Hester Grenville, 1st Countess Temple

British aristocrat

Hester Grenville, 1st Countess Temple, 2nd Viscountess Cobham (née Temple; bapt. 7 May 1684 – 6 October 1752) was an English noblewoman. She was the mother and grandmother of the Prime Ministers George Grenville and William Grenville.

Life and family

She was the daughter (and eventual co-heir) of Sir Richard Temple, 3rd Bt. (1634–1697), of Stowe, Buckinghamshire,^[2] and his wife, Mary Knapp.

Hester married Richard Grenville of Wotton in Buckinghamshire on 25 November 1710, and became the mother of five sons, all of whom served as members of parliament:

• Richard Grenville-Temple, 2nd Earl Temple (1711–1779), MP.
• George Grenville (1712–1770), MP; was Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1763 to 1765. He married Elizabeth Wyndham and had children. (George's son, William Grenville, 1st Baron Grenville, also became prime minister.)
• James Grenville (1715–1783), MP; served as a minister under his brother-in-law William Pitt the Younger. He married Mary Smyth and had children.
• Henry Grenville (1717–1784), MP; married Margaret Eleanor Banks and had children.
• Thomas Grenville (1719–1747), MP; a Royal Navy officer, who died at sea, aged 28, unmarried.

Her daughter, Hester (1720–1803), was the wife of William Pitt the Elder and mother of William Pitt the Younger, who both became prime minister.^[3]

Hester was the sister of Richard Temple, 1st Viscount Cobham, whose title she inherited under a special remainder in 1749; on 18 October of the same year, her husband being long dead, she was created 1st Countess Temple.^[4][5] Lord Cobham had excluded from succession his nephews Temple West and Gilbert West (who were sons of his elder sister Maria and Richard West), and also his other sister Penelope.^[6]

References

1. Westminster, London, England, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1558–1812
2. Larsen, Ruth M. "Pitt, Hester". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/89688. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
3. Larsen, Ruth M. - Pitt (née Grenville), Hester, countess of Chatham and suo jure Baroness Chatham (1720–1803), political wife - Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
4. "No. 8892". The London Gazette. 10 October 1749. p. 2.
5. The Complete Peerage, Volume 12, part one, page 658.
6. Kilburn, Matthew. "Temple, Richard". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/27119. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)