Charles Brudenell-Bruce, 1st Marquess of Ailesbury (14 February 1773 – 4 January 1856), styled The Honourable Charles Brudenell-Bruce from birth until 1776, Lord Bruce from 1776 to 1814 and The Earl of Ailesbury from 1814 to 1821, was a

British peer The peerages in the United Kingdom are a legal system comprising both hereditary and lifetime titles, composed of various noble ranks, and forming a constituent part of the British honours system. The term ''peerage'' can be used both collec ...

and politician.

Background

Brudenell-Bruce was the third and only surviving son of

Thomas Brudenell-Bruce, 1st Earl of Ailesbury Thomas Brudenell-Bruce, 1st Earl of Ailesbury KT (30 April 1729 – 19 April 1814), styled The Honourable Thomas Brudenell until 1747 and known as The Lord Bruce of Tottenham between 1747 and 1776, was a British courtier. Background and educatio ...

and his first wife, Susanna, daughter and coheiress of

Henry Hoare Henry may refer to: People *Henry (given name) * Henry (surname) * Henry Lau, Canadian singer and musician who performs under the mononym Henry Royalty * Portuguese royalty ** King-Cardinal Henry, King of Portugal ** Henry, Count of Portugal, ...

, banker, of Stourhead, and the widow of Viscount Dungarvan. He was educated privately abroad in Italy from 1783 before being sent up to the

University of Leyden Leiden University (abbreviated as ''LEI''; nl, Universiteit Leiden) is a public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. The university was founded as a Protestant university in 1575 by William, Prince of Orange, as a reward to the city of Le ...

. A traditional description of Lord Bruce was provided by Lady Malmesbury when they met on several occasions on the Grand Tour in 1791.

"quite Lord Ailesbury just out of the shell – which, by the by, is no bad comparison, for they are like unfledged turkeys... a sad goose, but a good humoured creature and so desperately in love with the Duchess de Fleury it is quite melancholy, Lord Malmesbury says he is in love like a rabbit with a bunch of parsley".

In the 1760s his father had laid out the gardens at

Tottenham Park Tottenham House is a large Grade I listed English country house in the parish of Great Bedwyn, Wiltshire, about five miles southeast of the town of Marlborough. It is separated from the town by Savernake Forest, which is part of the Tottenha ...

with the help of

Lancelot "Capability" Brown Lancelot Brown (born c. 1715–16, baptised 30 August 1716 – 6 February 1783), more commonly known as Capability Brown, was an English gardener and landscape architect, who remains the most famous figure in the history of the English la ...

. Tottenham Park was of great extent and moderate beauty. Formal avenues were planted leading up to the house, in the extensive

Savernake Forest Savernake Forest stands on a Cretaceous chalk plateau between Marlborough and Great Bedwyn in Wiltshire, England. Its area is approximately . Most of the forest lies within the civil parish of Savernake. It is privately owned by the Earl of Ca ...

, which surrounded the cluster of aristocratic estates in east Wiltshire. The valley was good-grade farmland, where Lord Bruce's client-burgesses of

Marlborough Marlborough may refer to: Places United Kingdom * Marlborough, Wiltshire, England ** Marlborough College, public school * Marlborough School, Woodstock in Oxfordshire, England * The Marlborough Science Academy in Hertfordshire, England Austral ...

had rights to graze. His father erected tall statuary in a garden within a flat parkland landscape. When he inherited in 1814, Charles was determined to re-build and enlarge the house to a design by Thomas Cundy. The Marquess's ancestral "Rooms in the woods" distinguished his High Tory politics.

Military career

In March 1792, he joined the

Berkshire Militia The Royal Berkshire Militia was an auxiliary military regiment in the county of Berkshire in Southern England. From their formal organisation as Trained Bands, in 1572 and their service during the Armada Crisis and in the English Civil War, t ...

as an

Ensign An ensign is the national flag flown on a vessel to indicate nationality. The ensign is the largest flag, generally flown at the stern (rear) of the ship while in port. The naval ensign (also known as war ensign), used on warships, may be diffe ...

