Joseph Yorke, 1st Baron Dover

General Joseph Yorke, 1st Baron Dover, KB, PC (24 June 1724 – 2 December 1792), styled The Honourable Joseph Yorke until 1761 and The Honourable Sir Joseph Yorke between 1761 and 1788, was a British Army officer, diplomat and Whig politician.

1770 portrait of Yorke by Joseph Samuel Webster

Background

Portrait of Margaret Yorke, Joseph's mother

Yorke was the third son of Philip Yorke, 1st Earl of Hardwicke, by Margaret, daughter of Charles Cocks. Philip Yorke, 2nd Earl of Hardwicke, Charles Yorke and James Yorke were his brothers.^[1]

Career

Yorke was commissioned an ensign in the 2nd Regiment of Foot Guards on 25 April 1741, and was promoted to lieutenant in the 1st Regiment of Foot Guards on 24 April 1743.^[2] Yorke served in the War of the Austrian Succession as an aide-de-camp to the Duke of Cumberland, and fought in the Battle of Fontenoy on 11 May 1745. On 27 May, he became captain and lieutenant-colonel, commanding a company in the 2nd Guards. On 1 November 1749, he was appointed an aide-de-camp to the King, and on 18 March 1755, colonel of the 9th Regiment of Foot.^[2] He became a Major-General in 1758, a Lieutenant-General in 1760 and a full General in 1777.

In 1749 he was appointed Secretary to the British Embassy in Paris. In 1751 he became Minister Plenipotentiary to the Dutch Republic, a post he held for the next thirty years. He was involved in the Anglo-Prussian Convention in 1758.^[3] His post was upgraded to that of ambassador in 1761.^[1] During his tenure, the Dutch were nominally allied with the British, but remained neutral in the Seven Years' War (1756-63), and in the American Revolutionary War(1775-83) initially remained neutral and in 1780 allied with the Americans. Britain had sought to tap the Scots Regiment stationed in the Dutch Republic to fight the Americans, but Yorke's plea was rebuffed and relations between the two nations damaged. As a diplomat of long-standing, Yorke had few Dutch friends and contemporaries noted "he had scorn for the [Dutch] Republic."^[4]

He also sat in the House of Commons for East Grinstead between 1751 and 1761,^[1][5] for Dover between 1761 and 1774^[1][6] and for Grampound between 1774 and 1780.^[1][7] He was appointed a Knight Companion of the Order of the Bath (KB) in 1761 and sworn of the Privy Council in 1768.^[1] In 1788 he was raised to the peerage as Lord Dover, Baron of the Town and Port of Dover, in the County of Kent.^[8]

Family

Joseph Yorke memorial, St Andrew's Church, Wimpole, Cambridgeshire

Lord Dover married Christiana Charlotte Margaret, daughter of Johan Henrik, Baron de Stöcken, a Danish nobleman, in 1783. They had no children. He died in December 1792, aged 68, when the barony became extinct. Lady Dover only survived her husband by three months and died in March 1793.^[1]

Arms

Coat of arms of Joseph Yorke, 1st Baron Dover

Coronet A coronet of an Baron Crest A lion's head erased proper collared gules on the collar a bezant. Escutcheon Argent on a saltire azure a bezant, a mullet for difference. Supporters Dexter: a lion or, gorged with a collar gules charged with a bezant between two mullets sable; Sinister: a stag proper attired, unguled, and collared as the dexter. Motto Nec cupias, nec metuas.[9]