Author: Lyttelton, William Henry
Biography:
LYTTELTON, William Henry (1724-1808: ODNB)
Lyttelton inherited a baronetcy but he was made a baron for his active career as a colonial administrator and diplomat. He was born on 24 Dec. 1724 and baptised at St. Martin-in-the-Fields, London, on 24 Jan. 1724 (sic, for 1725), the sixth and youngest son of the fourth baronet Thomas Lyttelton (1685-1761), of Hagley, Worcestershire, and his wife Christian Temple (1688-1759). His brother and nephew, the fifth and sixth baronets, also figure in this bibliography: qq.v. George and Thomas Lyttelton. From Eton Lyttelton went to St. Mary Hall, Oxford (matric. 1742) but did not proceed to a degree. He accompanied Henry Thrale (1728-81) on his Grand Tour, at Thrale’s father’s expense, about 1744. In 1743 he entered the Middle Temple to study law, and was called to the bar in 1748—in which year he was elected to the House of Commons as MP for Bewdley, Worcestershire, a safe seat that he held 1748-55 and again 1774-90. A succession of diplomatic appointments followed. He was governor of South Carolina (1755-60) and of Jamaica (1761-66), and envoy to the King of Portugal (1766-72). He married Mary Macartney of Longford, Ireland, on 2 June 1761 at St. George’s, Hanover Square, London, just before taking up his post in Jamaica, where she died in 1765, leaving him with three children. His second wife was Caroline Bristow (d 1809), with whom he had two more children; they were married on 19 Feb. 1774 at her parish church of St. James, Piccadilly, London. Lyttelton was made an Irish peer, Baron Westcote of Ballymore, in 1776. In 1779 he succeeded his nephew Thomas as the seventh baronet Lyttelton and inherited most of his estates, including Hagley. He was a Lord of the Treasury 1779-82. Oxford made him DCL in 1781 and he secured an English peerage as Baron Lyttelton of Frankley in 1794. Trifles in Verse, his only known literary production, was privately printed for circulation among his friends and family. Lyttelton died at Hagley on 14 Sept. 1808 and was buried there. (ODNB 10 Feb. 2024; findmypast.com 10 Feb. 2024; ancestry.com 10 Feb. 2024; L. M. Napier The House of Commons, 1754-1790 [1964], 3: 76-7; Alumni Oxonienses)
Other Names:
- William Henry, Lord Lyttelton