government in Alsace; but was defeated by Marshal de la Ferté, and made his submission in 1654.
The most distinguished among the younger branches of the family are those of Montgomery and of Beuvron. To the former belonged Jean d’Harcourt, bishop of Amiens and Tournai, archbishop of Narbonne and patriarch of Antioch, who died in 1452; and Guillaume d’Harcourt, count of Tancarville, and viscount of Melun, who was head of the administration of the woods and forests in the royal domain (souverain maître et réformateur des eaux et forêts de France) and died in 1487.
From the branch of the marquises of Beuvron sprang Henri d’Harcourt, marshal of France, and ambassador at the Spanish court, who was made duke of Harcourt (1700) and a peer of France (1709); also François Eugène Gabriel, count, and afterwards duke, of Harcourt, who was ambassador first in Spain, and later at Rome, and died in 1865. This branch of the family is still in existence.
See G. A. de la Rogne, Histoire généalogique de la maison d’Harcourt (4 vols., Paris, 1662); P. Anselme, Histoire généalogique de la maison de France, v. 114, &c.; and Dom le Noir, Preuves généalogiques et historiques de la maison de Harcourt (Paris, 1907). (M. P.*)
HARCOURT, SIMON HARCOURT, 1st Viscount (c. 1661–1727),
lord chancellor of England, only son of Sir Philip Harcourt
of Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire, by his first wife, Anne,
daughter of Sir William Waller, was born about 1661 at Stanton
Harcourt, and was educated at a school at Shilton, Oxfordshire,
and at Pembroke College, Oxford. He was called to the bar
in 1683, and soon afterwards was appointed recorder of Abingdon,
which borough he represented as a Tory in parliament from
1690 to 1705. In 1701 he was nominated by the Commons to
conduct the impeachment of Lord Somers; and in 1702 he
became solicitor-general and was knighted by Queen Anne.
He was elected member for Bossiney in 1705, and as commissioner
for arranging the union with Scotland was largely instrumental
in promoting that measure. Harcourt was appointed
attorney-general in 1707, but resigned office in the following
year when his friend Robert Harley, afterwards earl of Oxford,
was dismissed. He defended Sacheverell at the bar of the House
of Lords in 1710, being then without a seat in parliament; but
in the same year was returned for Cardigan, and in September
again became attorney-general. In October he was appointed
lord keeper of the great seal, and in virtue of this office he
presided in the House of Lords for some months without a
peerage, until, on the 3rd of September 1711, he was created
Baron Harcourt of Stanton Harcourt; but it was not till April
1713 that he received the appointment of lord chancellor. In
1710 he had purchased the Nuneham-Courtney estate in Oxfordshire,
but his usual place of residence continued to be at Cokethorpe
near Stanton Harcourt, where he received a visit in state
from Queen Anne. In the negotiations preceding the peace of
Utrecht, Harcourt took an important part. There is no sufficient
evidence for the allegations of the Whigs that Harcourt entered
into treasonable relations with the Pretender. On the accession
of George I. he was deprived of office and retired to Cokethorpe,
where he enjoyed the society of men of letters, Swift, Pope,
Prior and other famous writers being among his frequent guests.
With Swift, however, he had occasional quarrels, during one of
which the great satirist bestowed on him the sobriquet of “Trimming
Harcourt.” He exerted himself to defeat the impeachment
of Lord Oxford in 1717, and in 1723 he was active in
obtaining a pardon for another old political friend, Lord Bolingbroke.
In 1721 Harcourt was created a viscount and returned
to the privy councils; and on several occasions during the king’s
absences from England he was on the council of regency. He
died in London on the 23rd of July 1727. Harcourt was not a
great lawyer, but he enjoyed the reputation of being a brilliant
orator; Speaker Onslow going so far as to say that Harcourt
“had the greatest skill and power of speech of any man I ever
knew in a public assembly.” He was a member of the famous
Saturday Club, frequented by the chief literati and wits of the
period, with several of whom he corresponded. Some letters to
him from Pope are preserved in the Harcourt Papers. His
portrait by Kneller is at Nuneham.
