George Digby

Short Stats

• Character Name: Sir George Digby
• Title: Earl of Bristol, Baron Digby of Sherborne
• Estate Name: Chenies, Buckinghamshire
• Nationality: English
• Age: 63 (b. October 1612)
• Gender: Male
• Eye Colour: Blue
• Hair Colour: Blond

Physical Attributes & Initial Impression of Personality

Clarendon wrote that he was "a man of very extraordinary parts by nature and art, a graceful and beautiful person, equal to a very good part in the greatest affairs, but the unfittests man alive to conduct them, having an ambition and vanity superior to all his other parts, and a confidence in himself which sometimes intoxicated, transported, and exposed him."

Walpole wrote "he was a singular person whose life was one contradiction. He wrote against Popery and embraced it; he was a zealous opposer of the Court and a sacrifice for it; was conscientiously converted in the midst of his persecution of Lord Strafford, and was most unconscientiously a prosecutor of Lord Clarendon. With great parts he always hurt himself and his friends; with romantic bravery he was always an unsuccessful commander."

Background

Born in Madrid, Spain, to Sir John Digby and Beatrice Walcott Digby, 1st Earl and Countess of Bristol, he earned an MA from Magdalen College, Oxford University, in 1636. He held the rank of Colonel in the Regiment of Horse, was an MP for Dorset (1640-41), Governor of Nottingham (1642), High Steward at Oxford University (1643-46), Secretary of State (1643-45), and invested as a Privy Counsellor (1643). He gained the rank of Lieutenant-General, in 1651, in the service of the French Army, and was investing into the Order of the Garter by, in January, 1653. He then gained the rank of Lieutenant-General in 1657 in the service of the English Army, and held the office of Secretary of State, in 1657. Following the Restoration, he once again took the position of High Steward at Oxford University, from 1660 to 1663.

Made Knight of the Garter in 1661

Digby married Lady Anne Russell, daughter of Sir Francis Russell and Catherine Brydges Russell, the Earl of Bedford. They have two surviving children. George is cousin to the Earl of Hardy, whose daughter Jane Mary Digby currently resides in London.

Digby is currently on a mission to Florida.

Offspring:

• John Digby (b. 1635)
• Anne Digby (b. 1646)