(1720 - 93), 1st surv. s. of Sir John Rawdon of Rawdon Hall, Yorks, and Moira, Co. Down; suc. fa. 1742 as 4th Bt.; Trin. Dublin 1736; Dilettanti 1741; FRS 1744; m. 1 1741 Ldy. Helena Perceval (d. 1746), dau. of 1st E. of Egmont [I], 2 1746 Hon. Anne Hill (d. 1751), dau. of 1st Vct. Hillsborough [I], 3 1750 Ldy. Elizabeth Hastings (1731 - 1808), dau. of 9th E. of Huntingdon; cr. B. Rawdon [I] 1750, E. of Moira [I] 1762.
1739 - 40 Genoa (Jun. 1739), Leghorn (Jul.), Siena (Aug.), Rome (Sep. 1739 - spring 1740), Venice, Turin (late May - 2 Jun.)
It was said that Rawdon was sent to travel in order to cure him of a passion in Ireland, but he embarked on another affair in Montauban and Joseph Spence suggested that, in Italy, he was 'prodigiously in love in every town he makes any stay at'.1 Rawdon had also come from the south of France to Leghorn in the hope of seeing his younger brother, Arthur, a naval officer whose ship was to be there, but it is unclear whether they then met.2 He visited Genoa ('better worth seeing than all the Kingdom of France') where Lord Aubrey Beauclerk introduced him to the nobility. He was overwhelmed by the 'Palaces, Pictures and Statues'. It was very hot, so that they slept by day and walked at night, and the Governor 'ordered all the dogs in the town to be killed for fear of their going mad, which was done before night'. He intended spending a month in Siena, where the best Italian was spoken, in order to study the language (20 Jul. 1739).
It was still very hot in Siena when he wrote on 27 August, and he intended being at Rome within about ten days. But he either stayed much longer or returned later, since in the spring of 1740, with Sir Roger Newdigate and Sir Francis Dashwood, Rawdon was being guided round Rome by Mark Parker. Rawdon was apparently apprehensive of assassination by the Jacobites in Rome; Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who remembered this, had met him in Venice (presumably in May 1740).3 Rawdon next appeared with his brother Arthur in Turin at the end of May 1740, and they were setting out for France on 2 June. Spence then met them both for the first time: he thought Sir John a 'good-natured good sort of man', and his brother 'a very sensible young man, and too modest for an Irishman'.4 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu later recalled that he had bought pictures in Italy 'not because he wanted to buy, but because somebody or other wanted to sell', and he was said to have guessed that the Sublime Porte was Leghorn (CP).
1. Spence Letters, 245 (27 Jan. 1740). 2. See Rawdon letters MSS (dates given in brackets). 3. Montagu Letters, 3:7 (1 Mar. 1752). 4. Spence Letters 284.
J. C.