Harcourt married, first, Rebecca, daughter of Thomas Clark, his father’s chaplain, by whom he had five children; secondly, Elizabeth, daughter of Richard Spencer; and thirdly, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Thomas Vernon. He left issue by his first wife only. His son, Simon (1684–1720), married Elizabeth, sister of Sir John Evelyn of Wotton, by whom he had one son and four daughters, one of whom married George Venables Vernon, afterwards Lord Vernon (see Harcourt, Sir William—footnote). Simon Harcourt predeceased his father, the lord chancellor, in 1720, leaving a son Simon Harcourt (1714–1777), 1st Earl Harcourt, who succeeded his grandfather in the title of viscount in 1727. He was educated at Westminster school. In 1745, having raised a regiment, he received a commission as a colonel in the army; and in 1749 he was created Earl Harcourt of Stanton Harcourt. He was appointed governor to the prince of Wales, afterwards George III., in 1751; and after the accession of the latter to the throne he was appointed, in 1761, special ambassador to Mecklenburg-Strelitz to negotiate a marriage between King George and the princess Charlotte, whom he conducted to England. After holding a number of appointments at court and in the diplomatic service, he was promoted to the rank of general in 1772; and in October of the same year he succeeded Lord Townsend as lord lieutenant of Ireland, an office which he held till 1777. His proposal to impose a tax of 10% on the rents of absentee landlords had to be abandoned owing to opposition in England; but he succeeded in conciliating the leaders of Opposition in Ireland, and he persuaded Henry Flood to accept office in the government. Resigning in January 1777, he retired to Nuneham, where he died in the following September. He married, in 1735, Rebecca, daughter and heiress of Charles Samborne Le Bas, of Pipewell Abbey, Northamptonshire, by whom he had two daughters and two sons, George Simon and William, who succeeded him as 2nd and 3rd earl respectively.
See Lord Campbell, Lives of the Lord Chancellors, vol. v. (London, 1846); Edward Foss, The Judges of England, vol. viii. (London, 1848); Gilbert Burnet, Hist. of his own Time (with notes by earls of Dartmouth and Hardwicke, &c., Oxford, 1833); Earl Stanhope, Hist. of England, comprising the reign of Queen Anne until the Peace of Utrecht (London, 1870). In addition to the above-mentioned authorities many particulars concerning the 1st Viscount Harcourt, and also of his grandson, the 1st earl, will be found in the Harcourt Papers. For the earl, see also Horace Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of George II. (3 vols., 2nd ed., London, 1847), Memoirs of the Reign of George III. (4 vols., London, 1845, 1894); also, for his vice-royalty of Ireland, see Henry Grattan, Memoirs of the Life and Times of the Right Hon. H. Grattan (5 vols., London, 1839–1846); Francis Hardy, Memoirs of J. Caulfield, Earl of Charlemont (2 vols., London, 1812); and for his genealogy, see Sir John Bernard Burke, Genealogical History of Dormant and Extinct Peerages (London, 1883). (R. J. M.)
HARCOURT, SIR WILLIAM GEORGE GRANVILLE VENABLES VERNON (1827–1904). English statesman, second
son of the Rev. Canon William Vernon Harcourt (q.v.), of
Nuneham Park, Oxford, was born on the 14th of October 1827.
Canon Harcourt was the fourth son and eventually heir of
Edward Harcourt (1757–1847), archbishop of York, who was
the son of the 1st Lord Vernon (d. 1780), and who took the name
of Harcourt alone instead of Vernon on succeeding to the property
of his cousin, the last Earl Harcourt, in 1831.[1] The subject
- ↑ William, 3rd and last Earl Harcourt (1743–1830), who succeeded his brother in the title, was a soldier who distinguished himself in the American War of Independence by capturing General Charles Lee, and commanded the British forces in Flanders in 1794, eventually becoming a field-marshal. He was a son of Simon, 1st earl (1714–1777), created viscount and earl in 1749, a soldier, and from 1772 to 1777 viceroy of Ireland, who was grandson and heir of Simon, Viscount Harcourt (1661–1727), lord chancellor—the “trimming Harcourt” of Swift—the purchaser of the Nuneham-Courtney estates in Oxfordshire, and son of Sir Philip Harcourt of Stanton Harcourt. The knights of Stanton Harcourt, from the 13th century onwards, traced their descent to the Norman de Harcourts, a branch of that family having come over with the Conqueror; and the pedigree claims to go back to Bernard of Saxony, who in 876 acquired the lordships of Harcourt, Castleville and Beauficel in Normandy. Viscount Harcourt’s second son Simon, who was father of the 1st earl, was also father of Martha, who married George Venables Vernon, of Sudbury, created 1st Baron Vernon in 1762. The latter was a descendant of Sir Richard Vernon (d. 1451), speaker of the Leicester parliament (1425) and treasurer of Calais, a member of a Norman family which came over with the Conqueror.
