The next Fitzwilliam to take a major interest in Mount Merrion was Richard FitzWilliam, 7th Viscount FitzWilliam, who remained a bachelor all his life. It was he who willed £100,000 to build the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, his former university. Prior to his death in 1816, he bequeathed his vast estates to his cousin George Herbert, 11th Earl of Pembroke. Mount Merrion was occupied for a time by the Fitzwilliam agent Barbara Verschoyle and her husband, then Lord Herbert of Lea, and later by Sir Neville Wilkinson, from 1903 to 1914.