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Welbore Ellis, 1st Baron Mendip

The Right Honourable
The Lord Mendip
FRS PC
Welbore Ellis, 1st Baron Mendip by Karl Anton Hickel.jpg
Secretary of State for the Colonies
In office
February 1782 – 8 March 1782
Monarch George III
Prime Minister Lord North
Preceded by Lord George Germain
Succeeded by Office abolished
Personal details
Born 15 December 1713 (1713-12-15)
Died 2 February 1802 (1802-02-03) (aged 88)
Nationality British

Welbore Ellis, 1st Baron Mendip PC FRS (15 December 1713 – 2 February 1802) was a British statesman. He held a number of political offices, including briefly serving as Secretary for the Colonies in 1782 during the American War of Independence.

Ellis was the second but only surviving son of the Most Reverend Welbore Ellis, Bishop of Kildare and Bishop of Meath.

In 1741, he was elected Member of Parliament (MP) for Cricklade, then moved to Weymouth and Melcombe Regis (1747–1761), Aylesbury (1761–1768), Petersfield (1768–1774), Weymouth and Melcombe Regis (1774–1790) and Petersfield (1791–1794). In 1762, he succeeded Charles Townshend as Secretary at War, and in 1763, he proposed the appropriation of twenty army regiments to the colonies of America. In Parliament, with many others, he opposed the reception of papers from the American Continental Congress. He became Treasurer of the Navy on 1777, then succeeded to the Colonial Secretaryship in 1782, which he held for a matter of months, before the American colonies were lost. In 1784, he became the longest-serving member of the House of Commons (having served for 34 years noncontinuously), becoming the honorary Father of the House. He was created Baron Mendip, of Mendip in the County of Somerset, in 1794 in recognition of his governmental service. The peerage was created with remainder to the three eldest sons of his sister Anne by her husband Henry Agar, of Gowran and Gowran Castle.


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