George Stepney

[1][2] Through his friend Charles Montagu, afterwards Earl of Halifax, he entered the diplomatic service, and in 1692 was sent as envoy to Brandenburg.

[2] In Nov 1697 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society[3] In 1705 Prince Eugene of Savoy requested Stepney's withdrawal on the grounds of his alleged favouritism towards the Hungarian insurgents, but the demand was taken back at the request of John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, who had great confidence in Stepney.

In the following year he returned to England in the hope of recovering from a severe illness, but died in Chelsea, London, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Much of his official and other correspondence is preserved in the letters and papers of Sir John Ellis (British Library Add MS 28875-28956), purchased from the Earl of Macclesfield in 1872, and others are available in the record office.

Samuel Johnson, who included him in his Lives of the Poets, called him a very licentious translator, and remarked that he did not recompense his neglect of the author by beauties of his own.