said to have answered, ‘The Lord in heaven knows’ (Hatsell, Precedents of Proceedings in the House of Commons, i. 237).
In June 1761 Onslow was elected a trustee of the British Museum, in the establishment of which he had taken the greatest interest. Several books, now long forgotten, were dedicated to him. His ‘Character of Archbishop Abbot upon reading Lord Clarendon's account of him,’ written in 1723, is appended to the ‘Life of Dr. George Abbot, Lord Archbishop of Canterbury,’ Guildford, 1777, 8vo. His speech on presenting the Money Bills to the king on 29 April 1740 was published in pamphlet form (London, 1740, 8vo), where it is erroneously stated that the speech was delivered on 29 April 1739. A number of Onslow's notes will be found in Burnet's 'History of his own Time,' 1833, and in the second volume of Hatsell. His correspondence with the Duke of Newcastle, 1738-65, is preserved in the British Museum (see Index to the Addit. MSS. 1882-7, p. 873). The Clandon Library (at Clandon Park, Surrey), formed by him, and containing many books with his autograph notes, was sold at Sotheby's in March 1885.
Onslow married in 1720 Anne (1703-1763), daughter of John Bridges of Thames Ditton, and niece and coheiress of Henry Bridges of Ember Court, in the same parish, by whom he had a son, George Onslow, first earl of Onslow [q. v.], and a daughter Anne, who died unmarried on 20 Dec. 1751.
A whole-length portrait of Onslow, in his speaker's robes, by Sir Godfrey Kneller, is in the National Portrait Gallery. There are portraits of him in the hall of Wadham College and in the town-hall of Guildford. Onslow is the principal figure in the ‘House of Commons,’ painted by Hogarth and Sir James Thornhill, which was exhibited at the loan collection of national portraits at South Kensington in 1867 (Catalogue, No. 285), an engraving of which is given in Nichols and Stevens's ‘Genuine Works of William Hogarth’ (ii. opp.285). There are several engravings of Onslow by Faber and others after Hysing; and a curious one of him, ‘in his seat at St. Margaret's Church, Westminster,’ by A. Walker, forms the frontispiece to Wilson's ‘Ornaments of Churches considered,’ Oxford, 1761, 4to.
[Walpole's Memoirs of the Reign of George II, 1847; Walpole's Memoirs of the Reign of George III, 1845; Walpole's Letters, 1857, vols. i. ii. iii. iv.; Hatsell's Precedents of Proceedings in the House of Commons, &c, 1818, pp. ii, vi-vii, 228, 236-7, 241, 354. 384, 393-7, iii. 189; Browne-Willis's Notitia Parliamentaria, 1750, iii. 118; Manning's Speakers of the House of Commons, 1851, pp. 435-40; Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, 1813-15, vols. i. ii. iii. iv. viii. ix.; Nichols's Literary Illustrations, 1817-58, iii. 492, iv. 252-4, v. 166, vi. 460; Nichols and Stevens's Genuine Works of William Hogarth, 1808-17, i. 259-60, ii. 285-6; Boswell's Life of Johnson (ed. G. B. Hill), ii. 165, v. 396; Georgian Era, 1832, i. 537-8; Gent. Mag. 1768, p. 94; Brayley and Britton's History of Surrey, 1850, i. 308, 343-4, ii. 58, 104, 415, 433; Collins's Peerage, 1812, v. 472-6; Burke's Peerage, 1892, p. 1058; Foster's Alumni Oxonienses, 1500-1714 (1891), iii. 1090; Gardiner's Registers of Wadham College. Oxford, 1889, pt. i. pp. 435-6; Notes and Queries, 6th ser. xi. 220, 405, 8th ser. iii. 167, 258, 318; Official Return of Lists of Members of Parliament, pt. ii. pp. 44, 56, 67, 79, 92, 104, 117; Brit. Mus. Cat.]
ONSLOW, GEORGE (1731–1792), politician, was the eldest son of Lieutenant-general Richard Onslow, M.P. for Guildford, by his second wife, Pooley, daughter of Charles Walton of Little Burstead, Essex. Admiral Sir Richard Onslow [q.v.] was his brother, and Arthur Onslow [q. v.], speaker of the House of Commons, his uncle. He was born on 28 April 1731, and became a lieutenant-colonel in the 1st foot guards on 27 March 1759. He succeeded his father as one of the members for Guildford in March 1760, and continued to sit for that borough until his retirement from the House of Commons at the dissolution in March 1784. At the outset of his parliamentary career Onslow was one of Rockingham's supporters. He was ‘the single member who said that No. 45 was not a libel,’ and he voted against the expulsion of Wilkes (Cavendish, Parl. Debates, i. 124-5, 226-7). He voted for the repeal of the Stamp Act in 1766 (ib. ii. 25-6), but subsequently changed his views, and became an adherent of the Duke of Grafton. On the report of the address in November 1767, Onslow ‘diverted the house with proposing, in imitation of the Romans, who used to send senators to inquire into the state of their provinces, to despatch Grenville to America on that errand’ (Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of George III, iii. 116-17; The Works of Benjamin Franklin, 1838, vii. 371-373). On 9 Dec. 1768 he brought before the notice of the house ‘a paper of seditious nature’ which had been stuck up at the corner of Bond Street, and for which one Joseph Thornton, a milkman, was subsequently committed to Newgate (Cavendish, Parl. Debates, i. 101-2). On 8 May 1770 he opposed Burke's resolutions relating to the disorders in North America, and called upon him ‘to found the censure upon established truth, not upon vague and general declamation’ (Parl.
