MORDAUNT, Henry (1623-97) | History of Parliament

MORDAUNT, Henry (1623–97)

styled Lord Mordaunt 1628-43; suc. fa. 19 June 1643 (a minor) as 2nd earl of PETERBOROUGH

First sat 1644; first sat after 1660, 17 May 1660; last sat 15 Feb. 1687

Bap. 18 Oct. 1623, 1st s. of John Mordaunt^‡, 5th Bar. Mordaunt (later earl of Peterborough), and Elizabeth, da. of William Howard^‡, Bar. Howard of Effingham. educ. Eton 1635–8; travelled abroad (France) 1641–2. m. winter 1644–5 (?with £2,500),1 Penelope (d. 1702), da. of Barnabas O’Brien, 5th Earl Thomond [I]; 2 da (1 d.v.p.). d. 19 June 1697; will 14 Oct 1688, pr. 2 July 1697.2

Groom of the stole to James, duke of York, 1665–85; dep. earl marshal 1673; amb. extraordinary 1673; PC 1674–9, 1683–9; groom of the stole 1685–8; high steward and chief bailiff to the queen 1686.

Ld lt. Northants. 1666–73, W. Division, Northants. 1673–78, Northants. 1678–88, Rutland 1688–90; recorder, Northampton 1671–2, 1682–8.

Gov. Tangier 1661–3; capt. gen. Tangier forces and col. Tangier Regt. 1661–3; capt. in the Unicorn 1665, of troop of horse 1666, in the Prince 1672, duke of York’s Regt. of Horse 1678–9; col. regt of ft. 1673–4, regt. of horse 1685–8.

FRS 1663.

Associated with: Drayton, Northants.

Likenesses: oil on canvas, by unknown artist, The 1st Queen’s Dragoon Guards Heritage Trust.

Troubled family relationships

The Mordaunt family were a long-established and important landowning family based in Bedfordshire. They traced their lineage and first English landholdings to a follower of William the Conqueror, and their chief seat at Turvey in Bedfordshire had been acquired early in the thirteenth century. By the mid-seventeenth century the heart of their landed estates was still in Bedfordshire, but they also owned extensive lands in Northamptonshire and Buckinghamshire. Henry Mordaunt’s grandfather, also named Henry, was a Catholic suspected of complicity in the Gunpowder Plot, but his parents were committed Protestants, deeply influenced by Archbishop Ussher. At the outbreak of the civil wars Henry Mordaunt, then styled Lord Mordaunt, was abroad. In his own account of his life he claimed that, having been inculcated with correct principles at Eton, he was naturally inclined to the king. He was horrified to learn that his father had taken Parliament’s side and instantly resolved to ‘wash out his father’s faults with his own blood’. Nevertheless, on his return to England in 1642 he was (so he claimed) forced to dissemble. He joined his father and commanded a troop of horse for several months before deserting to join the king in the spring of 1643. Even though he was several months under age, in 1644 he was summoned to attend the Oxford Parliament. According to his autobiography, which never errs on the side of modesty, his conduct as a soldier and his contributions to the debates in the House of Lords were outstanding. During this period of his life he survived financially through the assistance of his Catholic grandmother and his wife’s portion. After a spell abroad, he compounded in 1646 but was forced to compound again after being involved in the Surrey rising of 1648.3

