Bathurst, Allen Bathurst, 1st Earl, Baron Bathurst Of Battlesden

▪ British statesman

born November 16, 1684, Westminster, London, Eng.

died September 16, 1775, Cirencester, Gloucestershire

      British statesman and Tory politician.

      Educated at Trinity College, Oxford, Bathurst became member of Parliament for Cirencester in 1705 and held the seat until 1712, when he was one of 12 Tories raised to the peerage, becoming Baron Bathurst. He defended Francis Atterbury, bishop of Rochester, against charges of complicity in a plot against King George I in 1722. He was a consistent opponent of Sir Robert Walpole in the House of Lords and became a privy councillor after Walpole's fall (1742). Soon after the accession of George III, he was given a pension of £2,000 a year, and in 1772 he was created Earl Bathurst. The writers Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, William Congreve, and Laurence Sterne were among his friends.

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