ceeded to the command of that place, and was the first English governor who declared it a free port[1].
Granville, son of General Roger Eliot, was originally an officer in the English army, but retired from it early in life, to study military tactics at the university of Leyden, in company with his afterwards so highly distinguished cousin. Having married one of the Empress of Germany’s ladies of honor, he was induced to accept an appointment in the service of the Emperor, who afterwards conferred on him the rank of a Count of the Empire, together with the appointment of Chamberlain to his Majesty. Being esteemed an officer of considerable merit, he was, in the year 1758, called back into the English service, with the rank of Major-General, appointed Colonel of the 61st regiment, and immediately placed on the staff, in command of a brigade of the army, under the Duke of Marlborough, then about to proceed against St. Maloes, escorted by Admiral Lord Anson[2]. In the following year, the Major-General was appointed to the staff of the allied army in Germany, under the command of Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick; but having been urged to proceed on this service at a period when his health was in a very precarious state, he was soon afterwards suddenly taken ill at Rotheim, the headquarters of his Serene Highness, where he died, and was buried with very distinguished military honors. By his first wife he left one son, also a general officer, who died in France, without issue, in the year 1816; and was succeeded in his titles (Count Eliot and Morhange) by his eldest half-brother, Percival, who, however, did not think proper to assume them, and only survived him two years. The mother of this latter gentleman was a daughter and co-heiress of Colonel William Duckett.
The subject of the following memoir is a son of the said Percival Eliot, Esq. formerly Colonel of the Stafford militia, and many years a Commissioner for auditing the public accounts. He was born at Shenstone Hall, near Litchfield, in the above comity, Aug. 23d, 1790; and appears to have entered the royal navy, in Dec. 1802, as midshipman on board the Belleisle 74, then commanded by the late Captain John Whitby, at Plymouth, but subsequently by the present Sir William Hargood, and attached to the fleet under Lord Nelson, on the Mediterranean station, from whence she accompanied that hero to the West Indies in pursuit of the combined forces of France and Spain. On her return home,
- ↑ See Drinkwater’s History of the Siege of Gibraltar.
- ↑ See Vol. I. Part I. note at p. 154 et seq.
