Charles Pierrepont, 1st Earl Manvers

Charles Pierrepont, 1st Earl Manvers (4 November 1737 – 17 June 1816) was an English nobleman and naval officer. Born Charles Medows, he was the second son of Philip Medows, deputy ranger of Richmond Park, by his marriage to Lady Frances Pierrepont, daughter of William, Earl of Kingston (1692-1713), the heir apparent of Evelyn Pierrepont, 1st Duke of Kingston-upon-Hull. Because William predeceased his father, the Dukedom and estates devolved on his son, Evelyn, Lady Frances's brother. He, however, died childless, leaving Charles Medows as the eventual heir to the estates.

Naval career

Educated at Oxford, Medows became a midshipman in the Royal Navy and was promoted to lieutenant on 7 August 1755. He became a commander on 5 April 1757^[1] in Renown, a 20-gun sloop, but on 17 August the same year was promoted to post-captain in the frigate Shannon, and was ordered to join the Mediterranean Fleet. He commanded her until April 1761, when Vice-Admiral Saunders appointed him to the 50-gun frigate Isis, replacing Captain Edward Wheeler, who had been killed during the capture of the French ship Oriflamme. Medows continued in Isis, in the Mediterranean, until the end of the war in 1763, and in 1769 retired altogether from the Navy.^[2]

In 1773, Medows's uncle Evelyn Pierrepont, 2nd Duke of Kingston-upon-Hull, died and left his estates at Thoresby and elsewhere to his wife Elizabeth, Duchess of Kingston, the former wife of the Earl of Bristol. The duke's nephews challenged the will on the grounds of bigamy, and the proceedings which followed established that the marriage of the Duchess had indeed been bigamous. However, this was found not to affect her inheritance, so she was able to retain the Pierrepont estates until her death, which took place in August 1788. Upon inheriting the estates, Medows adopted the surname of Pierrepont.

A watercolour sketch entitled In Captain Pierrepont's Grounds was made by the Preston-born artist Anthony Devis (1729–1817).

With the patronage of the Duke of Newcastle, Pierrepont was returned as one of the Members of Parliament for Nottinghamshire in December 1778. He continued to sit in the Commons as a knight of the shire until he was ennobled in 1796. In Parliament, Pierrepont supported the Duke of Portland, whose influence helped him to be raised to the peerage as Baron Pierrepont, of Holme Pierrepont in the County of Nottingham, and Viscount Newark, of Newark on Trent in the County of Nottingham, on 23 July 1796,^[3] and on 1 April 1806 he was promoted to an earldom as Earl Manvers.^[4] In the Lords, Manvers supported agricultural reform and was vice-president of the Board of Agriculture in 1803. He died in 1816 and was buried at Holme Pierrepont.

Family and children

He married Anne Orton, daughter of William Mills of Richmond, in 1774. They had five children:

• Hon. Evelyn Henry Frederick Pierrepont (1775–1801).
• Charles Herbert Pierrepont, 2nd Earl Manvers (1778–1860).
• Hon. Henry Manvers Pierrepont (1780–1858).
• Hon. Philip Sydney Pierrepont (13 June 1786 – 15 February 1864), of Evenley Hall, Northamptonshire, married on 19 August 1810 Georgiana Browne, died without issue.
• Lady Frances Augusta Pierrepont (d. 1847), married on 20 October 1802 Admiral William Bentinck (1746–1813), married on 30 July 1821 Henry William Stephens.

References

Notes

Bibliography

• "Biography of Charles (Medows) Pierrepont, 1st Earl Manvers (1737-1816)". The University of Nottingham. 2013. Retrieved 26 October 2013. 
• Symonds, P.A. (2013). "Pierrepont (formerly Medows), Charles (1737-1816)". History of Parliament Online. Retrieved 26 October 2013. 
• "Pierrepont pedigree 2". Archived from the original on 15 May 2006. Retrieved 5 January 2006. 
• Leigh Rayment's Peerage Pages

External links

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by the Earl Manvers