Sir William Yonge, 4th Baronet

Sir William Yonge, 4th Baronet (c. 1693 – 10 August 1755), KCB FRS PC, of Escot House in the patish of Talaton in Devon, was an English politician.

He was the son and heir of Sir Walter Yonge, 3rd Baronet, and a great-great-grandson of Walter Yonge (1579–1649), a lawyer, merchant and notable diarist, whose diaries (1604–45) are valuable material for the contemporary history of Great Britain.

In 1722 he was elected to Parliament as member for his family's Rotten Borough of Honiton, in Devon. He succeeded his father, the 3rd Baronet, in 1731. In the House of Commons he attached himself to the Whigs, and making himself useful to Sir Robert Walpole, was rewarded with a commissionership of the Treasury in 1724. King George II, who conceived a strong antipathy to Sir William, spoke of him as "Stinking Yonge"; but Yonge obtained a commissionership of the Admiralty in 1728, was restored to the Treasury in 1730, and in 1735 became Secretary at War. He distinguished himself especially in his defence of the Government against a hostile motion by Pulteney in 1742. Making friends with the Pelhams, he was appointed Vice-Treasurer of Ireland in 1746. Acting on the committee of management for the impeachment of Lord Lovat in 1747, he won the applause of Horace Walpole by moving that prisoners impeached for high treason should be allowed the assistance of counsel. In 1748 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. He was a founding Governor of the Foundling Hospital, which worked to alleviate the scourge of child abandonment.

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