John, Lord Hervey, was educated first at Westminster School, under Dr. Freind, the friend of Mrs. Montagu; thence he was removed to Clare Hall, Cambridge:  he graduated as a nobleman, and became M.A. in 1715.

At Cambridge Lord Hervey might have acquired some manly prowess; but he had a mother who was as strange as the family into which she had married, and who was passionately devoted to her son:  she evinced her affection by never letting him have a chance of being like other English boys.  When his father was at Newmarket, Jack Hervey, as he was called, was to ride a race, to please his father; but his mother could not risk her dear boy’s safety, and the race was won by a jockey.  He was as precious and as fragile as porcelain:  the elder brother’s death made the heir of the Herveys more valuable, more effeminate, and more controlled than ever by his eccentric mother.  A court was to be his hemisphere, and to that all his views, early in life, tended.  He went to Hanover to pay his court to George I.:  Carr had done the same, and had come back enchanted with George, the heir-presumptive, who made him one of the lords of the bedchamber.  Jack Hervey also returned full of enthusiasm for the Prince of Wales, afterwards George II., and the Princess; and that visit influenced his destiny.

He now proposed making the grand tour, which comprised Paris, Germany, and Italy.  But his mother again interfered:  she wept, she exhorted, she prevailed.  Means were refused, and the stripling was recalled to hang about the court, or to loiter at Ickworth, scribbling verses, and causing his father uneasiness lest he should be too much of a poet, and too little of a public man.

Such was his youth:  disappointed by not obtaining a commission in the Guards, he led a desultory butterfly-like life; one day at Richmond with Queen Caroline, then Princess of Wales; another, at Pope’s villa, at Twickenham; sometimes in the House of Commons, in which he succeeded his elder brother as member for Bury; and, at the period when he has been described as forming one of the quartett in Queen Caroline’s closet at St. James’s, as vice-chamberlain to his partial and royal patroness.

His early marriage with Mary Lepel, the beautiful maid of honour to Queen Caroline, insured his felicity, though it did not curb his predilections for other ladies.

Henceforth Lord Hervey lived all the year round in what were then called lodgings, that is, apartments appropriated to the royal household, or even to others, in St. James’s, or at Richmond, or at Windsor.  In order fully to comprehend all the intimate relations which he had with the court, it is necessary to present the reader with some account of the family of George II.  Five daughters had been the female issue of his majesty’s marriage with Queen Caroline.  Three of these princesses, the three elder ones, had lived, during the life of George I., at St. James’s with their grandfather; who, irritated by the differences between him and his son, then Prince of Wales, adopted that measure rather as showing his authority than from any affection to the young princesses.  It was, in truth, difficult to say which of these royal ladies was the most unfortunate.