The Right Honourable The Lord Hervey PC
Portrait byJohn Fayram,c. 1737
Lord Privy Seal
In office 7 April 1740 – 13 July 1742
Monarch	George II
Prime Minister	Robert Walpole
Preceded by	The Earl of Godolphin
Succeeded by	The Earl Gower
Personal details
Born	(1696-10-13)13 October 1696
Died	5 August 1743(1743-08-05) (aged 46)
Spouse	Mary Lepell
Children	8, includingGeorge,Augustus andFrederick
Parent(s)	John Hervey, 1st Earl of Bristol Elizabeth Felton

John Hervey, 2nd Baron Hervey,PC (13 October 1696 – 5 August 1743) was an English courtier and political writer. Heir to theEarl of Bristol, he obtained the key patronage ofWalpole, and was involved in many court intrigues and literary quarrels, being apparently caricatured byPope andFielding. His memoirs of the early reign ofGeorge II were too revealing to be published in his time and did not appear for more than a century.

Hervey was the eldest son ofJohn Hervey, 1st Earl of Bristol, by his second wife,^[1] Elizabeth. He was known as Lord Hervey from 1723, upon the death of his elder half-brother, Carr, the only son of his father's first wife, Isabella, but Lord Hervey never becameEarl of Bristol, as he predeceased his father.

Hervey was educated atWestminster School and atClare College, Cambridge, where he took his M.A. degree in 1715.^[2] His father then sent him to Paris in 1716, and thence toHanover to pay court toGeorge I.^[1]

He was a frequent visitor at the court of the Prince and Princess of Wales atRichmond, and in 1720 he marriedMary Lepell, daughter of Nicholas Lepell, who was one of the Princess's ladies-in-waiting, and a great court beauty. In 1723 John's elder half-brother Carr died, whereby he became heir apparent to the Earldom of Bristol with the courtesy title ofLord Hervey. In 1725 he was elected M.P. forBury St Edmunds.^[1]

Hervey had been at one time on very friendly terms withFrederick, Prince of Wales, but in about 1732 they quarrelled, apparently because they were rivals for the affection ofAnne Vane. These differences probably account for the scathing picture he draws of the Prince's callous conduct. Hervey had been hesitating betweenWilliam Pulteney (afterwards earl of Bath) andRobert Walpole, but in 1730 he definitely took sides with Walpole, of whom he was thenceforward a faithful adherent. He was assumed by Pulteney to be the author ofSedition and Defamation display'd, with a Dedication to the patrons of The Craftsman (1731). Pulteney, who, up to this time, had been a firm friend of Hervey, replied withA Proper Reply to a late Scurrilous Libel, and the quarrel resulted in aduel from which Hervey narrowly escaped with his life.^[1]

Hervey is said to have denied the authorship of both the pamphlet and its dedication, but a note on the manuscript atIckworth, apparently in his own hand, states that he wrote the latter. He was able to render valuable service to Walpole from his influence with the Queen. Through him the minister governedQueen Caroline and indirectlyGeorge II. Hervey was vice-chamberlain in the royal household and a member of the Privy Council. In 1733 he was called to the House of Lords bywrit of acceleration in his father's Barony. He was then elected a governor of theFoundling Hospital prior to its foundation in 1739.^[3] In spite of repeated requests he received no further preferment until after 1740, when he becameLord Privy Seal.^[1]

After the fall of Sir Robert Walpole, he was dismissed (July 1742) from his office. A political pamphlet,Miscellaneous Thoughts on the present Posture of Foreign and Domestic Affairs, shows that he still retained his mental vigour, but he was liable to epilepsy, and his weak appearance and rigid diet were a constant source of ridicule for his enemies. He predeceased his father, but three of his sons became successively Earls of Bristol.^[1]

Hervey wrote detailed and brutally frank memoirs of the court ofGeorge II of Great Britain from 1727 to 1737. He gave a most unflattering account of the King, and ofFrederick, Prince of Wales, and their family squabbles. For the QueenCaroline of Ansbach and her daughter,Princess Caroline of Great Britain, he had genuine respect and attachment. The Princess's affection for him was commonly said to be the reason for the close retirement in which she lived after his death. The manuscript of Hervey's memoirs was preserved by the family, but his son,Augustus John, 3rd Earl of Bristol, left strict injunctions that they should not be published until after the death ofGeorge III. In 1848 they were published under the editorship ofJ. W. Croker, but the manuscript had been subjected to a certain amount of mutilation before it came into his hands. Croker also softened in some cases the plainspokenness of the original. Hervey's account of court life and intrigues resembles in many points the memoirs ofHorace Walpole, and the two books corroborate one another in many statements that might otherwise have been received with suspicion.^[1]

