MOORE, Henry, 4th Earl of Drogheda [I] (1700-27).

Succeeding to the family estates at the age of 13, Drogheda promptly took to drink. His grandmother and guardian, Lady Drogheda, then sent him on the grand tour, accompanied by a French Huguenot refugee as governor. At Brussels, in June 1717, he gave his companion the slip and set off alone for Paris, informing his grandmother that he could no longer bear the man’s ‘peevish humours’. Running short of money in Paris, he returned home, where, in 1719, his grandmother obtained from the lord chancellor of Ireland a release from responsibility for him, writing ‘sure he exceeds all the youth that ever went before him for wickedness’. An allowance of £1,500 p.a. was granted him, which he invariably exceeded. A year later, he married a daughter of Hugh Boscawen, the government manager for the Cornish boroughs, who brought him in for Camelford at the next general election. Having dissipated his fortune in racing and every kind of extravagance, he died at Dublin 29 May 1727, aged 26, leaving debts exceeding £180,000, which forced his successor to sell a large portion of the family’s estates in co. Louth.1Anne, Countess of Drogheda, Hist. Moore Fam. 112-16, 145.