Promoted to field marshal on 3 December 1757,[9] Molesworth became Governor of the Royal Hospital Kilmainham; he died in London on 12 October 1758 and was buried in Kensington.[4] He was succeeded in the title by his only son Richard. Lady Molesworth died in a house fire in 1763 with two of her daughters.[10]
Molesworth first married Jane Lucas, of whose family little is known; they had three children, Amelia, Letitia, and Mary, who became the second wife of Robert Rochfort, 1st Earl of Belvedere, and suffered greatly from his ill-treatment of her, which became a subject of public comment.[11] Following the death of his first wife he married Mary Jenney Ussher, daughter of the Reverend William Ussher, Archdeacon of Clonfert, and his wife Mary Jenney, on 7 February 1744 and had seven children from this union: Richard, 4th Viscount Molesworth, Henrietta (who married Right Hon. John Staples, MP for Antrim), Elizabeth, Charlotte, Melosina, Mary and Louisa (who married firstly William Ponsonby, 1st Baron Ponsonby, and secondly William Fitzwilliam, 4th Earl Fitzwilliam).[12] Mary and Melosina perished along with their mother in a house fire in 1763.[10]
^Cokayne, G.E. (2000). The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, Extant, Extinct or Dormant, new ed., volume II. Alan Sutton Publishing. p. 114.
^Cokayne, G.E. (2000). The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, Extant, Extinct or Dormant, new ed., volume X. Alan Sutton Publishing. p. 576.
Sources
Heathcote, Tony (1999). The British Field Marshals 1736–1997. Pen & Sword Books Ltd. ISBN0-85052-696-5.
