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Biography of William Wentworth 2nd Earl Strafford 1722-1791
Paternal Family Tree: Wentworth
Maternal Family Tree: Anne Smithson 1652
On 29 Jun 1711 [his father] Thomas Wentworth 1st Earl Strafford (age 38) was created 1st Earl Strafford.
On 06 Sep 1711 [his father] Thomas Wentworth 1st Earl Strafford (age 38) and [his mother] Anne Johnson Countess Strafford were married. She by marriage Countess Strafford. The marriage was described as both advantageous and happy: while Anne brought him a dowry rumoured to be £60000, her letters show their deep mutual affection.
On 17 Mar 1722 William Wentworth 2nd Earl Strafford was born to Thomas Wentworth 1st Earl Strafford (age 49) and Anne Johnson Countess Strafford.
On 15 Nov 1739 [his father] Thomas Wentworth 1st Earl Strafford (age 67) died. He had suffered poor health for a number of years. His son William Wentworth 2nd Earl Strafford (age 17) succeeded 2nd Earl Strafford.
In 1741 William Wentworth 2nd Earl Strafford (age 18) and Anne Campbell Countess Strafford (age 26) were married. She by marriage Countess Strafford. She the daughter of John Campbell 2nd Duke Argyll (age 60). He the son of Thomas Wentworth 1st Earl Strafford and Anne Johnson Countess Strafford.
On 07 Jun 1760 at a ball Horace Walpole (age 42) wrote to the Earl of Strafford (age 38) ... that there appeared a new Miss Bishop (age 19) from Sir Cecil's (age 59) endless hoard of beautiful daughters, who is still prettier than her sisters.
Letters of Horace Walpole. To STRAFFORD (age 49), Sunday 25 August 1771
Paris, August 25, 1771.
I HAVE passed my biennial six weeks here, my dear Lord, and am preparing to return as soon as the weather will allow me. It is some comfort to the patriot-virtue, envy, to find this climate worse than our own. There were four very hot days at the end of last month, which you know with us northern people compose a summer: it has rained half this, and for these three days there has been a deluge, a storm, and extreme cold. Yet these folks shiver in silk, and sit with their windows open till suppertime.-Indeed, firing is very dear, and nabobs very scarce. Economy and retrenchment are the words in fashion, and are founded in a little more than caprice. I have heard no instance of luxury but in Mademoiselle Guimard1, a favourite dancer, who is building a palace:2 round the salle a manger there are windows that open upon hothouses, that are to produce flowers all winter.-That is worthy of . There is a finer dancer whom Mr H[obart]3 is to transplant to London; a Mademoiselle Heinel4 or Ingle, a Fleming. She is tall, perfectly made, very handsome, and has a set of attitudes copied from the classics. She moves as gracefully slow as Pygmalion's statue5 when it was coming to life, and moves her leg round as imperceptibly as if she was dancing in the zodiac.-But she is not Virgo.
They make no more of breaking parliaments here than an English mob does of breaking windows. It is pity people are so ill-sorted. If this king and ours could cross over and figure in, Louis X V would dissolve our Parliament if Polly Jones6 did but say a word to him. They have got into such a habit of it here, that you would think a parliament was a polypus: they cut it in two, and by next morning half of it becomes a whole assembly. This has literally been the case at Besancon7. Lord and Lady Barrymore8, who are in the highest favour at Compiegne9, will be able to carry over the receipt10.
Everybody feels in their own way. My grief is to see the ruinous condition of the palaces and pictures. I was yesterday at the Louvre. Le Brun's11 noble gallery, where the battles of Alexander are, and of which he designed the ceiling, and even the shutters, bolts and locks, is in a worse condition than the old gallery at Somerset House12. It rains in upon the pictures13, though there are stores of much more valuable pieces than those of Le Brun. Heaps of glorious works by Raphael and all the great masters are piled up and equally neglected at Versailles. Their care is not less destructive in private houses. The Duke of Orléans's (age 46)14 pictures and the Prince of Monaco's's have been cleaned, and varnished so thick that you may see your face in them; and some of them have been transported from board to cloth, bit by bit, and the seams filled up with colour; so that in ten years they will not be worth sixpence. It makes me as peevish as if I was posterity! I hope your Lordship's works will last longer than these of Louis XIV. The glories of his siecle hasten fast to their end, and little will remain but those of his authors.
I am, my dear Lord,
Your most faithful humble servant,
HOR. WALPOLE (age 53)
Note 1. Marie-Madeleine Guimard (1743-1816), m. (1787) Jean-Etienne Despreaux (MAN N vii. 322-3, n. 16).
Note 2. The 'Temple de Terpsychore' in the Rue de la Chausee d'Antin, designed by Ledoux, sold by lottery in 1786 (MAN N vii. 323, n. 18).
Note 3. George Hobart (1731-1804), 3d E. of Buckinghamshire (age 39), 1793. For some of his difficulties in management of the operas, see MAN N vii. 271.
Note 4. Anne-Frederique Heinel (1753-1808), born in Bayreuth; made her debut at Stuttgart, 1767, and at Paris, 1768; in London for the opera season 1771-2, 1772-3, 1774, 1776; m. (1792) Gaetano Appolino Baldassare Vestris, the famous dancer (OSSORY i. 66, n. 15).
Note 5. Galatea.
