George Waldegrave, 7th Earl Waldegrave

Who was George Waldegrave, 7th Earl Waldegrave?

George Edward Waldegrave, 7th Earl Waldegrave was a British peer.

The eldest legitimate child of the 6th Earl Waldegrave, he was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford. In 1835, he inherited his father's titles and on 28 September 1840, he married his elder, illegitimate brother's widow, Frances at Gretna Green, Scotland.

In 1841, he was sentenced to six months imprisonment in Newgate Prison, by the Twickenham Bench of the Assize Court for having drunkenly assaulted a police officer in Kingston upon Thames. His wife and their servants came to live with him there until his release, when they moved back to their home, Strawberry Hill, the "Gothick" mansion and former residence of Horace Walpole in Twickenham, that had passed to Waldegrave's grandmother, Elizabeth.

Heavily in debt and tired of Twickenham, Waldegrave decided to sell Walpole's treasures at their home in 1842 and he and his wife travelled abroad before settling down at their country home of Harptree Court in Somerset, in 1844. Lord Waldegrave died two years later and left the-now derelict Strawberry Hill to his wife. Dying childless, he was succeeded by his uncle, William, and his wife later twice remarried.