styled Ld. Brackley 1649-86; suc. fa. 26 Oct. 1686 as 3rd earl of BRIDGWATER
First sat 22 Jan. 1689; last sat 3 Mar. 1701
MP Bucks. 1685-26 Oct. 1686
b. 9 Nov. 1646, 1st s. of John Egerton, 2nd earl of Bridgwater and Elizabeth (1626-63), da. of William Cavendish, mq. (later duke) of Newcastle; bro. of Hon. Sir William Egerton‡ and Hon. Charles Egerton‡. educ. I. Temple 1673. m. (1) 17 Nov. 1664, Elizabeth (1648-70), da. of James Cranfield†, 2nd earl of Middlesex, 1s. d.v.p.; (2) 2 Apr. 1673 (with £12,000),1 Jane (1655-1716), da. of Charles Powlett, styled Ld. St John (later duke of Bolton), 7s. (2 d.v.p.), 2da. KB 23 Apr. 1661. d. 19 Mar. 1701; will 10 May 1687-4 Mar. 1701, pr. 26 Apr. 1701.2
PC 7 May 1691-d.; ld. of trade 14 May 1691-Dec. 1695;3 commr. appeals in prizes of war c.1691-9,4 trade and plantations Dec. 1695-15 May 1696,5 to treat with French over Hudson Bay 1699;6 first ld. Bd. of Trade 15 May 1696-31 May 1699,7 Admiralty 31 May 1699-d.,8 ld. justice June-Oct. 1699, June-Sept. 1700.9
Speaker, House of Lords 22 July-30 Sept. 1697, 1 Mar.-20 June 1700.
Dep. kpr. of leash, Ashridge, Herts. 1665-?;10 dep. lt., Bucks. 1667-86;11 col. militia regt., Bucks. 1667-86;12 capt. militia horse, Bucks. by 1672-86; 13 ld. lt., Bucks. 1686-7, 1689-d.; recorder, Brackley, Northants. 1686-8.14
Gov. Charterhouse 1701-d.15
Associated with: Ashridge, Herts.; Red Lion Square, Westminster (to c.1692);16 St James’s Square, Westminster (to 1696);17 Cleveland House, Westminster (from 1696).18
Likenesses: oil on canvas by Sir G. Kneller (school of), mid-1680s, Ashridge, Herts.; oil on canvas by Sir G. Kneller (school of), National Trust, Belton House, Lincs.
Early life
John Egerton, styled Lord Brackley, was the eldest of six sons. At the coronation of Charles II he was made a knight of the Bath at the age of only 14. As his father, the 2nd earl, became more influential in the parliaments and Privy Council of Charles II, so the expectations attached to the young man rose. In November 1664 Brackley married Lady Elizabeth Cranfield, but the marriage ended early when Elizabeth died in childbirth on 3 Mar. 1670. Bridgwater was soon engaged in arranging another match for the young man, and in early April 1673 Brackley married for a second time.
Bridgwater, as lord lieutenant of Buckinghamshire, entrusted his heir with increasing local responsibilities. As early as November 1667 he had made the young man a justice of the peace, deputy lieutenant and colonel of a militia regiment for the county, and in 1672 he further commissioned him captain of a company of horse.19 Brackley was later to succeed his father directly as lord lieutenant of the county. The family’s residence of Ashridge lay close to the Buckinghamshire border but was actually in the county of Hertfordshire, and Brackley served as a magistrate in that county as well (his father was also lord lieutenant there from 1681). By the time of the elections of January 1679, Sir Ralph Verney‡ and other Buckinghamshire gentlemen ‘used the utmost endeavours’ to persuade Brackley to stand, as did the leaders of the country interest in the county, Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton, and Richard Hampden‡.20 Brackley declined and instead offered his own interest, or at least his neutrality, to the successful candidates, the exclusionists Thomas Wharton, later marquess of Wharton, and John Hampden‡.21 James II and his advisers chose Brackley as a court candidate for the election of March 1685 and his father Bridgwater forced his son to stand for the county. Brackley was still reluctant, as he wrote to his cousin Henry Herbert, 4th Baron Herbert of Chirbury, ‘I am forced to be a Parliament man for the county of Buckinghamshire much against my will, but with my father’s command’.22 Brackley was paired with Thomas Hackett, while Wharton stood on his own independently against the court. George Jeffreys, later Baron Jeffreys, acted as the government’s principal electoral agent in the county, but although his heavy-handed methods backfired badly and Wharton was returned, so was Brackley, with the support of Whigs as well as moderate Tories.23
On his succession to the title at his father’s death on 26 Oct. 1686 it was said that ‘no son does bear the image of his father more exactly’.24 The new earl of Bridgwater was commissioned lord lieutenant of Buckinghamshire exactly a month after his father’s death, on 26 November. Roger Morrice recorded that at Bridgwater’s swearing-in before the council he duly took the oath of allegiance, but the king prevented him from swearing the oath of supremacy, presumably because of the doubt it cast on the Pope’s authority over the Church of England. The scrupulous Bridgwater was concerned for a time that this affected the legality of his tenure, but was fully confirmed in the post when he took the oaths again in early May 1687.25 Earlier that year, laden with debts (as his father had been), Bridgwater had been intent on selling his family’s London residence of Bridgwater House in the Barbican and retiring to Ashridge in Buckinghamshire to ‘mind the county and my own estate and live as privately as I can’.26 Tragedy intervened when on 11 Apr. 1687 a fire burned down part of Bridgwater House killing his two eldest sons, Charles, Viscount Brackley (aged 12), and Thomas (aged 8), a disaster which made him quite ‘unfit for business’ for a time and prompted him to abandon Bridgwater House for good.27 By this time contemporary political observers already considered him an opponent of the king’s policies and particularly of his attempt to repeal the Test Acts, and in early November James replaced him with Jeffreys, now lord chancellor.28
The Convention, 1689-90
Bridgwater took no known military role in the Revolution of late 1688, but when he first sat in the Convention in January 1689 he clearly distinguished himself as a Williamite. Throughout late January and early February he consistently voted for the acceptance of the Commons’ resolution that James II had ‘abdicated’ and ‘that the throne is thereby vacant’, signing the protests of 31 Jan. and 4 Feb. against the House’s rejection of this wording.29 Following the vote in favour of this resolution on 6 Feb., he was active in the conferences from 8 Feb. which worked out the details of the proclamation of the prince and princess of Orange as king and queen as well as the wording of the oaths to the new monarchs. He was active in the first session of the Convention, and indeed continued to be active in all of William III’s Parliaments until he died in 1701, a year before the death of the king he served so diligently. For over ten years he was equally attentive to all sorts of parliamentary business – as a chair of select committees, as chair of committees of the whole House, as a manager or reporter of conferences, as a teller in divisions, as, for a time, Speaker of the House and, less noticeably but perhaps as importantly, as a member of successive subcommittees for the Journal, as evidenced by his frequent signatures attesting to his approval of accounts of proceedings. He did not only resemble his father physically but in character and interests as well, as he followed his example closely. The 3rd earl’s diligence and industriousness as an administrator and man of business in the House matched, if it did not exceed, that of his father and together they formed a dynasty that, with only a handful of others, effectively managed the daily business of the House for the 40 years from the Restoration of Charles II to the accession of Anne.
He attended all but 12 of the sittings (93 per cent) of the first session of the Convention, his highest attendance rate throughout his parliamentary career. He was named to 44 select committees, and of these he chaired nine separate committees concerning different pieces of legislation on a total of 13 occasions. In early March he chaired the committee on the removal of Papists for a substantial discussion, although he was not the only chairman on this matter.30 He also told in divisions affecting the wording of the legislation at the report stages of the trial of peers bill and the comprehension bill.31 He chaired committees of the whole House on the bills for reviving actions in the Westminster courts (22 Mar.) and for establishing a coronation oath for the new monarchs (6 Apr.), as well as on the wording for the address requesting their majesties to issue writs of summons to convocation (16 April). On 23 Mar. he received the proxy of William Pierrepont, 4th earl of Kingston, which was vacated upon Kingston’s return to the House on 6 Apr., before Kingston registered it once again with Bridgwater on 4 May for the remainder of the session. For a brief period of three days in early April Bridgwater held his full complement of two proxies, for on 3 Apr. Thomas Bruce, 2nd earl of Ailesbury, also registered his proxy with Bridgwater until he returned 12 days later on 15 April.
Bridgwater was a strange choice of proxy recipient for Ailesbury, as from the time of Ailesbury’s return the two peers frequently found themselves telling for differing positions in some key divisions. On 20 Apr. Bridgwater chaired the committee of the whole which discussed the Commons’ objections to the House’s amendment to the bill for the abrogation of oaths which exempted members of the clergy from taking the oaths to the new monarchs. Three days later he told, with Ailesbury on the opposite side, in a division on the question whether to agree to a resolution which left it to the king to determine which members of the ecclesiastical hierarchy to dispense from the requirement to take the oaths. On 10 May he told, once again against Ailesbury on the opposing side, in favour of dismissing the appeal in the cause Agutter v. Collins,32 He was also involved in the proceedings on the bill for disarming Papists, chairing and reporting from the committee of the whole House which devised amendments to the bill on 30 Apr. and then being named reporter of the conference on 8 May at which the Commons objected to one of these amendments, which the House accepted in order to let the bill pass. In the last week of May he acted as manager for two conferences on the additional poll bill and reported from the committee for privileges on a peerage claim.
From late April he chaired and reported from select committees on bills which attempted to redress some of the most egregious of the perceived crimes of the last reign, such as those for annulling the attainders of Algernon Sydney (reported 25 Apr.), Alice Lisle (reported 6 May) and Henry Cornish.33 Throughout June and July he was engaged in a variety of ways to reverse the draconian punishments inflicted on Titus Oates. On 31 May he told in two divisions to reverse that the judgments against Oates, and he entered his protest when the motion for reversal was rejected. The peer telling against him on both these divisions, and recording Bridgwater’s vote in favour of reversal, was once again his former proxy donor Ailesbury.34 A week later, on 6 June, he was placed on the committee of eight peers assigned to draw up an address requesting their Majesties formally to pardon Oates and to discharge him from his remaining punishments.