Peterborough later attributed his long-running legal disputes with his mother, who he described as ‘a lady of a very haughty spirit’, to her hatred of his early royalist conversion, although, since her house at Drayton was sacked by parliamentary forces in 1650, it is clear that, despite her initial parliamentarian sympathies, she too came to be regarded as a royalist.4 Ideological differences certainly exacerbated the tension between mother and son, but quarrels about money, centring on the 1st earl’s disposition of the family estates, were equally important. The 1st earl effectively disinherited his son, deliberately settling his estates so that his son became a tenant for life without power to sell or lease the lands. He left the estate in the charge of his widow, and ensured that after her death control would descend to the 2nd earl’s eldest son. According to the dowager countess this arrangement stemmed from her son’s refusal to accept an advantageous marriage that his father had negotiated for him. The 1st earl had intended his son to marry one of the daughters of ‘the Lady Wootton’ (probably Mary Wotton, widow of the 2nd Baron Wotton^‡) and had taken umbrage when his son insisted on marrying Penelope O’Brien instead. As Peterborough’s marriage to Penelope O’Brien took place well over a year after his father’s death, this seems unlikely. The 1st earl died just two months after his son’s desertion to the royalists. He was so mortified by the experience that he even sent his own servants to pursue and capture his son. Despite his son’s protestations to the contrary, it seems unlikely that the 1st earl’s commitment to his parliamentary allies had diminished. Equally, it seems that the 2nd earl’s explanations of his father’s actions varied according to circumstance. In his later legal action he claimed that his father being ‘weak in body and decaying very much in his health and understanding’ had been taken advantage of by designing individuals.5

In the short term, this unusual family settlement was advantageous since it meant that the full value of the estate could not be used as the basis for compounding. Peterborough demolished the family seat at Turvey and in 1652 went to live instead in another Mordaunt property, the White House, in Drayton, Northamptonshire. Although he was effectively his mother’s tenant, and a tenant at will at that, he spent some £6,000 on repairing the White House and putting it into good order. In the longer term, disputes about money and his mother’s threats to repossess the Drayton house poisoned relationships within an already quarrelsome family. According to Thomas Bruce, 2nd earl of Ailesbury, Peterborough had a ‘hot and fiery temper’.6 So, it would seem, did his mother. She was concerned to pay her husband’s debts and to make provision for herself and for her other children, John Mordaunt, later Viscount Mordaunt, and Elizabeth (who later married Thomas Howard, 2nd Baron Howard of Escrick). Peterborough feared that he would not be able to make proper financial arrangements for his wife and children, that his mother was raising money at his expense, and that she unduly favoured his younger brother.

Problems within the family were exacerbated when, at the Restoration, Peterborough not only failed to get the rewards that he considered his due but experienced instead ‘marks … of the king’s coldness’. In particular, his brother’s influence with the king and Edward Hyde, later earl of Clarendon, meant that he rather than Peterborough succeeded in gaining Reigate Priory, ‘one of the noblest houses in the south of England’ and worth £1,000 a year.7 In 1665, as part of negotiations for a loan of £1,000 from Peterborough to his mother, he at last managed to obtain her promise that she would never evict him from Drayton. Reluctant to give up any of her power, the dowager made it clear that she did not regard her promise as legally binding.8 Accordingly when, in 1669, Peterborough obstructed his mother’s collection of rents, and started a series of actions questioning her right to sell or lease lands and alleging that the family settlement had been extorted from his father by unfair means, she retaliated with an action of ejectment. He was appalled to discover that even retaining this, the only house on the family estates ‘suitable to his honour and quality’, was dependent on his mother’s goodwill, and that she was prepared to evict him without any compensation for the repairs and rebuilding that he had undertaken.9

Even when he wrote his autobiography in 1685, Peterborough’s references to his brother were negative. In some of his earlier legal actions he had accused his brother of conspiring against him with the dowager countess.10 Yet the brothers do seem to have had occasional bouts of co-operation. In 1665 Viscount Mordaunt offered his services as ‘brother and … friend’ after warning Peterborough that George Villiers, 2nd duke of Buckingham, was intriguing against him;11 and Mordaunt’s widow named Peterborough as one of the executors of the Mordaunt estate.12

Friend of the duke of York, 1660–85

Peterborough’s political views were extreme. In the early years of the Restoration he described England as a corrupt and ungrateful nation, ripe for rebellion. He believed that the king had to put himself in a condition to be ‘thoroughly feared’, and since this was not to be by use of a militia (which would simply train the king’s enemies in the use of arms), the implication is that he put his faith in a powerful standing army. For Peterborough ‘those old notions of mix’d governments, privileges and conditions’ were no longer feasible, for ‘the consequence of all undertakings, can no more be, but monarchy, or a commonwealth’. Although this suggests that Peterborough had considerable contempt for Parliament, he nevertheless soon became an active member of the House, attending over 65 per cent of the sitting days in 1660 and 1661. As a member of the coterie of military men close to James, duke of York, it is perhaps surprising that in 1661 he was expected to vote against the claim of Aubrey de Vere, 20th earl of Oxford, to the great chamberlaincy, but as one who could claim a more direct line of descent from the de Vere family he may have had a claim of his own to pursue.

