Excerpt from Manuscripts of the Earl of Egmont, Vol. 1: Diary of Viscount Percival Afterwards First Earl of Egmont

The preliminary report on the manuscripts of the Earl of Egmont, printed in the Appendix to the Seventh Report of the Historical mss. Commissioners, specifies: Twelve folio volumes of Diaries, 1729 - 30, Jan. 8, to 174 Aug. With the remark, They seem to be interesting. This they prove to be, and are, moreover, exceedingly valuable as a mirror of the times from many points of view, and particularly from that of the Parliamentary historian.

The first four of these vellum-bound folios furnish the material for the present volume. The others will probably yield sufficient for two more volumes of similar size and quality.

The diarist, whose small handwriting closely covers the pages of the folios, each of which is carefully indexed at the end, at the time when the diary was begun, had been first Baron, then Viscount Percival in the peerage of Ireland for a period of fifteen years, and three years later, while the diary was still in progress, he was advanced in the same peerage to the dignity of an Earl by the title of Earl of Egmont, in the county of Cork.

In 1730, when the diary starts, Lord Percival had passed middle-age. From earliest manhood he had been con versant with public affairs, and was intimately acquainted with the leading public men. He was a member of the House of Commons of Great Britain, sitting, in conjunction with his brother-in-law, Sir Philip Parker, for the borough of Harwich: a supporter of Sir Robert Walpole, with a bias towards independence; and a favourite in Court circles. Furthermore, he had long attained to fixed principles; was Protestant, pious and philanthropic; musical in his tastes, and himself something of a musician; married, to his own great comfort and content; father of a family of three children living, who were approaching manhood and womanhood; in easy circumstances conscious of his own dignity, and well pleased with himself and the conditions of his life. He said with evident truth, when he put forward discreetly in the proper quarters a request for advancement to the rank of an Earl, that he did it, not on his own account, for he had no ambition, nor could be the better for any further title, but because he thought it an obligation on him as a parent, now that his children were grown up, to study their benefit and advancement in the world, and because he surmised that, having an adequate estate, if he were an Earl, his children would marry the better. He obtained this step in the Irish peerage without anydifficulty, after a handsome testimonial from Sir Robert Walpole to his desert and his disinterestedness and his zeal for his Sovereign and his Sovereign's consort, the quietly but supremely influential Queen Caroline.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.