(1737 - 1806), diplomat, o. surv. s. of George Macartney of Lissanoure, co.Antrim; Trin. Dublin 1750; L.Inn 1753; Kt. 1764; env. Russia 1764 - 7; MP 1768 - 76 [I], 1768 - 9, 1774 - 6, 1780 - 1; m. 1768 Ldy. Jane Stuart, dau. of 3rd E. of Bute [S]; KB 1772; gov. of Grenada 1775 - 9, Madras 1781 - 5; cr. B. Macartney [I] 1776, Vct. Macartney [I] 1792, E. Macartney [I] 1794; B. Macartney 1796; FRS 1792; emb. to China 1792 - 4; gov. of Cape of Good Hope 1796 - 8; BM Trustee 1801 - d.
1761 Turin (Mar.), Florence [Switzerland]
1795 - 7 Venice (29 Aug. 1795), Verona (1795 - Feb. 1796) with visit to Florence (Oct. 1795); Rome (Feb. 1796), Naples (Feb. - Mar.), Rome (Apr.), Verona (Apr.), Florence, Verona (3 Nov. 1796 - Feb. 1797), Naples
George Macartney first visited Italy as a young man in 1761. A young gentleman of Ireland, 'good natur'd and well bred', he travelled from Turin to Florence in March.1 He was in Switzerland in 1762 and 1763, meeting Rousseau (July 1762) and Voltaire (by May 1763); Lord Holland then employed Macartney as a 'companion and mentor' to young Stephen Fox in Geneva.2
In 1795 Lord Macartney was sent to Verona on a confidential mission to the exiled comte de Provence (later Louis XVIII of France), who was there from May 1794 to April 1796. Lady Webster saw Macartney in Florence on his way to Rome in October 1795,3 but he was based in Verona until Louis returned to Germany in April 1796. An anonymous portrait of Macartney, showing him holding papers addressed to him at Verona, is in the NPG. In February 1796 he was in Rome, seeing much of Lady Webster and Lord Holland,4 and the same month he went on to visit Naples,5 where the 4th Earl of Bristol saw him in March: 'they have had him at Court twice & have squeezed this China orange so close they left him with nothing but the pulp. What restless perturbed spirits he has, that in the course of his short life he has visited Petersburgh & Grenada, Madras & Pekin, & is now reduced to a mock embassy to a mock King.'6 Lady Knight saw him in Rome in April,7 and he was in back in Verona later that month. He arrived in Verona from Florence on 3 November 1796,8 and was there in January and February 1797, when he was said to be going to Naples.9
1. SP 105/313, f.420 (Mackenzie, 4 Mar. 1761). J. Barrow, Some Account of ... the Earl of Macartney, [1807], 3. 2. Voltaire, no.45. G. de Beer, Annales de la soci?t? Rousseau 33[1953 - 5]:257 - 9. Ilchester, Henry Fox, 1st Lord Holland, 2:262 - 3. 3. Holland Jnl., 1:136. 4. Ibid., 142. 5. Morrison, 1:217 - 18 (no.275). 6. Childe-Pemberton, 2:497. 7. Knight Letters, 215. 8. ASV is 783. 9. ASV is 777, 780, 781.
