Richard Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville, 1st Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos | |
|---|---|
Engraving of the Duke, c. 1815 | |
| Lord Steward of the Household | |
| In office 28 July 1830 – 1830 | |
| Monarch | William IV |
| Prime Minister | The Duke of Wellington |
| Preceded by | The Marquess Conyngham |
| Succeeded by | The Marquess Wellesley |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 20 March 1776 |
| Died | 17 January 1839 (aged 62) |
| Spouse | |
| Children | The 2nd Duke of Buckingham and Chandos |
| Parents |
|
Richard Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville, 1st Duke of Buckingham and Chandos (20 March 1776 – 17 January 1839), styled Earl Temple from 1784 to 1813 and known as the Marquess of Buckingham from 1813 to 1822, was a British landowner and politician.
Background
Born Richard Temple-Nugent-Grenville, he was the eldest son of George Nugent-Temple-Grenville, 1st Marquess of Buckingham, son of George Grenville, Prime Minister of Great Britain. His mother was Lady Mary Nugent, daughter of Robert Nugent, 1st Earl Nugent. Thomas Grenville and Lord Grenville were his uncles.
He was educated at Brasenose College, Oxford, where he matriculated in 1791.[1]
Political career
Earl Temple, as he was known in his father's lifetime, was elected Member of Parliament for Buckinghamshire in 1797.[2]
When the Napoleonic Wars resumed in 1803 his father as Lord Lieutenant of Buckinghamshire commissioned him as colonel of the Royal Buckinghamshire Militia (King's Own), a position that he held for the rest of his life.[3][4]
In 1806, he was made a Privy Counsellor[5] and appointed Vice-President of the Board of Trade and Joint Paymaster of the Forces in the Ministry of All the Talents headed by his uncle, Lord Grenville. He retained these posts until the fall of the Grenville administration in 1807. He left the House of Commons in 1813 when he succeeded his father in the marquessate.[6]
In 1808 and again in 1810 Earl Temple volunteered the Royal Bucks to serve in the Peninsular War, but the government did not accept these offers. However, in 1813 The English Militia were invited to exchange with Irish Militia regiments on a voluntary basis, and the Royal Bucks did so, serving in Ireland from June 1813. Later in the year, with the war reaching a climax, the government invited the militia to volunteer for limited overseas service, primarily for garrison duties in Europe. Volunteers from the Royal Bucks formed the bulk of the 1st Provisional Battalion, which the Marquess of Buckingham commanded. With two other provisional battalions it formed a Militia Brigade that embarked from Portsmouth Harbour on 10–14 March 1814 and sailed to join the Earl of Dalhousie's division that had occupied Bordeaux just as the war was ending. The brigade did not form part of the Army of Occupation after the abdication of Napoleon and returned to England in June. On leaving France at the end of the deployment, Buckingham and the officers of the Royal Bucks were decorated with the Order of the Fleur de Lys by the restored King Louis XVIII of France.[4]
After Napoleon's final defeat at Waterloo the militia were disembodied and rarely came together for training in the following decades. When the Royal Bucks did train it was usually at the Marquess's park at Stowe House.[7]
In 1820, he was appointed a Knight of the Garter. In 1822, he was further honoured when he was made Earl Temple of Stowe, with remainder to his granddaughter Anne Eliza Mary, and Marquess of Chandos and Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, with normal remainder to heirs male.[8] He returned to ministerial office in July 1830 when he was made Lord Steward of the Household,[9] but only held the post for a short while. Apart from his political career, he was also Lord-Lieutenant of Buckinghamshire from 1813 to 1839.
Buckingham also owned a plantation in Jamaica and 10,482 acres (42.42 km2) in Britain, including thirty-eight properties in the Old Nichol.[10] Nicknames such as "Lord Grenville's fat nephew", Ph D (Phat Duke), and the "gros Marquis", attested to his size and unpopularity.[6]
Family
In April 1796, aged 20, the then Earl Temple married the Lady Anne Brydges,[2] daughter and sole heir of the late James Brydges, 3rd Duke of Chandos. Accordingly, Nugent-Temple-Grenville added Brydges and Chandos to their family names (and those of their children) by royal licence of 15 November 1799;[11] their full family name became the remarkable quintuple-barrelled Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville. His wife died in 1836 and he died in January 1839, aged 62, and he was succeeded by his son, Richard.
References
- ^ Boase, George Clement (1890). . In Stephen, Leslie; Lee, Sidney (eds.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 23. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
- ^ a b Cokayne, George E. (1912). Gibbs, Vicary (ed.). The complete peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, extant, extinct, or dormant. Vol. II, Bass to Canning. London: St. Catherine Press. pp. 408–409.
- ^ War Office, A List of the Officers of the Militia, the Gentlemen & Yeomanry Cavalry, and Volunteer Infantry of the United Kingdom, 11th Edn, London: War Office, 14 October 1805/Uckfield: Naval and Military Press, 2005, ISBN 978-1-84574-207-2.
- ^ a b Ian F.W. Beckett, Buckinghamshire: Military History, Chapter 4, 1792–1815, at Buckinghamshire Military Museum Trust.
- ^ "No. 15887". The London Gazette. 4 February 1806. p. 157.
- ^ a b Thompson, Michael (2009) [2004]. "Grenville, Richard Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-, first duke of Buckingham and Chandos". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/11496. (Subscription, Wikipedia Library access or UK public library membership required.)
- ^ Ian F.W. Beckett, Buckinghamshire: Military History, Chapter 5: 1815–1859, at Buckinghamshire Military Museum Trust.
- ^ "No. 17781". The London Gazette. 12 January 1822. p. 59.
- ^ "No. 18713". The London Gazette. 30 July 1830. p. 1619.
- ^ Wise, Sarah (June 2009). The Blackest Streets: The Life and Death of a Victorian Slum. Vintage. p. 51. ISBN 978-1-84413-331-4.
- ^ Debrett's (Retrieved 10 August 2015)