Background
Robert D’Arcy, born in 1718, was the only surviving son of Robert, third Earl of Holderness, and his wife, Lady Frederica, coheiress of Meinhardt Schömberg, third Duke of Schömberg.
Robert D’Arcy, born in 1718, was the only surviving son of Robert, third Earl of Holderness, and his wife, Lady Frederica, coheiress of Meinhardt Schömberg, third Duke of Schömberg.
He was educated at Westminster and at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, though it appears that he never received a degree.
In 1740 he was appointed lord lieutenant of the North Riding of Yorkshire. He undertook various diplomatic roles, attending the king as a lord of the bedchamber in Hanover in 1743, being ambassador to Venice between 1744 and 1746, and serving as minister plenipotentiary to The Hague in 1749.
On 21 June 1754 he succeeded John Firth, Duke of Bedford, as secretary of state for the Southern Department under Henry Pelham and became a privy councillor on the same day. He continued in office during the administration of the Duke of Newcastle but was transferred to the Northern Department under the fourth Duke of Devonshire. Holderness resigned the latter post in 1757 but was recalled a few days later, when Newcastle returned to become the First Lord of the Treasury and appointed him to succeed William Pitt, the Elder, in the Southern Department. After the accession of King George III—who reportedly complained that “he had two secretaries, one who would do nothing, and the other who could do nothing” —he was dismissed on 12 March 1761. He played no active part in government after that and died in 1778.