Heir to the Earl of Bristol, he obtained the key patronage of Walpole, and was involved in many court intrigues and literary quarrels, being apparently caricatured by Pope and Fielding.

[1] Hervey had been at one time on very friendly terms with Frederick, Prince of Wales, but in about 1732 they quarrelled, apparently because they were rivals for the affection of Anne Vane.

[1] Hervey is said to have denied the authorship of both the pamphlet and its dedication, but a note on the manuscript at Ickworth, apparently in his own hand, states that he wrote the latter.

An excellent 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.

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was preserved by the family, but his son, Augustus John, 3rd Earl of Bristol, left strict injunctions that they should not be published until after the death of George III.

Hervey's account of court life and intrigues resembles in many points the memoirs of Horace Walpole, and the two books corroborate one another in many statements that might otherwise have been received with suspicion.

[1] Until the publication of the Memoirs Hervey was chiefly known as the object of savage satire on the part of Alexander Pope, in whose works he figured as Lord Fanny, Sporus, Adonis and Narcissus.

In the first of the Imitations of Horace, addressed to William Fortescue, Lord Fanny and Sappho were generally identified with Hervey and Lady Mary, although Pope denied the personal intention.

[1] Pope's reply was a Letter to a Noble Lord, dated November 1733, and the portrait of Sporus in the Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot (1743), which forms the prologue to the satires.

[1] Some literary critics, such as Martin C. Battestin,[4] suggest that Pope's friend and fellow-satirist Henry Fielding intended the character of Beau Didapper in Joseph Andrews to be read as Hervey.

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.

[9][10] See Hervey's Memoirs of the Court of George II, edited by John Wilson Croker (1848); and an article by G. F. Russell Barker in the Dictionary of National Biography.

[12][13] 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.