Cholmondeley, George James Cholmondeley, 4th Earl of
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- Cholmondeley, George James Cholmondeley, 4th Earl of
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(1749 - 1827), s. of George Cholmondeley, Vct. Malpas; suc. gd.-fa. 1770 as 4th E. of Cholmondeley; env. Berlin 1782; m. 1791 Ldy. Georgiana Bertie (1764 - 1838), dau. of 3rd D. of Ancaster; cr. M. of Cholmondeley 1815; KG 1822.
1771 - 2 Genoa ( - 12 Oct. 1771), Leghorn (23 Oct.), Florence (Oct.), Bologna, Venice (3 Nov.), Pisa, Florence (25 - 30 Nov.), Leghorn (1 - 4 Dec.), Florence, Rome, Capua (23 Dec.), Naples (24 Dec. 1771 - ), Florence (Mar. - Nov. 1772)
1775 Venice (28 Mar.)
1781 - 2 Italy (Dec. 1781 - Feb. 1782); Rome (before Dec. 1782)
1792 - 3 Venice (29 Oct. - 29 Nov. 1792), Naples (Jan. - Mar. 1793), Venice (6 May), Naples (by 7 Oct. - Nov.)
On his first visit to Italy, shortly after his succession to the Earldom, Cholmondeley was, with Colonel Charles Rainsford, Major Nathaniel Heywood and a Mr Lee, equerry to the Duke of Gloucester, although his attendance was by no means constant. He sailed with the Duke from Genoa to Leghorn in October 1771.1 During the Duke's convalescence Cholmondeley visited Florence, Bologna and Venice.2 By the end of November he had rejoined the Duke in Pisa and accompanied him back to Florence (Horace Mann then said that a Mr Lee was travelling with Cholmondeley3). Cholmondeley dined with the Duke on the Trident at Leghorn on 1 and 4 December.4 Later that month he passed through Rome (Mann had given him an introduction to Cardinal Albani) on his way south; he was in Capua with Lee on 23 December and he rejoined the Duke in Naples.5 He sat to Batoni in Rome in 1772 (Clark/Bowron 343; Houghton, a replica now untraced); Horace Walpole had requested 'a head of himself [Cholmondeley] by Pompeio Battoni' the previous November.6 At the end of March 1772 Cholmondeley was again in Florence7 where he stayed through the summer, living 'almost entirely with the Great Duke [of Tuscany] and the Ladies of the Court to whose smiles he has the just pretension of spending £;1200 per annum'.8
His subsequent movements in Italy are not clear and the following references probably refer to separate visits. A 'Giorgio Shomoneij' with a 'mons Offner'[?] arrived in Venice on 28 March 1775.9 Cholmondeley wrote to Sir John Dick from Trent on 24 August 1777, describing how he had sat at the bedside of the Duke of Gloucester during his illness.(10) Four years later he was alleged to have pursued Mrs Armitstead from Paris to Italy where they stayed between December 1781 and February 1782, see Armitstead; later in 1782 he was seen in Rome by Charles Parker.(11)
Soon after his marriage he returned to Italy with his wife. A projected visit in 1791 seems not to have taken place,12 but they set out the following year. His first son, George, was born in Paris en route, and the family arrived in Venice on 29 October 1792 and left on 29 November.(13) They passed the winter in Naples where his mother-in-law, the Dowager Duchess of Ancaster, was convalescing; Lady Cholmondeley gave a ball in January for their son George's first birthday14 and Cholmondeley gave another on 7 March.15 The Duchess was in Rome in April and arrived in Venice on 7 May, the day after the Cholmondeleys.16 She went on to pass the summer in Lausanne (and the Cholmondeleys may have followed). In the autumn they were all together in Naples, where on 7 October the Duchess died in the house of her daughter and son-in-law; within a month the Cholmondeleys had set off back to England.17 While in Rome Cholmondeley attracted the attention of Lady Knight who remembered him as 'a man of no character except that of a democrat'.18
1. Wal.Corr., 23:335. 2. Ibid., 348 - 9. 3. Ibid., 353. 4. Scots Charta Chest, 242 - 3. 5. Wal.Corr., 23:370n7. ASN cra 1259. 6. Wal.Corr., 23:349. 7. Gazz.Tosc.. 8. Orde jnl.MSS. 9. ASV IS 760. 10. Dick corr.MSS. 11. Parker letters MSS B 2070 (2 Dec. 1782). 12. Wal.Corr., 11:255n26. 13. ASV IS 766. 14. Connell 1957, 276. 15. Parker jnl.MSS. 16. ASV IS 767. 17. Wal.Corr., 12:43 - 4 and n6. 18. Knight Letters, 216.