In September 1661, Peterborough was at last rewarded for his civil war sufferings with an appointment as governor of Tangier, a post that he took up in January the following year, covering his absence from the House with a proxy to his brother.13 The Crown anticipated considerable benefits from its acquisition of Tangier, part of Catherine of Braganza’s dowry, and probably even at this stage regarded its garrison as the nucleus of a possible standing army. Peterborough was instructed that the purpose of his post was ‘to gain to our subjects the trade of Barbary, and to enlarge our dominions in that sea, and advance thereby the honour of our crown and the general commerce and welfare of our subjects’.14

Unfortunately for Peterborough, Tangier turned out to be a rather more difficult, and very much less lucrative, position than he had anticipated. It had been ransacked and emptied of its civilian population and was also under constant threat of attack from the Moorish leader, Abd Allah Ghailan (‘Guyland’). Peterborough faced a genuinely difficult situation, but even so his performance was decidedly lacklustre. His overtures to Ghailan were interpreted as gestures of weakness rather than of friendship, and the garrison’s death rate, from sickness and wounds, was exceptionally high. In May 1662 his troops were routed after being lured too far from the town. The following month he returned to England to discuss the problems of the colony.15 He set out for Tangier again in August but his recall was announced in December.

Peterborough insisted that he relinquished his post voluntarily, that the king was well pleased with his performance and that under his command ‘there was never place kept in better order, better paid, better provided for’, but he also referred to the role played by ‘the envy and malice of some considerable enemies at home’.16 His protestations did not fool Samuel Pepys^‡ who reported that ‘though it is said [it] is done with kindness, yet all the world may see it is done otherwise’.17 Pepys was to remain involved in Peterborough’s financial affairs for several years through disputes over the Tangier accounts and the government’s inability to honour its promises over payment of the pension of £1,000 a year for life that the earl was promised on surrendering his Tangier offices. As the pension arrears – and Peterborough’s insistent demands – mounted, Pepys came to view Peterborough with increasing contempt; even Lady Peterborough turned from an object of pity to a troublesome nuisance through her ‘importunity and impertinency’.18

Peterborough’s appointment to Tangier accounts for his total absence from the House in 1662 and during the opening months of the 1663 session. He returned to Parliament on 9 July 1663 and attended all but one of the sitting days in that month. When Philip Wharton, 4^th Baron Wharton, drew up his somewhat unreliable prediction for the division on Clarendon’s impeachment, he listed Peterborough as doubtful. Whether this was a comment on Peterborough’s possible absence or his attitude to Clarendon is unclear. On 25 July Peterborough entered a dissent against the inclusion of the revised assent and consent clause in the bill to amend the Act of Uniformity, which suggests that at this stage of his life he was still a committed defender of the Church of England.

Despite his military and naval commitments Peterborough attended the House on over 60 per cent of sitting days in 1664 and 1665. In April 1664 he chaired two meetings of the committee for privileges on the question of Lady Petre’s claim to privilege, and from 24 Nov. 1664 to 12 Jan. 1665 he held the proxy of John Egerton, 2nd earl of Bridgwater. In February 1665 he chaired committees considering the bills of George Morley, bishop of Winchester, and of John Tufton, 2nd earl of Thanet. In April York interposed with the king to protect Peterborough from a complaint by Buckingham, though the cause of the quarrel is unknown.19 Peterborough was appointed groom of the stole to York following the death of the previous incumbent, Donah McCarty, Viscount Muskerry [I], in the naval battle at Lowestoft in June 1665.20 It seems that initially the post carried no salary (or, more probably, York’s financial embarrassments precluded an ability to pay) because in 1666 his countess complained that there was ‘no money to be had … [from the duke of York] … for wages or disbursements’. By 1667 Peterborough was chief commissioner to regulate the duke’s expenses; his countess became lady-in-waiting to the duchess of York.21

