Earl of Bridgewater

The title Earl of Bridgewater was created secondly in 1617 for John Egerton, Baron Ellesmere and Viscount Brackley, after the town of Bridgwater in Somerset, where he owned estates.

Thomas Egerton was knighted in 1594, admitted to the Privy Council in 1596 and in 1603 he was raised to the Peerage of England as Baron Ellesmere, in the County of Shropshire, and in 1616 to Viscount Brackley.

Thomas Egerton, both died in the fire which destroyed Bridgwater House in London.

Lord Bridgewater was succeeded by his eldest surviving son from his second marriage, the fourth Earl.

Lord Bridgewater was a General in the Army and also sat as Tory Member of Parliament for Morpeth and for Brackley.

He was childless and on his death in 1823 the titles passed to his younger brother, the eighth Earl.

In the early 17th century, Thomas Egerton, 1st Viscount Brackley, had purchased Ashridge House in Hertfordshire, one of the largest country houses in England, from Queen Elizabeth I, who had inherited it from her father who had appropriated it after the dissolution of the monasteries in 1539.

[4] Lady Amelia Egerton, sister of the seventh and eighth Earls, married Sir Abraham Hume, 2nd Baronet.

Also, Lady Louisa Egerton, daughter of the first Duke of Bridgewater, married Granville Leveson-Gower, 1st Marquess of Stafford.

A scoundrel claiming to be the long-lost but rightful Duke of Bridgewater appears in the 1885 novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, which is set before the American Civil War.