Brought in by the Government for Orford in 1747, Waldegrave was made a lord of the bedchamber, no doubt through the influence of his brother, Lord Waldegrave, ‘a personal favourite of the King’. In 1751 he married the sister of the Duchess of Bedford without the consent of her father, Lord Gower, who was so much incensed with Lord Sandwich for allowing the marriage to be performed at his apartments in the Admiralty that he broke with him and did not resign with the Duke of Bedford when Sandwich was dismissed a month later. At the beginning of 1752 Bedford is reported to have come to town ‘resolved to make use of the remains of the King’s favour to ask a pension for ... Lady Elizabeth Waldegrave’,1Walpole, Mems. Geo. II, i. 92, 188, 242. which however was not granted till some years later.
Waldegrave died 22 Oct. 1784.