George Granville, 1st Baron Lansdowne PC (9 March 1666 – 29 January 1735), of Stowe, Cornwall, was an English Tory politician who sat in the English and British House of Commons from 1702 until 1712, when he was raised to the peerage as Baron Lansdown and sat in the House of Lords. He was Secretary at War during the Harley administration from 1710 to 1712. He was also a noted poet and made a name for himself with verses composed on the visit of Mary of Modena, then Duchess of York, while he was at Cambridge in 1677. He was also a playwright, following in the style of John Dryden. Origins Granville was the son of Bernard Granville, the fourth son of Sir Bevil Grenville (1596-1643) of Bideford in Devon and Stowe in the parish of Kilkhampton in Cornwall, a heroic Royalist commander in the Civil War. (The family changed the spelling of its name in 1661 from "Grenville" to "Granville", following the grant of the titles Baron Granville and Earl of Bath). His uncle was John Granville, 1st Earl of Bath (1628-1701) whose half-first-cousin was George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle, who both played leading roles in the restoration of the monarchy to King Charles II in 1660. He was heir male of William Granville, 3rd Earl of Bath (1692-1711), the 19-year-old son of his first cousin Charles Granville, 2nd Earl of Bath (1661–1701), lord of the manors of Bideford in Devon and of Stowe, Kilkhampton, Cornwall. These connections guaranteed that Granville began life as a staunch Tory and Jacobite. Career Granville was sent to France at the age of ten, with his tutor, William Ellis, who was a proponent of passive resistance and later a servant of James II at St Germain. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge in 1677. Among his productions while there were poems welcoming Mary of Modena when she visited the university. In 1682, he went to Paris with his brother Sir Bevill Granville, where they studied fencing, riding, dancing, mathematics and military science. He stayed in France until 1687, accumulating a £500 debt. He then lived in England at his mother's house at Marr, near Doncaster. His early interests were literary and by the mid-1690s he had befriended John Dryden and begun to write plays. He wrote an undistinguished comedy of manners entitled The She-Gallants, which was staged unsuccessfully in 1695. His adult plays