Joseph Gage
British businessman
Joseph Edward Gage (c.1687 – 1766) was an entrepreneur and speculator. He was the son of Joseph Gage of Sherborne Castle and Elizabeth Penruddock and the brother of Thomas Gage, 1st Viscount Gage Bt.
Career
As a young man in Paris, he borrowed money from Richard Cantillon to speculate in shares in Mississippi Company and the South Sea Company. He made a vast paper fortune, whereupon he offered Augustus II the Strong the King of Poland 3,000,000 pounds for his crown. When this offer was declined, he made a similar offer for the crown of Sardinia. Later, he was granted a silver mine, and entered into the service of the King of Spain, given the command of his armies in Sicily and Lombardy, and created a grandee (March 1743) of the first class of the kingdom of Spain. He was also presented by the King of Naples with the order of San Gennaro, and a pension of 4000 ducats a year.
Personal life
Historians disagree over whether or not he married his business partner Lady Mary Herbert. He wrote to her father, William Herbert, 2nd Marquess of Powis, in 1736 to ask for his consent to their marriage. Murphy claims that he later married Catherine Caryll, daughter of John Caryll, of West Harting, Sussex, in 1748 and that he was widowed a few months later.
“Joseph Gage” enters the record as british businessman. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Joseph, Gage and British can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 13, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q6283321. VIAF identifies the subject as 1310145857164622922668. The Library of Congress control number is no2016028510. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1687, 1766, 1743 and 1736.
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This entry incorporates text from “Joseph Gage” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.