In 1666 Peterborough was appointed lord lieutenant of Northamptonshire. Just what political or electoral influence he was able to exercise there remains obscure. With the Peterborough estates under the control of his mother, now living in Surrey, and with several well-established aristocratic interests in the county, it seems unlikely that his influence could have been very high. He does not figure at all in the History of Parliament’s accounts of elections in this or any other county until after the accession of James II, and although his wife’s nephew, Henry O’Brien^‡, sat for Northampton between 1670 and 1678, the two men had very differing loyalties. Even after his mother’s death in 1670, Peterborough was unable to control the family estates because, as he had no son, the next heir was his brother. As lord lieutenant one might have expected him to contribute generously to the fund for rebuilding Northampton after the fire of 1675, yet his name is conspicuously absent from the list of benefactors. Nevertheless it is unwise to dismiss Peterborough’s influence altogether. His peerage, his court connections, and especially his friendship with York conferred a certain amount of power in its own right: during his brief term as recorder of Northampton the borough was threatened with a quo warranto because of its disrespectful attitude towards him.22

Peterborough continued to be an active member of the House. In 1666 he was present on 75 per cent of sitting days; during that year he was summoned to the trial of Thomas Parker, 15th Baron Morley, in the court of the lord high steward, and found him guilty.23 His attendance rose to over 80 per cent in the troubled sessions of 1667 and 1668. On 23 Jan. 1667 he entered a dissent against the failure to provide a right of appeal to the king and the House of Lords in the bill for resolving disputes concerning houses burnt down by the fire of London and then another dissent against the passage of the bill. As a leading member of York’s faction he used his influence in support of Clarendon. On 15 Oct. 1667 when the House voted to give thanks to the king for his dismissal of Clarendon, Peterborough was one of a small group of peers who followed York out of the chamber rather than vote on a matter that seemed to prejudge Clarendon as a criminal when no charge had been brought against him.24 He held York’s proxy from 8 Nov. 1667 to 10 Feb. 1668 and that of the parliamentarian turned royalist Basil Feilding, 2nd earl of Denbigh, from 24 Feb. to 13 Apr. 1668. In April 1668 he chaired the committee on the hearth tax.

Peterborough’s attendance levels dropped slightly in 1669 but rose sharply in 1670 when York’s interests were again under attack. In that year he was present on over 90 per cent of sitting days; he held the proxy of Leicester Devereux, 6th Viscount Hereford, as well as that of Charles Dormer, 2nd earl of Carnarvon, from 17 Mar. and 26 Mar. respectively until the end of the session. He undoubtedly used them to vote against the Roos divorce bill, which he correctly interpreted as an attack on York’s right to the succession.25 He entered dissents against the Roos divorce on 17 and 28 Mar. 1670 and another on 5 Apr. against the clause in the 1670 Conventicle Act that permitted searches of peers’ houses. On 8 Feb. 1671, during a debate on a petition presented to the House by his mother (arising from yet another dispute between mother and son about family property), ‘some words of provocation’ between Peterborough and John Lucas, Baron Lucas, led to a demand that both apologize to the House and to give assurances that neither would take any further action in the matter.