Bridgwater was otherwise occupied in mid May with framing addresses to be presented to the king and queen suggesting ‘what means to use to secure us from the designs of the Papists and power of the French king’. On 14 June he was named to a select committee entrusted with revising an address to forbid all French papists from coming to Whitehall or St James’s, and the following day he chaired a long committee of the whole on ‘means to use to secure us from the designs of Papists’, the records of whose proceedings are found in the select committee minute books, and reported the principal heads to the House.35 Bridgwater was named to the committee delegated to draw up an address based on these heads, and he reported the address on 18 June, along with a request which arose from the committee’s deliberations for copies of the records of the committee for Irish affairs. On that day he also reported from the committee assigned to draw up the address against French papists in St James’s, but it apparently not being completed, the House recommitted the drafting of the address to the same committee.36 It appears that Bridgwater was displaced as chair of this committee by Charles North, 5th Baron North and Baron Grey, who reported from it on 21 June, but the earl maintained his control of the committee now devoted to investigating Irish affairs, although, after an abortive meeting on 19 June, he was forced to report to the House two days later that the committee could not proceed in its examination until it got sight of the minute books of the committee for Irish affairs.37 On 20-21 June he was a reporter and then a manager for two conferences on the disagreement over the amendments to the bill for the commissioners of the Great Seal, to which amendments the Commons eventually agreed. On 26 June he was a teller in a division on the question whether to give a second reading to the bill to declare illegitimate four of the children of the late Brilliana Popham, and that same day, upon the delivery of articles of impeachment from the Commons against Sir Adam Blair and others; Bridgwater was named to a committee of six members selected to inspect the Journals for precedents.38 When the bill for the reversal of the judgments against Titus Oates was brought back up from the Commons on 6 July, Bridgwater once again became involved in trying to pass the bill and to reject some of the more punitive amendments placed in it by the House. On 10 July he told against Ailesbury in a division on agreeing with the committee of the whole’s amendments to the bill, and later that day he joined in the protest against this and two other divisions which had not gone in favour of Oates and his advocates in the House. The following day he chaired a long meeting of a committee of the whole on the bill, which went so far as to appoint a subcommittee to alter the controversial clauses which would have prevented Oates from being able to testify in court. The subcommittee reported its own amendments and revisions to the bill the following day, which were accepted by the majority of the House, though not without further protests from a handful of peers; Bridgwater, though, did not take part in these.
For the remainder of July and August, with the exception of a brief absence between 25 July and 2 August, during which time his Whig father-in-law, recently created duke of Bolton, held his proxy, Bridgwater was principally busy as a chairman for select committees and committees of the whole. Between 19 July and 17 August he chaired six different select committees on 12 occasions, and on 24 July oversaw the committee on the bill for Christopher Monk, one of the claimants in the Albemarle inheritance case, which heard copious testimony on the controversial marriage he had contracted while still a minor.39 After the committee to investigate the condition in Ireland was revived in mid July, minute books of the Privy Council committee dealing with the war there were entrusted to the House; Bridgwater took over as the chair of the subcommittee entrusted with examining them.40 On 18 July he also chaired the committee of the whole House on the bill for additional duties on liquors, and a week later was a reporter for the conference on the Commons’ objections to the amendments to the bill for duties on tea, coffee and chocolate; he was then named to the committee to draw up the House’s reasons for adhering to their amendment. On 7 and 10 Aug. he chaired committees of the whole on the bills for the relief of the Irish Protestant clergy and to appoint commissioners to execute the act raising 12d. in the pound. Over 16-17 August he chaired and reported from the select committee on the bill for the payment of small tithes.41 Most controversially, he oversaw the committee of the whole on 17 Aug. which heard testimony concerning those targeted in the bill to attaint rebels against William and Mary. So overwhelming was the task that Bridgwater had to report that the committee had so many amendments to make and further testimony to hear that it would require another two hours’ time before the report could be ready. The report had to be postponed for two days, at which time Bridgwater offered to the consideration of the House the fates of those whose names were included in the bill but against whom there appeared to the committee to be insufficient evidence.42 The following day, 20 Aug., the Convention was adjourned for a month, and was continuously adjourned until it was finally prorogued on 21 Oct. 1689.
Bridgwater was slightly less attentive to the second session of the Convention, first sitting on 30 Oct., a week after its commencement. He attended 70 per cent of its meetings. In a list drawn up between October 1689 and February 1690, Thomas Osborne, marquess of Carmarthen. classified him as among the supporters of the court. On his first day in the House he chaired the committee of the whole considering the bill against the clandestine marriages of minors, and throughout the session he chaired committees of the whole on various other bills: for preventing doubts concerning the collection of the public revenue (21 Dec. 1689); for granting a 2s. aid to the king (15 Jan. 1690); to establish an additional poll tax for the war in Ireland (21 January). On 10 Jan. 1690 he also reported from the committee for privileges the decision, then a controversial point in the debates on the unsuccessful treason trial bill, that peers could only be tried by the full House in time of Parliament. On 15 Jan. he also chaired a meeting of the committee for petitions.43
Two activities principally occupied him during this session. First was his stewardship of the committee established to examine the irregularities in procedures and fees in the courts held at Westminster Hall. He chaired this committee on eight occasions between 9 Nov. 1689 and 21 Jan. 1690 on which it heard evidence of practices in the court, and particularly of fees collected, and he made a preliminary report to the House on 14 November.44 A memo in the manuscript minutes for 17 Jan. 1690 noted that two bills first read that day, for the regulation of the law and of the courts, were in the possession of Bridgwater for consideration before the next meeting of the select committee, and one of these is surely the draft bill, ‘An Act for regulating their Majesty’s Household and the Courts of Justice’, found in Bridgwater’s papers. Parliament, however, was prorogued on 27 Jan. 1690 before Bridgwater could make further progress with this bill or his examinations.45 The other primary activity, in this, as in all his future parliaments, was his work on the subcommittee of the Journal, of which he appears to have been the leading member. In the period 1 Feb. 1689 to 27 Jan. 1690 his signature appears, often at the head of the signatories, on all but one of the many instances where the subcommittee indicated its approval of the clerk’s account of proceedings in the House.
Bridgwater was also a busy agent for the regime outside of Parliament. He had been reinstated as lord lieutenant of Buckinghamshire as early as 4 Apr. 1689, although he appears to have already been acting in this role, albeit informally, from late February at least.46 During the following years of war with France he took an active role in organizing the county militia and also encouraging, indeed ordering, his deputy lieutenants aggressively to press men for service in the army and navy.47 He also tried to exercise his electoral interest. At the elections of spring 1690 he was most successful in the Northamptonshire borough of Brackley, where he was lord of the manor, and was able to ensure that his younger brother, Sir William Egerton‡, and John Blencowe‡ were returned as burgesses.48 In Buckinghamshire, however, his influence was surpassed by that of the sitting members for the county Thomas Wharton and Richard Hampden who were returned for the county unopposed. He was largely uninvolved in the unopposed election in the borough of Aylesbury, but following the death of one of the incumbents, Sir Thomas Lee‡, Bridgwater apparently supported the candidacy of James Herbert, son-in-law of Carmarthen, against that of Wharton’s candidate Simon Mayne‡ in the bitterly contested by-election of April 1691.49
The Parliament of 1690: first session
Bridgwater himself attended all but five of the sittings of this first session of the 1690 Parliament (91 per cent) and first sat in the House on 24 Mar. 1690, four days after it had started. Already on the following day he was reporting from the committee for privileges. In the first week of April he was closely connected with the bill introduced by Bolton on 26 March to ‘declare’ the acts of the Convention ‘to be of full force and effect’ and to ‘recognize’ William and Mary as ‘rightful and lawful’ monarchs. Bridgwater first chaired the committee of the whole on this measure on 1 Apr., and then proceeded to direct the proceedings of the committee of the whole at all but one of its subsequent four meetings in which the language regarding the status of the acts of the Convention was debated. On 5 Apr. he reported a host of alternative wordings in different clauses and finally Carmarthen came up with acceptable language: that it was ‘the opinion of the House, that all the acts passed in the last Parliament ... were and are good laws, to all intents and purposes whatsoever’. Two days later Bridgwater reported from the committee of the whole different amendments whereby it was merely ‘enacted’ that the acts of the Convention ‘were and are’ legal statutes. Many peers were still dissatisfied and when the bill was read a third time and passed the following day, 8 Apr., 17 peers entered their protest, complaining that the phrase was ‘neither good English nor good sense’. A few days later the wording itself of this protest was expunged from the Journal, which prompted yet another protest from 13 peers. Copies of both these protests, including that of 8 Apr. with its original language, are among Bridgwater’s surviving papers.50
A few days after this controversial bill was pushed through, Bridgwater was again at the centre of further heated debates in the House, when the Whigs in the House tried to further their advantage from the recognition bill by proposing, on 1 May, a bill for an oath abjuring loyalty and all previous oaths to James II. On 3 May Bridgwater reported from the committee of the whole a first version of the abjuration oath and the results of the series of divisions, the product of several hours’ debate. The vote on Bridgwater’s report itself was saved until two days later when the House, after much more acrimonious debate, rejected the oath as first worded and the provision that it should only be tendered to civil and military officers. He chaired two further meetings of the committee of the whole on this bill over the following days as alternative versions of the oath continued to be worked over and reported a version from the committee, at whose debates the king himself had been present, on 8 May. When that oath was debated in the House four days later, the king once again present, a decision could still not be reached and debate was adjourned, while Bridgwater chaired another committee of the whole on the bill and reported that it had been agreed that the oath and declaration determined by the House was to be administered to all civil and military officers, ecclesiastics and members of both houses of Parliament. He was named to the select committee entrusted with drawing up a clause enforcing the oath on such persons, and there the clause and the bill itself appear to have languished, as the House turned its attention to other matters in the last days of the session.51
Bridgwater was named to 15 select committees on legislation during this session. From 9 Apr. to 10 May 1690 he chaired committees dealing with eight of these bills, and in the first week reported to the House with four of them – the bills for the regulation of coal prices and three estate bills.52 His most significant select committee was that for the bill to make void letters patent concerning Needwood Forest which he chaired on four occasions before reporting the final amended version on 10 May.53 His place among the Whigs in Parliament is suggested by his introduction on 21 Apr. of two of their foremost members to the House – Richard Lumley, elevated from a viscountcy to become earl of Scarbrough and Henry Booth, likewise elevated to an earldom as Warrington. His companion in making these introductions was another stalwart Whig, and one of the busiest men in the House alongside Bridgwater, Thomas Grey, 2nd earl of Stamford. On 26 Apr. Bridgwater chaired and reported from a committee of the whole on the bill to reform the practice of law. Two days later he chaired another committee of the whole on the bill to make Queen Mary regent in her husband’s absence, and on 12 May he was appointed a manager for the conference on this bill which was held the following day. On that same day he also entered his protest against the decision not to allow counsel for the City of London more time to present their case in the bill to restore the City’s charter and privileges from the quo warranto proceedings under James II.54 Bridgwater reported on 20 May from the committee for privileges concerning precedents for the passing of bills of royal pardon, which allowed for the quick passage of William’s general pardon. On the last day of the session, 23 May, it was Bridgwater who reported from the committee of the whole that the hereditary revenues bill was fit to pass, just before William unexpectedly prorogued Parliament to forestall its passage.
