Author: Proby, John Joshua
Biography:
PROBY, John Joshua, Lord Carysfort (1751-1828: ODNB)
The only son of the Irish peer and Westminster MP John Proby, 1st Baron Carysfort (1720-72), of Elton Hall, Huntingdonshire, and his wife the Hon. Elizabeth Allen, he was born presumably at their London home and was baptised on 23 Sept. 1751 at St. George’s, Hanover Square. From Westminster School (1764-7) he went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was admitted as a nobleman on 21 Dec. 1767 (matric. 1770, MA 1771, LLD 1811). He succeeded to the baronetcy in 1772 and took his seat in the Irish House of Lords. On 19 Mar. 1774 he married Elizabeth Osborne, daughter of Sir William Osborne of Newtown, in Ireland; they had five children, but she died in 1783. By his second marriage at Sir William Wynn’s house in St. James’s Square, London, on 12 Apr. 1787, to Elizabeth Grenville (1756-1842), Proby cemented his ties with Pitt’s Tories: she was the sister of Pitt’s foreign secretary William Grenville and of the marquess of Buckingham, newly appointed lord lieutenant of Ireland. The couple had four children together, three of whom grew to maturity. In 1789 he was created Earl of Carysfort in the Irish peerage. In England he served as MP first for East Looe, Cornwall (1790) and then for Stamford, Lincolnshire (1791-1801), before taking a seat in the House of Lords as Baron Carysfort of Norman Cross, Huntingdonshire. Among the roles and honours that came his way were a period (1800-2) as Minister Plenipotentiary to the court of Berlin, membership of the Privy Council (1806), a term as Joint Postmaster-General (1806-7), and an honorary DCL (Oxford, 1810). He published a few pamphlets on political matters but clearly looked on his literary work as recreational, with the first two titles privately printed in small numbers. His final work, again privately printed, consisted of religious advice to his children (1817). He died at his house in Upper Grosvenor Street, London, on 7 Apr. 1828, and was buried at Elton church, Huntingdonshire, with a tablet to his memory. (ODNB 19 Nov. 2023; findmypast.com 19 Nov. 2023; ancestry.com 19 Nov. 2023; Westminster School Records, collections.westminster.org.uk; ACAD)
Other Names:
- J. J. Proby
- John Joshua