sult the Duke of Cumberland. The duke would give no advice, and Waldegrave wrote to Fox to cut short the negotiation. He would not, says his relative, Horace Walpole, quit his friend in order to join a court he despised and hated. But he was not to be left at peace. Fox next made use of him to reconcile Cumberland and Devonshire; and shortly afterwards Rigby endeavoured to elicit from him an undertaking to accept the treasury. Waldegrave told Walpole (who was in his house at the time) of the overture ‘with an expressive smile, which in him, who never uttered a bitter word, conveyed the essence of sense and satire.’ A short time afterwards he ‘peremptorily declined’ the choice offered him of the French embassy or the viceroyalty of Ireland. Yet after his death the court boasted that they had gained him.
He died of small-pox on 28 April 1763. Had he lived longer, Walpole thinks he must have become the acknowledged head of the whigs, ‘though he was much looked up to by very different sets,’ and his ‘probity, abilities, and temper’ might have accomplished a coalition of parties. Walpole had brought about the marriage of Waldegrave in 1759 with his own niece Maria, a natural daughter of Sir Edward Walpole and Maria Clements. He was then ‘as old again as she, and of no agreeable figure; but for character and credit the first match in England.’ Lady Waldegrave was, since the death of Lady Coventry, ‘allowed the handsomest woman in England,’ and her only fault was extravagance. Reynolds painted her portrait seven times. After Waldegrave's death she was courted by the Duke of Portland, but secretly married Prince William Henry, duke of Gloucester. The marriage was for a long time unrecognised by the royal family. She died at Brompton on 22 Aug. 1807. By Waldegrave she had three daughters, of whom Elizabeth married her cousin, the fourth earl Waldegrave; Charlotte was the wife of George, duke of Grafton; and Anna Horatia, of Lord Hugh Seymour. Walpole gave Reynolds eight hundred guineas for a portrait of his three grand-nieces painted in 1780.
A portrait of Waldegrave, painted by Reynolds, was engraved by Thomson, S. Reynolds, and McArdell. The first-named engraving is prefixed to his ‘Memoirs.’ In Navestock church, Essex, there is a tablet to him with a lengthy inscription. His ‘Memoirs’ were not published till 1821, when they were issued by Murray in a quarto volume, with an introduction and appendices probably by Lord Holland. They are admirable in style and temper, and their accuracy has never been impugned. Waldegrave admits at the outset that it is not in his power to be quite unprejudiced, but the impartiality shown in his character-sketch of his friend Cumberland may atone for the slight injustice he may have done to Pitt and the satirical strokes he allowed himself when dealing with the princess dowager and Lord Bute. The relations he details as subsisting between himself and George II redound to the credit of both. Waldegrave's insight is proved by the remarkable change he foresaw in the character of his royal pupil when he should become king; and his comparison of the whig party to an alliance of different clans fighting in the same cause, but under different chieftains, is admirably just. The ‘Memoirs’ were reviewed in the ‘Quarterly’ for July 1821, and the ‘Edinburgh’ for June 1822. The writer of the latter notice, probably John Allen, gave, from a manuscript copy discovered after the publication of the work, the passage relating to George III just referred to.
Waldegrave having no male issue, the earldom passed to his brother.
John Waldegrave, third Earl (d. 1784), entered the army and attained the rank of lieutenant-general and governor of Plymouth. He commanded a brigade in the attack on St. Malo in 1758 (Grenville Corresp. i. 238). He greatly distinguished himself at the battle of Minden in the following year; and Walpole ascribes the victory chiefly to a manœuvre conducted by him. In the early years of George III he acted with the opposition, but was in 1765 made master of the horse to Queen Charlotte. When in 1770 Lord Barrington declared in parliament that no officer in England was fit to be commander-in-chief, he ‘took up the affront warmly without doors’ (Walpole). He was named lord-lieutenant of Essex in October 1781. He died of apoplexy in his carriage near Reading on 15 Oct. 1784. He married, ‘by the intrigues of Lord Sandwich’ (Sir C. H. Williams, Works, i. 184, Walpole's note), Elizabeth, fifth daughter of John, earl Gower. She had two sons and two daughters: the second son, William, created Lord Radstock [q. v.] in 1800, is separately noticed; the eldest, George (1751–1789), succeeded as fourth Earl Waldegrave and married his first cousin, Elizabeth Laura Waldegrave, by whom he was father of the fifth, sixth, and eighth earls.
[Walpole's Memoirs of George II, 2nd edit. i. 91, 92, 291, 418, iii. 26–30, 198, 199, Memoirs of George III, ed. Barker, i. 155, 156, 197, 212, 213, ii. 74, 121, 129, iii. 268–71, iv. 62, 63,
