George Annesley, 2nd Earl of Mountnorris
Earl in the Peerage of Ireland and politician (1770-1844)

George Annesley, 2nd Earl of Mountnorris FRS (4 December 1770 – 23 July 1844), styled Viscount Valentia between 1793 and 1816, was a British peer and politician.
Background
Mountnorris was the son of Arthur Annesley, 1st Earl of Mountnorris, and the Hon. Lucy, daughter of George Lyttelton, 1st Baron Lyttelton. He matriculated at Brasenose College, Oxford in 1787, and left in 1789 without taking a degree.
Political career
Mountnorris sat as Member of Parliament for Yarmouth from 1808 to 1810.
Trip to India
In 1802 Henry Salt was appointed secretary and draughtsman to George Annesley, Viscount Valentia. They started on an eastern tour, travelling on Minerva to India via the Cape. Salt explored the Red Sea area, and in 1805 visited the Ethiopian Highlands. He returned to England in 1806. Salt's paintings from the trip were used to illustrate Lord Valentia's Voyages and Travels to India, Ceylon, the Red Sea, Abyssinia and Egypt, in the years 1802, 1803, 1804, 1805, and 1806, published in 1809 in three volumes.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “George Annesley, 2nd Earl of Mountnorris” is earl in the Peerage of Ireland and politician (1770-1844). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through George, Annesley and Earl, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “earl in the Peerage of Ireland and politician (1770-1844)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5536270. VIAF identifies the subject as 61663663. The Library of Congress control number is nr93027534. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1770, 1844, 1793 and 1816.
A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “George Annesley, 2nd Earl of Mountnorris” 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.