Leicester succeeded to an estate said to be worth £12,000 a year. ‘Almost from his infancy’, according to the Gentleman’s Magazine obituary, ‘he was devoted by personal attachment and congeniality of mind and pursuits to his present Majesty [George IV], by whom he was honoured with close and familiar intercourse.’
In 1796 Leicester was the guest of Sir William Pierce Ashe A’Court for Heytesbury, in a seat at Portland’s disposal. His conduct, however, was independent. He joined the meeting of the ‘armed neutrality’ at Sir John Sinclair’s, 9 Mar. 1797. He joined opposition on the state of Ireland, 23 Mar., and on the naval mutiny, 10 May. He opposed the Irish union, 31 Jan., 7, 11 Feb. 1799, also voting for Grey’s motion critical of its effects at Westminster, 21 Apr. 1800. He was in the minorities that voted against the refusal to negotiate with France and against the restoration of the Bourbons as a war aim, 3, 28 Feb. 1800. He voted for the amendment to the address, 2 Feb., in the minority critical of the Ferrol expedition, 19 Feb., and for Grey’s censure motion, 25 Mar. 1801.
Leicester was out of Parliament from 1802 until January 1807 when he came in for the session on the interest of Joseph Foster Barham for Stockbridge. This was arranged by the Prince of Wales’s friend Thomas Tyrwhitt. In March there was speculation as to whether he might not have to resign the seat a week before Easter according to Foster Barham’s previous stipulation, because of a dispute over the terms (£4,000. in view of a debt of obligation of Tyrwhitt’s) submitted to William Adam’s arbitration.
Leicester’s aim was a peerage, said to have been promised to him by the Prince Regent in 1811. He wrote to the Regent’s secretary, 19 Mar. 1813:
No one knows better than you the sacrifices I have made in three Parliaments or the circumstances attendant upon the last, with the view solely of lending every feeble assistance in my power to the Prince Regent.
Renewing his application to the Regent, 19 Apr. 1817, he mentioned the dormant Irish title of Slane to which he had a claim. The prime minister informed him that the Regent was ‘fully sensible’ of his ‘public spirit and loyalty’, but could not engage anything. When his wish was not gratified on the Regent’s succession to the throne, he complained to Lord Sidmouth (21 July 1820) that he felt ‘entirely neglected’, having been ‘in three successive Parliaments ... at the King’s particular wish, expressed to me by Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt who is well acquainted with the extent of these transactions’. He threatened to give up the Cheshire yeomanry, on which he had spent large sums, and hinted that what riled him most was that Thomas Cholmondeley ‘to whom in family, fortune, or zeal I cannot yield’ was given a peerage and he not. When his wish was at length gratified in 1826, it was glossed over as being ‘wholly from the voluntary impulses of his gracious Sovereign’s goodwill, entirely unconnected with all political considerations or any other interest whatsoever’.
Leicester had two other claims to fame: he was the best pistol shot in England and he was ‘the greatest patron of the native school of painting that our island ever possessed’, helping to found, in 1805, the institution for the encouragement of British art.