In May 1796 Valentia obtained £2,000 damages from John Bellenden Gawler for crim. con. with his wife. Gawler had aggravated his offence by threatening, if Valentia sought legal redress, to charge him with a crime ‘as false as it was horrid, and thus drive him from human society’. Gawler resumed his activities when Valentia set off for India in 1802 to study natural history.
Valentia took no part in debate, but he made himself useful to Perceval in the Duke of York’s case in 1809 and later claimed that Perceval had promised to help him recover the interest he had inherited from his mother at Bewdley.
As to the arrangement with regard to his seat I understood from you that it was to be consequential on his going abroad in some diplomatic character to the Mediterranean, and till his employment could be arranged for him I did not imagine the other question would arise.
He had doubted as to ‘there being any opening for his lordship where he wants to find it’. Valentia arranged to winter abroad willy nilly for reasons of health, and allowed ministers to delay the vacation of his seat until November when a new writ was issued. On 14 Dec. 1810 he wrote to Yorke from Malta, whence he was proceeding to Sicily, to ask for the governship of the Ionian islands if they should be annexed. He promised to be ‘a licensed spy’ and vowed that if the Whigs came to power he would not return to England as long as his father lived.
Valentia recovered his health in Sicily, where he ‘indulged himself openly in propensities of which he was only suspected at home’. When in June 1812 Wellesley hoped to form an administration, it was his wish to be appointed minister at Palermo, or at least chargé d’affaires during Lord William Bentinck’s absence; or failing that, to obtain a place at home which might enable him to maintain his family—for he was on short commons while his father lived.