Family and Education

b. 6 Feb. 1758, 2nd s. of John, Mq. of Granby; bro. of Charles, Mq. of Granby, and half-bro of George Manners.  educ. Eton 1763-71.  unm.

Offices Held

Entered R.N. 1775; lt. 1778; capt. 1780.

Biography

Lord Robert Manners cared much for the navy and little for politics. Rutland wrote to him on 10 Mar. 1780 about the forthcoming general election:1

You are to know that ... you are the declared candidate, and will be the chosen one, for the county of Cambridge. I am advised to declare it formally at the assizes ... and it will be necessary, if your absence from your ship can be dispensed with, for you to be present. After that there will be a meeting of the freeholders to consider of a petition ... when, as you have not an inch of property in that county, it will be indispensably necessary that you should attend and make a most violent speech.

He was elected in his absence after a bitter and expensive contest, and never took his seat in the House. An officer of courage and daring, he was badly wounded in the battle of the Saints. ‘I am as well as a man can be’, he wrote shortly after the action,2‘with one leg off, one wounded, and right arm broken. The doctor ... says there are every hopes of recovery.’ But tetanus set in, and Manners died on 23 Apr. 1782.

Ref Volumes: 1754-1790

Author: John Brooke

Notes

• 1. HMC Rutland, iii. 25.
• 2. Ibid. 52.