Note 6. Former mistress of Henry, D. of Cumberland (H. Bleackley, Ladies Fair and Frail, 1925, p. 152).
Note 7. The parliament of Besancon was suppressed, 5 Aug., and then reconstituted (MAN N vii. 320, n. 1). Fourteen of the old members reappeared in the new parliament (Mercure historique, 1771, clxxi. 374).
Note 8. Richard Barry (1745-73), 6th E. of Barrymore (age 26), 1751, m. (1767) Lady Emily Stanhope (1749-80) (age 22).
Note 9. During the summer the Court often removed to Louis XV's chateau at Compiegne, about 45 miles N E of Paris.
Note 10. Perhaps a reference to the financial grants which the officers of the new parliament received. One of the old members was promoted to be first president, with 12,000 livres' salary and 3,000 livres' allowance for lodging (Mercure historique, loc. cit.).
Note 11. Charles Le Brun (1619-90).
Note 12.. The old Somerset House [Map], not yet replaced by Chambers's new structure. 'It was so far neglected as to be permitted to fall to ruin in some of the back parts' (Encyclopedia of London, ed. W . Kent, 1937, p. 587, citing Noorthouck's History of London, 1773). The Royal Academy's schools of design were moved there in 1771 (Kent, loc. cit.). HW's old friend Mrs Grosvenor had been housekeeper there (GRA Y i. 220, n. 17).
Note 13. 24 Aug.: 'Saw the great gallery of Le Brun with battles of Alexander, all the ornaments, ceiling, shutters, and even locks and bolts designed by Le Brun, but so abominably neglected that it rained in' ('Paris Journals,' D U DEFFAN D V. 339)
Note 14. Louis-Philippe de Bourbon (1725-85), Duc d'Orléans, 1752.
Note 15. Honore-Camille-Leonor Goyon-de-Matignon de Grimaldi (1720-95), P. of Monaco.
In 1785 [his wife] Anne Campbell Countess Strafford (age 70) died.
On 10 Mar 1791 William Wentworth 2nd Earl Strafford (age 68) died. His first cousin Frederick Wentworth 3rd Earl Strafford (age 59) succeeded 3rd Earl Strafford.
Kings Wessex: Great x 21 Grand Son of King Edmund "Ironside" I of England
Kings Gwynedd: Great x 18 Grand Son of Owain "Great" King Gwynedd
Kings Seisyllwg: Great x 24 Grand Son of Hywel "Dda aka Good" King Seisyllwg King Deheubarth
Kings Powys: Great x 19 Grand Son of Maredudd ap Bleddyn King Powys
Kings England: Great x 11 Grand Son of King Edward III of England
Kings Scotland: Great x 20 Grand Son of King Duncan I of Scotland
Kings Franks: Great x 17 Grand Son of Louis VII King Franks
Kings France: Great x 13 Grand Son of Philip IV King France
Great x 4 Grandfather: William Wentworth 9 x Great Grand Son of King Edward I of England
Great x 3 Grandfather: Thomas Wentworth 10 x Great Grand Son of King Edward I of England
Great x 2 Grandfather: William Wentworth 1st Baronet 7 x Great Grand Son of King Edward III of England
Great x 4 Grandfather: William Gascoigne 5 x Great Grand Son of King Edward III of England
Great x 3 Grandmother: Margaret Gascoigne 6 x Great Grand Daughter of King Edward III of England
Great x 4 Grandmother: Beatrice Tempest
Great x 1 Grandfather: William Wentworth of Ahsby 8 x Great Grand Son of King Edward III of England
Great x 3 Grandfather: Robert Atkins
Great x 2 Grandmother: Anne Atkins Baroness Wentworth Woodhouse
GrandFather: William Wentworth of Northgatehead 9 x Great Grand Son of King Edward III of England
Father: Thomas Wentworth 1st Earl Strafford 10 x Great Grand Son of King Edward III of England
Great x 3 Grandfather: John Apsley
Great x 2 Grandfather: Allen Apsley
Great x 1 Grandfather: Captain Allen Apsley 9 x Great Grand Son of King Edward III of England
Great x 4 Grandfather: Nicholas St John 6 x Great Grand Son of King Edward III of England
Great x 3 Grandfather: John St John 7 x Great Grand Son of King Edward III of England
Great x 4 Grandmother: Elizabeth Blount 13 x Great Grand Daughter of King Henry I "Beauclerc" England
Great x 2 Grandmother: Lucy St John 8 x Great Grand Daughter of King Edward III of England
Great x 4 Grandfather: Walter Hungerford 10 x Great Grand Son of King Henry III of England
Great x 3 Grandmother: Lucy Hungerford 11 x Great Grand Daughter of King Henry III of England
Great x 4 Grandmother: Anne Dormer
GrandMother: Isabella Apsley 10 x Great Grand Daughter of King Edward III of England
Great x 1 Grandmother: Frances Petre
William Wentworth 2nd Earl Strafford 11 x Great Grand Son of King Edward III of England
Great x 1 Grandfather: Henry Johnson
GrandFather: Henry Johnson Baron Wentworth
Mother: Anne Johnson Countess Strafford
Great x 3 Grandfather: Antony Smithson
Great x 2 Grandfather: Hugh Smithson 1st Baronet
Great x 1 Grandfather: Hugh Smithson
GrandMother: Anne Smithson