(1732 - 99), 1st surv. s. of 3rd E. of Essex; sty. Vct. Malden - 1743 when suc. fa. as 4th E.; m. 1 1754 Frances Hanbury Williams (d. 1759), 2 1767 Harriet Bladen.
1752 - 4 Venice (mid-Dec. 1752 - mid-Mar. 1753), Padua, Vicenza, Verona, Rome (by 14 Apr. 1753), Naples, Rome, Florence (May 1754), Turin (May) [England Jun. 1754]
The 4th Earl of Essex was born in Turin and was nearly four when he returned with his parents to England in 1736. His grand tour was undertaken between 1750 and 1754. From Tours on 15 July 1752 he told his sister Lady Anne Capel that he was 'Convinced that the Tour that is proposed for me is both for my pleasure and my improvement'.1 He arrived alone in Venice in mid-December 1752, having quarrelled with his tutor in Frankfurt. He was learning Italian, he told Andrew Mitchell, and had an excellent master who came twice a day.2 The Carnival was marred by the weather, but before it was over he was joined by the 10th Earl of Pembroke (with whom he had already been in Vienna). On 7 March 1753 he told his sister Lady Mary Capel, that he was 'heartily tired of Venice', apart from a recent visit to the opera when the theatre was hung with 'looking Glasses in a very magnificent Manner for the Prince of Anspach', but within a week he would set out with Lord Pembroke for Rome, via Padua, Vicenza and Verona; he was going to write to a Mr Freeman in Rome to procure lodgings, 'as I hear they are difficult to be found unless you speak some time before hand'.3 He wrote again from Rome on 14 April. He was then in the midst of a hectic course of antiquities with the 4th Earl of Rochford: 'the mornings I spend extreamly agreably in seeing very fine things and in learning Italian'; he was reading 'The wars in Flanders' with his tutor 'which is a book not very difficult & good Italian'; he had been received by Cardinal Albani, and intended to go on to Naples after Holy Week before returning to Rome 'to finish what is to be seen here'.4 He sat to Batoni in Rome (Clark/Bowron 176; priv. coll.).
He is said to have been with Lords Pembroke, Thanet and Bolingbroke watching Richard Wilson draw at Tivoli in 1754.5 In May 1754 he had passed through Florence to Turin where he spent one night6 on his way back to England. He was home by the end of June and he married Frances Hanbury Williams (to whom he had been betrothed at the age of seventeen)7 in August that year.
1. Hanbury Williams MSS, 78:243. 2. A. Bissett ed., Memoirs of Sir Andrew Mitchell, 1:84 - 5. 3. Hanbury Williams MSS, 78:247 - 50. 4. Ibid. 251 - 2. 5. Constable, Wilson, 225. 6. SP 105/310, ff.309, 334 (Charles, 1, 29 May 1754). 7. Ilchester, Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, 168.