BAKER, George (d.1723), of Crook Hall, in Lanchester, nr. Durham.

George Baker, nephew of Thomas Baker, the Cambridge antiquary, was great-grandson of Sir George Baker, of a Durham family, who bought Crook Hall about 1635.1Surtees, Hist. co. Durham, ii. 358. He was returned unopposed for Durham with his father-in-law, Thomas Conyers, both of them voting after 1715 against the Administration in all recorded divisions. In October 1718 William Cotesworth, a leading local government supporter, was ‘upon a project for making [them] either stay at home this session or behave themselves better than they did the last’.2Cotesworth to Sunderland, 18 Oct. 1718, Sunderland (Blenheim) mss. Baker’s name was sent to the Pretender in 1721 as a probable supporter in the event of a rising.3Stuart mss 65/16. He did not stand in 1722, dying 1 June 1723.