Evelyn Pierrepont, 2nd Duke of Kingston-upon-Hull
General Evelyn Pierrepont, 2nd Duke of Kingston-upon-Hull, KG (1711 – 23 September 1773) was an English nobleman and landowner, a member of the House of Lords. He was the only son of William Pierrepont, Earl of Kingston (1692–1713) and his wife, Rachel Bayntun (1695–1722).
His paternal grandparents were Evelyn Pierrepont, 1st Duke of Kingston-upon-Hull and his wife Mary Feilding, a daughter of William Feilding, 3rd Earl of Denbigh, while his maternal grandparents were Elizabeth Willoughby and her husband Thomas Bayntun of Little Chalfield, Wiltshire, or else her lover John Hall of Bradford-on-Avon. He succeeded his grandfather in 1726, inheriting the Thoresby estate in Nottinghamshire.
When the Jacobite rising of 1745 broke out he raised a regiment called "Kingston's Light Horse," which distinguished itself at the Battle of Culloden. The duke attained the rank of general in the army.[1]
He was described by Horace Walpole as “a very weak man, of the greatest beauty and finest person in England.”
Pierrepont was the subject of the earliest extant reference to cricket in Nottinghamshire. A letter dated 1751 comments that: "the Duke of Kingston at Thoresby Hall is spending all his time practising cricket because he is to play for Eton v All England in three matches".[2]
On 8 March 1769, Pierrepont married Elizabeth Hervey at Keith's Chapel in the parish of St George's, Hanover Square, Westminster, although their marriage was later judged to have been bigamous.[3] He died in 1773 without issue, and his titles became extinct. On the death of the bigamous Duchess in 1788, the Pierrepont estates passed to Charles Medows, who was the son of the 2nd Duke's sister, Lady Frances Medows. Charles Medows changed his name to Pierrepont in 1796 and, in 1806, he was created the first Earl Manvers.[4]
References
- ^ One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Kingston-upon-Hull, Earls and Dukes of". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 15 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 821–822.
- ^ Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club[permanent dead link]
- ^ She had secretly married Augustus Hervey, 3rd Earl of Bristol in 1744.
- ^ Chisholm 1911.
