William Cavendish, 5th Duke of Devonshire
William Cavendish, 5th Duke of Devonshire KG (born December 14, 1748 in Devonshire House , London , † July 29, 1811 there ) was a British nobleman .
Life
William Cavendish was the eldest son of four children of Prime Minister William Cavendish, 4th Duke of Devonshire (1720–1764), and his wife Charlotte Elizabeth Boyle, 6th Baroness Clifford (1731–1754), youngest daughter of Richard Boyle, 3. Earl of Burlington , and Lady Dorothy Savile.
William Cavendish was placed in the care of an educator very early on. Later, he studied at Trinity College of the University of Cambridge philosophy and politics . When his mother died early in 1754, he had inherited her title of nobility as 7th Baron Clifford . When his father died early in 1764, he inherited a huge fortune and his title of Duke of Devonshire .
In the following years the Duke was closely associated with the spa town of Buxton in Derbyshire . He used the profits from his copper mine by building the Buxton Crescent and the Devonshire Royal Hospital there.
In 1782 he was accepted as a knight in the Order of the Garter .
Marriages and offspring
On June 6, 1774, William Cavendish married Lady Georgiana Spencer (1757-1806), the eldest daughter of John Spencer, 1st Earl Spencer , and his wife Georgiana Poyntz, a great-great-granddaughter of John Churchill, 1st Duke, at Wimbledon near London of Marlborough . The marriage had three children:
- Georgiana Dorothy "Little G" (1783-1858), ⚭ 1801 George Howard, 6th Earl of Carlisle ;
- Harriet Elizabeth "Hary-O" (1785–1862), ⚭ 1809 Granville Leveson-Gower, 1st Earl Granville ;
- William George "Hart" (1790-1858), Marquess of Hartington, later 6th Duke of Devonshire.
In 1782 the Cavendish couple met Lady Elizabeth Foster (1758-1824), a daughter of Frederick Hervey, 4th Earl of Bristol , and the Lady Elizabeth Davers, who was separated from her husband , in Bath , who became a close friend of the Duchess Georgiana became. From that time on they lived in a “ ménage a trois ” that lasted more than twenty years. After the Duke had become a widower, he married Lady Elizabeth on October 19, 1809, who rose to the Duchess of Devonshire . She bore the Duke two children before the marriage: Sir Augustus Clifford, 1st Baronet and Lady Caroline St. Jules. The Duke also had another daughter from an affair with Charlotte Spencer, the daughter of a clergyman. The child, called Charlotte Williams, was born in 1774, shortly after his marriage to Lady Georgiana Spencer (not related to her).
literature
- Amanda Foreman : Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire . London 1998.
- Amanda Foreman: Georgiana's world. The illustrated Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire . HarperCollins, London 2001.
- Charles Mosley: Burke's Peerage , Baronetage & Knightage . Burke's Peerage (Genealogical Books) Ltd., Wilmington 2003.
- George Edward Cokayne , et al (Eds.): The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom . Alan Sutton Publishing, Gloucester 2000.
Web links
- William Cavendish, 5th Duke of Devonshire on thepeerage.com , accessed September 10, 2016.
| predecessor | Office | successor |
|---|---|---|
| William Cavendish |
Duke of Devonshire 1764-1811 |
William Cavendish |
| Charlotte Elizabeth Boyle |
Baron Clifford 1754-1811 |
William Cavendish |
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Cavendish, William, 5th Duke of Devonshire |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Cavendish, William 7th Baron Clifford |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British nobleman |
| DATE OF BIRTH | December 14, 1748 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Devonshire House, London |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 29, 1811 |
| Place of death | Devonshire House, London |