George O'Brien Wyndham, 3rd Earl of Egremont (18 December 1751 – 11 November 1837) was an English peer, landowner and art collector. He was interested in the latest scientific advances. He was an agriculturist and a friend of the agricultural writer Arthur Young, and was an enthusiastic canal builder who invested in many commercial ventures for the improvement of his estates. He played a limited role in politics.
He was a great patron of art, and the painter J. M. W. Turner lived for a while at his Sussex seat of Petworth House. Other talented artists – including John Constable, Charles Robert Leslie, George Romney and the sculptor John Flaxman – received commissions from Wyndham, who filled his house with valuable works of art. The Earl was a sponsor of the Petworth Emigration Scheme intended to relieve rural poverty caused by overpopulation. Generous and hospitable, blunt and eccentric, the earl was in his day a very prominent figure in English society. Charles Greville assessed him as "immensely rich and his munificence was equal to his wealth" and wrote that "in his time Petworth was like a great inn."
Though Wyndham had more than 40 children, the only legitimate one died in infancy. Lord Egremont was succeeded in the earldom by his nephew George Wyndham, 4th Earl of Egremont (1786–1845), but bequeathed his unentailed estates, namely the former Percy estates including Petworth House in Sussex, Leconfield Castle in Yorkshire and Egremont Castle in Cumbria, to his eldest illegitimate son Col. George Wyndham, 1st Baron Leconfield (5 June 1787 – 18 March 1869).
Early life Wyndham was born on 18 December 1751, the eldest son and heir of Charles Wyndham, 2nd Earl of Egremont (1710–1763) of Orchard Wyndham and Petworth House, by his wife Alicia Maria Carpenter, daughter of George Carpenter, 2nd Baron Carpenter of Killaghy, by his wife Elizabeth Petty.
In 1763, at the age of 12, he succeeded to his father's titles and estates at Petworth in Sussex, Egremont in Cumbria, Leconfield with further land in Wiltshire and also the large estates at Orchard Wyndham in Somerset, the family's oldest possession. He later inherited the lands of the Earl of Thomond in Ireland.
He was educated at Wandsworth and Westminster Schools. In 1774, he added O'Brien to his name upon inheriting extensive estates in Ireland from his uncle Percy Wyndham-O'Brien, 1st Earl of Thomond. He went on two grand tours to Italy in the 1770s. At the family's newly built London residence, Egremont House, he associated with fashionable Macaronis.Jerrome, p. 62
Patron of the arts
Wyndham was a patron of painters such as Turner and Constable, and of the sculptor John Flaxman who contributed a heroic group of Michael overthrowing Satan for the North Gallery at Petworth. Turner spent much time at Petworth House and had a studio on an upper floor. He painted landscapes of Petworth, Arundel, and one of the Earl's canal projects, the Chichester Ship Canal. Like his father, the Earl also collected French furniture, as when on a visit to Paris in July 1802 during the Peace of Amiens, he bought a pair of five-light candelabra supported by bronze female caryatids,with upraised arms and with their legs flanked by seated gryphons holding up the ends of their tunics so as to reveal their feet supplied by Martin-Eloy Lignereux.
Canal builder The Earl was an enthusiast for canal building, which would allow for agricultural improvement on his Petworth estates by bringing in chalk from Houghton for liming, and coal to replace scarce supplies of firewood, releasing more land for food production. The first venture was the Rother Navigation, making the River Rother navigable to Midhurst. Failing, during the time of Canal Mania, to find any reliable contractor able to undertake the construction, most of the work was done by the Earl's own estate workers.Vine, p. Starting from Stopham the Navigation reached Petworth in 1795 and Midhurst in 1796. A branch to Haslingbourne, south of Petworth, was then built, known as the Petworth Canal. This was originally intended to be extended north to link to the River Wey, but following unfavourable surveys, the plan was abandoned when the cost of locks needed to reach the north side of Petworth proved prohibitive.Vine Lost Route to Midhurst, pp. 64–67
In 1796, the Earl purchased 36 per cent of the shares in the Arun Navigation Company, saving it from bankruptcy when it was burdened with the £16,000 cost of building the Coldwaltham cut and Hardham tunnel.Vine, Arun navigation, p. 7 Having abandoned plans for a canal from Petworth to Shalford and keen for the nation to have an inland waterway linking London and Portsmouth, safe from natural hazards to coastal shipping and naval attack by the French, the Earl turned his attention to linking the River Arun to the River Wey in Surrey. The Arun Canal had extended the navigable length of the River Arun to Newbridge on the road from Wisborough Green to Billingshurst and the Wey and Arun Junction Canal was completed in 1816 to connect to the Godalming Navigation. In 1823, the completion of the Portsmouth and Arundel Canal, including the Chichester Ship Canal, completed the London to Portsmouth route for barges and marked the end of the Earl's investment in canal building.P.A.L. Vine West Sussex waterways .
A number of vessels were named Egremont, including a barge on the Arun Navigation,Vine, Arun navigation, p. 59 a brigantine built at Littlehampton for coastal trading and wrecked on the Goodwin Sands after only two years, and later a steam tug used to tow barges across Chichester and Langstone harbours for the Portsmouth and Arundel Canal.
