George Forbes, 3rd Earl of Granard
George Forbes, 3rd Earl of Granard PC (21 October 1685 – 19 June 1765)[1] was an Royal Navy officer, diplomat, politician, peer and colonial administrator.
[4] Forbes did duty with his troop until appointed to command the Sunderland of 60 guns, part of the western squadron under Lord Dursley, afterwards third Earl Berkeley.
In May 1709, he left his ship to do duty with his troop at Windsor, where "his sprightliness of genius and politeness of manner recommended him to Queen Anne",[5] at whose desire he was appointed to the Grafton of 70 guns.
Charles III, greatly pleased, made Forbes a grant of the duty payable at the mint for coinage of the amount, and urged him to go back to Menorca and fetch the specie.
He joined the part of the allied army under Marshal Staremberg, and was slightly wounded while charging with Brigadier Lepell's regiment at the battle of Villaviciosa, 10 December 1710.
Forbes returned to Barcelona, and found orders from home forbidding the disposal of the Genoese treasure, which sorely disconcerted the Spanish court.
Forbes obtained an order for eight hundred thousand dollars of the Genoese treasure, and set off, riding through the Netherlands, Germany, the Tyrol, and Italy to Genoa, where he took ship, with such despatch that he reached Barcelona in twenty-one days from England.
During that year, he served with the army in Spain, at the head of three hundred cavalrymen drafted from home, whom Argyll purposed to form into a new regiment of horse under Forbes's command.
[citation needed] On his return home in 1719, Forbes, at the desire of George I, proceeded to Vienna, to carry into effect a long-cherished project of the emperor Charles VI, of forming a naval power either in Naples and Sicily or on the Adriatic, for which purpose Forbes received the rank of vice-admiral in the imperial service with a salary of twelve thousand florins a year, and unlimited powers of organisation.
But the imperialist ministers looked coldly on the scheme, and adopted a policy of tacit obstruction, which at the end of two years led Forbes to resign his appointment in a private audience with the emperor, who presented him with a valuable diamond ring in recognition of his services.
On 11 March 1727 Forbes along with HMS Royal Oak captured the brand new Spanish 46-gun Fifth-rate warship Nuestra Senor Del Rosario not far from Cadiz during a relief effort into Gibraltar.
If the government at the end of that time was satisfied to take over the settlement, Forbes was to be created an English peer, with a perpetual pension of £ 1,000 a year out of the revenues of the post office.
[7] He negotiated and concluded a treaty – the first entered into by the court of St. Petersburg with any European state – for the better regulation of the customs, and for favouring the introduction of British woollen goods.
[9] When the popular outcry against Spain arose in 1739, he was offered the command of "a stout squadron" for the West Indies, but declined, believing the ministry not to be in earnest; nevertheless when his senior, Admiral Edward Vernon, who had been laid aside, was brought back over his head and sent out, Granard considered himself superseded, and refused to serve again.
He had been in treaty with Lord Dundonald for the command of the 4th troop of horse-guards, for which he was to give 10,000 £, but broke off the negotiations at the wish of the Duke of Argyll, who desired to see him rise to the head of the navy.
By Argyll's interest, Granard was returned to the House of Commons for the Scottish burghs of Ayr, Irvine, etc., in 1741, and took a very active part in the stormy discussions which drove Sir Robert Walpole from office on 3 February 1742, in consequence of which he was appointed one of the committee of inquiry into the conduct of the ex-minister.
[14][15] Through his eldest son, he was a grandfather of George Forbes, 5th Earl of Granard, a Member of Parliament for St Johnstown from 1762 to 1768 who married twice and had issue.
