| English
nobleman; grandson of the 1st earl of Orrery. He succeeded his brother
as earl in 1703. A supporter of Sir William Temple in his controversy
with Richard Bentley over modern and antique scholarship, Orrery edited
(1695) The Epistles of Phalaris. The issue was satirized—and made
famous—by Jonathan Swift in his Battle of the Books. Orrery rose
to the rank of major general (1709) in the War of the Spanish Succession,
and assisted in the negotiation of the Peace of Utrecht (1713-14). He
was a patron of the inventor George Graham, who designed the planetarium
called the orrery. |