a rotten ship in the hope that he would not return, but the reason of this abortive plot, if plot there was, is not exactly ascertained. At court he took the side of the duke of York, and helped to bring about Monmouth’s disgrace. In 1682 he was dismissed from the court, apparently for putting himself forward as a suitor for the princess Anne, but on the accession of King James he received a seat in the privy council, and was made lord chamberlain. He supported James in his most unpopular measures, and stayed with him in London during the time of his flight. He also protected the Spanish ambassador from the dangerous anger of the mob. He acquiesced, however, in the Revolution, and in 1694 was made marquess of Normanby. In 1696 he refused in company with other Tory peers to sign an agreement to support William as their “rightful and lawful king” against Jacobite attempts, and was consequently dismissed from the privy council. On the accession of Anne, with whom he was a personal favourite, he became lord privy seal and lord-lieutenant of the North Riding of Yorkshire, and in 1703 duke of Buckingham and Normanby. During the predominance of the Whigs between 1705 and 1710, Buckingham was deprived of his office as lord privy seal, but in 1710 he was made lord steward, and in 1711 lord president of the council. After the death of Anne he held no state appointment. He died on the 24th of February 1721 at his house in St James’s Park, which stood on the site of the present Buckingham Palace. Buckingham was succeeded by his son, Edmund (1716–1735) on whose death the titles became extinct.
Buckingham, who is better known by his inherited titles as Lord Mulgrave, was the author of “An Account of the Revolution” and some other essays, and of numerous poems, among them the Essay on Poetry and the Essay on Satire. It is probable that the Essay on Satire, which attacked many notable persons, “sauntering Charles” amongst others, was circulated in MS. It was often attributed at the time to Dryden, who accordingly suffered a thrashing at the hands of Rochester’s bravoes for the reflections it contained upon the earl. Mulgrave was a patron of Dryden, who may possibly have revised it, but was certainly not responsible, although it is commonly printed with his works. Mulgrave adapted Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, breaking it up into two plays, Julius Caesar and Marcus Brutus. He introduced choruses between the acts, two of these being written by Pope, and an incongruous love scene between Brutus and Portia. He was a constant friend and patron of Pope, who expressed a flattering opinion of his Essay on Poetry. This, although smoothly enough written, deals chiefly with commonplaces.
In 1721 Edmund Curll published a pirated edition of his works, and was brought before the bar of the House of Lords for breach of privilege accordingly. An authorized edition under the superintendence of Pope appeared in 1723, but the authorities cut out the “Account of the Revolution” and “The Feast of the Gods” on account of their alleged Jacobite tendencies. These were printed at the Hague in 1727. Pope disingenuously repudiated any knowledge of the contents. Other editions reappeared in 1723, 1726, 1729, 1740 and 1753. His Poems were included in Johnson’s and other editions of the British poets.
BUCKINGHAMSHIRE, EARLS OF. The first earl of Buckinghamshire (to be distinguished from the earls of Buckingham, q.v.) was John Hobart (c. 1694–1756), a descendant of Sir Henry Hobart (d. 1625), attorney-general and chief justice of the common pleas under James I., who was made a baronet in 1611, and who was the great-grandson of Sir James Hobart (d. 1507), attorney-general to Henry VII. The Hobarts had been settled in Norfolk and Suffolk for many years, when in 1728 John Hobart, who was a son of Sir Henry Hobart, the 4th baronet (d. 1698), was created Baron Hobart of Blickling. In 1740 Hobart became lord-lieutenant of Norfolk and in 1746 earl of Buckinghamshire, his sister, Henrietta Howard, countess of Suffolk, being the mistress of George II. He died on the 22nd of September 1756, and was succeeded as 2nd earl[1] by his eldest son John (1723–1793), who was member of parliament for Norwich and comptroller of the royal household before his accession to the title. From 1762 to 1766 he was ambassador to Russia, and from 1776 to 1780 lord-lieutenant of Ireland, but he was hardly equal to the exceptional difficulties with which he had to deal in the latter position. He died without sons at Blickling Hall, Norfolk, on the 3rd of August 1793, when his half-brother George (c. 1730–1804), became 3rd earl. Blickling Hall and his Norfolk estates, however, passed to his daughter, Henrietta (1762–1805), the wife of William Kerr, afterwards 6th marquess of Lothian.
Robert Hobart, 4th earl of Buckinghamshire (1760–1816), the eldest son of the 3rd earl, was born on the 6th of May 1760. He was a soldier, and then a member of both the English and the Irish Houses of Commons; from 1789 to 1793 he was chief secretary to the lord-lieutenant of Ireland, exerting his influence in this country to prevent any concessions to the Roman Catholics. In 1793, being known by the courtesy title of Lord Hobart, he was sent to Madras as governor, but in 1798, after serious differences between himself and the governor-general of India, Sir John Shore, afterwards Lord Teignmouth, he was recalled. Returning to British politics, Hobart was called up to the House of Lords in 1798 (succeeding to the earldom of Buckinghamshire in 1804); he favoured the union between England and Ireland; from March 1801 to May 1804 he was secretary for war and the colonies (his family name being taken for Hobart Town in Tasmania), and in 1805 he became chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster under Pitt. For a short time he was joint postmaster-general, and from 1812 until his death on the 4th of February 1816 he was president of the Board of Control, a post for which his Indian experience had fitted him.
The 4th earl left no sons, and his titles passed to his nephew, George Robert Hobart (1789–1849), a son of George Vere Hobart (1761–1802), lieutenant-governor of Grenada. In 1824 the 5th earl inherited the Buckinghamshire estates of the Hampden family and took the name of Hampden, his ancestor, Sir John Hobart, 3rd baronet, having married Mary Hampden about 1655. On his death in February 1849 his brother, Augustus Edward Hobart (1793–1884), who took the name of Hobart-Hampden in 1878, became 6th earl. His two sons, Vere Henry, Lord Hobart (1818–1875), governor of Madras from 1872, and Frederick John Hobart (1821–1875), predeceased him, and when the 6th earl died he was succeeded by his grandson, Sidney Carr Hobart-Hampden (b. 1860), who became 7th earl of Buckinghamshire, and who added to his name that of Mercer-Henderson. Another of the 6th earl’s sons was Augustus Charles Hobart-Hampden, generally known as Hobart Pasha (q.v.).
See Lord Hobart’s Essays and Miscellaneous Writings, edited with biography by Lady Hobart (1885).
BUCKINGHAMSHIRE (abbreviated Bucks) a south midland county of England, bounded N. by Northamptonshire, E. by Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Middlesex, S. for a short distance by Surrey, and by Berkshire, and W. by Oxfordshire. Its area is 743.2 sq. m. The county is divided between the basins of the rivers Ouse and Thames. The first in its uppermost course forms part of the north-western boundary, passes the towns of Buckingham, Stony Stratford, Wolverton, Newport Pagnell and Olney, and before quitting the county forms a short stretch of the north-eastern boundary. The principal tributary it receives within the county is the Ouzel. The Thames forms the entire southern boundary; and of its tributaries Buckinghamshire includes the upper part of the Thames. To the north-west of Buckingham, and both east and west of the Ouzel, the land rises in gentle undulations to a height of nearly 500 ft., and north of the Thames valley a few nearly isolated hills stand boldly, such as Brill Hill and Muswell Hill, each over 600 ft., but the hilliest
- ↑ Until 1784, when George Grenville, Earl Temple, was created marquess of Buckingham, the 2nd earl of Buckinghamshire always signed himself “Buckingham”; his contemporaries knew him by this name, and hence a certain amount of confusion has arisen.
