Edward Villiers, 1st Earl of Jersey

He was the son of Sir Edward Villiers (1620–1689) of Richmond, Surrey, by his wife Frances Howard, the youngest daughter of Theophilus Howard, 2nd Earl of Suffolk, and Elizabeth Home.^[1]

His grandfather was Sir Edward Villiers (c. 1585 – 1626), Master of the Mint and Lord President of Munster, who was half-brother of George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, and of Christopher Villiers, 1st Earl of Anglesey. His sister was Elizabeth Villiers, the reputed mistress of King William III, who was later Countess of Orkney as the wife of George Hamilton, 1st Earl of Orkney.^[2]

He was admitted to St John's College, Cambridge, in 1671 and took his Master of Arts in 1672.^[3]

Following the Glorious Revolution of 1688, Villiers was appointed Master of the Horse to Queen Mary II, and in June 1689 he succeeded his father as Knight Marshal to the royal household. On 20 March 1691 he was elevated to the Peerage of England as Viscount Villiers of Dartford and Baron Villiers of Hoo, in part owing to the influence of his sister, Elizabeth.^[1] In 1695, he was sent as a diplomat to the Dutch Republic, representing his country at the Congress of Ryswick in 1686, and on 25 May 1697 he was appointed one of the Lords Justices of Ireland, although he rarely visited that country subsequently. The same year, on 13 October he was made Earl of Jersey and English ambassador at The Hague. In 1698 he became the English ambassador in Paris.^[1]

After returning to England in 1699, was made Secretary of State for the Southern Department, and on three occasions he was one of the Lords Justices of England. In June 1700, he was appointed Lord Chamberlain by King William, an office he continued to hold after the accession of Queen Anne in 1702. The same year he received an honorary degree from the University of Oxford.^[1]

In 1701, he persuaded the young writer and diplomat Matthew Prior to abandon his former Whig allies and vote for the impeachment of his fellow Kit Cat Club member and patron Lord Halifax. Jersey replaced Halifax as Prior's patron.

In 1704, he was dismissed from office by Queen Anne after objecting to the foreign policy initiatives of Lord Godolphin. After his dismissal, Lord Jersey was activity involved in Jacobite schemes, using his wife, who was a Roman Catholic, as a useful go-between.^[1] Despite this, shortly before his death he had been nominated to attend the Congress of Utrecht by the British government. In 1711 the Queen was reluctantly persuaded to bring him back into the Cabinet as Lord Privy Seal, but he died immediately afterwards.^[2] He died on 25 August 1711, the day of his investiture, of apoplexy.^[4]

The Scottish spy, John Macky, observed that Lord Jersey was "a man of weak capacity [but] he makes a very good figure in his person, being tall, well-shaped, handsome, and dresses clean".^[1]