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George Villiers (23 November 1759 – 21 March 1827), styled The Honourable, was a British courtier and politician from the Villiers family. The youngest son of the diplomat Lord Hyde (later Earl of Clarendon), he was an intimate of Princess Amelia and personal supporter of her father, George III. His favour within the Royal Family and his father's influence brought him a number of sinecures to support him. However, Villiers was more interested in the operation of the royal farms at Windsor Castle than in politics or the duties of his offices. When his bookkeeping as Paymaster of the Marines was carefully examined in 1810, Villiers' carelessness and the speculation of his clerk had left him in debt to the Crown by more than £250,000. This exposure touched off a public scandal; Villiers promptly surrendered all his property to the Crown and threw himself on the king's mercy. The misconduct of Joseph Hunt as Treasurer of the Ordnance to some extent obscured Villiers' own misconduct, and he was able to retain other sinecures and a stable, if reduced, income from them until his death in 1827. ==Upbringing and political career== Villiers was the youngest son of Thomas Villiers, 1st Earl of Clarendon and Charlotte Capell. His maternal grandparents were William Capell, 3rd Earl of Essex and Jane Hyde. George, like his brother, was educated at Eton College and then St John's College, Cambridge, graduating with an MA in 1779. It was presumably through the influence of his father, then Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster under the first Pitt ministry, that he was appointed a Groom of the Bedchamber to George III on 13 January 1783, and Clerk of the Council and Registrar of the Duchy of Lancaster in August 1786. A polished courtier, Villiers earned the nickname "Tiger" among his party for his vehement support of the king; although as Fanny Burney observed, his "remarkably slim, slight and delicate person" did not match the nickname. In 1792, Villiers purchased the support of Lord Warwick, and was returned as Member of Parliament for Warwick in the by-election of 18 January 1792〔(Gazette Issue 13382 published on the 24 January 1792. Page 3 Crown Office January 28, 1792 Members returned to serve in the present Parliament Borough of Warwick )〕 as a Tory. On 19 March 1792, shortly after his entry into Parliament, Villiers was appointed to the office of Paymaster of Marines, a sinecure which would ultimately prove his undoing. The salary of the post was fixed at £600 p.a. after a reform in 1800.〔 In 1794, Villiers became the captain commanding the newly raised Western Troop of the Hertfordshire Gentlemen and Yeomanry-Cavalry.〔 He was elected unopposed in 1796, but did not stand for the borough in 1802. Though a friend of Pitt's government, he rarely attended the House; George Rose commented in a letter that Villiers's loss would have no impact on the Tories.〔 While a member of parliament, in 1798, he married Lord Boringdon's daughter, Theresa, who would bear him ten children over the next two decades. After leaving Parliament, Villiers continued his presence at Court, and carried messages from the Princess Royal in Stuttgart to the king.〔 In 1803, the duties of his office as paymaster were extended, and on 9 May, he was reappointed as Paymaster and Inspector-General of Marines, with a salary of £1,000 p.a. In the same year, he was commissioned a captain in the Watford Volunteer Cavalry. Villiers was prepared to intercede with the king on behalf of Pitt to fulfill the latter's desire for a more comprehensive ministry, which, however, was frustrated; and to bring Pitt's friends into the Ministry of All the Talents in 1806.〔 Villiers, indeed, enjoyed considerable favour with the king,〔 who granted him a private bounty of £400 p.a. in 1804 after being compelled to refuse him an office at Windsor Park. He was allowed to hold simultaneous office as a groom of the bedchamber and paymaster, and the king determined to place him in charge of his farms at Windsor as bailiff. Villiers and his family lived at Windsor Old Lodge until 1805, when he was appointed ranger of Cranbourne Chase and he moved into Cranbourne Lodge, newly renovated as his residence. Villiers and his wife were particularly intimate with Princess Amelia, the king's favourite daughter, accounting in part for the Royal favour shown him. With the fall of the Ministry of All the Talents in 1807 and the formation of Portland's government, the Duke of Cumberland vigorously lobbied Portland to grant Villiers the mastership of the Buckhounds or some other office, on the grounds of Villiers having rendered "very serious and important services" to the Royal Family, but was unsuccessful.〔 In 1809, upon the death of John Fordyce, Surveyor General of the Land Revenues of the Crown, Portland proposed to replace that office and that of the Surveyor General of Woods, Forests, Parks, and Chases, then held by Lord Glenbervie, with a three-man commission (the Commissioners of Woods and Forests), and to make Villiers one of the junior commissioners. This reorganisation of the Crown Lands temporarily halted upon Portland's resignation and the formation of a new government under Spencer Perceval. This created an embarrassing difficulty for Villiers and his interest; George Canning did not choose to serve under Perceval, and Villiers' brother-in-law, the 2nd Lord Boringdon, was Canning's friend. Nor was the proposed appointment of Villiers universally popular; Lord Glenbervie, the proposed senior commissioner, vented his anger at Perceval's nomination of Villiers in his journal:〔 Nonetheless, Villiers continued to press his claims to office on Perceval, in a letter of 18 October 1809. He had, he said, turned down a pension of £1,200 p.a. for "reasons...which can never be publicly alluded to"〔 and had received a promise from Portland to replace Fordyce as Surveyor General of the Land Revenues (a post worth £2,000 p.a.); Villiers would, however, be satisfied with the commissionership and £1,000 p.a. in addition, provided that he might retain his office of paymaster. In fact, that office was about to become the engine of Villiers' political destruction.〔 He appears to have received the sinecure offices of registrar of the Vice-Admiralty Court of Gibraltar and marshal of the Vice-Admiralty Court of Antigua around this time.〔Thorne dates these appointments to 1811, but a letter of 27 January 1810 by "A.B." in ''Cobbett's political register'' refers to "sinecures at Gibraltar, and in the West Indies," presumably the same.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「George Villiers (1759–1827)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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