(1714 - 77), o. s. of Simon Harcourt; educ. Westminster; suc. gd.-fa. 1727 as 2nd Vct. Harcourt; m. 1735 Rebecca Le Bas; Dilettanti 1736; army officer, col. 1745, gen. 1772; cr. E. Harcourt 1749; FRS 1753; amb. Paris 1768 - 72; viceroy of Ireland 1772 - 7.
1732 - 4 Turin (Oct. 1732), Milan (Jan. 1733), Genoa (Feb.), Florence (by Mar. - 7 Apr. - ), Siena (by 2 Sep.), Rome (Oct. 1733 - 22 Apr. 1734), Bologna, Venice (Jun. 1734) [Vienna by 8 Jul.]
'A most amiable serious fine gentleman of good nature & good sense',1 Lord Harcourt made the grand tour with the antiquarian and traveller Walter Bowman (whose letters supplement his own). After spending two years in France he arrived in Turin at the end of October 17322 and in January 1733 he was in Milan, dividing his time 'twixt study, and assembly, and operas'.3 In mid-February he was in Genoa and in March in Florence.4 He wrote to his sister from Siena on 2 September, describing the ladies there as 'more numerous and beautyfull than in any other place I have yet seen; very polite to strangers, as indeed they ought to be, the gentlemen of their own country being by far the oddest, unaccountable creatures that can possibly be seen'.5 He reached Rome by the end of October,6 and was staying on the east side of the Piazza di Spagna the following Easter.7 Bowman wrote from Rome on 22 April,8 but they must have left soon afterwards, going through Bologna and Parma to Venice. Harcourt is said to have viewed the battle of Parma (an action in the War of the Polish Succession) from the ramparts of that town,9 and in Venice in June he was described as understanding 'as much of the art of war as any man in England that has no experience of it'.1 In July and August he passed through Vienna and Dresden and he was back in England by the end of the year.(10)
1. Pococke letters MSS, f.17 (23 Jun. 1734). 2. Harcourt Papers, 3:10 (Bowman, 4 Nov. 1732). 3. Ibid., 12 (18 Feb. 1733). Add.27732, f.76 (Stanhope, 6 Jan. 1733). 4. Spence Letters,
152. 5. Harcourt Papers, 3:25 - 6. 6. Folkes jnl.MSS (31 Oct. 1733). 7. AVR sa, S.Lorenzo in Lucina. 8. Balfour of Fernie MSS (to A. Balfour). 9. Black 1992, 162, 178n11. 10. Balfour of Fernie MSS (Bowman letters). Harcourt Papers, 3:27.