Fletcher Norton to the chair, but Cornwall, the ministerial candidate, was elected by 203 to 134 (ib. 795–6). In February 1782 he supported Conway's motion against the further prosecution of the American war (ib. 1081–2), and a month later announced that arrangements were being made for the formation of a new ministry ‘which he trusted would meet with the wishes of that house and of the nation at large’ (ib. 1237). On 27 March 1782 Dunning, in company with Lord John Cavendish, Fox, Burke, and Keppel, was admitted to the privy council, and on 8 April following was created Baron Ashburton of Ashburton in the county of Devon. He was now fairly entitled to the great seal, but as the king insisted upon retaining Thurlow, Dunning with considerable reluctance was sworn in as chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster on 17 April. He continued in the cabinet after Rockingham's death, and was consulted by Shelburne as his confidential adviser in all legal matters, but took little share in the debates of the upper house. Upon Shelburne's resignation, Dunning had several interviews with the king, who had taken a great fancy to him, and asked his advice with regard to the formation of a new ministry. Before the act for the reform in the civil list expenditure (22 George III, c. 82) could be passed, a pension of 4,000l. was granted to Dunning. His health, however, had begun to give way, and he died at Exmouth a few months after the death of his eldest child, on 18 Aug. 1783, in the fifty-second year of his age. He was buried in the parish church of Ashburton, where a monument was erected to his memory. Though possessed of an ungainly person, a husky voice, and a provincial accent, Dunning was one of the most powerful orators of his time. Lord Shelburne in his sketch of Dunning says: ‘He had the greatest power of reasoning which can be conceived, and such a habit of it that he could not slight a cause no more than an able artist could suffer a piece of work to go imperfect from his hands. … All parties allow'd him to be at the head of the bar. … The only doubt was whether he excelled most at equity or common law. There was none as to anybody's coming up to him in either’ (Life of Lord Shelburne, iii. 453–4). Kenyon records that he was ‘a man of the greatest ability’ he had known (Kenyon, Life, p. 103); while Sir William Jones, speaking in somewhat exaggerated style of his wit, describes it as a faculty ‘in which no mortal ever surpassed him, and which all found irresistible’ (Works, 1779, iv. 578). But though Burke in his speech to the electors of Bristol declared that there was ‘not a man of any profession, or in any situation, of a more erect and independent spirit, of a more proud honour, a more manly mind, a more firm and determined integrity’ (Burke, Works, 1852, iii. 429), Dunning's conduct afterwards in accepting a sinecure office as well as a pension was grievously inconsistent with his former professions. Dunning married, on 31 March 1780, Elizabeth, daughter of John Baring of Larkbear, Devonshire, by whom he had two sons, viz John, who was born on 29 Oct. 1781, and died in April 1783, and Richard Barré, who succeeded as second Baron Ashburton, and on 17 Sept. 1805 married Anne, daughter of William Cunninghame of Lainshaw. Upon his death without issue at Friar's Hall, Roxburghshire, in February 1823, the title became extinct. The existing barony of Ashburton was in 1835 conferred upon Alexander Baring [q. v.], the second son of Sir Francis Baring, bart., an elder brother of the first Lord Ashburton's widow. Dunning is supposed by some to have been the author of ‘A Letter to the Proprietors of East India Stock on the subject of Lord Clive's Jaghire, occasioned by his Lordship's letter on that subject’ (London, 1764, 8vo), and also of an ‘Inquiry into the Doctrines lately promulgated concerning Juries, Libels, &c., upon the principles of the Law and the Constitution.’ Horace Walpole, writing in reference to this pamphlet, which was published in 1764, says that it is ‘the finest piece that I think has been written for liberty since Lord Somers. It is called … and is said to be written by one Dunning, a lawyer lately started up, who makes a great noise’ (Letters, Cunningham's ed. iv. 299). The joint authorship of ‘Junius's Letters’ has also been attributed to him (Halkett and Laing, ii. 1435). His portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds, which was engraved by Bartolozzi in 1787, is in the National Portrait Gallery.
[Roscoe's Lives of Eminent British Lawyers, pp. 287–306; Law Magazine, vii. 317–48; Lord Mahon's History of England, vols. v. vi. and vii.; Chatham Correspondence, vols. iii. and iv.; Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice's Life of Shelburne; Kenyon's Life of Lloyd, first Lord Kenyon; Lord Campbell's Lives of the Lord Chancellors, vols. v. vi. and vii.; Sir N. W. Wraxall's Historical Memoirs, 1815, ii. 41–4; The Georgian Era, 1833, ii. 289–91; Law and Lawyers (1840), i. 57–60, 182–3, 185–9; Collins's Peerage (1812), vii. 543–545; Burke's Peerage (1886), pp. 62, 1021; Gent. Mag. 1783, vol. liii. pt. i. p. 254, pt. ii. pp. 717–18, 1006–7; Official Return of Lists of Members of Parliament, pt. ii. pp. 144, 157, 170; Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. v. 121, 161, 240–2, 278–80, vi. 151, 3rd ser. viii. 182–3; Watt's Bibl. Brit.; Brit. Mus. Cat.]
