of the same year De Ferrars was created Earl of Leicester of the county of Leicester. When he asked his father's permission to assume it, he replied he might take any title but that of Viscount Townshend. The earldom of Leicester had been extinct since 1759, and Fox wished to have given it to his friend Coke, whose family had possessed it after the Sidneys, and to whom it reverted in 1837 [see Coke, Thomas William of Holkham, Earl of Leicester].
In February 1788 Leicester signed a protest against Thurlow's proposal that the commons should produce evidence in support of Hastings's impeachment before calling on the defendant. He held the office of master of the mint from 20 Jan. 1790 to July 1794, and that of joint postmaster-general from the latter date till February 1799. He was named lord steward of the household on 20 Feb. 1799, and held office till August 1802. On the death of his father in 1807 he succeeded as second Marquis Townshend. Before his death he had sold much of his Norfolk property to the Marquis Cornwallis and to Edmund Wodehouse. He was much interested in archæology, having the reputation of being the best amateur antiquary of his time. Walpole writes of his violent passion for ancestry, and makes many bantering allusions to his taste for heraldry. In 1784 Leicester ousted Edward King (1735?–1807) [q. v.] from the presidency of the Society of Antiquaries ‘in an unprecedented contest for the chair’ (Nichols). Throsby addressed to him his ‘Letter on the Roman Cloaca at Leicester, 1793;’ and four years before he obtained from George III permission for Gough to dedicate to him his new edition of Camden's ‘Britannia.’ Leicester was also a fellow of the Royal Society and a trustee of the British Museum. He died suddenly at Richmond on 27 July 1811. A portrait of him was engraved by M'Kenzie after a painting by J. S. Copley.
Townshend married, in December 1777, Charlotte, second daughter and coheir of Mainwaring Ellerker, esq., of Risby Park, Yorkshire. She died in 1802. By her he had two sons, George Ferrars and Charles Vere Ferrars, who died without issue.
The elder son, George Ferrars Townshend, third Marquis Townshend (1778–1855), was disinherited by his father, who also gave his library and pictures to Charles, his second son. He lived chiefly abroad. On his death at Genoa on 31 Dec. 1855, the earldom of Leicester became extinct. He was succeeded in the marquisate by his cousin, John Townshend (1798–1863), son of Lord John Townshend of Balls Park, Hertfordshire. George Ferrars Townshend's wife Sarah, daughter of John Dunn-Gardner of Chatteris, left him a year after marriage, and on 24 Oct. 1809 went through a ceremony at Gretna Green with John Margetts. Their son John was baptised at St. George's, Bloomsbury, in December 1823, under the name of Townshend, and afterwards assumed the title of Earl of Leicester. He represented Bodmin for several years. All the children of the Gretna Green marriage having been declared illegitimate by an act of parliament of 1842, he assumed his mother's maiden name.
[Doyle's Official Baronage; G. E. C[okayne]'s Peerage; Gent. Mag. 1811, ii. 93; Walpole's Letters (Cunningham), vii. 159, 192, 204, 372, viii. 556, ix. 156–7; Nichols's Lit. Anecd. vi. 279–80, viii. 58, 338, ix. 87 n.; Neale's Views of Seats, vol. iii. with view of Rainham Hall, engraved by J. F. Hay; Rogers's Protests of the Lords, Nos. 103, 114, 115; Evans's Cat. Engr. Portraits; Carthew's Hundred of Launditch, iii. 296; Wraxall's Memoirs (Wheatley), iii. 356; Diary of Mme. D'Arblay, 1890, i. 243.]
TOWNSHEND, HAYWARD (fl. 1602), author of ‘Historical Collections,’ was son and heir of Sir Henry Townshend, knight, of Cound, Shropshire, second justice of Chester, one of the council of the marches of Wales, and M.P. for Ludlow, 1614, by his first wife Susan, daughter of Sir Rowland Hayward, knight, of London. He was born in 1577, entered St. Mary Hall, Oxford, as a gentleman-commoner in 1590, and graduated B.A. on 22 Feb. 1594–5, and became a barrister-at-law of Lincoln's Inn in 1601. On 16 Oct. 1597, and again on 3 Oct. 1601, he was elected member of parliament for Bishops Castle, his colleague in the earlier parliament being Sir Edmund Baynham, one of the gunpowder plot conspirators. He was the youngest member of the House of Commons. In 1601 he made a motion to restrain the number of common solicitors, and to prevent perjury, also in committee to abolish monopolies. Sir Francis Bacon referred to one of his speeches as ‘the wise and discreet speech made by the young gentleman, even the youngest in this assembly.’ He died without issue before 1623.
Townshend's fame rests upon his parliamentary report, published posthumously in 1680, entitled ‘Historical Collections; or, An exact Account of the Proceedings of the Four last Parliaments of Q. Elizabeth of Famous Memory. Wherein is contained The Compleat Journals both of the Lords and Commons, Taken from the Original Records of their Houses, &c., Faithfully and Labori-
