George Herbert, 2nd Earl of Powis

Who is George Herbert, 2nd Earl of Powis?

George Edward Henry Arthur Herbert, 2nd Earl of Powis, styled Viscount Ludlow until 1772, was an Anglo-Welsh peer.

Herbert was born at Finchley, Middlesex, the son of Henry Herbert, 1st Earl of Powis, by Barbara Herbert, daughter of Lord Edward Herbert. He was educated at Eton College.

He succeeded his father in the earldom in 1772 and was appointed Recorder of Ludlow and Lord Lieutenant of Montgomeryshire in 1776. Powis was commissioned a colonel to embody the Montgomeryshire Militia in 1778. In 1798 he was also made Lord Lieutenant of Shropshire; he was also appointed colonel of the Shropshire Militia in place of the Montgomeryshire. He retained both Lord-Lieutenancies until his death in 1801.

Lord Powis made a Grand Tour in Italy in 1775-76, when he probably acquired a collection of marble sculpture preserved at his family seat, Powis Castle. He added a ballroom but did little to maintain the house, visitor John Byng in 1784 ascribing its neglected state to his time spent "in the prodigalities of London and in driving high phaetons up St James's Street." At a later visit he wrote: "The present is a mean silly man, the bubble of his mistress who rarely comes here, to sneak for about a day or two."