Bridgwater was present at 86 per cent of the sittings of the 1690-1 session. He remained occupied with select committees, being named to 31. He chaired committees on nine different matters and reported eight bills to the House, including those for regulating the price of coals (23 Oct. 1690), for suspending parts of the navigation and corn acts during the duration of the war (30 Dec.), as well a number of personal estate bills.55 His most significant committee was that examining the bill to rectify abuses in chancery, which he chaired on two occasions and reported to the House on 3 Nov. with amendments which were rejected. On 14 Nov. he told in a procedural division on this bill.56 He was also rebuffed when he reported the bill to void letters patent concerning Needwood Forest on 26 Nov., when the House did not agree with Bridgwater’s committee’s choices for commissioners and inserted their own preferences ‘at the table’.57 On 6 Oct. he voted against the discharge of James Cecil, 4th earl of Salisbury and Henry Mordaunt, 2nd earl of Peterborough, from their imprisonment in the Tower, and on 30 Oct. he protested against the decision to discharge these two suspected Catholics from bail; he also protested on that day against the passage of the bill to ‘clarify’ the powers of the admiralty commissioners, a bill which was largely used by the Tories Carmarthen and Daniel Finch, 2nd earl of Nottingham, to attack the unsuccessful admiral Arthur Herbert, earl of Torrington, after the disaster of Beachy Head in the summer. The following day he chaired and reported from the committee of the whole considering ways to make absent peers attend the House. On 10-11 Nov. he also reported from the committee for privileges on two separate cases concerning the privilege of bishops. He reported again from the committee for privileges on 2 Dec. 1690. Ten days later, Bridgwater chaired and reported from a committee of the whole concerning the abuse of protections, and he again guided a committee of the whole a week later in passing the bill to lay duties on wine, vinegar and tobacco.58 He was involved in three conferences over the course of two days, two on 17 Dec. on the debated amendments to the mutiny bill, and the following day in the conference on the lower House’s amendments to the bill to prevent Salisbury from cutting off his entail from his Protestant kinsmen. On the penultimate day of 1690 he chaired and reported from the select committee on the bill to suspend the navigation acts during the war.59 He was one of four peers chosen by ballot (garnering the second largest number of votes, after Charles Cornwallis, 3rd Baron Cornwallis) to represent the House on the commission of accounts. The Commons objected to this interference from the upper House and, after threatening to hold up a much-needed supply bill, the four peers the following day, probably upon orders from the court, declined their appointment. The House then backed down from its insistence on having representatives on the commission by rejecting the bill as reported from committee.60 In the last three days of the session he chaired two committees of the whole, on the bill to prevent false musters at sea, and on 5 Jan. 1691, the day of prorogation, on the bill for renewing the excise on liquors. That same day he was a teller for the question whether to pass the bill to prohibit trade with France.
Second and third sessions, 1691-3
Both in the House and in his efforts in early 1691 to recruit soldiers and seamen in Buckinghamshire, Bridgwater had marked himself out as an industrious and efficient follower of the government.61 On 7 May 1691 he was sworn to the Privy Council and within a few weeks he was further appointed to the subcommittees for Ireland and for trade and plantations, the latter of which was to become his specialty in his burgeoning career as a government administrator.62 Perhaps his new responsibilities kept him away from the House, for he came to only 70 per cent of the sittings of the 1691-2 session. However, from his first sitting on 6 Nov. 1691 he was more than usually busy in select committees. He chaired meetings on 15 different matters on 22 occasions, and reported to the House on 11 of these legislative matters, including the bills for ascertaining the tithes for hemp and flax (11 Dec.), for declaring two merchant vessels as prize ships (21 Dec.) and for settling the militia for that year (1 Feb. 1692) as well as several estate bills.63 In December 1691 he was involved as both a teller and committee chair in seeing through the House the bill to preserve for the Navy two prize ships laden with bay salt, perhaps reflecting his growing involvement in naval matters and the disposition of prize ships in particular.64 From early 1692 at least, if not earlier, he was a commissioner of appeal in prizes and he diligently attended meetings, on which he took copious notes, over the next several years right up to the time of his death.65 He also chaired committees of the whole on that year’s Mutiny Bill on 29 Jan. and 5 and 9 Feb. 1692. On 17 Dec. 1691 he was appointed a reporter for the conference on the Commons’ objections to the amendments to the trial for treasons bill, and Bridgwater was also named to the committee delegated to draw up reasons for the House’s adhering to its amendments. Bridgwater may have tried fruitlessly to reach some consensus with the lower House on this bill, for on 20 Jan. 1692 he was a teller on the question whether to agree with the Commons’ amendment to a penalty clause in the bill.66 In contrast, in the first two weeks of February he consistently refused to agree with the Commons in its complaints against the House’s amendments to the bill for a commission for public accounts. He was made a reporter for a conference on 1 Feb. 1692 in which the Commons made clear their objections and upon the conference report the following day was named to the committee designed to draw up reasons in defence of the amendments. He helped to present the House’s view in conferences on 5 and 8 Feb., and upon the latter conference’s report, told on 9 Feb. in a division on the motion to agree with the Commons. The matter was effectively dropped after a further fruitless conference the following day. On 16 Feb. he also protested against the resolution that proxies could not be used in votes on the divorce bill of Henry Howard, 7th duke of Norfolk, and on 22 and 23 Feb. he chaired two committees of the whole on the bill to ascertain the commissions and salaries of judges. In the last weeks of the session he held the proxies of both John Digby, 3rd earl of Bristol (from 8 Feb. 1692) and William Russell, 5th earl (later duke) of Bedford (from 12 Feb. 1692).
Bridgwater missed only 12 of the sittings in 1692-3, an attendance rate of 89 per cent. In this session he chaired select committees dealing with 16 different matters on 24 occasions, and he reported from seven of these committees with bills, including the bill to allow their majesties to make leases and grants of their estate in the duchy of Cornwall (on 7 Mar. 1693), as well as several personal bills concerning private estates.67 On 23 Nov. 1692 he also reported from a drafting committee the address to recommend to the king’s favour the acting Speaker of the House, Sir Robert Atkyns‡, for his dutiful service.
The most notable and controversial committee with which Bridgwater was concerned was that investigating the failure of the military campaigns of the previous summer, particularly the heavy defeat at Steenkerke, accompanied by the accusations that the Dutch general Hendrik Trajectinus, Count Solms, had abandoned the English troops under his general command to face the full force of the French attack unaided, and the apparent reluctance of Admiral Edward Russell, later earl of Orford, to follow up his resounding naval victories at Barfleur and La Hogue with an aggressive ‘descent’ on the French coast. Bridgwater acted as chairman of the committee of the whole which from 28 Nov. 1692 to 13 Jan. 1693 discussed on seven occasions the advice to be given to the king on military and naval matters in the wake of these setbacks. On 12 Dec. 1692 the committee approved an address to the king that insisted that, according to the treaty with the United Provinces of 1678, English general officers had command over Dutch and other Allied commanders of the same rank – a rebuke to Solms for his purported dismissal of the concerns of the English commander James Butler, 2nd duke of Ormond.