Promoter of emigration War with France and population growth made famine an ever-present danger in the early nineteenth century and there was an urgent need to maximise food production using any land that could be cultivated. In the 1820s, emigration, mostly to Canada, was promoted as a means of relieving rural unemployment and poverty. Thomas Sockett, Rector of Petworth and Wyndham's protégé, promoted the Petworth Emigration Scheme, which sent 1,800 people from Sussex and neighbouring counties to Upper Canada between 1832 and 1837. The Earl encouraged those living on his land to join the scheme by offering to pay the £10 per head cost of passage.Wright, DebatesHaines and Lawson, p. 159
Agriculture
The agriculturist Arthur Young stayed at Petworth House while conducting his surveys of English agriculture. The Earl established a pedigree herd of Sussex cattle from the local breed which was commended by Young who wrote that they "must be unquestionably ranked among the best of the kingdom".Young, p. 226 A herd descended from these animals is maintained at Stag Park at the present day. Devon and Hereford cattle were also kept, together with crossbreds. Different breeds of sheep were tried and exotic Tibetan Shaul goats, which produced fine wool for hatters.Jerrome, p. 65
Stag Park model farm was created in the northern part of Petworth Park on land cleared of scrub and gorse, consisting of between 700 and 800 acres divided into fields and drained.Young, pp. 188–189 Land previously used for producing wood fuel could then be released for food production as wood had been replaced by coal delivered by the new canal system. Crop rotations including turnips, tares, wheat, barley, oats and grass were introduced. Potatoes were grown at Petworth and rhubarb as medicine. More unusually Young describes opium production at Petworth, with juices from the incised poppy heads being scraped into earthenware bowls and dried in the sun. The 1797 crop was the largest grown in England and was said to be purer than imported opium.Jerrome, p. 64
The 24,000-acre estates in Yorkshire at Wressle and Leconfield in the East Riding, Catton and Seamer in the North Riding, and Spofforth and Tadcaster in the West Riding were also greatly improved with £26,000 spent on drainage and fencing alone between 1797 and 1812.
As well as breeding horses and introducing improved machinery, the Earl was keen to continue using draught-oxen when they were going out of favour elsewhere. Young records that by experiment traditional wooden yokes were found to be superior to horse-style collars.
John Ellman, writing in The History, Antiquities and Topography of the County of Sussex by Thomas Walker Horsfield (1835), writes of Wyndham:
Horses—This county must not boast of their breed. The Earl of Egremont, with a spirit of liberality which pervades all his actions, gives to farmers, in the neighbourhood of Petworth, the opportunity of breeding from his valuable stud; his lordship also affords the eastern part of the county the same opportunity, by giving the use of one of his best bred horses to Mr. Brown, the venerable training groom at Lewes; his lordship also gives annual premiums to the breeders of the best colts, shewn at Egdean fair, near Petworth.
In 1800, Wyndham bought land at Houghton, Sussex, where he developed chalk pits, which in 1808 Arthur Young reported as producing annually. A canal cut was dug from the River Arun to allow chalk to be moved by barge to lime kilns on higher reaches of the river system, including one at Haslingbourne, south of Petworth.Vine, Arun navigation, p. 54
Other enterprises Paper mills were established at Duncton, south of Petworth and at Iping, west of Midhurst.Haines and Lawson, p. 99 Near Northchapel, a government factory was set up to produce high-quality charcoal (for making gunpowder) from alder wood in coal-heated iron cylinders.
At Spofforth in North Yorkshire, the geologist William Smith was employed to search for coal and iron ore deposits. Between 1803 and 1804, £1,000 was invested in sinking test wells, with the use of steam engines to pump out water. Six thin veins of coal were found but were insufficient to be of commercial value.
Horse racing Wyndham maintained a racing stud near Lewes and had his first winner at Lewes in 1777. Assassin won the Derby in 1782, the first of his five Derby winners and five Oaks winners.Jerrome, p. 63 His racing silks were dark green with a black cap.
Politics
Wyndham was a member of the Whig party. In 1787, he bought the pocket borough of Midhurst and used it to return his two younger brothers, Charles and Percy, to the House of Commons. Charles only served in one parliament for Midhurst and by 1796 the seat had been sold to Robert Smith, 1st Baron Carrington. When the party split in 1792 over the French Revolution he sided with the more conservative faction which supported Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger in his condemnation of the "wicked and seditious" writings of radicals such as Thomas Paine.Jerrome, p. 134 He opposed the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 which introduced the harsh workhouse system. When the Sussex Poor Law Commissioner William Hawley visited Petworth House in October 1835 he was politely received but was informed that the Earl considered the Act "one of the worst measures that could have been devised".
While Egremont remained aloof from day-to-day affairs, his secretary Thomas Sockett, Rector of Petworth, was deeply involved with poor relief and emigration, and became engaged in bitter disputes with the commissioner over the provision of relief to Petworth paupers and the running of the Petworth Emigration Scheme. The national press reported the matter and Sockett, together with other witnesses from Petworth, gave evidence to a House of Commons select committee in March 1837.Haines and Lawson, pp. 173–180
Military