Jerome, 2nd Count de Salis

Family and early life in Chur and London

He was born on 8 July 1709 in Chur, capital of the Grisons, then an independent republic whose rule extended into present-day Italy, including the areas of Chiavenna and the Valtellina. He would be the only surviving son of Colonel Peter de Salis-Soglio (1675–1749), by his wife Margherita (1678–1747), daughter of Hercules de Salis-Soglio.

His father, of a distinguished family, had been a soldier in France, in the Dutch Republic and in England, where he became envoy of the Grisons Republic to the Court of St. James's during the reign of Queen Anne. There he became an Anglophile and made influential friends amongst the Hanoverians. On his return to Chur he resolved to send his son to London and Jerome De Salis became a naturalised British subject by private Act of Parliament on 24 March 1730/31.

On 7 January 1734/35, de Salis married Mary Fane (baptised 18 September 1710), eldest daughter of Charles, the first Viscount Fane. Sir Luke Schaub, Lord Harrington and Lord Cobham were among signatories of the marriage settlement. They were to have four sons: Charles (1736–1781), who died at Hieres; Peter (1738–1807), who became 3rd Count de Salis; Henry Jerome (1740–1810) and William (1741–1750).

De Salis was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society on 19 March 1741, proposed by Philip, 2nd Earl Stanhope (his wife's cousin), Martin Folkes (former president of the society), Andrew Mitchell, and his brother-in-law, Lord Sandwich. (He may have introduced Sandwich to his native bresaola and hence help to associate his brother-in-law with the sandwich).

Diplomatic service in the Grisons

In 1743, de Salis was appointed British Resident. This means he served as King George II's extraordinary envoy or minister plenipotentiary to the Grisons Leagues. He arrived in Coire on 10 April 1743, and resided there in a public character until 13 March 1750.

In 1748, by a patent dated of 12 March Emperor Francis I created his father Peter, together with his descendants, a Count of the Holy Roman Empire; the father died the following year.

During and after his time as British Resident in the Grisons he lived in both Chur and in Chiavenna and, in the mid-1760s, he started to build an Anglo-Palladian double-pile summer villa in Bondo, a village in the Val Bregaglia between Chiavenna and the Maloja Pass. The house was completed by his son Peter in 1774.

Madame de Salis

Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu, the blue-stocking, in a letter of circa 1755 to her sister Sarah Scott, mentions Mary de Salis and two of her sisters: My dear Sister, ... I am in hopes of seeing Lady Sandwich this week. I am much charmed with Madame de Salis, her manner, her address, her understanding, are all of the first rate, she has l'esprit orne with a great deal of knowledge of the world. I grieve to think she should return to the Switzerland mountains; she was made for polite society. Miss Charlotte Fane is in good health and spirits; we were at the opera together on Saturday, and she and Madame de Salis were with me on Monday evening...

Return to London

De Salis returned to London in 1768 and lived in Harley Street until his death on 8 August 1794, at the first door on the left-hand from Cavendish square (then no. 1). In the meantime, his wife lived in Knightsbridge, Margate, Marseilles, Harlington and, from 1780, at Smallborough Green, Isleworth. She died there of dropsy on 31 March 1785 aged 74 and was buried at Harlington, on the same day as her granddaughter, the first of six generations of her family to be buried there.

Sister

Margaretha (born 2 July 1704 and died 13 May 1765), married 3 October 1728, Antonio v. Salis-Soglio; Chur Stadtrichter; (born 1702 and died 1765). He was son of commissioner Battista v. Salis-Soglio of the Casa Battista, by Anna v. Salis-Samaden.