Personal data
William Augustus Fawkener
abt.
Born 1750   Died 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

 

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.

    Boswell on the Grand Tour I, 1764
    The Journal of His German and Swiss Travels, 1764

    Unless otherwise noted, the source for a dated quotation of Boswell's is generally the corresponding volume of the Yale Trade Editions of Boswell's journals.