George Tilson

Who was George Tilson?

George Tilson was a British civil servant, long-serving Under-Secretary of State in the Foreign Office.

George Tilson was the grandson of Henry Tilson, Bishop of Elphin; his brother Christopher was MP for Cricklade. From 1703 to 1706 Tilson was Secretary to the British envoy to Prussia, Baron Raby. From 1710 until his death in 1738 he was Under-Secretary for the Northern Department, serving under a succession of Tory and Whig Secretaries of State: Bolingbroke, William Bromley, Townshend, James Stanhope, 1st Earl Stanhope, Sunderland and Lord Carteret. As Thomas Carlyle put it, Tilson's name "often turns up [...] in the [...] extinct Paper-heaps of that time".

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in May 1735.