Even more controversy arose when the committee on the advice turned its attention to the naval events of the previous summer. The secretary of state Nottingham submitted his papers to the House on 6 Dec., and Bridgwater chaired the committee of the whole that considered them, as well as the four meetings of the select committee assigned on 10 Dec. to examine the matter further.68 Papers submitted to this committee and his notes of its proceedings can still be found among his papers, attesting to his close attention to this case.69 Late on 17 Dec. he reported the findings of the select committee, a long account of the battle of La Hogue and its aftermath, derived from Nottingham’s correspondence with Russell. The report was not considered by the House until two days later and when the ensuing conference (held on 20 Dec.), at which these papers were delivered to the lower House’s representatives, was reported in the Commons, Russell denounced Nottingham and the House’s proceedings, and the Commons passed a vote of thanks to Russell for his actions. After the managers from the Commons informed the House’s reporters of this vote at a conference the following day, Bridgwater was named to a select committee to consider precedents for this unusual action, as the conference had not been requested for the matter of the vote. Bridgwater chaired the first meeting of this committee which searched the Journal and reported on 23 Dec. that the committee needed more time for its work, but it was John Sheffield, 3rd earl of Mulgrave (later duke of Buckingham and Normanby), who eventually reported its findings on 29 December.70 Over the following days at the turn of the year Bridgwater continued to be named to the select committees considering this unprecedented action, and he was manager at a conference on 4 Jan. 1693 where this issue was taken up once more, before it fizzled out in the wake of William’s dismissal of Russell from his command and the press of other business.71 The heads of advice from the committee were not deemed ready for the king until as late as 11 Feb. 1693, when Bridgwater reported them and then told in a series of divisions (against John Churchill, earl (later duke) of Marlborough) on whether to present one of the heads in an address.72
At the turn of the year Bridgwater was a teller, once again against Ailesbury, for the not contents in the division on whether to commit the place bill, and he voted against both its commitment and, on 3 Jan. 1693, its passage. At the same time he supported Norfolk’s divorce bill and voted to read it a second time. In late January 1693 he was involved in the dispute with the Commons over the House’s amendments to the land tax bill which provided for a separate body of commissioners, drawn from the peerage itself, to assess the value of the peers’ lands. He chaired the committee of the whole on 18 Jan. which reluctantly consented to a conference with the Commons on the matter, but was not made a reporter. Upon the report the following day the House declined to follow the opposition members George Savile, marquess of Halifax, and Mulgrave in insisting that the clause be submitted to the consideration of the committee for privileges and instead receded from the clause. Bridgwater did not sign either of the protests against these decisions and instead was placed on the committee to draw up a statement explaining the House’s decision to recede from the amendment, which was not to be taken as a precedent of the House’s abandoning of its rights and privileges.73 On 24 Jan. the House ordered that the libellous pamphlet King William and Queen Mary Conquerors should be burned by the common hangman in Old Palace Yard. Bridgwater was a manager for the two conferences held the following day where the House presented this order to the Commons. On 23 Jan. John Bennet, Baron Ossulston, registered his proxy with Bridgwater, on the same day he chaired and reported from the select committee assigned to consider methods to be used at the trial of Charles Mohun, 4th Baron Mohun.74 At the trial itself, Bridgwater was one of 20 who protested against the decision on 31 Jan. not to proceed with the trial of Mohun that day, and at the verdict on 4 Feb. he was one of only 14 peers to find him guilty of murder. His own interest in this trial may be suggested by the three copies of accounts of it surviving among his papers.75
During the first three months of 1693 he also frequently acted as a teller in divisions on judicial cases and private bills.76 As the session drew to a close he was busy as chair of committees of the whole on bills that needed to be passed quickly, such as those for renewing the commission of accounts, for raising the militia (both on 25 Feb.), for punishing mutiny in the army, for granting additional impositions for raising supply (both on 1 Mar.) and for charging several joint stocks (on 11 March). In early March he became involved in the proceedings of the committee to draw an address on abuses in the government of Ireland, and his hastily scribbled notes from the select committee still survive among his papers, as does a copy of the address itself.77 He was one of three peers appointed to consult with the king on 4 Mar. 1693 when he would be ready to receive the address. A few days later he acted as chair on two occasions for the select committee on the bill for the revival of statutes about to expire, of which the most controversial was the act for licensing printed publications.78 After he had reported it from committee on 8 Mar. he acted as teller in a division on whether to accept the proposed riders to the bill which would prohibit the search of peers’ houses and would allow publications with the names of the printer and author clearly marked to be published without licence. Two other matters with which he was involved at this late stage of the session reflect his growing interest and involvement in naval and military matters. He chaired the select committee on the bill to develop and license a process to make saltwater fresh on two occasions before reporting the bill as fit to pass on 7 Mar., on which day it was recommitted to his committee to hear the petition of one of the patentees of the process involved, Colonel Fitzgerald.79 He also reported that year’s mutiny bill from the committee of the whole on 1 Mar. and a week later he also informed the House of the results of the delegation which the previous day had attended the king to inform him of the bill’s passage.
Third and fourth sessions, 1693-5
The level to which Bridgwater’s star had risen at court can be suggested by the rumours circulating in November 1693 that he would replace Nottingham as secretary of state after the latter’s resignation.80 This change was not effected, but Bridgwater remained a key figure for the government in the House, particularly on naval matters, during the following session and thereafter. He attended a high proportion of the meetings of the 1693-4 session, at 83 per cent. In the day to day business of the House he chaired select committees on 12 separate bills, almost all of them private bills, and reported eight of these bills to the House.81 He also chaired committees of the whole dealing with the bills for preventing disputes concerning the royal mines (31 Jan. 1694), for repealing an article in the Elizabethan Act of Artificers (6 Mar.), for setting rates and duties upon salt, beer and ale (22 Mar.), for the import of saltpetre (2 Apr.), for raising money by poll (on two occasions, 10 and 11 Apr.), for preventing frivolous and vexatious suits (on two occasions, 13 and 14 Apr.), and for re-appointing commissioners of public accounts (20 April). He also reported from the committee for privileges, on 28 Nov. 1693, and for petitions, on 18 Nov. and again on 3 Jan. 1694.82
On 13 Dec. 1693 Bridgwater joined six other peers in dissenting from the decision to uphold the original judgment in favour of Simon Harcourt‡ in the writ of error brought before the House by John Fox. His principal occupation at the turn of the year, however, appears to have been the continuing negotiations on the place bill. He chaired the committee of the whole that put some amendments to the bill on 14 Dec., and he was a manager for a conference on 5 Jan. 1694 in which the Commons objected to a House amendment which placed the Speaker of the Commons under the same pains and penalties as other members. Upon report, Bridgwater was a teller in the division on the question whether to agree with the Commons in its objections. Once again a naval matter caught his attention, and he registered his protest against the resolution of 10 Jan. that the Tory admirals had done well in executing the orders they had received in the previous summer in directing the movements of Sir George Rooke‡, which had resulted in the Turkey fleet being captured by the French. Bridgwater appears to have been one of the driving forces behind this protest, as a number of different draft versions of the text of the protest are found among his papers, some of them much harsher in their condemnation of the admirals than the final version found in the Journal.83 He was opposed to the petition and appeal of Ralph Montagu, earl (later duke) of Montagu, against chancery’s dismissal of his bill against John Granville, earl of Bath, and he told in a series of divisions on this matter in mid February.84 On 6 Mar. he was a manager for a conference on the House’s disputed amendments to the mutiny bill and the following day he was placed on the committee assigned to draw up reasons why the House insisted on those amendments. This matter languished for several weeks before the committee was revived on 27 Mar. and Bridgwater was a manager for another conference two days following. In the first days of April he defended in conference the House’s objections to the amendments to the bill to pay the debts of John Stawell, 2nd Baron Stawell, while on 16 Apr. he managed the conference on the House’s amendments to the bill for the recovery of small tithes. In the last days of the session, in the period 10-14 Apr., he chaired committees of the whole trying to wrap up the bills for the poll tax, the bill against vexatious suits, and to establish commissioners of the public accounts.
He attended the 1694-5 session on its first day, 12 Nov. 1694, when he introduced into the House Francis Newport, elevated from Viscount Newport to earl of Bradford and Henry Sidney, similarly elevated from Viscount Sydney to earl of Romney, and then went on to attend a further 111 of its 127 sittings (88 per cent). He chaired committees considering 30 separate bills on a total of 58 occasions, and reported bills to the House from 19 of these committees, the majority on estate or naturalization bills, but also including the bills for exempting apothecaries from local offices (9 Feb. 1695), for establishing new oaths to William III as sole monarch (8 Mar.), for determining the rates of water carriage along the Thames (8 Apr.), and for approving the process to make salt water fresh (14 March). 85 One bill he managed had to be worked out over the course of eight meetings of its committee between 19 Jan. and 2 Mar. 1695, not including the four times the committee met under Bridgwater only to be adjourned.86 On 18 Dec. 1694 he reported from the committee of the whole with a version of the triennial bill fit for passage, to which controversial measure William III finally, and reluctantly, assented four days later. In the new year, and particularly as the session drew to a close, he chaired committees of the whole on ten occasions, including on the bills for preventing simony (18 Feb. 1695), for suppressing profane swearing (28 Mar.), for relief of creditors (29 Mar.), for purchasing life annuities (3 Apr.), for appointing commissioners of the public accounts (4 Apr.), for granting the king duties upon births, marriages and deaths (10 Apr.), for granting him likewise additional duties upon coffee, tea and chocolate (13 Apr.), for regulating the penalties in the existing act for duties on vellum, parchment and paper (18 Apr.), and for raising the militia for that year (19 April).
One issue with which he became heavily involved, in both a select committee and a committee of the whole, was the bill against coin clipping. He was named to the select committee assigned to draw up a bill on the matter based on the evidence delivered before the House by the officers of the mint on 6 Feb. 1695. He first took over the chair of the committee on 12 Feb. and chaired it for its further three meetings before he reported the bill against counterfeiting and clipping coin on 22 February.87 Three days later it was read a second time and ordered to be committed to a committee of the whole in early March, but in the meantime a further order on 2 Mar. revived the original select committee assigned to draw up the bill, and Bridgwater duly chaired that select committee on 8 Mar. and all three committees of the whole that discussed the bill on 7, 11 and 14 Mar., reporting it as fit to pass with amendments on 18 March.88 Another measure with which he was heavily involved in the early months of 1695 was the treason trials bill. On 23-24 Jan. he acted as teller in four divisions regarding adding amendments, including the controversial ones which postponed the implementation of the bill’s provisions from 1695 to 1698 and which required every peer to be summoned to a peer’s trial for treason. On 20 Feb., after the Commons had objected to some of these amendments in a conference, Bridgwater was named to the select committee assigned to draw up reasons defending the House’s amendments.89 The matter was still rumbling on in April and Bridgwater was named one of the seven managers for two free conferences on the controversial amendments to the bill held on 15 and 20 Apr. In addition, on 19 Mar. Bridgwater signed the protest against a motion regarding the inheritance of baronies by writ which only furthered the petition of Sir Richard Verney, to receive a writ of summons as 11th Baron Willoughby de Broke.
