LEGGE, Hon. Heneage (1788-1844), of Richmond, Surr.

Legge was described in 1812 as ‘a delightful little man, quiet, clever, singing beautifully and drawing excellent caricatures, and all within five feet four’.1Letters of Countess Granville, i. 43. Lord Auckland’s son George Eden informed his father apropos of the Oxford city election that year: ‘When Wright and Lockhart coalesced I in one of my speeches called them coupled dogs and Heneage Legge etched the caricature in which all the portraits are good likenesses’.2Add. 34458, f. 408. Subsequently he became secretary and treasurer of Grillion’s Club and a barrister practising on the Oxford circuit. On 31 Oct. 1819, following the tragic death of Frederick Douglas, Henry Legge informed Lord Colchester, ‘My nephew Heneage will, I believe, be the new representative for Banbury’.3PRO 30/9/16. This was on the interest of the 3rd Earl of Guilford, whose grandfather had married Legge’s great grandmother en secondes noces and thereby drawn the two families into close association. He neither spoke nor voted against ministers in his first session. He died 12 Dec. 1844.