suc. fa. 7 Dec. 1711 (a minor) as 2nd Bar. LEOMINSTER (LEMPSTER); cr. 27 Dec. 1721 earl of POMFRET (PONTEFRACT).
First sat 9 Dec. 1719; last sat 13 Mar. 1753
b. 23 Mar. 1698, s. of William Fermor, Bar. Leominster, and Sophia, da. of Thomas Osborne, duke of Leeds. educ. Christ Church, Oxf. (MA 1717). m. (settlement 13 July 1720) Henrietta Louisa, da. of John Jeffreys, 2nd Bar. Jeffreys, and Charlotte, da. of Philip Herbert, 7th earl of Pembroke, 4s. (at least 2 d.v.p.), 6da. (1 d.v.p.).1 KB 27 May 1725. d. 8 July 1753;2 will 23 Jan. 1752, pr. 20 July 1753.3
Master of the horse to Queen Caroline, 1727-37.
Gov. of Guernsey, 1740-42;4 ranger, St James’s Park and Hyde Park, 1751-d.5
Col. regt. of dragoons, 1740.6
Associated with: Easton Neston, Northants. and New Bond St, Westminster.7
Likenesses: oil on canvas (with Henrietta, countess of Pontefract), by Thomas Bradwell, c. 1721, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
Leominster succeeded to the peerage while underage, though this did not prevent Sir Thomas Cave‡ from appealing to him to ‘take care of his side’ in the forthcoming elections in Buckinghamshire in the summer of 1713.8 He seems early on to have tended towards the Jacobites but a trip to Hanover was thought to have persuaded him ‘to have nothing more to say to them and never to believe what they said more’.9 His conversion resulted in several marks of favour. He was promoted in the peerage under George I and was awarded significant household and local office under George II. His career will be considered more fully in the second part of this work.
R.D.E.E.- 1 Collins, Peerage (1812 edn), iv. 206-7.
- 2 Public Advertiser, 9 July 1753; Read’s Weekly Journal, 14 July 1753.
- 3 TNA, PROB 11/803.
- 4 London Daily Post and General Advertiser, 11 July 1740.
- 5 London Evening Post, 12-14 July 1753.
- 6 Daily Gazetteer (Country edition), 30 Jan. 1741.
- 7 Universal Spectator and Weekly Journal, 17 Oct. 1741.
- 8 Verney ms mic. M636/55, Sir T. Cave to Fermanagh, 30 Aug. 1713.
- 9 Cheshire ALS, Cholmondeley mss, DCH/X/5.