THE EARL OF ALBERMARLE.
William Anne Keppel, second Earl of Albermarle, was born at Whitehall
in 1702, and received his second Christian name from Her Majesty
Queen Anne, who in person and as sponsor graced his baptism. He
succeeded George Hamilton, Earl of Orkney, as the Governor-in-chief
of Virginia, after the death of the latter, September 6, 1737. Appointed
August 25, 1717, by George I. a captain in the British army, he was continuously
promoted, and on February 20, 1743, was made a Lieutenant-General,
and distinguished himself June 2d in that year at the battle
of Dettingen in the Netherlands. In 1744 he made the campaign
with Marshall Wade, and in 1745, under the Duke of Cumberland, at
the battle of Fontenoy, he was wounded. On April 16, 1746, he commanded
the right wing at the battle of Culloden, and succeeded to the
command in chief, as General, August 23d. Distinguished himself July
2, 1747, at the battle of Vall; was embassador to France in 1748; was
created a Knight of the Garter, July 12, 1750; was made a member
of the Privy Council, July 12, 1751, and on March 30, 1752, one of the
Lords Justices during the absence of the King in his German dominions.
He married, in 1722, Anne, daughter of Charles, first Duke of Richmond,
and who was one of the ladies of the bed-chamber of Queen Caroline.
The issue of this marriage was eight sons and seven daughters.
The portrait of Lord Albermarle, with those of Sir Charles Wager;
Charles Montague, first Earl of Halifax; Colonel Daniel Parke, Governor
of the Leeward Islands, whose daughter Lucy was the wife of the
second Colonel William Byrd: the third Earl of Orrery; the Earl of
Egremont; the second Duke of Argyll; Peggy Blount, the favorite of the
poet Alexander Pope; Sir Robert Walpole, Lady Betty Cromwell, Sir
Wilfred Lawson, Sir Robert Southwell, and others of colonial distinction,
with those of the second William Byrd, and of members of his
family, from a gallery formerly at "Westover," are now preserved at
the hospitable seat of the Harrison family, "Lower Brandon," on James
River. Lord Abermarle died at Paris, December 22, 1754, and was
succeeded in the title by his eldest son George, the third Earl. Admiral
Augustus Keppel, of the British Navy, was his second son. The name of
Lord Albermarle is commemorated in a sound on the coast of North Carolina
and in a county in Virginia.
