Description

George Nassau Clavering-Cowper left England in January 1757 to undertake his Grand Tour of Europe. Styled Viscount Fordwich, he was 18 years old and heir to an Earldom. All went well until the summer of 1759 when he arrived in Florence and fell passionately in love with a beautiful Florentine lady. He refused to return home at the end of the tour and instead headed back to Florence. He was still living there when he succeeded to the Earldom in 1764. By then he was thoroughly embedded in the cultural and social life of Florence, and apart from one short visit to England in 1786, he remained in Italy until his death in 1789.

An extensive body of primary source material relating to the Third Earl Cowper is held by Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies (HALS), but much of it is written in French and Italian and has been little studied. This situation was rectified in 2015 with the publication by the Hertfordshire Record Society of Lord Fordwich’s Grand Tour 1756 – 60, which contained a transcript of the Grand Tour journal kept by the Earl’s Swiss tutor.

The Society has now published this companion volume. It takes up the story in January 1760 when Lord Fordwich returned to Florence at the end of his tour, and shows how his life unfolded over the following thirty years, as revealed in his household accounts. The volume comprises a two-part set. Part One contains key extracts from his Stewards’ Journal Accounts, 1760 – 1780. Part Two continues these accounts to 1789, plus biographical sketches and full Indexes. Both volumes include detailed analyses of this extensive financial record, revealing how the income from the Earl’s estates in Hertfordshire and elsewhere was syphoned off to fund his luxurious lifestyle in Florence. In the process we gain a wholly new insight into one of Hertfordshire’s most colourful historical characters.

Hardback: part 1 312 pages, part 2 219 pages
Published by: Hertfordshire Record Society, 2020
ISBN: 978-0956511164
Product Dimensions: 2 volumes, each measuring 24 x 16.2 x 2.5 cm