Selwyn, GEORGE, wit, was born of a good old Gloucestershire family on 11th August 1719, and was educated at Eton and Hertford College, Oxford, whence, after making the grand tour, he was expelled in 1745 for a blasphemous travesty of the Eucharist. He entered parliament for a pocket borough in 1747, and, siding generally with the court party, was rewarded with several sinecures; in 1751 succeeded his father in the Matson property; and for the best part of half a century led the life of a man about town, dozing in the Horse, gaming pretty deeply, corresponding much, and haunting exeptions. He often visited Paris, where he had the entrée of the best and the highest society, whilst at home his chief intimates were the Duke of Queensberry, Horace Walpole, 'Gilly' Williams, and Lord Carlisle. Grown at last 'like the waxwork figure of a corpse,' he died penitent in Cleveland Row, 25th January 1791. He left £33,000 to Maria Fagniani, and the residue of his fortune to 'Old Q,' who disputed with him the paternity of that future Marchioness of Hertford.
See Jesse's delightful George Selwyn and his Contemporaries (4 vols. 1843), the review thereof in Hayward's Lord Chesterfield and George Selwyn (1854), and Roscoe's George Selwyn (1899).