Giles Earle (politician)

Giles Earle (1678 – 20 August 1758), was an English politician and wit.

Earle came from a family resident at Eastcourt, Crudwell, near Malmesbury, Wiltshire. He served in early life in the army, attaining to the rank of colonel, and was attached to John, the second duke of Argyll, who was distinguished both in war and in politics. This connection had lasted in 1716 for twenty years, and was so marked that Sir Robert Walpole, in a letter written in that year, styles him 'the Duke of Argyll's Erle'. On the accession of George I he entered into political life, and in that king's first parliament (1715–22) sat for Chippenham.

At the general election of 1722 he succeeded on petition in establishing his right to represent the electors of Malmesbury, and he held the seat until 1747, when he was rejected and his parliamentary career terminated. Through his intimacy with the Duke of Argyll, who was Groom of the Stole to the Prince of Wales, he exerted himself in the autumn of 1716 in promoting addresses of congratulation from Gloucestershire and the adjacent counties to the prince on his success as regent during the absence of George I in Hanover. For his services in such matters Earle was rewarded in 1718 with the post of groom of the prince's bedchamber; but he resigned this position in 1720, when public differences broke out between the prince and his father.

The price of this desertion was promptly paid. He became clerk-comptroller of the king's household at once, and in 1728 was made a commissioner of Irish revenue. When Sir George Oxenden was deprived of his lordship of the treasury in 1737, the vacant place was filled by Earle, and he retained its emoluments until 1742. A soldier of fortune, his readiness to do the minister's bidding ingratiated him with Walpole, and the coarseness of his humour made him an acceptable companion in the minister's happier hours of social life. Through the partiality of Walpole he filled the place of chairman of committees of election in the two parliaments from 1727 to 1741; but his covetous disposition had rendered him unpopular, and his strokes of wit, which he had freely exercised against the Scotch, turned into hatred the distrust with which they had always regarded him for his abandonment of the Duke of Argyll.

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