Peterborough was absent from the House for almost the whole of 1673 while acting (under an appointment as ambassador extraordinary) as York’s agent during the tortuous and at times semi-farcical negotiations for his second marriage. He later claimed that his task was much obstructed by the reluctance of the lord treasurer, Thomas Clifford, Baron Clifford of Chudleigh, to issue sufficient money for the trip and that this had forced him together with York into a series of intrigues with Clifford’s more supportive ‘competitor’, presumably Thomas Osborne, later earl of Danby and duke of Leeds.26 Peterborough attributed Clifford’s hostility to the marriage negotiations to a fear of parliamentary opposition, yet it was to Clifford that he assigned his proxy in February 1673 before leaving the country. In September Peterborough acted as James’s proxy during the marriage ceremony with Mary of Modena and then accompanied her to England. By the time of his return, hostility to York’s conversion had reached new heights. The general enmity towards York was also directed against Peterborough. There was a rumour that he too had turned Catholic, and his problems were exacerbated by the rivalry between York and his nephew, ‘that young viper’ James Scott, duke of Monmouth. Peterborough was sure that Monmouth’s influence was to blame for keeping him from the rewards that he believed to be his due.27

In 1674 he became involved, together with York, in a dispute with Alice Lisle concerning lands in the Isle of Wight. The details of the dispute are as yet obscure but probably relate to the problems that York faced in securing possession of the lands forfeited by her husband, the regicide John Lisle, and awarded to York at the Restoration.28 Throughout the crisis years of 1674–9 Peterborough’s attendance was exceptionally high: in 1674 and 1679 he was present on every sitting day; his lowest attendance was in 1677 but even then he attended on just over 87 per cent of sitting days. From his perspective these were years marked by the growth of faction designed to ‘the ruin of the crown, and establishment of a commonwealth’ and in which York stood out as the lone defender of the king’s ‘just power and prerogatives against popular invasion’.29

In April 1675 Danby listed Peterborough as one of the lords likely to support the non-resisting Test. In November he voted in favour of the address to the Crown to request a dissolution of Parliament. In June 1676, during the interval between sessions, he was one of the triers who found Charles Cornwallis, 3rd Baron Cornwallis, not guilty of murder.30 In 1677 he headed a syndicate that was awarded a grant of the profits from fines of court. The other members of the syndicate included Sir Francis Compton^‡ and Robert Paston, Viscount (later earl of) Yarmouth. The award was apparently a lucrative one; it certainly helped to win Compton back to the court.31

On 15 Mar. 1677 Peterborough entered a dissent against the bill to secure the Protestant religion; during the debate he had denounced the attempt to disable a prince of the blood who married a Catholic from succeeding to the throne as a ‘horrid notion’.32 Not surprisingly, in May 1677 Shaftesbury listed him as ‘triply vile’. On 14 Feb. 1678 Peterborough dissented to the resolution to dismiss the appeal in Barret v Loftus. On 4 Apr. he voted Philip Herbert, 7th earl of Pembroke, not guilty in his murder trial. Heneage Finch, 3rd earl of Winchilsea, entered a proxy in Peterborough’s favour on 9 Apr. 1678 and, presumably in error, entered another on 7 May 1678; they were vacated at the end of the session.

Personal as well as political considerations had played a role in encouraging Peterborough’s attendance, since in 1677 he also obtained a private act of Parliament enabling him to sell several properties vested in his only surviving daughter to the financier Sir Robert Clayton^‡. Peterborough was one of Clayton’s clients and there was a widespread belief that Clayton and his partner, John Morris, had taken advantage of him.33 Although this may be true in part, the lands were heavily mortgaged and it is rather more likely either that Peterborough had run into debt as a result of the family settlement and his own desire to maintain a lifestyle appropriate to his position in society, or that he needed to finance his daughter’s marriage in September of that year to Henry Howard, later 7th duke of Norfolk.34 Ten years earlier, in 1667, Peterborough’s countess had openly admitted their poverty to Pepys, telling him ‘how her plate and jewels are at pawn for money, and how they are forced to live beyond their estate, and do get nothing by his being a courtier’.35

Peterborough supported James throughout the period of the Popish Plot, in his own mind courting unpopularity because ‘he stood up for the innocent supported the oppressed, and … declared for public justice against public malice and public partiality’.36 An undated manuscript tract against Catholicism which probably belongs the period around 1678, when fears of York’s influence were high, describes Peterborough as one of York’s 12 disciples who sit ‘at the helm of the council to steer as they please’.37 Although Peterborough is not listed in the surviving division list it is clear that he opposed the Test.38 On 23 Nov. 1678 he, almost certainly acting on behalf of the Crown, was one of the managers of the conference with the Commons on the address concerning the militia. On 28 Dec. he was appointed to the committee to draw up reasons to be used at the conference on the supply (disbanding the army) bill and voted in favour of insisting on the Lords’ amendment relating to the payment of money into the exchequer. On 27 Dec. 1678 he voted against the commitment of Danby.

