Fitzclarence, George Augustus Frederick, 1st Earl of Munster (1794 -1842)
George FitzClarence was the eldest son of William, Duke of Clarence, afterwards William IV, and the actress Dorothea Jordan. He was educated at the Royal Military College, Marlow 1807, and was commissioned as a Cornet in the Prince of Wales Regiment of Hussars 1808. He was at the Battle of Corunna as Aide de Camp to General Slade, accompanied the Adjutant General Sir Charles Stewart to Portugal in May 1809 as a Captain on the Head Quarters staff, where he remained until the successful end of the Peninsular War in 1814. He was posted to India in January 1815 as Aide de Camp to Warren Hastings, arriving in Calcutta in July. While in India he applied himself to learning oriental languages, and was sent home overland with despatches, after the peace of Sandia. Honourably mentioned in the despatches, he published an account of his journey Journal of a route across India, through Egypt, to England, in 1817 and 1818. (London, 1819). The same year he was made a Lieutenant Colonel. He married Mary Wyndham, second daughter of the Earl of Egremont 18 October 1819. A Fellow of the Royal Society, and a keen member of the Royal Asiatic Society, he was instrumental in the foundation of the Oriental Translation Fund, and published papers in the Journal Asiatique of Paris. He was created Earl of Munster in 1831, and a Major General, and was an Aide de Camp to Queen Victoria and Lieutenant of the Tower and Governor of Windsor Castle. His equivocal position caused him much pain. At the beginning of 1842 he was greatly depressed, and shot himself on the 20 March. A portion of the library of the Earl of Munster was sold in London by Wilmot on the 5 April 1843, and the library of William George, 2nd Earl was sold by E. Hodgson 22 March 1855.