(1737 - 63), 1st surv. s. of Hon. Charles Compton of Eastbourne, Sx.; educ. Westminster and Ch.Ch. Oxf. 1755; suc. uncle 1758 as 7th E. of Northampton; amb. extra. Venice 1761 - 3; m. 1759 Ldy. Anne Somerset (1741 - 63, d. Naples), dau. of 4th D. of Beaufort.
1757 - 9 Padua (23 Jun. 1757), Venice (18 - 20 Jul. 1757), Rome (by 5 Apr. 1758), Florence (by 6 May - 31 Dec. 1758 - ) [London by 24 Apr. 1759]
1762 - 3 Turin (3 Oct. 1762), Venice (17 Oct. 1762 - 8 Jun. 1763) [Lyons, d. 18 Dec.]
'Lively and good natured with what is called a pretty figure', Charles Compton was in Padua in June 1757, when he had promised Robert Adam 'employment' at Castle Ashby.1 He was in Venice in July,2 and then turned back to Rome. On 5 April 1758 the artist John Parker in Rome told Lord Charlemont that Compton had 'ordered a large history piece to Mr [Gavin] Hamilton' (characteristically adding 'and had he seen my work, I flatter myself I should have been employed too').3 This was the Andromache weeping over the dead body of Hector, one of two remarkable commissions for ambitious classical history pictures which Compton then placed, the other being Hector's Farewell from Batoni, to whom Compton also sat for a whole-length portrait (dated Rome 1758, Clark/Bowron 208; Fitzwilliam Mus.). The history pieces are now untraced, the designs known only through drawings and an engraving,4 and Compton did not live to see them completed. He also commissioned a copy from Francis Harwood of the Venus de Medici, together with seven busts and two full-sized figures.5 In May 1758 he was dallying in Florence, 'so much engag'd that he will scarcely leave',6 but George Lucy was impressed by his manners.7 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu reported him still in Florence on 31 December 1758,8 when he had just succeeded his uncle as 7th Earl of Northampton. He was back in London late in April 1759,9 and on 13 September he married the eighteen-year-old Lady Anne Somerset in London.
In May 1761 the Earl of Northampton was appointed ambassador extraordinary to Venice, in return for a Venetian embassy which had come to London to congratulate George III on his accession.(10) Etiquette required that Northampton did not make his formal entry until the Venetian embassy had made theirs in London, and there was a considerable delay. When he arrived in Venice with his wife on 17 October 1762 (having come through Turin on 3 October),11 neither was well, and in April 1763 the Countess set out for Naples to recover her health.(12) West had painted her portrait in Venice in the character of a Madonna with her young daughter (Lady Elizabeth Compton) in her arms (Bass Museum, Miami Beach). She left Rome on 14 May, passed through Capua on the 16th and reached Naples on the 17th, only to die the next day.(13) Not until 29/30 May 1763 was her husband able to make his formal entrance into Venice, and he returned, weak and 'wasted to a skeleton', from the second day's ceremonies only to be told of his wife's death.14 He left Venice on 8 June 1763 and died in Lyons on 18 December.
1. Fleming Adam, 260. 2. ASV is 759. 3. HMC Charlemont, 1:247. 4. See Clark/Bowron 222. 5. J. Fleming and H. Honour in Festschrift Ulrich Middeldorf, [1968], 511. 6. SP 105/312, f.12 (Bristol, 17 May 1758). 7. Lucy Family, 104. 8. Montagu Letters, 3:195 (31 Dec. 1758). 9. Fleming, Adam, 368. 10. See W.B. Compton, History of the Comptons, 185 - 7. Horn, 1:85. 11. Storia Patria, 8 - 1:204. 12. SP 105/315, f.92 (Murray, 16 Apr. 1763). 13. Wal.Corr., 22:142n7. ASN cra 1277. 14. SP 105/314, f.186 (Murray, 4 Jun. 1763).