 A lifelong Tory, in spite of joining the Whig Brooks's Club, he was a great admirer of the Duke of Wellington.He travelled on the Continent at the close of the Napoleonic Wars visiting France, Germany, Austria and Italy between 1815 and the late 1820s, latterly with his first wife, Harriet Capel, whom he married in 1824.She was a daughter of the George Capel-Coningsby, 5th Earl of Essex, who had been a close friend of his father.