. In 1796 he was appointed Captain of the Marlborough Yeomanry. He was promoted to

Colonel Colonel (abbreviated as Col., Col or COL) is a senior military officer rank used in many countries. It is also used in some police forces and paramilitary organizations. In the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, a colonel was typically in charge of ...

the Wiltshire Yeomanry in 1797. He was colonel of the

Royal Wiltshire Militia The Royal Wiltshire Militia was a militia regiment in Great Britain and the later United Kingdom from 1758 to 1881, when it was amalgamated into The Duke of Edinburgh's (Wiltshire Regiment). The regiment was organised in late 1758, as the Wiltsh ...

in 1811–27, a largely honorary appointment, although his record was one of sabre-rattling against the French, behaving for the most part like an

Ultra adopted by British military intelligence in June 1941 for wartime signals intelligence obtained by breaking high-level encrypted enemy radio and teleprinter communications at the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park. '' ...

Political career

From an early age his father wanted him to have management control of the family's electoral interest at Marlborough, in which place he continued until inheriting his father's estates. He was

Member of Parliament A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members of ...

for

from 1796 until 19 April 1814, when he succeeded to his father's titles of Baron Bruce of Tottenham House and the earldom of Ailesbury. Lord Bruce was not a regular attender of debates in the Commons. He frequently disappointed the government's attempts to whip his vote. On 19 February 1801, he supported an opposition motion calling for an inquiry into the failed

Ferrol Expedition The Ferrol Expedition (or Battle of Brión) took place on 25 and 26 August 1800, and was an unsuccessful British attempt to capture Ferrol from Spain. Ferrol was a major Spanish naval base with a shipyard for shipbuilding and dry dock for re ...

. He joined only twenty other MPs in rejecting the Peace of Amiens on 14 May 1802. Pitt's Irish Secretary imagined that Bruce was a Tory supporter of the navy, but on every vote, he opposed the Orders of the Day in the Commons. From 3 June 1803 to March 1804, there were numerous votes in which Bruce did not line up with Pitt's ministry, and he continued this record into the brief Addington ministry. However, Bruce did support the Tory Irish Volunteer bill on 16 April 1804. Thereafter he returned to the Pittite loyalties opposing Melville's Censure motion on 18 April 1805. On Pitt's death he was among those Tory MPs who foregathered to discuss the future. Grenville chose to repeal the Additional Forces Act, to which Bruce raised an objection as the war against France was raging in Europe, specifically with reference to the debate on 30 April 1806, being only one of thirty to vote against. He raised an objection to the government on the election petition for Hampshire for 13 February 1807. Bruce was "adverse" to the abolition of the slave trade when it was debated in the Commons taking the traditional ''laissez-faire'' economic principles; omitting to recall it was a new century. On 16 March 1807 Bruce was arrested and taken into custody for defaulting on payment of fees. The House banned him from sitting, as the law prohibited bankrupts from being members. Nevertheless, he had the nerve to apply to the Duke of Portland's administration for a marquessate, which was needless to say rejected out of hand. Bruce supported the Scheldt Question that developed in 1810 from the Walcheren Expedition of 1809. Having destroyed the League of Armed Neutrality, the Royal Navy decided to prevent the Dutch from becoming agents of

Bonapartism Bonapartism (french: Bonapartisme) is the political ideology supervening from Napoleon Bonaparte and his followers and successors. The term was used to refer to people who hoped to restore the House of Bonaparte and its style of government. In thi ...

. The Admiralty enquiry had to determine whether the loss of life had been worthwhile. And votes were taken on 23 February, and 30 March 1810 to this effect. The Whiggish aristocrats despaired of his ambiguous voting record. He supported Spencer Perceval's attempts to pass a Regency bill to regularize Prince George's assumption of the monarch's duties and civil list on New Year's Day 1811. The general election saw a convincing victory for the new Liberal Tory Prime Minister Lord Liverpool, caused by Perceval's assassination. The following year he voted against the Catholic Relief bill on 24 May 1813. Bruce became firmly associated with the Ultras. He adhered rigidly to the whig constitution, opposing any relaxation of the franchise, and became associated with the Duke of Wellington's Tories. Ailesbury left the Commons on 19 April 1814, when he inherited the courtesy earldom of Ailesbury, and the barony Bruce of Tottenham, co. Wiltshire.