In his various calculations drawn up over the early months of 1679 Danby consistently listed Peterborough as a supporter and in April the earl duly voted against the attainder. On 27 May he probably voted for the right of the bishops to stay in the House during capital cases. In May he similarly voted against proceedings concerning the ‘Popish Lords’ and on 14 May entered a dissent against the bill for regulating trials of peers. Later that year, through his friendship with Lady Powis, wife of the imprisoned Catholic peer, William Herbert, earl (later marquess) of Powis, he was introduced to Mrs. Cellier and was persuaded by her to assist the reconciliation of Sir Robert Peyton^‡ with York. Mrs Cellier also introduced him to Thomas Dangerfield. Peterborough was taken in by Dangerfield’s allegations of a ‘Presbyterian Plot’ and was instrumental, along with Lady Powis, in bringing them to the attention of an equally credulous duke of York. 39 Dangerfield subsequently changed his story, alleging that he had been employed by York to kill the king and that Peterborough had ‘encouraged him to go on with it courageously’.40

Although he was left out of the remodelled Privy Council in 1679, Peterborough remained loyal to York throughout the Exclusion crisis. He visited York in exile and was with him when he returned to England in September 1679.41 From late October through to early December 1680 he was again constantly present in the House of Lords, determined to defend himself and to defend York against attempts to bar him from the succession. On 15 Nov. 1680 the House heard Dangerfield’s allegations of Peterborough’s complicity in the ‘Meal Tub’ or ‘Sham’ plot and of his involvement in securing the allegedly underhand acquittal of Sir George Wakeman. The House declined to commit him, so he was present later that day to speak and vote against the Exclusion bill. An anecdote passed down to Burnet by Charles Powlett, duke of Bolton, reported that in his speech Peterborough described the campaign against Exclusion as ‘a cause in which every man in England was obliged to draw his sword’ and provoked fear and disorder when in the heat of the moment he laid his hand on the hilt of his sword as if he intended to use it.42 On 23 Nov. he opposed the attempt to appoint a committee to consider the state of the kingdom. The following month he found William Howard, Viscount Stafford, not guilty of treason. Not surprisingly, when York tried to persuade his brother to purge the existing government, Peterborough was one of the suggested replacements.

In March 1681 Peterborough was expected to support Danby’s application for bail and attended the Oxford Parliament accordingly.43 Throughout the summer he was active in rallying the Northamptonshire gentry to support the king and in encouraging addresses of loyalty to the Crown.44 In October he took his family to join York in Scotland, apparently prepared for the possibility that this might turn into permanent exile; during his absence there were rumours that he was to be impeached.45 He accompanied York on his return in March 1682. He was soon readmitted to the Privy Council and spent the summer of 1683 in Northamptonshire, busying himself with prosecutions against supporters of Anthony Ashley Cooper, earl of Shaftesbury, and other allegedly disaffected persons. He also purged the magistracy and militia, thus, in his own view, rendering ‘one of the most perverse, and worst inclined countries of all England’ into ‘the most exemplary, and readiest to serve the king’.46 In February 1684 when the ‘Popish Lords’ were finally bailed, he and his son-in-law, Norfolk, stood as two of the four sureties for Powis.47

