BEAUCLERK, Lord Henry (1701-61), of Foliejohn, Berks.

Lord Henry Beauclerk, a professional soldier, who had been returned for Plymouth on the Administration interest in 1740, was given a seat at Thetford in 1741 by his cousin, the 2nd Duke of Grafton, voting consistently with the Government. In 1749 he resigned his regiment, according to Horace Walpole, because the Duke of Cumberland refused to allow him more than two months’ leave, ‘though the lowest officer in his regiment had got much longer leave in order to take the benefit of the act of insolvency, and avoid paying his creditors’. Walpole added ‘it is incredible how [the Duke] has persecuted this poor man for these four years, since he could not be persuaded to alter his vote at a court martial for the acquittal of a man, whom the Duke would have had condemned’.2Walpole to Montagu, 18 May 1749. Under an Act of 1748 debtors were allowed to obtain a discharge from their creditors by assigning all their property to them before 25 Dec. 1750. For many years he and his brother Lord George shared a pension of £800 on the Irish establishment.3T 14/13/80-81. He died 6 Jan. 1761.