Macartney, GEORGE MACARTNEY, EARL

Macartney, GEORGE MACARTNEY, EARL, an administrator and diplomatist, was born of Scottish descent at Lissanoure, near Belfast, Ireland, on 14th May 1737. On leaving Trinity College, Dublin, he entered (1759) the Inner Temple, London. As envoy-extraordinary to Russia, he concluded (1767) a commercial treaty; from 1769 to 1772 he was Chief-secretary of Ireland; and from 1775 to 1779 he was governor of Grenada, in the West Indies, but was compelled, after an honourable defence, to give up the island to Count D'Estaing, and was himself carried prisoner of war to France, though he soon contrived his exchange. The East India Company in December 1780 appointed him governor of Madras, and six years later promoted him to be governor-general; but his weak state of health obliged him to decline the honour. He had already had some experience as member of both the English and the Irish parliaments, and had been raised from a knight (created in 1764) to a baron in Ireland (1776). A duel with an officer named Stuart, whom he had expelled the service in India, brought him a severe wound shortly after his return home from India. The first diplomatic mission to China from Great Britain was headed by Macartney, now an Irish viscount, in 1792; before his return home he was made an Irish earl (1st March 1794). After undertaking a confidential mission to Italy (1795-96), he went out as governor of the new colony of the Cape of Good Hope (1796); but ill-health compelled him to return home in November 1798. Three years later he was offered a place in the Addington ministry, but he declined the honour. He died at Chiswick on 31st March 1806. In 1796 he was made Baron Macartney in the British peerage. See Life, prefixed to (Sir) J. Barrow's edition of his Writings (1807).