Shelburne, WILLIAM PETTY, EARL OF

Shelburne, WILLIAM PETTY, EARL OF, son of the first earl, and maternal grandson of the famous Sir William Petty (q.v.), was born in Dublin, 20th May 1737, and, after studying at Oxford and serving in Germany, entered the House of Commons for the pocket-borough of Wycombe in 1761, but only sat for a few weeks, the death of his father calling him to the House of Lords. When George Grenville succeeded Bute in 1763 Lord Shelburne was placed at the head of the Board of Trade, and when Chatham formed his second administration in 1766 he became one of the Secretaries of State. Upon the fall of Lord North's ministry in 1782 George III. sent for Shelburne, and proposed to him to form a government. He declined, not being the head of a party, and was sent by the king to the Marquis of Rockingham with an offer of the Treasury, himself to be one of the Secretaries of State. It soon appeared that Shelburne was not so much the colleague as the rival of Lord Rockingham, the chosen minister of the court, and the head of a separate party in the cabinet. Upon Rockingham's death in the following July the king sent at once for Shelburne, and offered him the Treasury, which he accepted without consulting his colleagues. Fox thereupon resigned, and Shelburne introduced William Pitt, then only twenty-three, into office as his Chancellor of the Exchequer. Shelburne's ministry, on the occasion of the king's announcement of his determination to concede the independence of the American colonies, found itself outvoted by the coalition between Fox and Lord North (February 1783). He resigned, and the coalition ministry took his place, but soon broke up. The nation expected that the king on this event would have sent for Shelburne, but William Pitt received the splendid prize, and Shelburne was consoled by being made in 1784 Marquis of Lansdowne (q.v.). The rest of his days he spent in retirement, amusing himself by collecting in Lansdowne House a splendid gallery of pictures and a fine library, and with the friendship of Priestley, Jeremy Bentham, Sir S. Romilly, Mirabeau, Dunmont, and others. He died at Bowood Park, Wiltshire, 7th May 1805. See Life of Shelburne, by his great-grandson Lord Edmund Fitzmaurice (3 vols. 1875-76), in which he is shown to have been an advocate of reform, free trade, and Catholic emancipation.