(1723 - 93) of Blickling, Norf., 1st surv. s. of 1st E. of Buckinghamshire; educ. Westminster and Christ's Camb. 1739; Dilettanti 1746; MP 1747 - 56; suc. fa. 1756 as 2nd E.; m. 1 1761 Mary Ann Drury (d. 1769), 2 1770 Caroline Conolly; env. St Petersburg 1762 - 5; FSA 1784; FRS 1785.
1746 - 7 [dep. Harwich 19 Jul. 1745] Florence (May 1746), Naples ( - Jun. 1747), Rome, Florence (11 - 22 Jul.)
In June 1745 Horace Walpole gave Hobart a letter of introduction to Horace Mann in Florence, and he left Harwich for the Continent in July.1 He reached Florence in May 1746 and stayed in Lady Orford's empty house; Mann found him 'so unlike all the English that I adore him'.2 He was proposed for the Society of Dilettanti in November 1746 by Sir James Gray, the British resident in Venice.3 In June 1747 he was 'still' in Naples, proposing to be back in Florence by the end of the month; but his resolution, wrote Mann, 'does not, I believe, depend upon him, but on somebody there with whom he is very smitten'.4 Though he ought 'long since to have obeyed his father's summons to return home' (for the elections then taking place), he had only arrived in Florence on 11 July, having been 'unwilling to leave his loves at Rome'; he stayed a week with Mann and left on 22 July.5
In 1776 Mann wrote to him from Florence concerning 'the lady who so long attracted your attention here'; she was then a widow, in perfect health.6
1. Wal.Corr., 19:60 and n1. 2. Ibid., 252. 3. Dilettanti MSS (letter of 23 Nov. 1746), and see Cust, 77. 4. Wal.Corr., 19:408. 5. Ibid., 421 and n3. 6. HMC Lothian, 296.