Reward for faithfulness, 1685–8

At the accession of James II in 1685 Peterborough received the garter and was appointed groom of the stole with a salary of £1,000 a year; his wife became groom of the stole to the queen. Peterborough also became high steward and chief bailiff to the queen. Together with Norfolk and Henry Hyde, 2nd earl of Clarendon, he was granted the right to license pedlars and petty chapmen. This was a potentially lucrative grant which the three peers planned to lease for £10,000 a year, but which was quickly cancelled, perhaps because it was potentially an extremely controversial measure.48 Surprisingly, given his assiduous attention to Parliament before the king’s accession, his attendance in 1685 was only 67 per cent. On 9 Nov. Peterborough moved the motion for an address of thanks to the king for his speech.49 That month he voted for the acquittal of Henry Booth, 2nd Baron Delamer (later earl of Warrington), though it was reported that he whispered in his neighbour’s ear ‘Guilty by god!’50

In 1686, at the direction of James II, Peterborough was reported to have dropped an action of scandalum magnatum against Speaker Williams^‡ in connection with the publication of Dangerfield’s Narrative of the Late Popish Designs, but this is almost certainly an error since Speaker Williams’ own papers indicate that he came to an agreement with Peterborough and that some but not all of the damages were paid.51 Peterborough had also brought several actions against the printers. A government prosecution against Speaker Williams for libel had probably already suppressed the pamphlet, and at a hearing in 1687 two of the judges (Wythens and Herbert) pointedly remarked that the earlier action had also vindicated Peterborough’s honour and that only ‘lucre’ was left as a motive.52 Given the size of damages customarily awarded in cases of scandalum magnatum, Peterborough’s action must have been intended as a way of threatening Williams with financial ruin unless he changed political sides, which he duly did. Peterborough’s action was almost certainly undertaken at the behest of the king, who had acquired extensive experience of the political usefulness of scandalum magnatum while still duke of York. Roger Morrice reported that it was Peterborough’s action against the printer, Hill, that had attracted James II’s intervention. Peterborough had been awarded £4,000 and damages from the various printers but had compounded with them all except Hill, who converted to Catholicism in order to secure James II’s good opinion (and a subsequent appointment as royal printer).53

In November 1686 Peterborough was appointed as a member of the Privy Council committee to inspect justices of the peace throughout the country.54 Even before the accession of James II, he had become active in the campaign against the corporations. His interventions at this point were largely confined to his home territory of Northamptonshire; their lack of success underlines his inability to wield any real electoral influence in the county. When a new charter was issued to Higham Ferrers in February 1684, Peterborough was appointed as the town’s first recorder. Presumably at his direction the town had produced a loyal address at the accession of James II; the corporation was nevertheless considered to be insufficiently loyal and was purged drastically in March 1688. In 1686 a new charter placed Brackley under the control of the Egertons, who had long exercised a proprietary interest there, but when they opposed the repeal of the Test Act and penal laws, the charter was replaced. Peterborough, who was probably regarded as something of an intruder, was appointed recorder there in September 1688. Northampton itself had been given a new charter in 1683 but, even though the corporation was prepared to vote an address of thanks for the Declaration of Indulgence, it was still reluctant to accept the candidates proposed by Peterborough in 1688. Between February and September 1688 it was repeatedly purged and even so Peterborough had to pack the town with his troops at election time, although news of the imminent arrival of William of Orange’s invasion force meant that the troops were removed before any confrontation occurred. Despite Peterborough’s earlier boasts about the way in which he had transformed the loyalty of the county and his belief that he had secured the gratitude of the county gentry by securing pardons for some 53 ‘considerable gentlemen’ who had been presented at Northampton, the response to the Three Questions was decidedly unsatisfactory.55

