Philip Yorke Hardwicke

Cambridge, England, 1757 - 1834

BiographyLibrary of Congress Authority Record n 83040477
Library of Congress Heading: Hardwicke, Philip Yorke, Earl of, 1757-1834

Biography:

Yorke, Philip, third earl of Hardwicke (1757–1834), politician, the eldest son of Charles Yorke (1722–1770), lord chancellor, and his first wife, Catherine Freeman (d. 1759), was born in St George's parish, Bloomsbury, London, on 31 May 1757. He was educated at Harrow School (1770–71) and Queens' College, Cambridge, where he received the degree of MA in 1776 and that of LLD in 1811. From 1777 to 1779 he travelled through the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland and kept a journal of his grand tour. Chosen to stand for parliament for Cambridgeshire by his uncle, Philip Yorke, second earl of Hardwicke, he was elected second county member on 14 September 1780 after a very costly election. He represented the constituency until his accession to the peerage as third earl of Hardwicke on his uncle's death, on 16 May 1790. He married, on 24 July 1782, Lady Elizabeth Lindsay (1763–1858), the third daughter of James Lindsay, fifth earl of Balcarres, and his wife, Anne Dalrymple. They had four daughters and two sons.

In politics Yorke at first followed Fox, but he grew increasingly doubtful of Fox's stance towards the king and by 1785 was giving independent support to Pitt's administration. He was appointed lord lieutenant of Ireland in March 1801, and served as the first viceroy in post-union Ireland until the formation of the ‘ministry of all the talents’ in February 1806. Together with his chief secretary, Charles Abbot, he did much to allay the irritation caused by the union, not least by the reforms he authorized in the Irish offices. He ‘proved a very conscientious, at times indeed fussy, viceroy’ (McDowell, 53), and became himself a convert to Catholic emancipation, to which cause he steadfastly adhered until its triumph in 1829. To the parliamentary Reform Bill of 1831 he gave a qualified support.

Hardwicke was a keen patron of the arts and commissioned John Soane, whom he had met in Italy on the grand tour, to make additions to his country house, Wimpole Hall in Cambridgeshire, including the celebrated neo-classical yellow drawing room. He was also FRS and FSA, and a trustee of the British Museum; from 1790 he served as lord lieutenant of Cambridgeshire and from 1806 as high steward of Cambridge University. He was elected KG on 25 November 1803 and installed by proxy, having received the insignia at Dublin on 23 April 1805. He died at Tyttenhanger, Hertfordshire, on 18 November 1834 and was buried on 21 November in the family vault at Wimpole Hall. The title devolved upon his nephew Charles Philip Yorke (1799–1873).

J. M. Rigg, rev. Hallie Rubenhold
(J. M. Rigg, ‘Yorke, Philip, third earl of Hardwicke (1757–1834)’, rev. Hallie Rubenhold, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 [http://proxy.bostonathenaeum.org:2055/view/article/30248, accessed 20 Jan 2016])

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Last Updated8/7/24

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