MACARTNEY, GEORGE MACARTNEY, EARL (1737-1806), was descended from an old Scottish family, the Macartneys of Auchinleck, who had settled in 1649 at Lissanoure, Antrim, Ireland, where he was born on May 14, 1737. Having won the friendship of Lord Holland, he was appointed envoy extraordinary to Russia in 1764, and negotiated an alliance be tween England and that country. On his return he entered par liament, and became chief secretary for Ireland (1769-72). In 1775 he became governor of the Caribbee Islands (being created an Irish baron in 1776), and in 1780 governor of Madras, but he declined the governor-generalship of India, and returned to Eng land in 1786. After being created Earl Macartney in the Irish peerage (1792), he was appointed the first envoy of Britain to China, in the hope of opening up commercial relations with that country. The Emperor, however, informed Macartney that he "set no value on objects strange or ingenious" and already possessed all things; the rejected gifts including the famous coach on which the Emperor mounted the box of the nearest seat to heaven, while the coachman rode inside. On his return from a confiden
tial mission to Italy (1795) Macartney was raised to the English peerage as a baron in 1796, and in the end of the same year was appointed governor of the newly acquired territory of the Cape of Good Hope, where he remained till ill health compelled him to resign in Nov. 1798. He died at Chiswick, Middlesex, on May 31, 1806, the title becoming extinct.
An account of Macartney's embassy to China, by Sir George Staun ton, published in 1797, has been frequently reprinted. See J. Barrow, Life and Writings of Lord Macartney (1807) H. Macartney Robbins Our First Ambassador to China (1908).