(1731 - 71), o. s. of 5th B. Baltimore [I] of Woodcott Green, Surr.; educ. Eton; suc. fa. 1751 as 6th B.; gov. of Maryland; m. 1753 Ldy. Diana Egerton (d. 1758), dau. of 1st D. of Bridgewater; FRS 1767; d. Naples.
1762 - 3 Rome (by 17 Dec. 1762 - Feb. 1763), Naples ( - 4 May)
1770 - 1 Venice (by 23 Mar. 1771), Naples (Jul. - d.14 Sep. 1771)
Lord Baltimore spent the winter of 1762 - 3 in Italy, apparently for his health's sake, before proceeding to Asia.1 Winckelmann, his cicerone in Rome, was fascinated by this strange, jaded man, who inspected the Villa Borghese in ten minutes and 'cared for nothing except St Peter's and the Apollo Belvedere ... he has £;30,000 a year which he does not know what to do with'; he persuaded Baltimore to commission from Fran?ois Casanova (brother of the adventurer) a copy of Raphael's Transfiguration for the King (the copy was hung near the cartoons at Hampton Court).2 In February 1763 Baltimore visited Nathaniel Dance in Rome.3 On 4 May he embarked at Naples for Constantinople (see Francis Smith). He returned to London on 31 October 1764.
In 1768 Lord Baltimore narrowly escaped conviction in London for the rape of a Quakeress, and he left England shortly afterwards. He appeared in Vienna with a harem of eight women4 and probably went next to Venice, where his Caelestes et Inferni was published in 1771, and where John Gray described him in March as 'incognito to every one, excepting his own seraglio of Italians, Greeks, Blacks, etc.'5 He went on to Naples, arriving in July or August 1771, and dying there on 14 September, owing, according to James Byres, 'to the bad Air and his own Obstinacy. He would take nothing. He has left seven unfortunate Nimphs, who have nothing to do now, but look out of their windows.'6 Baltimore's body was shipped back to England for burial, and on 17 March 1772 George Tierney wrote from Naples thanking God that all Lord Baltimore's women had left the place: 'The greatest service that could be done to him was to forget him, for he was a Strange worthless being.'7
1. Baltimore, Tour of the East, [1767], 51 - 2. 2. Winckelmann Briefe, 2:278, 280, 285, 289, 302 - 3; 3:415. 3. Dance letters MSS (N. Dance, 6 Feb. 1763). 4. Winckelmann 1898, 3:35.
5. L. Melville, Life and Letters of Smollett, 244. 6. Byres letters MSS c (30 Sep. 1771). 7. Chichester-Constable MSS.