Three issues in particular occupied him in the closing weeks of the session in April and May 1695. He reported on 18 Apr. from a conference on the House’s amendments to the bill to make several acts perpetual, the Commons’ objections to the clause in the Licensing Act which would strengthen the licensing power of the Stationers’ Company and the bishops. Another matter was the affair of Sir Thomas Cooke‡ and his suspected misuse of the funds of the East India Company. The House proposed a bill which would indemnify him in exchange for further evidence against his accomplices, and Bridgwater chaired the committee of the whole on 16 Apr. which debated this bill and reported a version fit to be engrossed. A week later he and Charles Talbot, duke of Shrewsbury, came a joint top of the ballot (each receiving 46 votes) for a place as one of the 12 peers on the committee assigned to take evidence from Cooke.90 He was also named to the committee to examine Cooke’s accomplices in the company. Bridgwater was involved in conferences on the matter throughout its proceedings. He was most highly involved in the attempt to pass bills for the encouragement of privateers in the war against France. On 18 Apr. he reported from select committee a bill that would retrospectively declare March 1693 as the commencement of a former act prohibiting trade with France and encouraging privateers.91 The Commons added a proviso excepting a particular ship from the bill, and Bridgwater was the principal actor in the select committee assigned to draw up objections to it, as among his papers are both the reasons against the proviso drawn up by the committee’s clerk and a draft in Bridgwater’s own hand of the report he made to the House on 1 May. He also reported from the conference where these reasons were presented to the Commons.92 Encouraged by Bolton, who was confined by illness to Hampton Court but kept a close eye on events in Parliament through his correspondence with his son-in-law, Bridgwater on 30 Apr. introduced another, separate, bill for the encouragement of privateers.93 This was lost at its second reading on 1 May when the committee of the whole delayed further consideration of the matter for a whole month, even though the prorogation was imminent. Bridgwater took a great interest in this matter, and many drafts of bills for privateers, and the objections to them, survive among his papers.94 The bills for encouraging privateers and for imprisoning Sir Thomas Cooke, both of which Bridgwater had been working on since participating in Cooke’s interrogation, were lost when Parliament was prorogued on 3 May 1695.
The 1695 Parliament, first session
William III’s first Parliament was dissolved on 11 Oct. 1695 and new elections called. The elections for Bridgwater’s lieutenancy county of Buckinghamshire were straightforward, as the sitting member Wharton and his new partner Sir Richard Atkins‡ were returned without a contest in a county where the Whartons had the greatest interest. There had already been some change at Brackley, for at the turn of 1691-2 one of its burgesses, Bridgwater’s brother William, had died and at the ensuing by-election Bridgwater had supported as his replacement Harry Mordaunt‡, the younger brother of Charles Mordaunt, earl of Monmouth (later 3rd earl of Peterborough). In the autumn of 1695 Bridgwater once again returned Mordaunt and instituted as his partner another younger brother, Charles Egerton‡, who was to sit continuously as a Whig burgess in the Commons until unseated by petition in 1711.95
Bridgwater himself sat in 85 per cent of the sittings of the 1695-6 session, the first of William III’s second parliament. He spent the first two weeks of December involved in committees and conferences on a number of trade and military issues, such as the condition of the army and the damage done to English trade by the Scottish East India Company. He was one of the delegates of the House sent to discover when the king would be able to receive the House’s addresses on these matters, and on both occasions he reported the king’s answer to the House. Only from late December did he once again take up his usual activity in select committees, chairing committees on 21 different bills on 33 occasions and reporting 18, almost all of them personal bills for naturalization or estate management.96 He also continued the concern with the state of the coinage of the realm which he had shown in the previous session. From 30 Dec. 1695 he chaired a series of three committees of the whole on the recoinage bill in which several clauses were added and modified, with him always being a member of the drafting committees for these as well, until he could report the bill as fit to pass on 3 Jan. 1696. From 7 Jan. he was a manager for three conferences in which the houses debated the amendments and Bridgwater himself reported from the conference on 11 Jan. in which the House insisted on one of its amendments. He also continued his opposition to the claims of Sir Richard Verney to a writ of summons as Baron Willoughby de Broke, signing protests on both 17 Jan. and 13 Feb. against motions which gave legitimacy to, and eventually upheld, Verney’s claims. In late January he was involved in a number of committees of the whole dealing with bills for electoral reform – the bill to prevent charge and expense in elections (18 Jan.) and that to prevent double returns (24 January). He also chaired and reported from committees of the whole on the land tax bill and on the bill for a commission of public accounts.
Bridgwater was involved in drafting the Association in defence of William III from his first involvement on 24 Feb. in the committees and conferences on the address to be presented to the king concerning the assassination attempt against him. Two days later Bridgwater chaired the committee of the whole concerning the state of the nation, and it was he who reported the text of the Association as agreed upon by the committee. He signed the Association signifying his loyalty to the Williamite regime as soon as he could on 27 Feb. and a copy of the Association survives in his own papers, with his own annotations indicating the numbers of those who signed it and those who refused.97 He followed this up by chairing on 5 Mar. the committee of the whole on the bill to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act in order to apprehend William III’s enemies. On 19 Mar. he reported from the committee of the whole discussing the bill for regulating the ecclesiastical courts; this may have had something to do with his role two days previously as chairman of the committee for privileges considering the petition of Richard Lucy, the chancellor of the diocese of St Davids, against Thomas Watson, bishop of St Davids, which he had reported to the House on 18 March.98 Bridgwater was later, in 1699, appointed one of the court of delegates to consider Watson’s appeal.99
During the final month of this session Bridgwater was principally employed as a chairman of committees of the whole as Parliament tried to wrap up the legislation of the session. He reported from eight committees of the whole between 15 and 25 Apr. 1696, on the bills to accept ‘affirmations’ instead of oaths from Quakers in courts of law (15 Apr.), against the export of wool, to vest the profits of the honour of Tutbury in the king (both 18 Apr.), for setting an excise on low wines, and for enforcing the laws against marriages entered into without license or bans (both 24 Apr.), among others. Bridgwater was the principal actor in the House on the penultimate day of the session, 25 April. Not only did he report from the conference on the House’s amendments to the Greenland trade bill, whose formulation he had overseen himself as chairman of the committee of the whole on 20 Apr., but he also reported from another committee on the bill to continue duties on salt, glass and stoneware. One of his last acts of this day and of the session suggests his increasingly important role in the government of William III. The night before Bridgwater had received a letter from secretary of state Sir William Trumbull‡ conveying the king’s pleasure that Bridgwater should lay before the House the following day ‘the state of the Lords who are now in the messenger’s hands’. It was, indeed, Bridgwater who on 25 Apr. 1696 informed the House of the king’s warrants for the commitment of Peterborough, Edward Henry Lee, earl of Lichfield, and Charles Gerard, 6th Baron Gerard of Gerard’s Bromley for high treason.100
Second and third sessions, 1696-8
Bridgwater’s increasing influence at William’s court was confirmed in the following months. On both 16 June and 28 July 1696 he was the king’s commissioner entrusted with proclaiming Parliament’s prorogation and setting the date on which it was to reconvene. More significantly, on 15 May 1696 he was commissioned first lord of the new royal council of trade.101 He had long been involved in dealing with issues of trade and the plantations, from the time he was placed on the subcommittee of the Privy Council dealing with such matters in 1691 to the time he was named in a separate commission of trade set up by the king in December 1695 to counter calls from the Commons for a parliamentary board of trade.102 This was the genesis of the royal council of trade and plantations established in May 1696, and it was as its principal commissioner, the first lord of trade, that Bridgwater appeared at all but 12 of the sittings of the session of 1696-7. Bridgwater did not get heavily involved in the detailed business of the parliamentary session until its final weeks from mid March 1697. During this relatively fallow period of almost five months Bridgwater chaired only four select committees on private bills (of which he reported three to the House over the two days 11 Jan. and 8 Mar. 1697) and chaired three committees of the whole, on bills for coining guineas (9 Nov. 1696), to attaint those suspected in the assassination attempt (9 Jan. 1697), and for the return of juries (15 Feb.).103 He also held the proxy of his father-in-law, Bolton, from 6 to 23 Feb. In the most controversial legislation of that period, the bill to attaint Sir John Fenwick‡, Bridgwater unsurprisingly followed the government line and voted in favour of the attainder.
Most likely Bridgwater was busy at the council of trade and also perhaps dealing with local matters, for the political complexion of Buckinghamshire changed over the course of 1696. There had already been a by-election in the county in February following Thomas Wharton’s succession as 5th Baron Wharton on the death of his father. Bridgwater joined with Wharton and a Tory of the county Charles Dormer, 2nd earl of Carnarvon, to back the candidacy of Wharton’s ally (and Bridgwater’s own cousin) William Cheyne‡, at that point styled Lord Cheyne (later 2nd Viscount Newhaven [S]), who came top of the poll. The other sitting member Atkins died in late November 1696, prompting another by-election in December. Both Wharton and Bridgwater supported as the Whig candidate, Henry Neale‡, who won by a large margin.104 One of Neale’s opponents was the moderate Tory candidate Sir John Verney‡ (later Viscount Fermanagh [I]), who had recently moved into the county following the death of his father, Bridgwater’s loyal deputy lieutenant Sir Ralph Verney. Sir John was advised by one of his followers to address himself to Bridgwater, Carnarvon and James Bertie, earl of Abingdon, who were seen as potential supporters for the Tory candidate. Another correspondent of Verney also advised him to garner Bridgwater’s support: ‘I know my Lord Bridgwater is a Church of England man and I believe will not be very solicitous to set up a man against it. However, he is at present influenced’.105 Such comments suggest that contemporary political observers did not see Bridgwater as a zealous Junto Whig like his colleague Wharton, or his father-in-law, Bolton, but as a court Whig. His sense of loyalty and duty was tied above all to serving the king and de facto government, but as that government moved more and more under the influence of the Junto throughout 1696-7, Bridgwater too perforce became increasingly associated with and influenced by them.
