1730–1. In November 1727 he was elected a fellow of All Souls' College. In 1732 his half-brother, Sir John Bernard, presented him to the living of Houghton with Wilton in Huntingdonshire, and on 8 Nov. 1735 he was appointed a canon of Christ Church, retaining his prebend till 1752. On 10 June 1736 he proceeded to the degree of D.C.L., and on 1 April 1744 he was consecrated bishop of St. David's, whence he was elected to the see of Durham on 9 Nov. 1752. In 1759 he competed for the office of chancellor of Oxford University against George Henry Lee, third earl of Lichfield [q. v.] and John Fane, seventh earl of Westmorland [q. v.], and had the advantage of his competitors singly, but was defeated by Lichfield giving his interest to Westmoreland. Trevor died unmarried at Bishop Auckland in Durham on 9 June 1771, and was buried at Glynde in Sussex. He was a munificent patron of merit, a man of considerable learning and exceptional benevolence. By his will he left large sums for charitable purposes. A monument was erected to him in the antechapel at Auckland. His portrait, drawn by Robert Hutchinson and engraved in 1776 by Joseph Collyer, was prefixed to a memoir by George Allan [q. v.] published in that year. A portrait in oils is preserved at Glynde Place near Lewes, the seat of Viscount Hampden. Trevor was the author of several published sermons.
[Allan's Sketch of the Life of Richard Trevor, Darlington, 1776, reprinted in Nichols's Lit. Anecdotes, ix. 241–50; Nichols's Lit. Anecdotes, passim; Hist. MSS. Comm. 14th Rep. ix. 153–4, 296; Letters of Radcliffe and James, ed. Evans (Oxford Hist. Soc.), p. 13; Notes and Queries, 7th ser. ix. 208, 257, 338; Gent. Mag. 1777, pp. 224, 625; Surtees's Hist. of Durham, vol. i. p. cxxiii.]
TREVOR, ROBERT HAMPDEN-, first Viscount Hampden and fourth Baron Trevor (1706–1783), born on 17 Feb. 1705–6, was third son of Thomas Trevor, baron Trevor of Bromham [q. v.], being his first son by his second wife, Anne, daughter of Colonel Robert Weldon, and widow of Sir Robert Bernard, bart. He was educated privately and at Queen's College, Oxford, whence he matriculated as gentleman-commoner on 21 Feb. 1723, and graduated B.A. on 20 Oct. 1725. He was nominated fellow of All Souls' 20 Nov. 1725. He was appointed clerk in the secretary of state's office in 1729, and from 1734 to 1739 acted as secretary to the legation at The Hague under Horatio Walpole. In September 1739 he was appointed envoy extraordinary, and in 1741 was raised to the rank of minister plenipotentiary. In February 1736–7 he stood as parliamentary candidate for Oxford University, but was defeated by William Bromley (1699?–1737) [q. v.] (An Exact Account of the Poll, &c., 12mo, 1736), and in 1743 he was offered a seat in the house by the Duke of Newcastle, but declined (Newcastle to Trevor, 25 Oct. 1743, Trevor Corresp.)
During the whole period of Trevor's residence in Holland from 1734 to 1746 he kept up a regular and almost weekly correspondence with Horatio Walpole. These letters are preserved in the Trevor collection in the possession of the Earl of Buckinghamshire (Hist. MSS. Comm. 14th Rep. pt. ix.), which also includes a considerable correspondence between Trevor and the British representatives at foreign courts.
The difficulties attending Trevor's position as minister became greatly increased in 1744, and are well described in a long letter to Henry Pelham on 15 May 1744 (ib. p. 95), in which he explained that the real discouragement to vigour in the conduct of the war by the government of Holland was ‘its want of a due reliance upon our royal master through its discovery of the prevalency of his electoral bias;’ he complained that he was reproached by the government of Holland with the perpetual dodging between the king's two qualities. ‘When any guaranty or advantage is the question, all the allies of the British crown are to be deemed allies of the electorate; but when any danger or onus is the question, Hanover is a distinct independent state and no wise involved in the measures nor even fate of England’ (Trevor to Henry Pelham, 26 May 1744, Trevor Corresp.) These candid communications on the part of Trevor were well received by the ministers at home. In July 1745 some delicate negotiations with regard to the bribery of the ministers of the elector of Cologne and the elector himself were placed in Trevor's hands, Pelham instructing him that he might venture to engage 20,000l. on this account (ib. 20 July 1745). In August 1745 Trevor expressed himself strongly in favour of opening negotiations with France: ‘the only string left to our bow … before Europe is absolutely flung off its old hinges, is to try whether there may still be a party left in the French cabinet for peace’ (ib. 3 Aug. 1745). He drew up a plan for ‘a general accommodation by means of a preliminary treaty between France and the maritime powers.’ This was generally approved by the ministers, but was not adopted and led to no results, and Trevor's position became almost untenable. ‘In public conferences which I cannot avoid I am baited unmercifully, and am told that if every time