Until the publication of theMemoirs Hervey was chiefly known as the object of savage satire on the part ofAlexander Pope, in whose works he figured as Lord Fanny,Sporus,Adonis andNarcissus. The quarrel is generally put down to Pope's jealousy of Hervey's friendship withLady Mary Wortley Montagu. In the first of theImitations ofHorace, addressed to William Fortescue, Lord Fanny and Sappho were generally identified with Hervey and Lady Mary, although Pope denied the personal intention. Hervey had already been attacked in theDunciad and thePeribathous, and he now retaliated. There is no doubt that he had a share in theVerses to the Imitator of Horace (1732) and it is possible that he was the sole author. In theLetter from a nobleman at Hampton Court to a Doctor of Divinity (1733), he scoffed at Pope's deformity and humble birth.^[1]

Pope's reply was aLetter to a Noble Lord, dated November 1733, and the portrait of Sporus in theEpistle to Dr Arbuthnot (1743), which forms the prologue to the satires. Many of the insinuations and insults contained in it are borrowed from Pulteney'sA Proper Reply to a late Scurrilous Libel.^[1]

Some literary critics, such as Martin C. Battestin,^[4] suggest that Pope's friend and fellow-satiristHenry Fielding intended the character of Beau Didapper inJoseph Andrews to be read as Hervey. Beau Didapper is described as obedient to the commands of a "Great Man" (presumably Walpole) "which he implicitly submitted to, at the Expence of his Conscience, his Honour, and of his Country." Didapper is also compared toHylas, and is mistaken for a woman in the dark on account of his soft skin.

The malicious caricature of Sporus does Hervey great injustice, and he is not much better treated by Horace Walpole, who in reporting his death in a letter (14 August 1743) to Horace Mann, said he had outlived his last inch of character. Nevertheless, his writings prove him to have been a man of real ability, condemned by Walpole's tactics and distrust of able men to spend his life in court intrigue, the weapons of which, it must be owned, he used with the utmost adroitness. His wife Lady Hervey (1700–1768), of whom an account is to be found inLady Louisa Stuart'sAnecdotes, was a warm partisan of theStuarts. She retained her wit and charm throughout her life, and has the distinction of being the recipient of English verses byVoltaire.^[1]

Hervey marriedMary Lepell (1700–1768) on 21 April 1720. They had eight children:

1. George William Hervey, 2nd Earl of Bristol (1721–1775), unmarried
2. Lepell Hervey (15 April 1723 – 11 May 1780), married in 1743Constantine John Phipps, 1st Baron Mulgrave, leaving issue
3. Augustus John Hervey, 3rd Earl of Bristol (1724–1779), died without legitimate issue
4. Mary Hervey (1725–1815),^[5] married 1747^[6] George FitzGerald, ofTurlough, County Mayo, and was the mother of the notoriously eccentric duellistGeorge Robert FitzGerald, hanged forconspiracy to murder in 1786
5. Frederick Augustus Hervey, 4th Earl of Bristol (1730–1803), married 1752 Elizabeth Davers, had issue
6. General William Hervey (13 May 1732 – 1815), unmarried
7. Amelia Caroline Nassau Hervey (1734–1814), unmarried
8. Caroline Hervey (1736–1819), unmarried

Hervey wasbisexual.^[7] He had an affair with Anne Vane, and possibly withLady Townshend,^[8]Lady Mary Wortley Montagu andPrincess Caroline. He lived withStephen Fox often during the decade after he followed him to Italy in 1728. He wrote passionate love letters toFrancesco Algarotti, whom he first met in 1736. He may have had a sexual affair withPrince Frederick before their friendship dissolved. He was in fact denounced as a sexually ambiguous figure in his time most notably byWilliam Pulteney, then leader of the Opposition and as cited above, by Alexander Pope in his "Sporus" portrait: "Let Sporus tremble/What that thing of silk...His wit all seesaw between that and this/Now high, now low, now master up, now miss/And he himself one vile antithesis...". He was also attracted toHenry Fox before his affair with Stephen Fox.^[9][10]

See Hervey'sMemoirs of the Court of George II, edited byJohn Wilson Croker (1848); and an article by G. F. Russell Barker in theDictionary of National Biography.^[11] Besides theMemoirs he wrote numerous political pamphlets, and someoccasional verses.

Hervey appears as a character in the 1999 British television seriesAristocrats, where he is portrayed byAnthony Finigan. He is shown acting as a patron to the youngerHenry Fox.

Hervey appears as a character in the historical novelPeter: The Untold True Story (2013) by Christopher Mechling, a tale of 18th-century feral childPeter the Wild Boy, whom the author believes to have been the inspiration forPeter Pan.^[12][13]

• Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs

• Moore, Lucy,Amphibious Thing: The Life of Lord Hervey (pub. Viking, 2000)

For a recent account of Hervey and Caroline, see Janice Hadlow,The Strangest Family.The Private Lives of George III, Queen Charlotte and the Hanoverians. London 2014.

• John Hervey at theEighteenth-Century Poetry Archive (ECPA)
• Works by John Hervey, 2nd Baron Hervey atProject Gutenberg
• Works by or about John Hervey, 2nd Baron Hervey at theInternet Archive

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