He maintained his busy activity in the House from March 1697. Over the two days 6 and 15 Mar. he chaired committees of the whole on the bills to set duties on paper and vellum, to allow the Turkish merchandise laden on two foreign ships to be sold as if they had been transported by English ships, and to enlarge highways. From 17 to 22 Mar. he held the proxy of Aubrey de Vere, 20th earl of Oxford. His involvement in the House increased greatly in the last two weeks of the session, as the House tried to clear up its legislative backlog. From 31 Mar. to 15 Apr. he chaired nine committees of the whole; eight of these were in the last week of the session alone. He reported from committee on such matters as the bills to enlarge the capital stock of the Bank of England (31 Mar.), to enforce the existing act to prevent delays at quarter sessions (9 Apr.), to prevent the clandestine marriages of minors (12 Apr.), to raise the militia for that year, to increase the number of seamen for the navy (both on 13 Apr.), to supply the king with tonnage and poundage, to better observe procedure in the receipt of the Exchequer, and to license hawkers and peddlers (all three on 15 Apr.). In those same final few days he chaired three meetings of select committees on three different matters, and reported from two of them, on the bills to prevent counterfeit of coins (10 Apr.) and to pave the streets of London and Westminster (13 Apr.).106
Bridgwater was the commissioner who announced Parliament’s prorogation on 13 May 1697 and its next meeting date, and at another prorogation on 22 July he was appointed by commission as Speaker of the House during the absence of the newly appointed lord keeper, John Somers, later Baron Somers. Bridgwater’s period as Speaker was short-lived, consisting of only two days, 22 July and the subsequent day of prorogation, 26 Aug., for he was replaced by Sir John Holt‡ on the following day of prorogation, 30 September. Bridgwater maintained his usual diligent attendance on the House when the 1697-8 session finally began in December, and he came to all but 15 of its meetings (89 per cent). Here he chaired 16 meetings of the committee of the whole between 16 Dec. 1697 and 2 July 1698, six of them from 20 June alone. From 26 Feb. 1698 he chaired all five meetings of the committee of the whole considering the bill for the divorce of Charles Gerard, 2nd earl of Macclesfield, and the many petitions and objections raised against it, finally reporting the bill fit to pass on 2 Mar. He chaired other committees of the whole on matters such as the bills to prevent clandestine marriages (16 Dec. 1697), for the continuing imprisonment of one of William III’s suspected assassins (8 Jan. 1698), to prevent the import of foreign bone lace (25 Feb.), for licensing hawkers and peddlers (31 May), for duties upon coals (12 May) and on stamped vellum (20 June), for raising money by poll (22 June), for raising the militia for the following year (28 June), and for establishing the new East India Company, and for declaring two prize ships free to trade as English ships (both on 2 July). Bridgwater also chaired select committees on 18 occasions between 7 Jan. and 30 June 1698. These dealt with 21 different pieces of legislation, and he reported from 13 of them, the majority of them personal estate or naturalization bills.107
Among Bridgwater’s papers is a copy of a speech against the bill to punish the exchequer official Charles Duncombe‡ and what appears to be Bridgwater’s own division list recording the defeat of the bill (by one vote) in the House on 15 Mar. The division list indicates that Bridgwater himself followed the Junto line and voted in favour of the bill. The following day he entered his one protest of the session, against the House’s reversal of the chancery decree in the cause James Bertie v. 6th Viscount Falkland on 16 Mar. He reported from the conference held on 7 Mar. 1698 where the Commons presented their objections to the House’s amendments to the bill for remedying defects in the poor law passed the previous session, and a number of sheets among his manuscripts detailing objections to the bill may be the papers delivered to him at this conference.108 Later, on 20 June, he helped to manage a conference on the bill for the Alverstoke Waterworks promoted by Peter Mews, bishop of Winchester, and a week later he also reported from a conference in which he delivered to the Commons the information that Jean Goudet and the other French merchants whom the Commons had impeached had voluntarily confessed their guilt. On 2 July he chaired the committee of the whole that set the fines against each of the merchants. During the session he held the proxies of Robert Lucas, 3rd Baron Lucas of Shenfield, from 2 Apr. to 3 May 1698, of Ralph Eure, 7th Baron Eure, from 13 Apr. until the end of the session, and of his father-in-law Bolton from 10 June for the last month of the session.
As first lord of the Board of Trade, much of Bridgwater’s involvement in the House involved matters of trade. On 2 and 18 Apr. 1698 he reported from select committees bills to repair navigation and docking facilities in both Bridgwater in Somerset and Colchester in Essex. From 20 Apr. Bridgwater’s fellow Whig Stamford had been directing the committee considering the bill to encourage woollen manufacture in England and to ‘restrain’ the export of rival woollen manufactures from Ireland. On 6 May he reported that the king should be asked to supply the committee with papers concerning the English Privy Council’s amendments to a bill sent from the Irish Parliament for the establishment of linen manufacture in that country. There is no record in the Journal of the establishment of this committee or its composition, but the presence of pages in Bridgwater’s surviving manuscripts endorsed, ‘Some observations on the amendments offered in England to the bill for encouraging the linen manufacture in Ireland’, suggest that he was a prominent member of this committee or consulted with it in his position as first lord of trade. The final address, as reported by Stamford on 9 June, recommended that strict measures be taken against Irish manufacturers continuing to export woollen products, while it strongly encouraged the development of linen manufacture on the island, which was not seen to compete with vital English manufactures. Also among Bridgwater’s papers is a sheet of ‘Objections and Amendments to a Bill relating to Plantations in Africa, and trading to the same’, no doubt dealing with the bill ‘to settle Trade to Africa’ which was first read on 24 May and passed by the House on 10 June. This act, which received the royal assent on 5 July, secured for the Royal African Company the statutory charter it had long sought.109 Similarly, he was involved in the dealings on the bill to encourage the Russia trade, telling on 23 June in a division on the motion to put the question whether to reject the bill, and this much-contested bill was subsequently lost in the press of other business at the end of the session in early July. In December 1697 he had also been re-appointed a commissioner of appeal in Admiralty cases involving prize ships, and his personal papers show that he was active in this committee.110 He was also involved when the issue of prize ships spilled over into the House. On 27 June 1698 and again on 2 July he reported from the committees dealing with two separate bills to give the freedom to trade as ‘English’ ships to vessels taken as prizes.111
The 1698 Parliament: first session
Bridgwater spent the remainder of July 1698 managing the elections in Buckinghamshire and Brackley for the next Parliament, which was summoned for that autumn. In Buckinghamshire Wharton, who still controlled the principal interest there, put forward his own brother ,Goodwin Wharton‡, and Henry Neale‡ against his former ally William Cheyne, now 2nd Viscount Newhaven [S]. At the poll Newhaven, owing to his long preparations and perhaps the growing Tory and country mood, came top of the poll by a wide margin, followed by Wharton’s brother Goodwin. Sir John Verney came very close to pipping Goodwin Wharton at the poll, and the tallies in a Buckinghamshire poll book in Bridgwater’s papers even suggest that Verney did come second.112 Once again Sir John Verney’s allies had encouraged him to enlist Bridgwater’s support for this election, but the earl appears to have been more secretive than usual in this election. A correspondent of Verney’s noted that Abingdon did not know whom Bridgwater would support, and could only guess, as Verney himself had made no mention of Bridgwater in his electoral calculations, that ‘he is for the other party’.113 Bridgwater’s mysterious stance in this election may have been owing to a growing estrangement from his fellow Whig Wharton, who was now trying to encroach in Bridgwater’s own borough of Brackley. There was now a contest between a sitting member Harry Mordaunt, now supported by Wharton, and Bridgwater’s nominee, Sir John Aubrey‡. After the first poll in the borough since 1679 Aubrey was returned for the borough with the other Bridgwater candidate, Charles Egerton.
Bridgwater was in the House when the new Parliament convened on 6 Dec. 1698 and proceeded to attend three-quarters of the meetings of its first session, down from the high attendance he had shown in recent sessions. Nor was he active in select committees, as he only chaired them on four occasions on three different matters; and of these he only reported from one.114 Nor was he particularly active in committees of the whole, although as usual in the last weeks of the session he was called on to push bills through quickly. From 26 Apr. 1699 to the prorogation on 4 May he chaired six committees of the whole, on the bills to raise supply for disbanding the Army (26 Apr.), to raise the militia for that year (27 Apr.), to enable disbanded soldiers to exercise trades (28 Apr.), to levy a duty on paper, parchment and vellum (2 May), and two bills to set the duties on a number of goods (3 and 4 May).
Bridgwater was directly involved in the address of thanks and advice to the king regarding the proposed disbandment of the army in early February 1699. On 4 Feb. he chaired the select committee assigned to draw up the address to the king thanking him for his speech in which he had reluctantly acquiesced to a disbandment. After reporting the committee’s address of thanks, Bridgwater then went on to chair two committees of the whole, on 7 and 8 Feb., in which the king’s speech was debated. He reported that the committee thought the state of the fortifications on the south coast should be examined, and on 8 Feb. he reported the controversial motion that the House was ‘ready and willing to enter into any expedient’ to retain the king’s Dutch Guards for the year 1699, which produced a dissent from 38 peers. Notes endorsed by Bridgwater ‘Heads of Advice upon the King’s Speech’ and recommending ‘that no troops may be left here this summer but his subjects ... except his Guards’, undoubtedly come from these duties as chairman of the committee.115 Throughout the session he was also involved in a number of conferences concerning bills for regulating trade and markets. On 23 Jan. 1699 he was placed on the committee to draft a clause for the bill to prohibit the export of corn and malt and was made a manager for the conference on this amendment held five days later. He was named a manager on 20 Apr. for the conference on the amendments to the bill for restoring Blackwell Hall market, and the following day he was likewise made a manager for a conference on the bill for making Billingsgate a free market. On the latter bill he was also named to the committee assigned on 25 Apr. to draw up reasons for adhering to the House’s amendment and he again was a manager for the conference held two days later where these reasons were given. On the penultimate day of the session he was a manager for the conference on the amendments to the bill for the duty on paper and vellum – which Bridgwater had steered through the committee of the whole the previous day with the omission of one clause. He was appointed to the committee to draw up an explanation of the House’s insistence on this omission, but the bill was lost at the prorogation the following day, 4 May 1699.
One other matter closely affecting Bridgwater was dealt with in the final days of the session as well. On 29 Apr. Bridgwater and other petitioners received permission from the House to prove, as the appointed executors, the will of the duke of Bolton, who had died in February 1699. The House resolved as a general rule that no peer had privilege to stop probate. Bolton’s heir Charles Powlett, 2nd duke of Bolton, may well have been trying to hinder probate of his father’s will, as he was severely disadvantaged by it. Bolton left his daughter the countess of Bridgwater and her children, in whom he clearly delighted, close to £40,000 by his will, while barely mentioning and making virtually no provision for his heir.116 The ungenerous terms of this will were later to bring lawsuits between the 2nd duke and his sister.117 Yet there was no immediate evident ill-feeling between the new duke of Bolton, a keen follower of the Whig Junto, and his brother-in-law Bridgwater, to whom Bolton looked for advice on measures to take with the wayward behaviour of his son and heir Charles Powlett, then styled marquess of Winchester, later 3rd duke of Bolton. In this case Bridgwater, in his efficient way, took the matter in hand and independently removed Winchester from his uncongenial school and from the temptations offered by his love for Lady Falkland’s daughter.118 The correspondence between the brothers-in-law suggests that Bolton constantly looked up to, and relied on, Bridgwater.
