George William Frederick Howard, 7th Earl of Carlisle, KG, KP, PC (18 April 1802– 5 December 1864), styled Viscount Morpeth from 1825 to 1848, was a British statesman, orator, and writer.[1]
At the general election in 1826 Carlisle was returned to parliament as member for the family borough of Morpeth (in Northumberland), a seat he held until 1830, and then represented Yorkshire until 1832 and the West Riding of Yorkshire from 1832 to 1841 and from 1846 to 1848. The latter year he succeeded his father in the earldom and entered the House of Lords.[4]
In the six weeks after he stepped down as Chief Secretary of Ireland in 1841, the signatures of 160,000 men and women who appreciated his service were gathered on 652 sheets of paper and stuck together, creating the Morpeth Roll, a continuous roll measuring 420 metres.[9]
Lord Carlisle died unmarried at Castle Howard in December 1864, aged 62, and was buried in the family mausoleum. He was succeeded in the earldom by his younger brother, Reverend William George Howard.[10]
AD MDCCCLXIX: IN PRIVATE LIFE WAS LOVED BY ALL WHO KNEW HIM BY HIS PUBLIC CONDUCT WON the RESPECT of his COUNTRY and LEFT THE BRIGHT EXAMPLE OF A TRVE PATRIOT AND EARNEST CHRISTIAN VIIth EARL of CARLISLE
Statues of him by the Irish sculptor John Henry Foley were also erected in Phoenix Park, Dublin, and in Brampton, Carlisle in Cumbria, both in 1870. The statue in Brampton stands on Brampton motte and depicts him in the robes of a Knight of the Garter.[11] The statue in Phoenix Park stood in the Peoples' Garden until 1956, when it was blown off its plinth in an explosion, and subsequently removed to Castle Howard in Yorkshire.[12] The plinth it once stood on remains in place.[13]
The statue of Lord Carlisle, which stood in the Phoenix Park, Dublin, from 1870 to 1956
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