We now approach that part of the family history when the individual members cannot be quite so rapidly dismissed from notice.
The only son of Edward Boscawen (the Turkey merchant) and Jael Godolphin was another Hugh; who, like his father and uncles, seems to have been no friend to the Stuarts, and to have assisted in bringing to England William III. This no doubt explains his being made Captain of St. Mawes Castle, Warden of the Stannaries, Steward of the Duchy of Cornwall in the room of Francis Godolphin, Viscount Rialton; Comptroller of the Household; a Privy Councillor; and finally, in 1720, his being ennobled by the titles of Baron Boscawen Rose and Viscount Falmouth. He was also Vice-Treasurer of Ireland, a post which he resigned the year of his death. He several times, before gaining his title, sat for Cornwall in Parliament; but gave up all his appointments except that of Warden of the Stannaries, on the defeat of the Excise Scheme.
Hugh Boscawen seems to have been quite carried away by his political zeal, for he was foremost in arresting, or trying to arrest, any, even of his old friends, who were suspected of holding high monarchical principles; amongst whom may be named Sir Richard Vyvyan, of Trelowarren, and, as we have already seen,[84] Mr. Basset, of Tehidy. He died of an apoplexy, at Trefusis, in 1734, having married, in 1700, Charlotte Godfrey, a niece of the great Duke of Marlborough, by whom he had eighteen children, eight sons and ten daughters.
The second Viscount of the same name seems, though of a kind and gentle disposition, not to have possessed a very brilliant intellect. Davies Gilbert tells the story of him that he is said to have mistaken the phrase, 'Optat ephippia Bos,' for the Latin of his own name; and that he always confounded Horace Walpole with the Roman poet whose name is so familiar to us. Probably a somewhat unattractive sort of man, for his wife often threatened, so Mrs. Delany says, that she 'wou'd part with my lord.'
Yet he was not without shrewdness, and had some political influence. Votes which overthrew Sir Robert Walpole were carried against the Minister by his losing the majority of the Scotch and Cornish boroughs; the latter of which were managed by Lord Falmouth and Thomas Pitt. Indeed, the second Viscount Falmouth, like so many others of his contemporaries, was a great dealer in boroughs. It is of him that Dodington tells the story, that he went to the Minister to ask him a favour, which the latter seemed unwilling to grant; upon which Lord Falmouth said, 'Remember, sir, we are seven!' And Dover says that Lord Cowper resigned the Bedchamber on the 'Beefeaters' being given to Lord Falmouth:—'The latter, who is powerful in elections, insisted on having it; the other had nothing but a promise from the King, which the Ministry had already twice forced him to break.'
He was also Yeoman of the Guard to George II., and in 1745, according to Chauncey, raised a regiment at his own expense to serve against the Scotch rebels; and he had such influence in Cornwall that 6,387 persons joined an association, the members of which bound themselves to appear armed in the best manner they could, under his command, to defend the King and the Government. Mrs. Thomson, in her 'Memoirs of Viscountess Sandon,' tells us how the second Viscount's wife, H. C. M. Russell, née Smith, was in desperate straits to get herself appointed a Lady of the Bedchamber, and wrote the most pressing letters to Mrs. Clayton on the subject. In one she says that she could not sleep a wink all night for thinking of it!
His brother Nicholas went to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, took holy orders, and on the Duke of Newcastle's visit to the University, as Chancellor, was created a D.D. He was appointed a King's Chaplain, and 'Dean' of Buryan in 1756, Rector of St. Mabyn and of St. Michael Penkivel in 1774, and a Prebendary of Westminster in 1777. The only remarkable thing about him seems to have been his appointment as 'Dean' of Buryan, the exact significance of which dignity it is difficult to discover, though it is said that this 'Deanery' had jurisdiction over three parishes, and the probate of wills therein, and that there were three prebends attached to it; it is not uninteresting to note this tendency in a member of the Boscawen family to 'hark back to their early St. Buryan haunts.[85] His wife, Mrs. Hatton, was, I believe, the widow of a linendraper in Newgate Street.
There was another brother, John—a Major-General in the army;—and the 4th son of the second Viscount, the Hon. George Boscawen, was another military member of the family; he was present at the battles of Dettingen and Fontenoy, and represented Truro in Parliament from 1761 to 1764. His daughter, Mary, maid-of-honour to the Princess Charlotte, wrote a memoir of the Princess.