Second session, and the 1701 Parliament
The summer of 1699 also saw a major reshuffling of offices in which Bridgwater at the beginning of June 1699 replaced Orford as first lord of the Admiralty. This was only after Ford Grey, earl of Tankerville, had declined the offer, telling William III that ‘he would be drawn through a horse pond’ rather than take such a politically vulnerable post and was made first lord of the treasury instead.119 Some contemporaries were disappointed by the appointment, and Matthew Prior‡ confided in his patron Edward Villiers, earl of Jersey, that ‘I wish to God Lord Tankerville had accepted the commission offered him, for he has an active understanding and a good one. I believe Lord Bridgwater is too sedate for such an employment’.120 Bridgwater himself appears to have had serious doubts as to his fitness for the post. James Vernon‡ told his many correspondents that Bridgwater ‘was ‘earnest ... with the king to be excused’ from a post in which ‘he does not pretend to skill’, but ‘he was pressed beyond resistance, and the king would not part with him till he had kissed his hand upon the acceptance’.121 Bridgwater also served as a commissioner of prorogation on 1 June 1699, and before the king set sail for the continent the following day he further made Bridgwater one of the lords justices assigned to govern the realm in his absence.
When Parliament resumed in November 1699 Bridgwater came to over three-quarters (77 per cent) of the sittings but did not play a noticeable role in the first three months or so of the session, during which his only known stance was his opposition on 23 Feb. 1700 to the bill to continue the old East India Company as a corporation. Unusually, he chaired no committees, neither select nor of the whole House, during this session. This was most likely because as of 1 Mar. he had a new responsibility thrust on him which may have precluded such close involvement in committees. For on that day a commission was read in the House making Bridgwater Speaker of the House in the periods of absence of the lord chancellor, Somers. He served as Speaker, directing proceedings in the House in the periods 1-9 and 21-25 Mar. and 1-11 Apr., Somers having returned to the House briefly during 11-20 and 26-28 Mar.122
He was thus presiding over the House on 10 Apr. 1700, when the debate between the two Houses over the bill to resume the Irish lands forfeited to William III came to its head. Narcissus Luttrell‡ has this account of the events of that day:
The Lords debated the Commons’ reasons for not agreeing to their [the House’s] amendments to the land tax and Irish forfeiture bill; and the question being put for adhering to the said amendments, yeas 37, noes 34; but proxies being allowed of, the numbers were then equal; and the lord Bridgwater, officiating for lord chancellor (who was indisposed) gave his casting vote against adhering: so the bill passed as sent from the Commons.123
Immediately after this bill was passed, Bridgwater and 20 other peers signed a dissent against its passage. Luttrell’s account throws up some questions about procedure in the House. The general practice was that if the vote at a division was tied, it was decided in the negative. There was thus no reason for Bridgwater to cast a deciding vote, and the manuscript minutes record the division as a tie at 43 voices each and imply that the motion was lost on that basis, with no need for a casting vote from the Speaker tipping the not contents over into 44 voices. It may have been that Luttrell, unfamiliar with procedure in the House, misinterpreted Bridgwater’s pronouncement as Speaker of the result of the tied division in the negative. William III did not like the Commons’ version of the Irish forfeiture bill, but was eager to have some supply bill passed, and at the last moment enlisted enough of his supporters to vote, with a narrow majority of five this time, to accept the bill without the controversial amendments. Still angry, he came to the House the following day to dismiss Parliament hurriedly, and Bridgwater, as Speaker, made the formal announcement proroguing Parliament to 23 May.
Bridgwater continued in his role as Speaker of the House and formally announced Parliament’s prorogation when it met again on 23 May 1700, one of a long series of prorogations as William reordered the ministry to try to counter the hostility of the Commons. He was removed from the Speakership on the next day of prorogation, 20 June, and replaced by Sir Nathan Wright‡, recently made lord keeper in the place of the disgraced Somers, but Bridgwater still served as a commissioner of prorogation on that day and on two more successive prorogations on 24 Oct. and 21 Nov. 1700.124 Before the king’s departure for the Netherlands in late June Bridgwater was once again appointed a lord justice of the realm during the king’s absence.125 From the time of the death of the lord privy seal John Lowther, Viscount Lonsdale, on 10 July 1700, there were rumours that he would be promoted from the Admiralty to that place. Certainly his Whig brother-in-law, Bolton, encouraged him to apply for the post – ‘it would be much quieter than the place you have and for my own part I protest I cannot think of anybody fit for it but yourself’.126 Throughout that summer Bridgwater was kept informed of William’s activities by a regular correspondence with William’s secretary-at-war, William Blathwayt‡.127 The post of lord privy seal still had not been filled by late October 1700, and Luttrell was sure that Bridgwater would indeed be named as Lonsdale’s replacement until he was forced to report at the end of October that the post had gone instead to Bridgwater’s fellow Whig, Tankerville, whom Bridgwater had long been shadowing (and vice versa) in the frequent reshuffling of offices in William III’s last years.128
Bridgwater’s choice for Brackley in 1698, Sir John Aubrey, had died in a riding accident in the interval before the long-anticipated elections of January 1701 and, with the selection of candidates now narrowed down, Bridgwater conceded and allowed Wharton’s candidate, Harry Mordaunt, to be returned unopposed with his own brother, Charles Egerton. Buckinghamshire was of course more contested. Verney hoped to join interests with Newhaven this time and looked to him for support in gaining Bridgwater’s favour, but Newhaven wrote to him in mid November 1700 that, ‘my interest with the earl you mention is not sufficient for any such purpose if you were in danger’.129 Even worse for Tory prospects, Verney’s election agent (or at least a correspondent who was concerned with Verney’s election prospects) informed him in December that ‘I fear Lord Bridgwater is not your friend’.130 At the election in January 1701 Newhaven and Verney stood separately for the Tory interest against the Whigs Goodwin Wharton and Robert Dormer‡, who also formally stood independently of each other. Presumably Bridgwater put his interest behind Wharton and Dormer, and a poll book among Bridgwater’s papers shows that Wharton came top of the poll this time, followed by Newhaven, trailing by 250 votes, while Verney, who had conducted another lacklustre campaign, trailed badly by 500 votes.131
Bridgwater consistently came to meetings in the first month of the new Parliament throughout February 1701. On 12 Feb. he was named to the large committee assigned to compose the address of thanks for the king’s speech. The following day Charles Mordaunt, now 3rd earl of Peterborough, reported the address, which asked the king to lay the recently signed Partition Treaties before the House for their examination. The House’s address was sent down to the Commons on 14 Feb. and Bridgwater was appointed one of 14 managers to attend a conference three days later when the lower House announced that it had drafted its own separate vote on the same matter. Bridgwater was more directly involved when the House called for a report on the state of the navy on 19 Feb., arising from a specific request of William in his speech of the previous week. Bridgwater assured the House that, as first lord of the Admiralty, he would have the report ready for the House by the following day. When Bridgwater submitted the Admiralty’s report to the House as promised he was, not surprisingly, named to the very large committee entrusted to draw up an address on the state of the navy, which was ultimately reported to the House by Rochester.
Bridgwater’s sudden death on 19 Mar. 1701 must have been unexpected. He was ‘much lamented’, as he died ‘with a good reputation’ and ‘leaving a very honourable character behind him’ at the height of his ministerial and official career in a regime which he had long and well served, and which was about to face some of its sternest tests.132 He was succeeded in his title and estate by his 17-year-old son, Scroop Egerton, 4th earl (and later duke) of Bridgwater. The young man hurriedly returned from his continental travels to take up his father’s title and inheritance, which included a special bequest of ‘all my books and collections of coins’, which were to be made heirlooms in the family – an indication of the antiquarian interests Bridgwater had been able to maintain while conducting his busy and dutiful public life in the service of William III.
C.G.D.L.- 1 Verney ms mic. M636/25, Sir R. to E. Verney, 6 Feb. 1673.
- 2 TNA, PROB 11/460.
- 3 Luttrell, Brief Relation, iii. 563.
- 4 CSP Dom. 1693, p. 96; 1694-5, pp. 204, 238; 1695, p. 112; CSP Dom. Addenda 1689-95, pp. 111-12, 1697, pp. 510-11; CTB, x. 636; HEHL, EL 9107-54, 9167-8, 9190-9192, 9968.
- 5 CSP Dom. 1695, p. 124.
- 6 Ibid. 1699-1700, pp. 64, 67.
- 7 Ibid. 1696, p. 154, 1699-1700, pp. 192, 194, 273.
- 8 Ibid. 1699-1700, pp. 192, 194, 273.
- 9 Ibid. 1699-1700, p. 208; 1700-1702, p. 77.
- 10 HEHL, EL 8107.
- 11 CSP Dom. 1667-8, p. 301; HEHL, EL 9440.
- 12 HEHL, EL 9440.
- 13 HEHL, EL 8522; Verney ms mic. M636/26, Sir R. to E. Verney, 15, 26 May 1673; CSP Dom. 1685, p. 235.
- 14 CSP Dom. 1686-7, p. 189.
- 15 HEHL, EL 8627.
- 16 HEHL, EL 8614a, H. Dale to Bridgwater, 2 Mar. 1691.
- 17 Survey of London, xxix. 84.
- 18 HEHL, EL 9539; Survey of London, xxx. 493.
- 19 HEHL, EL 8522, 9440; Verney ms mic. M636/26, Sir R. to E. Verney, 15, 26 May 1673; M636/27, E. to Sir R. Verney, 8 June 1674.
- 20 Verney ms mic. M636/32, Sir R. to E. Verney, 29 Jan 1679, E. to Sir R. Verney, 30 Jan. 1679.
