| Francis Egerton, 1st Earl Of Ellesmere |
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Information AboutFrancis Egerton, 1st Earl Of Ellesmere |
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He was known by his patronymic as Lord Francis Leveson-Gower until 1833, when he assumed the surname of '''Egerton''', having succeeded on the death of his father to the estates which the latter inherited from the Duke Of Bridgewater . Educated at Eton and at Christ Church, Oxford , he entered Parliament soon after attaining his majority as member for the Pocket Borough of Bletchingly in Surrey . He afterwards sat for Sutherland and for South Lancashire , which he represented when he was elevated to the peerage as '''Viscount Brackley''', of Brackley in the County of Northampton, and '''Earl of Ellesmere''' in 1846. In politics he was a moderate Conservative of independent views, as was shown by his supporting the proposal for establishing the University Of London , by his making and carrying a motion for the endowment of the Roman Catholic Clergy in Ireland , and by his advocating Free Trade long before Sir Robert Peel yielded on the question. Appointed a lord of the Treasury in 1827, he held the post of Chief Secretary For Ireland from 1828 till July 1830, when he became Secretary At War for a short time. His claims to remembrance are founded chiefly on, his services to literature and the fine arts. Before he was twenty he printed for private circulation a volume of poems, which he followed up after a short interval by the publication of a translation of Goethe 's '' Faust '', one of the earliest that appeared in England, with some translations of German lyrics and a few original poems. In 1839 he visited the Mediterranean and the Holy Land . His impressions of travel were recorded in his very agreeably written ''Mediterranean Sketches'' (1843), and in the notes to a poem entitled ''The Pilgrimage''. He published several other works in prose and verse, all displaying a fine literary taste. His literary reputation secured for him the position of rector of the University Of Aberdeen in 1841. Lord Ellesmere was a munificent and yet discriminating patron of artists. To the splendid collection of pictures which he inherited from his great-uncle, the 3rd Duke Of Bridgewater , he made numerous additions, and he built a noble gallery to which the public were allowed free access. Lord Ellesmere served as president of the Royal Geographical Society and as president of the Royal Asiatic Society , and he was a trustee of the National Gallery . He was succeeded by his son (1823-1862) as 2nd Earl, and his grandson (b. 1847) as 3rd Earl. On the extinction of the senior line of the Dukedom Of Sutherland in 1963 , his great-great-grandson, the 5th Earl, succeeded as 6th Duke of Sutherland. Ellesmere Island was named after him. REFERENCES |