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MAKER'S MARK OF PHILIP RUNDELL, LONDON, 1822
Details
A FINE SET OF FOUR GEORGE IV SILVER COMPOTES
Maker's mark of Philip Rundell, London, 1822
Each on a shaped square base on four shell and berried leaf scroll feet, the four supports formed as acanthus leaves with a gadrooned mid-band, the circular rim with band of scrolling foliage centering a cut-glass dish, the base and rim engraved with a crest below an Earl's coronet, marked under base, rim and on wing-nuts
10½in. high; 171oz. (5321gr.) weighable silver (4)
Maker's mark of Philip Rundell, London, 1822
Each on a shaped square base on four shell and berried leaf scroll feet, the four supports formed as acanthus leaves with a gadrooned mid-band, the circular rim with band of scrolling foliage centering a cut-glass dish, the base and rim engraved with a crest below an Earl's coronet, marked under base, rim and on wing-nuts
10½in. high; 171oz. (5321gr.) weighable silver (4)
Provenance
The crest and coronet are those of the Earls Grey, as borne by Charles, 2nd Earl Grey, born in 1764. He was educated at Eton, where his headmaster later recounted that Grey "was, what he now is, able in his excercises, impetuous, overbearing." After Trinity College, Cambridge, he was admitted to the Middle Temple, and began his political career in 1786 when he became MP for Northumberland. He served briefly as First Lord of the Admiralty and as Foreign Secretary in 1806 and 1807, when he was dismissed on the question of Catholic Emancipation. In 1807 he succeeded to his father's recent Earldom (which apparently was created in 1806 through the influence of the 2nd Earl).
The 2nd Earl retired from office until 1830, when he became First Lord of the Treasury (Prime Minister). According to the Dictionary of National Biography, "His Ministry was characteristic of him," being "almost exclusively composed of peers or persons of title, and his own family well represented in it." While he was accused of nepotism and corruption by his political opponents, the Whig accounts of him were favorable, and the Whig Club reported in 1794 that "he has neither wasted his time at a gaming table nor stained his reputation with scenes of sensual excess or gross debauchery." He died in 1845 at Howick House, and his obituary in the Times described him as "a most natural, unaffected, upright man, hospitible and domestic; far surpassing any man one knows in his noble appearance and beautiful simplicity of manners." (The Complete Peerage)
The 2nd Earl retired from office until 1830, when he became First Lord of the Treasury (Prime Minister). According to the Dictionary of National Biography, "His Ministry was characteristic of him," being "almost exclusively composed of peers or persons of title, and his own family well represented in it." While he was accused of nepotism and corruption by his political opponents, the Whig accounts of him were favorable, and the Whig Club reported in 1794 that "he has neither wasted his time at a gaming table nor stained his reputation with scenes of sensual excess or gross debauchery." He died in 1845 at Howick House, and his obituary in the Times described him as "a most natural, unaffected, upright man, hospitible and domestic; far surpassing any man one knows in his noble appearance and beautiful simplicity of manners." (The Complete Peerage)