Charles Long, 1st Baron Farnborough

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Charles Long, 1st Baron Farnborough (2 January 1760 – 17 January 1838) was a renowned English politician and art connoisseur. Born in London, he was the fourth surviving son of West Indies merchant Beeston Long and his wife Sarah Cropp. A senior branch of the family of Hurts Hall in Suffolk had established themselves in Jamaica after the conquest of the island in 1665. Educated at a private school in Greenwich and at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, Long matriculated in 1779 but did not take a degree. He was admitted to the Inner Temple and later made the grand tour between 1786 and 1788, exploring Rome and laying the foundation of his art collection under James Byres' guidance. Long was a close friend of William Pitt, whom he met at Cambridge, and began his involvement in politics as early as 1788 when he canvassed for Lord Hood, the ministerial candidate in the Westminster election. He entered parliament in January 1789 as member for Rye, a Treasury-controlled seat. Long sat as member for Midhurst (1796–1802) and for Wendover (1802–06), boroughs whose parliamentary representatives were nominated by Pitt's friend Lord Carrington, and for Haselmere (1806–26), where the sole patron was the Pittite Earl of Lonsdale. Becoming junior secretary to the Treasury in 1791, Long acted as parliamentary whip and teller. In 1796, he undertook much of the general election management on behalf of the government. When Pitt left office in 1801, Long followed and was rewarded with a yearly pension of £1500. At Pitt's behest, he was appointed Treasury advisor to Prime Minister Henry Addington, and in 1802 was sworn of the Privy Council. The following year, his house at Bromley Hill in Kent hosted negotiations between Pitt and Addington, with Long as chief intermediary. When Pitt returned to power in 1804, Long was made a lord of the Treasury (1804–06) and then chief secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (1805–06). He took office in the Portland ministry as paymaster-general of the forces after Pitt's death in 1806, a post he retained until 1826 when he retired from politics. Long was offered the Chancellorship of the Exchequer and the Secretaryship at War by Perceval but refused both positions, considering himself unfit to fill either role. Except on matters arising from his ministerial responsibilities, Long rarely spoke in the House of Commons. Rather than an initiator of policy, his strengths lay in his loyal and efficient political judgments. In 1792, he established the Sun newspaper as an instrument of the Tories with Sir James Bland Burges. Long was the author of pamphlets on the French Revolution (1795) and the price of bread (1800). In 1820, King George IV made Long a Knight of the Bath, and upon his retirement from politics in 1826, he was raised to the peerage as "Baron Farnborough, of Bromley-Hill-Place, in the county of Kent." Farnborough was then a village in Kent, near his country residence. Long was elected FRS in 1792, FSA in 1812, and received an honorary LLD from his old university in 1833. The arts were Long's true passion, but due to limited resources, he could not be a major patron or collector in his own right. However, as a minister and MP, he was influential in furthering artistic causes such as the establishment of the National Gallery and the purchase of the Elgin marbles. He acted as intermediary in 1792 between Pitt and Humphry Repton over improvements to the former's grounds at Holwood, and in 1799 when the Altieri Claudes were brought to England, they were first exhibited to English connoisseurs at Long's house in Grosvenor Place. In subsequent years, he maintained a high profile in connection with his public patronage of the arts. A committee of taste was appointed in 1802 to supervise the erection of monuments to the heroes of the Napoleonic wars, with Long as chairman. In 1809, the responsibilities were extended to the repair of Henry VII's chapel at Westminster, with money voted by parliament. Long was consulted on everything from the need for a fig-leaf on the heroic statue honoring the Duke of Wellington, subscribed for by the ladies of Great Britain (1821), to the appropriate order for the facade of the privy council offices in Whitehall (1824).