Lt-Col Cecil Forester, MP

Family and Education b. ?1721, 2nd s. of William Forester, and bro. of Brooke Forester. educ. Westminster Apr. 1733 (aged 12)-1737. m. Anne, da. and coh. of Robert Townshend of Christleton, Cheshire, 5s. 2da.

Offices Held

Cornet 4 Drag. 1739; maj. 46 Ft. 1748, lt.-col. 1752; lt.-col. 11 Ft. 1755; sold out 1760.

Biography Forester’s elder brother, Brooke, when asking the Duke of Newcastle, 15 Mar. 1759, that Cecil be made aide-de-camp to the King, added: ‘As my brother has been ill used, if he is not preferred he is determined to give up immediately.’ The secretary at war, Lord Barrington, noted in his ‘Military Paper’ of 28 Mar. that Forester was ‘high on the list of lieutenant-colonels’; and from now onwards he continued to appear in the Duke’s memoranda, and in his correspondence with Lord Powis; to whom Newcastle wrote in despair on 12 Aug. 1759:

Your Lordship knows my zealous wishes for Colonel Forester’s service; the King knows them; my Lord Ligonier knows them. It is not in my power to make any absolute promise of any military preferment; and therefore I should be extremely to blame to promise what it may not be in my power to perform. Yet nothing happened, and Forester left the army.1

In the House he presumably followed his brother. On 9 Dec. 1762 he appears as voting against the peace preliminaries in the list published in the History of the Late Minority, but not in that sent by Fox to Bute. Otherwise not a single vote, and not a single speech, by him is recorded during his seven years in Parliament; in the division lists on general warrants, 6 and 18 Feb. 1764, he is marked as ‘absent’; and together with his brother, at Lord Powis’s instance, stayed away from the House on 29 Jan. 1765. He did not stand again for Parliament, and died on 22 Aug. 1774, aged 53.

Ref Volumes: 1754-1790 Author: Sir Lewis Namier Notes 1. Add 32889, ff. 86, 283-4; 32894, f. 103