Thomas Trevor, 1st Baron Trevor

The Right Honourable The Lord Trevor PC
Chief Justice Trevor
Lord President of the Council
In office 8 May – 19 June 1730
Monarch	George II
Prime Minister	Sir Robert Walpole
Preceded by	The Duke of Devonshire
Succeeded by	The Earl of Wilmington

Arms of Trevor: Party per bend sinister ermine and ermines, a lion rampant or

Thomas Trevor, 1st Baron Trevor, PC (8 March 1658 – 19 June 1730) was a British judge and politician who was Attorney-General and later Lord Privy Seal.

Biography

Trevor was the second son of Sir John Trevor III. and was educated privately before entering the Inner Temple (1672) and Christ Church, Oxford. He was called to the bar in 1680.

He was made King's Counsel in 1683 and was knighted and made Solicitor General in 1692, being promoted to Attorney-General in 1695. In 1701 Trevor was appointed Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. He was also a Privy Councillor (1702–1714) and First Commissioner of the Great Seal (1710). In 1712 he was created a peer as Baron Trevor of Bromham. He was created as one of Harley's Dozen when twelve new peerages were distributed to shift the political balance in the Whig-dominated House of Lords towards the Tories in order to secure the Peace of Utrecht.

On the accession of George I in 1714 he was deprived of his offices for alleged Jacobite sympathies, but from 1726 he was restored to favour as Lord Privy Seal (1726 to his death), one of the Lords Justice Regents of the Realm (1727), Lord President of the Council (1730) and Governor of the Charterhouse.

In 1707 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society.

Family

In 1690 he married Elizabeth (1672-1702), daughter of John Searle of Finchley, by whom he had 5 children:

• Thomas Trevor (1691-1753), 2nd Baron Trevor, who married Elizabeth (1697-1734), daughter of Timothy Burrell of Ockenden House, Cuckfield, a barrister, by her having one daughter, Elizabeth (1715-1761), who married Charles Spencer, 3rd Duke of Marlborough, thereby becoming the ancestress of the future Dukes of Marlborough and Winston Churchill
• Ann Trevor (1692-1785), who died unmarried
• Elizabeth Trevor (1693-1773), who died unmarried
• John Trevor (1695-1764), 3rd Baron Trevor, who married Elizabeth (c.1709-1782), daughter of Richard Steele, a writer, playwright, and politician, by her having one daughter Diana-Maria (1744-1778), who had severe learning difficulties and died unmarried
• Laetitia Trevor (1697-1769), who married Peter Cock of Camberwell, Surrey and had issue

In 1704 he married Anne Barnard, (c. 1670–1723), the daughter of Robert Weldon (or Wilding), a merchant in Fleet Street, London and Colonel of the Tower Hamlets Regiment. Anne had previously been married to Sir Robert Barnard of Brampton, 3rd Baronet, with whom she had had six children. By Anne, Trevor had two further children who lived to adulthood:

• Robert Trevor (1705-1783), 4th Baron Trevor (later created 1st Viscount Hampden)
• Richard Trevor (1707–1771), who was bishop of St Davids from 1744 to 1752, and then bishop of Durham.

References

• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Trevor, Sir John". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 27 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 256–257.

Further reading

• Rigg, James McMullen (1899). "Trevor, Thomas (1658-1730)" . In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 57. London: Smith, Elder & Co. pp. 228–230.