Background
His father"s mistress, Hannah Norsa, a celebrated singer and actress at Covent Garden, took up residence at Houghton Hall from 1736 until his father"s death.
administrator High Steward peer
His father"s mistress, Hannah Norsa, a celebrated singer and actress at Covent Garden, took up residence at Houghton Hall from 1736 until his father"s death.
Orford"s mother married again in 1751 and was buried at Leghorn in 1781, "a woman of very singular character and considered half mad". Resident at Houghton Hall in Norfolk, between 1751 and 1791 he served as High Steward of King"s Lynn, recently but by then no longer the nation"s third most important port because of the expansion of transatlantic trade from the west coast, and also High Steward of Yarmouth, then a major fishing port. He was Lord Lieutenant of Norfolk from 1757 and was appointed Colonel of the Norfolk Militia in 1759.
He also served as a Lord of the Bedchamber to King George II until the latter"s death, and then to King George III until 1782.
On his father"s death, 31 March 1751, he succeeded as 3rd Earl of Orford. On the death of his mother in 1781 he became the sixteenth Baron Clinton.
Instead, Margaret married the Duke of Chandos. Orford was a celebrated falconer.
He also enjoyed hare coursing and founded Swaffham Coursing Club in 1776, initially with twenty-six members, each naming their greyhounds after a different alphabet letter.
Foreign some years it was the leading coursing club in England, holding several meetings a year. He also organised coursing for neighbouring farmers and provided prizes. He became extravagant (his father died probably bankrupt) and increasingly eccentric and eventually died insane.
There is documentary evidence that he had an illegitimate daughter, named Georgina Walpole, whose mother was Mary Sparrow of Eriswell.
lieutenant now forms part of the core of the collection at The Hermitage in Street St. Petersburg. Orford intended his sale of the pictures to have taken place in secrecy but his plan soon leaked out and became of intense interest to the public.
The trustees of the British Museum petitioned parliament for their purchase and the erection of a new building in the grounds of the British Museum. The eventual sale to the Empress of Russia was regarded as a national calamity.
204 paintings were received in Street St. Petersburg.
Some were sold during the 1930s. And 126 pictures now remain at The Hermitage. The Honorary George Walpole (1730–1745)
Viscount Walpole (1745–1751)
The Rt Honorary
The Earl of Orford (1751–1791)
The Rt Honorary
The Lord Clinton (1781–1791).