Earl of Albemarle
(1799-1891)

Volume 1, page 95, sitting number 583.

Born into one of the great Whig families of England on 13 June 1799, George Thomas Keppell was educated at Westminster School, where, according to his memoirs, he was abominably bullied and frequently flogged. He entered the Army when he was sixteen, and fought at Waterloo as an ensign in the 14th Regiment. We have from his own pen a lively account of the battle and the long, hungry march to Paris. Shortly after his return to England, he was appointed equerry to the Duke of Sussex. He served afterwards in India and came home via Persia, Baku, Astrakhan, and St Petersburg. In 1829 he was with the British squadron in Eastern waters, when he visited Constantinople. After the passing of the Reform Bill he stood for East Norfolk, and despite the fact that he owned not an acre of land in the county, was returned by a large majority and sat until 1835. Appointed one of Lord John Russell’s private secretaries in 1846, he again entered Parliament in 1847, this time as the member for Lymington, and sat for three years. In the mid-1870s he published some entertaining memoirs under the title Fifty Years of My Life, which told his story up until 1855.

He married, in 1831, the third daughter of Sir Coutts Trotter, and was succeeded by his son, Viscount Bury.

The Earl of Albemarle died at his residence, Quiddenham Hall, Norfolk, on 21 February 1891, at the age of 91.

[From an album assembled by Edmund Baskerville-Mynors, Rector of Ashley in Wiltshire.]