*** Welcome to piglix ***

Sir George Yonge, 5th Baronet


Sir George Yonge, 5th Baronet (17 July 1731 – 25 September 1812), KCB, PC, of Escot House in the parish of Talaton in Devon, England, was a British Secretary at War (1782–1783 and 1783–1794). He succeeded to his father's baronetcy in 1755 which became extinct when he died without children. He is remembered by, among others, the name of Yonge Street, a principal road in Toronto, Canada, so named in 1793 by the Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada John Graves Simcoe.

Yonge was born in 1731 at Great House in the parish of Colyton, Devon, the son and heir of Sir William Yonge, 4th Baronet (1693–1751) by his second wife Ann Howard. He had a stepbrother, Walter Yonge, from his father's first wife Mary Heathcote.

He was educated at Eton College and then at the University of Leipzig. He served as a Member of Parliament for his family's Rotten Borough of Honiton, Devon, from 1754 to 1761 and again from 1763 to 1796. He was quoted to have often said that he had inherited £80,000 from his father, acquired another £80,000 when he married and £80,000 from Parliament but Honiton had "swallowed it all," This was due to the huge briberies which were commonplace to influence the electorate in rotten borough elections of the time. Yonge was appointed to the Privy Council of the United Kingdom in 1782, and acted as Governor of the Cape Colony for a short period from 1799 to 1801. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1784 and was invested as a Knight of the Bath in 1788.


...
Wikipedia

...