William Augustus Fawkener
Biography
Birth: abt. 1750
Death: 1811
Son of Everard Fawkener (1684-1758) and Harriet Churchill (ca. 1726-1777).1 In 1774 he married Georgiana Ann Poyntz (1763-1851), but the marriage soon ended in divorce, and his then former wife married Lord John Townsend in 1787. He then married Elizabeth Wright, with whom he had two daughters.
A clerk to the Privy Council, he was in 1791 sent on a secret mission to Empress Catherine II of Russia.2
Life with James Boswell
Boswell rode with Fawkener, then a student at the Collegium Carolinum in Brunswick, from Brunswick to Wolfenbuttel on August 14, 1764. He described him as “a genteel, pretty, amiable young fellow”
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Notes
Note 1: Everard Fawkener is best known as the friend of Voltaire, at whose house the famous philosopher lived for a major part of his stay in England. He was also a silk merchant, secretary to the Duke of Cumberland, ambassador to Turkey, and postmaster general.
Note 2: Dictionary of National Biography, entry "Fawkener, Everard".
Mentioned in
William Augustus Fawkener is mentioned in:
- Boswell on the Grand Tour: Germany and Switzerland 1763-1764
