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.

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 and later expelled from Eton College.

Hervey was Queen Caroline's equerry from 1736-7, but he was dismissed for misconduct. However, from 1737 to 1756 he was the groom of the bedchamber to her seventh child, Prince William, Duke of Cumberland. In 1754 Hervey stood for the House of Commons against the naval officer Augustus Hervey to whom he was related having quarrelled with Lord Bristol. He became one of the Members of Parliament (MP) for Bury St Edmunds in Surrey. Hervey said that he was expecting a position by the then Whig Prime Minister Henry Pelham, but he eventually gave up hope despite Pelham's reassurances. In 1756 Hervey resigned his position with the Duke of Cumberland citing the problems of travelling several times a year. (In 1757 his nephew Augustus Hervey was narrowly elected for Bury St Edmunds by one vote despite still being in active command of a ship in the Mediterranean.)

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