Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

The Most Honourable Order of the Bath, G.C.B. (Civil) Knight Grand Cross breast star by Rundell Bridge & Rundell, circa 1825, silver with gold and enamel appliqué centre, 95mm x 92mm, fitted with gold pin for wearing, the reverse back-plate inscribed ‘RUNDELL BRIDGE & RUNDELL, Jewellers to HIS MAJESTY and THE ROYAL FAMILY’, minor damage to ermine band of top crown, otherwise nearly extremely fine and very rare £2500-3500

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, Fine Insignia of the Order of the Bath from the collection of the late Philip Kitchen.

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Provenance: Sotheby, January 1977, ‘The property of the Rt. Hon. The Earl Granville, M.C.’

The above star was awarded to Granville Leveson Gower, First Earl of Granville (1777-1846). Educated at Oxford, he became a protegé of Pitt and was appointed a Lord of the Treasury in 1800. Serving as M.P. for Lichfield (1795-99) and Staffordshire (1799-1815), he became a member of the Privy Council in 1804 and was sent as Special Ambassador to St Petersburg. Created Viscount Granville in 1815, he subsequently became minister at Brussels and then, because of his great friendship with Canning, he became British Ambassador in Paris in the autumn of 1824. He was appointed G.C.B. and invested with it by the King of France at the Tuileries on 9 June 1825. Recalled in 1827, he was re-appointed as Ambassador to Paris by Earl Grey and remained there until the fall of Melbourne’s government in 1841. On 2 May 1833, he was created Earl Granville and Baron Leveson of Scone and he died on 8 January 1846.