- 21 HP Commons, 1660-90, i. 135-7; Bodl. Carte 79, ff. 168-9, 175-6, 185.
- 22 TNA, PRO 30/53/8/9.
- 23 HP Commons, 1660-90, i. 135-7; Verney ms mic. M636/39, Sir R. Verney to W. Coleman, 27 Feb. 1685, same to J. Verney, 9 and 12 Apr. 1685.
- 24 Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. iii. 279; Verney ms mic. M636/41, J. to Sir R. Verney 28 Oct., 8 and 17 Nov. 1686; Sir R. to J. Verney, 31 Oct. 1686.
- 25 Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. iii. 338; TNA, PRO 30/53/8/45; Verney ms mic. M636/41, J. to Sir R. Verney, 4 May 1687.
- 26 Verney ms mic. M636/41, C. Gardiner to Sir R. Verney, 8 Dec. 1686; TNA, PRO 30/53/8/45.
- 27 Verney ms mic. M636/41, J. to Sir R. Verney, 13 Apr. 1687; HEHL, EL 8608-10.
- 28 CSP Dom. 1687-1689, p. 97; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. iv. 156; HMC Downshire, i. 275.
- 29 Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. iv. 516.
- 30 PA, HL/PO/CO/1/4, pp. 43-44; HMC Lords, ii. 4.
- 31 HMC Lords, ii. 31n, 51n.
- 32 Ibid. 55, 69.
- 33 PA, HL/PO/CO/1/4, pp. 64-65, 69, 100-1.
- 34 HMC Lords, ii. 80.
- 35 PA, HL/PO/CO/1/4, pp. 110-15.
- 36 Ibid. 116-17.
- 37 Ibid. 118.
- 38 HMC Lords, ii. 134.
- 39 PA, HL/PO/CO/1/4, pp. 149-51, 162-71, 219, 242-4.
- 40 Ibid. 162, 244.
- 41 Ibid. 219, 242-4.
- 42 Ibid. 244-52; HMC Lords, ii. 228 and n. 230.
- 43 PA, HL/PO/CO/7/3, for 15 Jan. 1690.
- 44 PA, HL/PO/CO/1/4, pp. 256-7, 333-4, 340-1, 359-62, 366, 372-3, 375-7, 379-80.
- 45 HMC Lords, ii. 315; HEHL, EL 9892-3.
- 46 HEHL, EL 8607; Verney ms mic. M636/43, A. Denton to Sir R. Verney, 26 Feb. 1689, Bridgwater to Sir R. Verney, 8 Mar. 1689.
- 47 Verney ms mic. M636/60, Bridgwater to Sir R. Verney, 5, 21 July 1690, 19 Jan., 13 Feb. 1691, 16 Feb. 1694, 25 Jan., 28 Feb., 25 Mar. 1696.
- 48 HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 433-4.
- 49 Ibid. 23-24; Verney ms mic. M636/45, J. to Sir R. Verney, 12 Mar. 1691.
- 50 HEHL, EL 9909.
- 51 HMC Lords, iii. 41-43.
- 52 PA, HL/PO/CO/1/4, pp. 396-7, 401-2, 404.
- 53 Ibid. 409-11, 413-14.
- 54 HEHL, EL 9927.
- 55 PA, HL/PO/CO/1/4, pp. 426-7, 430, 438-9, 453, 456-7, 504, 509-10.
- 56 Ibid. 430, 438-9; HMC Lords, iii. 135.
- 57 PA, HL/PO/CO/1/4, pp. 456-7.
- 58 HMC Lords, iii. 232.
- 59 PA, HL/PO/CO/1/4, pp. 509-10.
- 60 HMC Portland, iii. 456; Add. 70014, f. 393; HMC Lords, iii. 401n.
- 61 Verney ms mic. M636/60, Bridgwater to Sir R. Verney, 19 Jan., 13 Feb. 1691.
- 62 Luttrell, Brief Relation, ii. 226; TNA, PC 2/74, 15 May 1691.
- 63 PA, HL/PO/CO/1/5, pp. 29, 36, 42-45, 57, 61-62, 64-67, 69, 71, 74-76, 78-81, 84-85.
- 64 Ibid. 42-43; HMC Lords, iii. 445.
- 65 CSP Dom. 1693, p. 96; 1694-5, pp. 204, 238; 1695, p. 112; CSP Dom. Addenda, 1689-95, pp. 111-12; 1697, pp. 510-11; CTB, x. 636; HEHL, EL 9107-54, 9167-8, 9190-9192, 9968.
- 66 HMC Lords, iii. 326n.
- 67 PA, HL/PO/CO/1/5, pp. 102, 117-23, 125, 130-133, 138, 142-3, 173-7.
- 68 HMC Lords, iv. 180-4; PA, HL/PO/CO/1/5, pp. 118-23.
- 69 HEHL, EL 9095-9104, 9160-9162.
- 70 HMC Lords, iv. 184-5; PA, HL/PO/CO/1/5, p. 125.
- 71 HEHL, EL 9155.
- 72 HMC Lords, iv. 179-80, 183, 186.
- 73 Ibid. 305-7.
- 74 PA, HL/PO/CO/1/5, pp. 142-3.
- 75 HEHL, EL 9915-17.
- 76 HMC Lords, iii. 216; iv. 257, 269.
- 77 HEHL, EL 9917-18, 9930a, 9984.
- 78 PA, HL/PO/CO/1/5 pp. 174-5.
- 79 Ibid. 174-7.
- 80 Luttrell, Brief Relation, iii. 232.
- 81 PA, HL/PO/CO/1/5, pp. 183-4, 189-94, 196-200, 208, 221-3, 227.
- 82 HMC Lords, n.s. i. 47, 301; PA, HL/PO/CO/7/3, for 3 Jan. 1694.
- 83 HEHL, EL 9156-9.
- 84 HMC Lords, n.s. i. 317, 319-20.
- 85 PA, HL/PO/CO/1/5, pp. 233-7, 242-3, 245-54, 256-7, 259-64, 267-75, 277-82, 284-90, 294-5, 299-300.
- 86 Ibid. 245, 249-54, 270-4, 279-81, 284-6, 288-90.
- 87 Ibid. 269-70, 275, 279.
- 88 Ibid. 290; HMC Lords, n.s. i. 516-19.
- 89 HMC Lords, n.s. i. 418.
- 90 Ibid. 551.
- 91 HEHL, EL 9106.
- 92 PA, HL/PO/CO/1/5, p. 300; HEHL, EL 9151-2.
- 93 HEHL, EL 8976, 8980, 8988, 8989, 8997, 8999 (but calendared as EL 8981-6).
- 94 HEHL, EL 9181-9.
- 95 HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 23-24, 433-4.
- 96 PA, HL/PO/CO/1/5, pp. 305-7, 313, 315-16, 322-3, 337-8, 340-1, 345, 348, 350-2, 356-7, 364, 371, 373, 377-9.
- 97 HEHL, EL 9921.
- 98 HMC Lords, n.s. ii. 220-1; HEHL, EL 8556.
- 99 Luttrell, Brief Relation, iv. 506.
- 100 HEHL, EL 9944; Luttrell, Brief Relation, iv. 50.
- 101 Luttrell, Brief Relation, iv. 58; HEHL, EL 9881.
- 102 Luttrell, Brief Relation, iii. 563; CSP Dom. 1695, p. 124; HEHL, EL 9572-3, 9577-86, 9588, 9595-8, 9618-9742.
- 103 PA, HL/PO/CO/1/5, pp. 416, 436, 438, 441.
- 104 HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii.23-4; Luttrell, Brief Relation, iv. 163.
- 105 Verney ms mic. M636/49, W. Butterfield to Sir J. Verney, 10 Dec. 1696; W. Busby to Sir J. Verney, 12 Dec. 1696.
- 106 PA, HL/PO/CO/1/5, pp. 474-5, 477.
- 107 Ibid. 481, 507-9, 540-1, 544-7, 577, 605-6, 611-12.
- 108 HEHL, EL 9922-3.
- 109 HEHL, EL 9610.
- 110 CSP Dom. 1697, pp. 510-11; HEHL, EL 9167-8, 9190-9192.
- 111 PA, HL/PO/CO/1/5, pp. 611, 612.
- 112 Verney ms mic. M636/50, C. Gardiner to Sir J. Verney, 23 July 1698; HEHL, EL 8629a.
- 113 HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 23-24.
- 114 PA, HL/PO/CO/1/6, pp. 5, 93, 98.
- 115 HEHL, EL 9872.
- 116 HEHL, EL 8977, Bolton to Bridgwater, 2 May 1694, EL 8991, Bolton to Bridgwater 13 July 1698; Luttrell, Brief Relation, iv. 491; Northants. RO, Vernon-Shrewsbury Letterbooks II (ms 47), no. 151; HP Commons, 1690-1715, v. 185-8.
- 117 Add. 70075, newsletter, 18 Nov. 1703; HEHL, EL 8953, 9005-8.
- 118 HEHL, EL 8992-4, 8997-9; UNL, PwA 384.
- 119 Luttrell, Brief Relation, iv. 520; Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, ii. 287.
- 120 Longleat, Bath mss, Prior pprs. 12, p. 233.
- 121 CSP Dom. 1699-1700, p. 189; Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, ii. 291-4.
- 122 Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, iii. 3.
- 123 Luttrell, Brief Relation, iv. 632-3.
- 124 Ibid. 658.
- 125 Ibid. 661.
- 126 HEHL, EL 8977.
- 127 Beinecke Lib. OSB mss 2, box 2, folder 46, nos. 101, 105, 109.
- 128 Luttrell, Brief Relation, iv. 700-2.
- 129 Verney ms mic. M636/51, Newhaven to Sir J. Verney, 19 Nov. 1700.
- 130 Ibid. C. Gardiner to Sir J. Verney, 13 Dec. 1700.
- 131 HEHL, EL 8629a.
- 132 Luttrell, Brief Relation, v. 29-30; Verney ms mic. M636/51, C. Gardiner to Sir J. Verney, 3 Apr. 1701; Post Man, 18-25 Mar. 1701; Bodl. Carte 228, f. 402.