Harcourt was born in December 1661 at Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire, the only son of Sir Philip Harcourt, of Stanton Harcourt, and his first wife Anne Waller, daughter of Sir William Waller of Osterley Park, Middlesex. He was educated at a school at Shilton, Oxfordshire, under Samuel Birch, to 1677 and was admitted at Inner Temple in 1676. He matriculated at Pembroke College, Oxford on 30 March 1677, aged 15, and was awarded BA in 1679. In 1683, he was Called to the Bar. He had four brothers and four sisters from his father's second marriage in 1674 to Elizabeth Lee. He succeeded to the family estates on the death of his father on 20 March 1688.
Career
Harcourt was recorder of Abingdon from June to December 1687 and, after a break at the time of the revolution, from October 1689 to April 1711. At the 1690 English general election, he was returned as Tory Member of Parliament for Abingdon. In 1701 he was nominated by the Commons to conduct the impeachment of Lord Somers. In 1702 he became solicitor-general and was knighted by Queen Anne. In the same year he became bencher and treasurer of his Inn and was awarded DCL at Oxford University. At the 1705 English general election, he was returned as MP for Bossiney, and as commissioner for arranging the union with Scotland which he was largely instrumental in promoting. Harcourt was appointed attorney-general in 1707, but resigned office in the following year when his friend Robert Harley, afterwards Earl of Oxford, was dismissed. Harcourt defended Sacheverell at the bar of the House of Lords in 1710, being then without a seat in Parliament; but in the same year was returned for Cardigan, and in September again became attorney-general. In October he was appointed lord keeper of the great seal, and in virtue of this office he presided in the House of Lords for some months without a peerage, until, on 3 September 1711, he was created Baron Harcourt of Stanton Harcourt; but it was not till April 1713 that he received the appointment of Lord Chancellor. In 1710 he had purchased the Nuneham Courtenay estate in Oxfordshire, but his usual place of residence continued to be at Cokethorpe near Stanton Harcourt, where he once received a state visit from Queen Anne. In the negotiations preceding the Peace of Utrecht, Harcourt took an important part. There is no sufficient evidence for the allegations of the Whigs that Harcourt entered into treasonable relations with the Pretender. On the accession of George I however, he was deprived of office and retired to Cokethorpe, where he enjoyed the society of men of letters, Swift, Pope, Prior and other famous writers being among his frequent guests. With Swift, however, he had occasional quarrels, during one of which the great satirist bestowed on him the sobriquet of "Trimming Harcourt." He exerted himself to defeat the impeachment of Lord Oxford in 1717, and in 1723 he was active in obtaining a pardon for another old political friend, Lord Bolingbroke. In 1721 Harcourt was created a viscount and returned to the privy councils; and on several occasions during the king's absences from England he was on the Council of Regency. In 1726, he acquired the manor of Cogges from the heirs of Sir Francis Blake.
Private life
Harcourt enjoyed the reputation of being a brilliant orator; Speaker Onslow going so far as to say that "Harcourt had the greatest skill and power of speech of any man I ever knew in a public assembly." He was a member of the famous Saturday Club, frequented by the chief literati and wits of the period, with several of whom he corresponded. Some letters to him from Pope are preserved in the Harcourt Papers. His portrait was painted by Kneller; it was once at Nuneham House. Harcourt married first at St Marylebone on 18 October 1680 Rebecca Clarke, daughter of the Rev. Thomas Clarke, his father's chaplain, by whom he had five children; secondly Elizabeth Spencer, daughter of Richard Spencer; and thirdly in Oxfordshire on 30 September 1724 Elizabeth Vernon, daughter of Sir Thomas Vernon, of Twickenham Park. He left children by his first wife only:
Hon. Simon Harcourt, who was MP for Wallingford, and predeceased his father, the Lord Chancellor, leaving a son, married Elizabeth Evelyn, sister of Sir John Evelyn, of Wotton, and daughter of John Evelyn, by whom he had one son and four daughters:
