Hugh, who succeeded as fifteenth Lord Willoughby, was an infant at the time of his father's decease (July 12, 1715). He was brought up in the Presbyterian faith, but appears to have been less demonstrative in the assertion of it than some of his progenitors; at all events his neighbours found him much less troublesome in that respect than his grandfather had been. Cole, the Cambridge antiquary, describes him as a Presbyterian "of the most rigid class," and remarks that he had heard "Mr. Coventry, of Magdalen College, Cambridge, declare that his conscience was so nice that he could not bring himself to receive the sacrament in the Church of England on his knees without scruple and thought it idolatry." He resided for the most part in London, but when at Shaw Place he usually attended the Nonconformist chapel at Rivington. It is said, though apparently on slender foundation, that when in London he professed himself a strict Churchman, and that some of his friends there, hearing that he was in the habit of worshipping with the Nonconformists when at Rivington, took him to task, whereupon he forsook the chapel and became a worshipper at Horwich Church. The accuracy of the story may very well be doubted. His lordship lived and died in the faith of his fathers; the canopied pew he was wont to occupy in Rivington chapel may still be seen, though the glories of its decoration have become somewhat faded; and at his death he bequeathed £100, the interest of which helps to pay its minister's stipend at the present day. He was more of a philosopher than a polemic, and a liberal patron of literature and art. In 1752 he succeeded Martin Foulkes as Vice-president of the Royal Society, and two years later he was elected to the honourable position of President of the Society of Antiquaries. It was in this latter capacity that John Byrom, of Manchester, addressed to him his famous poetical letter "On the Patron of England," and facetiously started the question whether _Georgius_ was not a mistake for _Gregorius_, contending for the non-existence of St. George of Cappadocia or any other George as patron saint of England, and calling upon the society to say whether England's patron was a knight or a pope. The _jeu d'esprit_ startled the sedate president, and drew forth a serious rejoinder from the learned Dr. Pegge in his "Observations on the History of St. George."[15] Lord Willoughby filled the office of Chairman of Committees of the House of Lords for a considerable period; he was also a Trustee of the British Museum, one of the Commissioners of Longitude, and Vice-president of the Society for the Encouragement of the Fine Arts. When the Dissenting Academy, at Warrington, was founded in the latter half of the last century, his lordship was chosen to be the first president, the Presbyterians, as Dr. Halley says, being "with pardonable vanity in their declension fond of exhibiting the relics of their former glory." He died unmarried, at