Sir Richard Worsley, 7th Baronet, was a British politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1774 and 1801. He was a noted collector of antiquities.
Worsley failed to win a seat at the Hampshire by-election of December 1779 and lost all his offices when the North administration fell in 1782. Scandals involving his wife further damaged his political career. Worsley left for Spain, Portugal, and France and wintered in Rome. After further travels, he returned to England in 1788.
1790–1805
Worsley re-entered Parliament as MP for Newtown, Isle of Wight, from 1790 to 1793. He became British ambassador to the Republic of Venice from 1794 until Venice's annexation by France in 1797. In the latter post he continued collecting antiquities and worked hard to keep France's ambassador from taking advantage of Venice's neutrality. He managed to escape Venice when the French invaded, transferring soon after his departure from a civilian convoy to a 14-gun Royal Navy sloop, leaving his art collections from Venice on the convoy with instructions to stay at Fiume to await a more peaceful situation in which to continue to England. He landed in England in mid-September 1797 and received a £600 annuity from the crown for his services. Having been re-elected in absentia for Newtown in 1796, Worsley held that seat until Pitt the Younger resigned in February 1801, ending his participation in public life.
Antiquarian and collector
In 1778 Worsley was elected a Fellow of both the Society of Antiquaries of London and the Royal Society. In February 1785 he left Rome for the Levant with Willey Reveley as draughtsman. He visited Athens, the Greek interior, Rhodes, Cairo, Constantinople, Sigeion, Troy and the Crimea. During his travels he built up a collection of gems, paintings, sculpture and reliefs. He lost the paintings when the collection was interned in Portugal during his return from the east to Britain via Rome in 1787–88. In Rome he bought more antiquities from Thomas Jenkins and Giovanni Battista Piranesi, and became a friend of the Spanish ambassador, Jose Nicolas de Azara, and the antiquary Ennio Quirino Visconti. On his return Worsley arranged the collection at his house at Appuldurcombe, where he had the grounds landscaped by Capability Brown. His was the most extensive collection of ancient Greek sculpture in Britain, before the arrival of Elgin Marbles. Worsley went into seclusion, principally at Sea Cottage, which he built in the early 1790s near St Lawrence, in the Undercliff of the Isle of Wight, adding small classical temples in its grounds and making a failed attempt to add a vineyard. In 1801 he received news from a British government agent that a French privateer had brought the ship carrying his art treasures into Málaga and that the paintings onboard had been bought up cheaply by Lucien Bonaparte. Only the antiquities remained, which he reacquired by paying the French bounty on them.
Last years and death
Poor health prevented Worsley from taking part in defending the Isle of Wight against the Napoleonic invasion threat, but he carried on collecting until his death. He died of apoplexy on 8August 1805 at Appuldurcombe House and was buried at the parish church at Godshill. Most of Worsley's collections went to Brocklesby Park.
Works
Completion of a History of the Isle of Wight by his father and grandfather, 1781
Museum Worsleianum – part one issued 1798, part one issued 1802. This work was written jointly with Ennio Quirino Visconti.
On 20 September 1775 Worsley married Seymour Dorothy Fleming, the younger daughter and coheir of Sir John Fleming, 1st Baronet, of Brompton Park, Middlesex, and his wife, Lady Jane Fleming. They had one legitimate son, Robert Edwin and he claimed the paternity of Seymour's daughter, Jane Seymour Worsley, even though he knew her to be the daughter of Seymour's lover, George Bisset. This was done to avoid scandal, allowing the affair to remain a secret. Seymour Fleming brought £52,000 to the marriage, which soon became unhappy. cartoon - "Sir Richard Worse-than-sly, exposing his wife's bottom; - o fye!" His wife was rumoured to have 27 lovers, and in 1782 Worsley brought a criminal conversation case for £20,000 against one of them, George M Bissett, a Hampshire militia officer who lived near to them. The jury decided that Worsley had connived in the adultery and awarded him only one shilling in damages. In 1788 he and his estranged wife entered into articles of separation. After the separation, she reverted to her birth name, Fleming. Worsley began an affair with a Mrs Sarah Smith, which lasted until his death. The baronetcy passed to Worsley's fourth cousin, Henry Worsley-Holmes. Fleming's £70,000 jointure reverted to her, and just over a month later, on 12September, she married John Lewis Cuchet at Farnham. Worsley left the estate saddled with heavy debts. Appuldurcombe passed to his niece, Henrietta Anna Maria Charlotte, who married the Hon. Charles Anderson-Pelham, later first earl of Yarborough, in 1806.
