George Tierney

Statesman George Tierney has a white marble memorial in the north west tower chapel in the nave of Westminster Abbey. This is by sculptor Richard Westmacott junior, and was erected in 1832. It shows a slightly over life-sized bust and on the pedestal a woman leans on an inscribed tablet from which hangs a spray of foliage. The inscription reads:

George Tierney. To the memory of the Right Honorable George Tierney. Born in 1762, died in 1830. A man equally distinguished for the disinterested integrity of his public conduct, and the unpretending virtues of his private life. In Parliament he was long conspicuous for a style of oratory peculiarly his own; plain, familiar, forcible and persuasive, abounding in proofs of natural shrewdness, and strokes of original humour, and sustained throughout by an accurate knowledge of details and an unostentatious command of clear language, and sound argument. Without having obtained the rewards of wealth or station, he secured the respect and esteem of his contemporaries by the consistency of his political principles, and his unwearied activity in supporting them, by the simplicity of his manners, and the benevolence of his character and by an unaffected reverence for religion. His surviving friends have raised this monument to be a testimony of their affection and a record of his talents and virtues.

He was born at Gibraltar on 20th March 1761, a son of Thomas, a merchant (originally from Limerick in Ireland) and his wife Sabina. Educated at Eton and Cambridge he studied as a lawyer. On 9th July 1789 he married Anna Maria Miller and they had a son George and three daughters. He became a Member of Parliament but was defeated several times. He was Treasurer of the Navy and died of heart failure on 25th January 1830. He is not buried in the Abbey.

Further reading

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 2004