In the House of Lords

Ailesbury was appointed a

Knight of the Thistle A knight is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a head of state (including the Pope) or representative for service to the monarch, the church or the country, especially in a military capacity. Knighthood finds origins in the Gr ...

on 20 May 1819. Lord Brudenell-Bruce was raised to a number of peerages being created 1st Viscount Savernake of Savernake Forest, 1st Earl Bruce of Whorlton, co. York and, 1st Marquess of Ailesbury on 17 July 1821, with many other peers for the occasion of George IV's

coronation A coronation is the act of placement or bestowal of a coronation crown, crown upon a monarch's head. The term also generally refers not only to the physical crowning but to the whole ceremony wherein the act of crowning occurs, along with the ...

, after much lobbying of the new king's patronage, whose tutor his father had been. Ailesbury was lord and master of all he surveyed in the borough of Marlborough, holding virtually all the voters in his pocket, so alleged the whig reformer, Henry Hobhouse MP in the Great Reform bill debates of 1831. He signed the Earl of Mansfield's dissentient protest during the third reading of the bill. In 1843 Ailesbury voted against a bill to remove restrictions on Jews from becoming members. He was amongst a large number of Tory peers in the die-hard lobbies against extending the franchise. Lord Ailesbury was on the independent benches in the House of Lords, but he had liberal leanings, supporting the Whig governments. On 1 Feb 1849, he responded to the Queen's loyal address "...if not that, pursuing so unusual a course, he might appear to be acting disrespectfully towards their lordships, and perhaps to some degree towards Her Majesty..." He supported the reformist agenda of the Whig government, particularly in foreign relations. He was strongly in favour of Palmerston's gunboat diplomacy, and supported a joint task force with France to bombard Naples and Sicily to end the atrocities there in 1849. He would not propose any reductions in the army numbers, because adequate defences were needed for each colony far in excess of those present. He required the "presence of the noble and gallant Duke" with no reduction in the Artillery. Indeed, he thought the artillery should be supplemented by cuts to the infantry. He agreed with the earl of Yarborough's warnings of revolutionary Europe posed to Britain. He encouraged adding to the powers of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and applauded the emergency powers introduced in 1848. On 8 May, Lord Ailesbury appealed to the Lords to open their eyes to the realities of free trade. He called for the repeal of the Navigation Laws:

"The various colonies of this country first themselves aggrieved by the course pursued by the mother country with respect to the adoption of free trade measures, and they claimed as some compensation for the injury they had sustained, the removal of the burdens imposed upon them by the existing navigation laws."

Intercommunication was between all parts of the globe, so it was natural to allow sailors to trade their labour. It was essentially part of a free trade system that Lord Ailesbury wished to assert.

Family

On 10 April 1793, Brudenell-Bruce married at

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico an ...

, the Hon. Henrietta Maria Hill, daughter of Noel Hill. She died on 2 January 1831. They had six children: *Charlotte Henrietta (Florence, 10 May 1794 – unknown date) and Lady Maria Carolina Ann (Florence, 10 May 1794 – 1835). Maria married Count de Mondreville or Montreville on 17 July 1819 in Paris. *Lady Augusta Frederica (1795 – 1869), married Frederick Wentworth, paternal grandson of Henry Vernon MP, and also great-grandson of

Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford, (13 April 1593 ( N.S.)12 May 1641), was an English statesman and a major figure in the period leading up to the English Civil War. He served in Parliament and was a supporter of King Charles I. From 1 ...

. They had two children, Henrietta (wife of Col. Arthur John Bethell Thellusson), and Thomas (husband of Lady Harriet Augusta de Burgh, daughter of

Ulick de Burgh, 1st Marquess of Clanricarde Ulick John de Burgh, 1st Marquess of Clanricarde (; ; ; ; ; ; 20 December 1802 – 10 April 1874), styled Lord Dunkellin (; ) until 1808 and The Earl of Clanricarde from 1808 until 1825, was a British Whig politician who served as British Amb ...

). * George William Frederick, later 2nd Marquess of Ailesbury (1804 –1878). *Lady Elizabeth (1807 –1847), married H.E.

