Alleyne FitzHerbert, 1st Baron St Helens - Retirement

Retirement

This completed his services abroad, and on 5 April 1803 he retired from diplomatic life with a pension of £2,300. a year. When Addington was forced to resign the premiership, St. Helens, who was much attached to George III, and was admitted to more intimate friendship with that king and his wife than any other of the courtiers, was created a lord of the bedchamber (May 1804), and the appointment is said to have been made against Pitt's wishes. He declared that he could not live out of London, and he therefore dwelt in Grafton Street all the year round. Although he repurchased Somersal Herbert Hall, an old family property, in 1806, he lent it for life to a cousin, the novelist Frances Jacson and her sister. His consummate prudence and his quiet, polished manners are the theme of Nathaniel Wraxall's praise. Rogers and Jeremy Bentham were included in the list of his friends.

To Rogers he presented in his last illness Pope's own copy of Garth's Dispensary, with Pope's manuscript annotations. Bentham had been presented to St. Helens by his elder brother, sometime member for Derbyshire, and many letters to and from him on subjects of political interest are in Bentham's works. Two letters from him to Croker on Wraxall's anecdotes are in the 'Croker Papers (ii. 294-7), and a letter to him from the first Lord Malmesbury is printed in the latter's diaries. St. Helens died in Grafton Street, London, on 19 February 1839, and was buried in the Harrow Road cemetery on 26 February. As he was never married, the title became extinct, and his property passed to his nephew, Sir Henry Fitzherbert. From 1805 to 1837 he had been a trustee of the British Museum, and at the time of his death he was the senior member of the privy council.