At George I’s accession Paget’s father, a Hanoverian Tory, who had represented Staffordshire 1695-1712, adhered to the Whig government. Rewarded with an earldom at the coronation, he put up Paget for Staffordshire, asking Lord Gower, the leading local Tory, to ‘be merciful to the young man at first setting out, and not exert his interest to the utmost’.
Horace Walpole records that ‘in the intervals of bad weather in hunting seasons’, Paget ‘published some pieces, particularly An Essay on Human Life in verse 1734, quarto; Some reflections upon the Administration of Government, a pamphlet in 1740’, adding: ‘in both these pieces there is much good sense, the former is written in imitation of Pope’s Ethic Epistles, and has good lines, but not much poetry’.
Paget died 4 Feb. 1742, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.