EGREMONT, EARLS OF. In 1749 Algernon Seymour, 7th duke of Somerset, was created earl of Egremont, and on his childless death in February 1750 this title passed by special remainder to his nephew, Sir Charles Wyndham or Windham, Bart. (1710-1763), a son of Sir William Wyndham of Orchard Wyndham, Somerset. Charles, who had succeeded to his father’s baronetcy in 1740, inherited Somerset’s estates in Cumberland and Sussex. He was a member of parliament from 1734 to 1750, and in October 1761 he was appointed secretary of state for the southern department in succession to William Pitt. His term of office, during which he acted in concert with his brother-in-law, George Grenville, was mainly occupied with the declaration of war on Spain and with the negotiations for peace with France and Spain, a peace the terms of which the earl seems to have disliked. He was also to the fore during the proceedings against Wilkes, and he died on the 21st of August 1763. Horace Walpole perhaps rates Egremont’s talents too low when he says he “had neither knowledge of business, nor the smallest share of parliamentary abilities.”
The 2nd earl’s son and successor, George O’Brien Wyndham (1751-1837), was more famous as a patron of art and an agriculturist than as a politician, although he was not entirely indifferent to politics. For some time the painter Turner lived at his Sussex residence, Petworth House, and in addition to Turner, the painter Leslie, the sculptor Flaxman and other talented artists received commissions from Egremont, who filled his house with valuable works of art. Generous and hospitable, blunt and eccentric, the earl was in his day a very prominent figure in English society. Charles Greville says, “he was immensely rich and his munificence was equal to his wealth”; and again that in his time Petworth was “like a great inn.” The earl died unmarried on the 11th of November 1837, and on the death of his nephew and successor, George Francis Wyndham, the 4th earl (1785-1845), the earldom of Egremont became extinct. Petworth, however, and the large estates had already passed to George Wyndham (1787-1869), a natural son of the 3rd earl, who was created Baron Leconfield in 1859.
EGREMONT, a market town in the Egremont parliamentary division of Cumberland, England, 5 m. S.S.E. of Whitehaven, on a joint line of the London & North Western and Furness railways. Pop. of urban district (1901) 5761. It is pleasantly situated in the valley of the Ehen. Ruins of a castle command the town from an eminence. It was founded c. 1120 by William de Meschines; it is moated, and retains a Norman doorway and some of the original masonry, as well as fragments of later date. The church of St Mary is a modern reconstruction embodying some of the Norman features of the old church. Iron ore and limestone are raised in the neighbourhood.
It seems impossible to find any history for Egremont until after the Norman Conquest, when Henry I. gave the barony of Coupland to William de Meschines, who erected a castle at Egremont around which the town grew into importance. The barony afterwards passed by marriage to the families of Lucy and Multon, and finally came to the Percys, earls of Northumberland, from whom are descended the present lords of the manor of Egremont. The earliest evidence that Egremont was a borough occurs in a charter, granted by Richard de Lucy in the reign of King John, which gave the burgesses right to choose their reeve, and set out the customs owing to the lord of the manor, among which was that of providing twelve armed men at his castle in the time of war. The borough was represented by two members in the parliament of 1295, but in the following year was disfranchised, on the petition of the burgesses, on account of the expense of sending members. In 1267 Henry III. granted Thomas de Multon a market every Wednesday at Egremont, and a fair every year on the eve, day and morrow of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary. In the Quo Warranto rolls he is found to have claimed by prescription another weekly market on Saturday. The market rights were purchased from Lord Leconfield in 1885, and the market on Saturday is still held. Richard de Lucy’s charter shows that dyeing, weaving and fulling were carried on in the town in his time.
EGRESS (Lat. egressus, going out), in astronomy, the end of the apparent transit of a small body over the disk of a larger one; especially of a transit of a satellite of Jupiter over the disk of that planet. It designates the moment at which the smaller body is seen to leave the limb of the other.
EGYPT, a country forming the N.E. extremity of Africa.[1] In the following account a division is made into (I.) Modern Egypt, and (II.) Ancient Egypt; but the history from the earliest times is given as a separate section (III.).