Page:The Complete Peerage Ed 2 Vol 2.djvu/39

BATH 23 1742, he was cr. BARON OF HEDON, co. York, VISCOUNT PULTE- NEY OF WRINGTON, Somerset, and EARL OF BATH. During the absence of the King from England in Apr. 1743 and May 1745, he was one of the Lords Justices. F.R.S., 15 Nov. 1744. On 10 Feb. 1746 he was head (as First Lord of the Treasury) of the " Short lived Ministry " which lasted but two days. Lord Lieut, of Salop, 1761-64. His political career is a matter of history, and is remarkable for the entire collapse of his reputation in popular estimate on his taking a Peerage. (^) He amassed enormous wealth (;/^ 1,200,000) and great estates. He m., 27 Dec. 17 14, at Isleworth (Lie. Lond., he 26, she 17), Anna Maria,() da. and coh. of John GuMLEY, of Isleworth, Midx., Commissary Gen. to the Army, by Susan (sister of Mary, wife of Sir John Wittewrong, 3rd Bart. [1662]), da. of Samuel White, of London, merchant. She d. in Piccadilly, 14, and was bur. 21 Sep. 1758, at St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, aged 64. Admon. 9 Oct. 1758, and again 27 May 1775. -^^ ^- ^-P-^-, 8, and was bur. 17 July 1764, in Westm. Abbey, aged 80, when his Peerage honours became extinct.if) The bodies of his wife and two children (removed from St. (*) This was well expressed, by the witty Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, in an epigram to be affixed on the door of Bath House, Piccadilly. " Here, dead to fame, lives patriot Will.; his Grave — a Lordly-seat; His Title proves his Epitaph; his Robes — his Winding-sheet." iy) She inherited Gumley House, of which there is a view and description in Aungier's Isleworth, 1 840, p. 228. It was afterwards sold by her nephew. Viscount Lake. Among her sisters were (i) Lsetitia, wife of Launcelot Charles Lake, mother of Gerard, cr. Viscount Lake, 1807; and (2) Mary, wife of Francis Colman, mother of George Colman, the dramatist. (See Misc. Gen. et Her., 4th Ser., vol. ii, p. 11). Lady Bath was a somewhat celebrated character. Pope in The looking glass wrote of her "Far other carriage graced her virgin life. But charming Gumley 's lost in Pulteney's wife." G.E.C. Sir C. H. Williams calls her "Bath's ennobled doxy," and says that in taking a peerage he "trucked the fairest fame For a right honourable name To call his vixen by." According to Lord Hervey she was of "low birth, lower mind, and the lowest manners." V.G. (■=) Lord Hervey, who fought a duel with him (for a libel in The Craftsman), 25 Dec. 1 731, in which both were slightly wounded, says Pulteney was "cool and unsteady in his friendships, warm and immovable in his hate." In a ballad called The Patriots are Come, Carteret is made to say of "weathercock Pulteney." — " To cheat such a colleague demands all my arts For tho' he's a fool, he's a fool of great parts." His contemporary. Lord Chesterfield, writes of him — "He was a most complete orator and debater, eloquent and entertaining, persuasive, strong, and pathetic as occasion required; for he had arguments, wit, and tears at his command;" but, "his breast was the seat of all those passions which degrade our nature" and "avarice, the meanest of them all, generally triumphed."