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Sir William Congreve, 2nd Baronet KCH FRS (20 May 1772 – 16 May 1828) was an English inventor and rocket artillery pioneer distinguished for his development and deployment of Congreve rockets, and a Tory Member of Parliament (MP). ==Biography== He was son of Lt. General Sir William Congreve, 1st Baronet, the Comptroller of the Royal Laboratories at the Royal Arsenal and raised in Kent, England. He was educated at Newcome's school in Hackney, Wolverhampton Grammar School and Singlewell School in Kent. He then studied law at Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating BA in 1793 and MA in 1796.〔Venn recorded these educational details for a William Congreve, but without identifying him with his "illustrious contemporary namesake", the inventor. 〕 In 1814 he succeeded his father as second Baronet Congreve. In 1803 he was a volunteer in the London and Westminster Light Horse, and was a London businessman who published a polemical newspaper, the Royal Standard and Political Register, which was Tory, pro-government and anti-Cobbett. Following a damaging libel action against it in 1804, Congreve withdrew from publishing and applied himself to inventing. Many years previously, several unsuccessful experiments had been made at the Royal Laboratory in Woolwich by Lieut General Thomas Desaguliers. In 1804, at his own expense, began experimenting with rockets at Woolwich.〔Article by Roger T. Stearn.〕 Congreve was awarded the honorary rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the Hanoverian army's artillery in 1811, and was often referred to as "Colonel Congreve", later made Major general in the same army.〔 He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in March that year.〔(【引用サイトリンク】 Library and Archive Catalogue )〕 He was also awarded the Order of St. George following the Battle of Leipzig in 1813〔 and 1816 he was made Knight Commander of the Royal Guelphic Order (KCH). In 1821 he was awarded the Order of the Sword by the King of Sweden.〔 He enjoyed the friendship of the Prince Regent, in whose household he served as an equerry from 1811, carrying on the service when the Prince, who supported his rocket projects, became King George IV in 1820.〔 Earlier in 1812 he offered to contest for Parliament the borough of Liverpool but withdrew before polling for lack of support. He entered Parliament later that year when he was nominated as MP for the rotten borough of Gatton in 1812, but withdrew at the next elections in 1814 in favour of the son of the borough's proprietor Sir Mark Wood.〔 In 1818 he was returned as Member for Plymouth, a seat he held until his death.〔 After living with a mistress and fathering two illegitimate sons, he married in December 1824, at Wessel, Prussia, Isabella Carvalho (or Charlotte), a young woman of Portuguese descent and widow of Henry Nisbett McEvoy. They had two sons and a daughter.〔 In later years he became a businessman and was chairman of the Equitable Loan Bank, director of the Arigna Iron and Coal Company, the Palladium Insurance Company and the Peruvian Mining Company. After a major fraud case began against him in 1826 in connection with the Arigna company, he fled to France, where he was taken seriously ill. He was prosecuted in his absence, the Lord Chancellor ultimately ruling, just before Congreve's death, that the transaction was 'clearly fraudlent' and designed to profit Congreve and others.〔 He died in Toulouse, France in May 1828, aged 55, and was buried there in the Protestant and Jewish cemetery of Terre Cabade. 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「Sir William Congreve, 2nd Baronet」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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