Life
Hartley was born in Bath, Somerset, England in 1732. He matriculated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford on 6 April 1747 at the age of 15. He was awarded his B.A. on 14 March 1750 and was a fellow of Merton College, Oxford until his death. He became a student of Lincoln's Inn in 1759. During the 1760s he gained recognition as a scientist and, through mutual interests, he met and became an intimate friend and correspondent of Benjamin Franklin. Hartley was sympathetic to the Lord Rockingham's Whigs, although he did not hold office in either Rockingham ministry. He represented Kingston upon Hull in parliament from 1774 to 1780, and from 1782 to 1784, and attained considerable reputation as an opponent of the war with America, and of the African slave trade.
He was expert in public finance and spoke frequently in parliament in opposition to the war in America. Although a liberal on American policy, Hartley was a long-time friend of Lord North and strongly disliked the Prime Minister, Shelburne. He supported the Coalition by voting against Shelburne's peace preliminaries. It was probably owing to his friendship with Franklin, and to his consistent support of Lord Rockingham, that he was selected by the government to act as plenipotentiary in Paris, where on 3 September 1783 he and Franklin drew up and signed the definitive treaty of peace between Great Britain and the United States of America. He died at Bath on 19 December 1813 in his eighty-second year.
His portrait was painted by George Romney and has been engraved by J. Walker in mezzotint. Nathaniel William Wraxall says that Hartley, "though destitute of all personal recommendation of manner, possessed some talent with unsullied probity, added to indefatigable perseverance and labour." He adds that his speeches were intolerably long and dull, and that "his rising always operated like a dinner bell" (Memoirs, iii. 490).
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