Lieutenant-General James Edward Oglethorpe (22 December 1696 – 30 June 1785) was a British army officer, Tory politician and colonial administrator best known for founding the Province of Georgia in British North America. As a social reformer, he hoped to resettle Britain's "worthy poor" in the New World, initially focusing on those in debtors' prisons.
Born to a prominent British family, Oglethorpe left college in England and a British Army commission to travel to France, where he attended a military academy before fighting under Prince Eugene of Savoy in the Austro-Turkish War. He returned to England in 1718 and was elected to the British House of Commons in 1722. His early years were relatively undistinguished until 1729, when he was made chair of the Gaols Committee that investigated British debtors' prisons. After the report was published, to widespread attention, Oglethorpe and others began publicising the idea of a new British colony to serve as a buffer between the Carolinas and Spanish Florida. After being granted a charter, he sailed to Georgia in 1732.
Oglethorpe was a major figure in Georgia's early history, holding much civil and military power and instituting a ban on slavery and alcohol. During the War of Jenkins' Ear, he led British troops in Georgia against Spanish forces based in Florida. In 1740, he led a lengthy siege of St. Augustine, which was unsuccessful. He then defeated a Spanish invasion of Georgia in 1742. Oglethorpe left Georgia after another unsuccessful invasion of St. Augustine and never returned. He led government troops in the Jacobite rising of 1745 and was blamed for his role in the Clifton Moor Skirmish. Despite being cleared in a court martial, Oglethorpe never held a military command again. He lost reelection to the House of Commons in 1754 and left England, possibly serving undercover in the Prussian Army during the Seven Years' War. In his later years, Oglethorpe was prominent in literary circles, becoming close to James Boswell and Samuel Johnson.
James Oglethorpe's family history dates back to William the Conqueror. His family supported Charles I of England during the English Civil War and suffered under Oliver Cromwell, but regained favour after the Stuart Restoration in 1660. Theophilus Oglethorpe, the head of the family, lived next to the Palace of Whitehall; he and his brothers were members of Parliament. At Whitehall, Theophilus met Eleanor Wall, one of Queen Anne's ladies-in-waiting, and they married in 1680. They had ten children: Lewis, Anne, Eleanor, Theophilus Jr., James, Frances Charlotte, Sutton, Louise Mary, and James Edward. James Edward was the Oglethorpes' youngest child and fifth son. He was born on 22 December 1696. Little is known about his early life. He was named James after James II, reflecting his family's royalist sympathies, and Edward after James Francis Edward Stuart. He was baptised on 23 December at St Martin-in-the-Fields in London.
In 1707, Oglethorpe's father bought him an ensign's commission in the British Army's 1st Regiment of Foot Guards. On 21 November 1713 he was promoted to lieutenant. Following in his older brothers' footsteps, Oglethorpe studied at Eton College, and subsequently his mother managed to have him enter Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he matriculated on 8 July 1714 with Basil Kennett as his tutor. George I of Great Britain renewed his army commission in 1715, but Oglethorpe resigned on 23 November 1715, in part because his regiment was not expected to see action.
Oglethorpe then travelled to France, where his sisters Anne and Fanny lived. He attended the military academy at Lompres, near Paris, where he met and befriended fellow-student James Francis Edward Keith. The next year, intending to fight in the Austro-Turkish War, he travelled to serve under the Austrian general Prince Eugene of Savoy. With a letter of recommendation from the Duke of Argyll and several other prominent Britons, Oglethorpe and Louis François Crozat arrived and alongside Infante Manuel, Count of Ourém joined the Imperial Army of the Holy Roman Emperor on 3 August as aides-de-camp to Eugene. Oglethorpe was present but not actively engaged in the Battle of Petrovaradin in August 1716. He was also present at the siege of Temeşvar in September. He found active command at the siege of Belgrade from 19 June to 16 August. After the death of his superior in combat, on 16 August, Oglethorpe, as the most senior aide-de-camp, acted as adjutant general, took possession of the Ottoman camp, and reported the siege's casualties to Eugene. After the battle, he was offered the rank of lieutenant colonel but did not accept.
Oglethorpe then fought in Sicily under General George Olivier Wallis in 1718 for several weeks. By 19 September, he had left the Imperial Army and returned to England. Despite hoping otherwise, Oglethorpe was refused a commission in the British army and was briefly back at Corpus Christi beginning on 25 June 1719.
When he was 26, Oglethorpe inherited the family estate at Godalming in Surrey from his brother. He was first elected to the House of Commons as a Tory aligned with William Wyndham in 1722, representing Haslemere. Oglethorpe remained unchallenged until 1734. He almost did not serve when, in a drunken brawl, he killed a man and spent five months in prison, before he was cleared of murder through a powerful friend's influence and released from prison. He took his seat in the House of Commons on 9 October.
According to Pitofsky, Oglethorpe was "among the least productive representatives". In the six years after he was elected, he was actively involved in only two debates. In contrast, Sweet writes that Oglethorpe was an "eloquent yet honest" speaker who had strong Tory principles and genuinely cared about his constituents' conditions, noting his service on 40 committees that investigated widely varied topics. Oglethorpe's first debate was on 6 April 1723; he unsuccessfully opposed the banishment of the bishop Francis Atterbury, who had been accused of supporting James Francis Edward Stuart.
In 1728, in response to the poor living and working conditions of sailors in the Royal Navy, Oglethorpe published an anonymous pamphlet, The Sailors Advocate, about press gangs and pay issues. It was 52 pages long and argued for reforming and strengthening the Navy and against impressment, but proposed few real solutions apart from analysing the work of other countries' navies. Sweet considers it the beginning of Oglethorpe's philanthropy and writes that it "gave Oglethorpe the practical experience necessary to undertake future efforts more successfully". The pamphlet was reprinted several times in the 18th century.
In the late 1720s, Oglethorpe's attention was drawn to the conditions of debtors' prisons after his friend, Robert Castell, was sent to Fleet Prison and eventually died. Oglethorpe motioned to investigate the prison's warden, and was made chairman of the resulting committee on 25 February 1729. As chair of the Gaols Committee, he began touring debtors' prisons in late February and in March finished the first of three detailed reports presented to Parliament. The reports described various abuses in the prisons, including torturing, overcrowding, and widespread disease. They particularly attacked Thomas Bambridge, the warden of Fleet Prison, where Castell had died. Oglethorpe urged reform of the prisons, mainly through prosecution of those in charge of them. Most of the blame was laid on the individual wardens, rather than the system as a whole. The reports attracted much attention, but little real change ensued. The investigation ended on 14 May.
In the aftermath (the final report was presented on 8 May 1730), prominent Britons such as Alexander Pope, James Thomson, Samuel Wesley, and William Hogarth praised Oglethorpe and the committee. Pitofsky writes that there was seemingly a "great deal of popular support for the committee". But Conservative members of the House of Commons attempted to prevent change by deriding the committee members as "amateurs and zealots" and preventing the wardens from being jailed. On 3 April 1730, a bill Oglethorpe drafted was presented to the House; it would have removed Bambridge from his position. Both Houses adopted it in a revised form six weeks later, but recommendations for a bill to better oversee Fleet Prison were discarded. William Acton was tried for murdering four debtors, but acquitted. Oglethorpe felt that the proceedings had been manipulated. Bambridge was also acquitted of charges, and Oglethorpe denounced both acquittals. Shortly afterwards, he disbanded the committee. He led another committee of the same nature in 1754.