HARE, Henry, 3rd Baron Coleraine [I] (1693-1749).

In 1708 Hare, an antiquary and collector of prints and drawings, inherited an Irish peerage, with large estates in Middlesex, Wiltshire and Norfolk. He married an heiress with a dowry of £100,000, who left him three years later. Returned as a Tory for Boston in 1730 he voted against the Administration on the army in 1732 and the excise bill in 1733. On 17 Jan. 1734 he spoke against the Address, and on 28 and 29 Mar. against authorizing the King to augment his forces in the event of an emergency during the parliamentary recess.HMC Egmont Diary, ii. 8, 71-72. He did not stand again. In 1740, having failed to persuade his wife to return to him, he entered into ‘a solemn mutual engagement’ with Rose Duplessis, the daughter of a French clergyman, ‘to take each other for husband and wife, and perform to each other the negative and positive duties of that relationship’. In 1748 he granted her an annuity of £148 p.a. ‘in consideration of good services and faithful offices’. He died 10 Aug. 1749, leaving his Middlesex estates to his illegitimate daughter. She being an alien, they escheated to the Crown, but were subsequently granted to her husband James Townsend, M.P., son of Chauncy Townsend.Nichols, Lit. Anecs. v. 349-52.