Lensgreve Count (feminine: countess) is a historical title of nobility in certain European countries, varying in relative status, generally of middling rank in the hierarchy of nobility. Pine, L. G. ''Titles: How the King Became His Majesty''. New York: ...

Christian

Danneskiold-Samsøe The House of Danneskiold-Samsøe is a Danish family of high nobility associated with the Danish Royal Family, and who formerly held the island of Samsø as a fief. By royal statutory regulation, the Counts Danneskiold-Samsøe and their male-lin ...

. Their children were Frederick and Henrietta, of whom she married

Henry Byng, 4th Earl of Strafford Henry William John Byng, 4th Earl of Strafford (21 August 1831 – 16 May 1899) was a British peer and courtier. Biography Byng was the second son of George Byng, 2nd Earl of Strafford and his first wife, Agnes. From 1840 he was a Page of H ...

. * Lord Ernest Augustus Charles, later 3rd Marquess of Ailesbury (8 January 1811 – 1886). After his wife's death in 1831, the Marquess settled his affairs. By deed, he put into trust his considerable estates for his eldest son, houses at Seymour Place and East Sheen in London, as well as a 99-year lease on lands in Wiltshire and Yorkshire. The allowance paid him also met mortgage charges on a debt of £104,000. The Marquess married secondly Maria Elizabeth, second daughter of Hon Charles Tollemache, of Harrington, Northants, (by his second wife, Gertrude Florinda Clarke, widow of Charles John Clarke, and daughter of Gen William Gardiner), 3rd son of John Manners MP of Hanby Hall, Lincs. Gertrude Florinda Gardiner was also a granddaughter of

Louisa Tollemache, 7th Countess of Dysart Louisa Manners Tollemache, 7th Countess of Dysart (2 July 1745 – 22 September 1840) was a peer in the Scottish peerage in a flourishing family. Her father held considerable estates in England largely due to the two marriages of Elizabeth Maitla ...

. They were married on 20 August 1833 at Ham House, Petersham, Surrey. They had one son, Lord Charles William (1834 –1897), a soldier and courtier. She died at Petersham on 7 May 1893, aged eighty-three. On Lord Ailesbury's death in January 1856 at Tottenham Park, his titles passed to his eldest son,

George George may refer to: People * George (given name) * George (surname) * George (singer), American-Canadian singer George Nozuka, known by the mononym George * George Washington, First President of the United States * George W. Bush, 43rd Presid ...

. He was buried at Great Bedwyn churchyard. His will was proven in July 1856. File:Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830) - Henrietta Maria Hill (c.1773–1831), Marchioness of Ailesbury - 608955 - National Trust.jpg, Henrietta Maria Hill, Marchioness of Ailesbury, by

Thomas Lawrence Sir Thomas Lawrence (13 April 1769 – 7 January 1830) was an English portrait painter and the fourth president of the Royal Academy. A child prodigy, he was born in Bristol and began drawing in Devizes, where his father was an innkeeper at t ...

File:Maria Tollemache, later Marchioness of Ailesbury, by circle of Martin Archer Shee.jpg, Maria Tollemache, later Marchioness of Ailesbury, by circle of

Martin Archer Shee Sir Martin Archer Shee (23 December 1769 – 13 August 1850) was an Irish portrait painter. He also served as the president of the Royal Academy. Early life He was born in Dublin, of an old Irish Roman Catholic family, the son of Martin Shee ...

Sources

Manuscripts

* 1790–99: Continental travel diaries * 1813–30: Letters to Sir R.J.Buxton * 1824–31: Letters to his daughter, Mrs F.Wentworth * Correspondence during the Grand Tour * 1841–44: Correspondence – 10 terms – with Sir Robert Peel * 1674–1985: Additional estate and family papersWSHC 3790; Annual Return 2009

References

* *

Glossary

* WRO – Wiltshire Record Office * WSHC – Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre * BL – British Library * HMC – Historical Manuscripts Commission * NRA – National Register of Archives * CUL – Cambridge University Library * NRAS – National Register of Archives for Scotland.

External links

Charles Charles is a masculine given name predominantly found in English language, English and French language, French speaking countries. It is from the French form ''Charles'' of the Proto-Germanic, Proto-Germanic name (in runic alphabet) or ''*k ...

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