(1696 - 1746), s. of 7th E. of Huntingdon by his 2nd wife; suc. half-bro. 1705 as 9th E.; m. 1728 Ldy. Selina Shirley, dau. of 2nd E. Ferrers.
1720 - 2 Leghorn (May 1720), Rome, Venice (by Nov. 1720 - ), Padua (24 Jun. 1721), Florence (Jun. - 11 Nov. 1721), Venice, Bolzano [Innsbruck, Augsburg, Strasbourg, Paris]
The 9th Earl of Huntingdon was a good linguist and classical scholar, 'of good Address, of a slow lisping speech, a thin, small, fair complexion ... and something of a Libertine'.1 He passed through Leghorn on his way to Rome in May 1720.2 From Rome he went to Venice, arriving in mid-November and intending to stay for all the Carnival; he had with him 'a Scotch Gentleman whose name is Lynn',3 presumably the Alexander Lind who with Owen Swiney was with Huntingdon in Padua on 24 June 1721.4 Huntingdon left Florence on 11 November 1721 for Venice, apparently for a second visit.5 By the spring of 1722 he had met in Florence Antonio Cocchi, the renowned physician and antiquary, then still a young man, whom he took as his guest on tour from Bolzano through Germany and France to England. Cocchi stayed with Huntingdon in London but, finding his host somewhat mean, left to practise as a doctor in London before returning to Tuscany in 1726.6
1. Macky, Memoirs, Roxburgh Club [1895], 65. 2. SP 98/24 (Fuller, 10 May 1720). 3. SP 99/62, f.545 (Burges, 29 Nov. 1720). 4. Brown 1686 - 8. 5. March, A Duke and his Friends, 1:41 (Dereham, 11 Nov. 1721). 6. T.W.I. Hodgkinson, VAM Bull., 3[1967]:73 - 5.