Felton Hervey

Felton Hervey (12 February 1712 – 16 August 1773) was an aristocratic English politician from Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, and a member of the British royal household. He took his son and daughter on a grand tour of Italy where he met Johann Zoffany and Pope Clement XIV.

Life

Hervey was born in 1712; he was the tenth son (and seventeenth child) of John Hervey, 1st Earl of Bristol. His mother, Elizabeth Felton, was the daughter and heir of Sir Thomas Felton, 4th Baronet, who, like her husband, was also an MP for the family seat of Bury St Edmunds. He was the second child to be called Felton, as an elder brother who had lived only a few weeks had been given that name. His elder brother's brief life and death are recorded in a naive painting conserved in the Rotunda, Ickworth House, that is possibly by Joseph Brooke.

He was educated at Bury St Edmunds Grammar School

Hervey was Queen Caroline's equerry in 1736–7, but he was dismissed for misconduct. )

Hervey was successful in being appointed to the sinecure post of Remembrancer to the Exchequer. He shared this post unusually with his son, who continued with the post after his father's death. Hervey had an audience with the Pope in 1773 and died shortly after returning from Italy.

Family Hervey had married Dorothy, daughter of Solomon Ashley, of Westminster. MP and widow of Charles Pitfield of Hoxley on 25 December 1740, and together they had a son and three (or four) daughters. Caroline Hervey (b. 29 March 1745), was baptised at St James's Church, Piccadilly. Elizabeth Hervey. Isabella Hervey (b. 16 August 1756), was baptised at St James's Church, Piccadilly.

Legacy Beside the Zoffany painting there is also a much younger and larger portrait by John Fayram in the Ickworth Rotunda, and the National Trust own a miniature of him by Christian Friedrich Zincke, which dates from about 1730.

In 1775 an auction was organised by Christie's at his former home in Bury St Edmunds of his considerable art collection. Hervey's son Lieutenant Felton Lionel Hervey, who had worked for the exchequer with him, was left the manor in Bury St Edmunds.