Parliamentary Reform Bill in 1831. He was created a Knight of the Garter
in 1803, [Footnote: Lord Hardwicke married in 1782 Elizabeth, daughter
of James, fifth Earl of Balcarres, the sister of Lady Anne Barnard, the
authoress of _Auld Robin Gray_.] and had the misfortune to lose the
only son who survived infancy in a storm at sea off Lubeck in 1808 at
the age of twenty-four. The succession to the peerage was thus opened up
to his half-brothers, the sons of Charles Yorke's second wife, Agneta,
daughter of Henry Johnston of Great Berkhampsted: Charles Philip (1764-
1834) who left no heir, and Joseph Sydney (1768-1831), father of the
subject of this memoir. I have already alluded to the public career of
their half-brother, the third Lord Hardwicke; and it is interesting to
see how the tradition of political and public work was maintained by the
two younger brothers, who both, and especially the younger of the two,
added fresh laurels to the distinguished record held by so many of the
descendants of the great Chancellor. The Right Honourable Charles Yorke
represented the county of Cambridge in Parliament from 1790 to 1810, and
joined Addington's Government at the same time as Lord Hardwicke, first
as Secretary at War in 1801, and then as Secretary of State for the Home
Department, till the return to office of William Pitt (to whom he was
politically opposed) in 1804. In 1810 he became first Lord of the
Admiralty under Spencer Perceval, with his younger brother Joseph as one
of the Sea Lords, and retained office till Perceval's assassination
broke up the ministry; and when in 1812 Lord Liverpool became Prime
Minister he left the Admiralty and never afterwards returned to office,
retiring from public life in 1818. The splendid breakwater at Plymouth
was decided on and commenced while he was at the Admiralty, and a slab
of its marble marks his tomb in Wimpole Church.

With Joseph Sydney Yorke, afterwards Admiral and a K.C.B., opens a
chapter of family history with which this volume will be mainly