Welbore Ellis, 1st Baron Mendip facts for kids

Quick facts for kids The Right Honourable The Lord Mendip PC FRS
Portrait by Anton Hickel
Secretary of State for the Colonies
In office February 1782 – 8 March 1782
Monarch	George III
Prime Minister	Lord North
Preceded by	Lord George Germain
Succeeded by	Office abolished
Personal details
Born	(1713-12-15)15 December 1713 England, Kingdom of Great Britain
Died	2 February 1802(1802-02-02) (aged 88) England, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

Welbore Ellis, 1st Baron Mendip, PC, FRS (15 December 1713 – 2 February 1802) was a British politician who sat in the House of Commons for 53 years from 1741 to 1794 when he was raised to the peerage as Baron Mendip. He held a number of political offices, including briefly serving as Secretary for the Colonies in 1782 during the American War of Independence.

Background

Ellis was the second but only surviving son of the Most Reverend Welbore Ellis, Bishop of Kildare and Bishop of Meath. He was educated at Westminster School from 1727 to 1732 and then entered Christ Church, Oxford.

Political career

In 1741, he was elected Member of Parliament (MP) for Cricklade, then moved to Weymouth and Melcombe Regis (1747–1761), Aylesbury (1761–1768), Petersfield (1768–1774), Weymouth and Melcombe Regis (1774–1790) and Petersfield (1791–1794).

In 1762, he succeeded Charles Townshend as Secretary at War, and in 1763, he proposed the appropriation of twenty army regiments to the colonies of America. In Parliament, with many others, he opposed the reception of papers from the American Continental Congress. He became Treasurer of the Navy in 1777, then succeeded to the Colonial Secretaryship in 1782, which he held for a matter of months, before the American colonies were lost. In 1784, he became the longest-serving member of the House of Commons (having served for 43 years non-continuously), becoming the honorary Father of the House.

He was created Baron Mendip, of Mendip in the County of Somerset, in 1794 in recognition of his governmental service. The peerage was created with remainder to the three eldest sons of his sister Anne by her husband Henry Agar, of Gowran and Gowran Castle.

Personal life

Portrait by Timothy Collopy

In 1738 he inherited a large fortune from his uncle, John Ellis and built Clifden House in Brentford.

He married firstly in 1747 Elizabeth, the daughter and heiress of Sir William Stanhope and secondly in 1765 Anne, the daughter of George Stanley of Paultons, Hampshire. Ellis nevertheless died childless in February 1802, aged 88, and was succeeded in the barony according to the special remainder by his great-nephew, Henry Welbore Agar, 2nd Viscount Clifden, who assumed the surname of Ellis two years later.

See also

• Viscount Clifden