(1682 - c.1728), 2nd s. of Sir Theophilus Oglethorpe; educ. Eton; India and China 1700 - 5; MP 1708 - 13; ADC to D. of Ormonde in Flanders 1712; env. [J] Sicily 1716 and Turin 1716 - 17; cr. B. Oglethorpe [J] 1717; Paris 1721 - 2 - ; unm.
1714 - 18 Turin (2 Jan. 1714 - 1717), Venice (Oct. 1717), Rome (by 1 Jan. 1718 - Apr.), Naples (Apr. - 27 May) [Malta]
'Mr Oglethorpe, Adjutant-General of the Queen's forces' came to Turin in January 1714 with George Berkeley in the retinue of the 3rd Earl of Peterborough.1 He remained in Turin some four years in the course of which, even though he appears to have had an unofficial diplomatic post, he became a Jacobite sympathiser. In January 1715 Thomas Coke said he could make 'nothing at all' of Oglethorpe's position, 'for he is one day Envoy, and the next not, but [he] is a very goodnatur'd man'; the two visited Milan together in March.2 By October 1716 Oglethorpe was working in the Jacobite interest, but the King of Sicily told Lord George Murray that Oglethorpe 'meant very well, [but] it was neither in his nature or power to keep anything secret'.3
There are several references to him being with the Sicilian court in Turin in 1716 and 1717 among the Stuart Papers (HMC Stuart). In December 1717 the Pretender prepared a warrant for making him Baron Oglethorpe, in recognition of his and his father's loyalty, but in April 1718 Oglethorpe thanked the Pretender for the title of Earl, assuring him he would not accept it till it was his pleasure.4 This was probably the cause of Oglethorpe's 'noble blunder' mentioned by the Pretender in April 1718.5 Oglethorpe was probably in Venice in October 1717,6 and was certainly in Rome by January 1718, when he was about to have an audience with the Pope;7 William Kent listed him in Rome on 18 January.8 That same month he met his younger brother, James Edward, in Rome and in April they left for Naples, where they had been 'about a month' on 27 May.9 In February 1718 his sister Fanny, a Jacobite agent in Britain, told the Earl of Mar that Theophilus was to take his youngest brother [James Edward] to Malta.(10) One of the last remarks about him in Italy was made by Mar who told the Pretender that Oglethorpe 'is grown yet an odder fellow than I formerly knew him ... I cannot imagine how he gets the money to live as he does'.(11)
1. Berkeley Letters, 77. 2. James, Coke, 190. 3. HMC Stuart, 3:56. 4. Ibid., 5:282; 6:335. 5. Ibid., 6:379. 6. SP 99/61, f.407 (Cunningham, 15 Oct. 1717). 7. HMC Stuart, 5:383. 8. Kent letters MSS (18 Jan. 1718). 9. SP 93/4 (Fleetwood, 6, 27 May 1718). HMC Stuart, 6:168, 264. 10. Ibid., 5:477. 11. Ibid., 6:264 (6 Apr. 1718).