t 1763. Horace Walpole perhaps rates
Egremont's talents too low when he says he "had neither knowledge of
business, nor the smallest share of parliamentary abilities."

The 2nd earl's son and successor, George O'Brien Wyndham (1751-1837),
was more famous as a patron of art and an agriculturist than as a
politician, although he was not entirely indifferent to politics. For
some time the painter Turner lived at his Sussex residence, Petworth
House, and in addition to Turner, the painter Leslie, the sculptor
Flaxman and other talented artists received commissions from Egremont,
who filled his house with valuable works of art. Generous and
hospitable, blunt and eccentric, the earl was in his day a very
prominent figure in English society. Charles Greville says, "he was
immensely rich and his munificence was equal to his wealth"; and again
that in his time Petworth was "like a great inn." The earl died
unmarried on the 11th of November 1837, and on the death of his nephew
and successor, George Francis Wyndham, the 4th earl (1785-1845), the
earldom of Egremont became extinct. Petworth, however, and the large
estates had already passed to George Wyndham (1787-1869), a natural son
of the 3rd earl, who was created Baron Leconfield in 1859.

EGREMONT, a market town in the Egremont parliamentary division of
Cumberland, England, 5 m. S.S.E. of Whitehaven, on a joint line of the
London & North Western and Furness railways. Pop. of urban district
(1901) 5761. It is pleasantly situated in the valley of the Ehen. Ruins
of a castle command the town from an eminence. It was founded c. 1120 by
William de Meschines; it is moated, and retains a Norman doorway and
some of the original masonry, as well as fragments of later date. The
church of St Mary is a modern reconstruction embodying some of the
Norman features of the old church. Iron ore and limestone are raised in
the neighbourhood.

It seems impossible to find any history for Egremont until after the
Norman Conquest, when Henry I. gave the barony of Coupland to William de
Meschines, who erected a castle at Egremont around which the town grew
into importance. The barony afterwards passed by marriage to the
families of Lucy and Multon, and finally came to the Percys, earls of
Northumberland, from whom are descended the present lords of the manor
of Egremont. The earliest evidence that Egremont was a borough occurs in
a charter, granted by Richard de Lucy in the reign of King John