George Leonard Staunton was born in Cargin,
County Galway,
Ireland, the son of Col. George Staunton. He was educated at the Jesuit College in
Toulouse,
France, obtaining an
M.D. in 1758, and subsequently studied at the
School of Medicine in
Montpellier. He was awarded a
DCL by the
University of Oxford in 1790. Staunton initially worked as a physician in the
British West Indies, where he acquired
slave plantations on
Grenada and
Dominica. He then switched to law and was made Attorney-General in Grenada in 1779. In 1784, he accompanied his lifelong friend
George Macartney, 1st Earl Macartney, whom he first met in the West Indies, to
Madras to negotiate peace with
Tipu Sultan, for which service Staunton was created a baronet of Ireland, on 31 October 1785. He was elected in February 1787 a
Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1793, Staunton was named Secretary of the British
Macartney Embassy to the
Qing dynasty of China, which was headed by
Lord Macartney. While the embassy returned to London without obtaining any concession from China, the mission brought back detailed observations. Staunton died at his London house, 17 Devonshire Street, on 14 January 1801 and was buried in Westminster Abbey, where a monument by
Sir Francis Chantrey was erected to his memory around 1808. The baronetcy, Staunton's estate at Clydagh, County Galway and his London townhouse were all inherited by his only son,
George Thomas Staunton. ==Works==