In 1688 Peterborough replaced Edward Noel, earl of Gainsborough, whose answers to the Three Questions had been unacceptable, as lord lieutenant of Rutland. His appointment suggests that he was also expected to intervene there. Although documentary evidence does not survive, it was presumably at his instigation that the sitting Members, Sir Thomas Mackworth^‡ and Baptist Noel^‡, were omitted from the lieutenancy in 1688.56 He also intervened in Bedford. The town had been given a new charter in July 1685 but the corporation’s lukewarm response to the endorsement by Ailesbury of Peterborough’s recommended parliamentary candidates ensured that it was twice purged in the spring of 1688. Perhaps it is significant that Ailesbury was a captain in Peterborough’s horse; military rank may well have given Peterborough additional opportunities to influence Parliament. It is noticeable that the 1685 elections returned five Members who held commissions in Peterborough’s horse: apart from Ailesbury himself, they were William Barlow^‡, Sir Simon Leach^‡, John Talbot^‡, and Sir Michael Wentworth^‡. A sixth Member, Oliver Nicholas^‡, groom of the bedchamber to James II both before and after his accession, was an army officer who had served in Peterborough’s foot in 1673–4.

Peterborough’s close association with James II may also have given him influence over Church appointments. Thomas Cartwright, appointed to the bishopric of Chester in 1687, originated from Northamptonshire, was a member of Peterborough’s social circle, and referred to Peterborough as his patron.57 Samuel Parker, controversially appointed bishop of Oxford in 1686 and imposed on Magdalen College in 1687, was a Northamptonshire man and was probably also known to Peterborough.

In January 1686 Gilbert Dolben^‡ wrote that ‘Peterborough says he will do whatever the king commands him in relation to the government but by God he’ll love and die of the Church of England. That’s his holy resolution.’58 Just over a year later, in March 1687, Peterborough announced his conversion to Catholicism.59 Throughout that year lists of supporters and opponents of James’s policies simply identify him as a Catholic. His religious beliefs had long been the subject of speculation. As noted above, rumours of his conversion to Catholicism had circulated in 1673; they resurfaced in 1676.60 Yet his 1663 dissent to the amendment to the Act of Uniformity and his fulminations against ejected ministers the following year suggests that in the mid-1660s he was still a committed Anglican.61 Unlike York he had no difficulty in taking the oaths prescribed by the Test Act, and the well-known story of his reluctance to give up his pew in St. Margaret’s Church after his conversion confirms that he had previously worshipped there according to Anglican rites.62 Nevertheless it is not difficult to believe that he had long-standing sympathies for Catholics and Catholicism. Quite apart from his close association with York, many members of his family were Catholic. He described the grandmother who supported him after his desertion of the parliamentary army as ‘a zealous Catholic’. One of his aunts was suspected of harbouring Catholics in 1666 and she and another aunt were prosecuted for recusancy in 1680.63 His daughter, the duchess of Norfolk, had converted to Catholicism before 1687.64 He ensured that at least one of his nephews, George Mordaunt, would be educated as a Catholic.65 Nevertheless, the timing of Peterborough’s formal conversion was almost certainly influenced by secular rather than theological considerations. By 1687 it had become clear that the price of membership in the circle of power around James II was not past loyalty but conversion to Catholicism.

As Peterborough watched Charles II die, he must surely have expected to reap a considerable reward from the new king – probably rather more than an appointment as groom of the stole and a garter. It is tempting to wonder whether the autobiography that he included in 1685 in his privately printed Succinct Genealogies was in part intended as an appeal for further favour. Throughout that autobiography Peterborough emphasized both his loyalty to James and the paucity of the rewards he had received. He also referred to unnamed enemies who had sought to influence the royal brothers against him. In the early months of James’s reign, one of those enemies can be identified as John Sheffield, 3rd earl of Mulgrave, later duke of Buckingham. Their enmity evidently persisted, since in December 1686 an argument between the two men about the remodelling of a room formerly belonging to the groom of the stole led to a challenge. The ensuing duel was prevented when the king imposed a compulsory cooling-off period by imprisoning Peterborough for a few days.66 Another enemy was Ailesbury, who feared that Peterborough was ready and waiting to take over Ailesbury’s lord lieutenancies, and who even in the midst of the panic caused by the invasion of 1688 was still sufficiently worried about his status in James’s household to quarrel with Peterborough about the protocol of riding in the king’s coach.67 Peterborough’s championing of Cartwright as bishop of Chester must also have brought him the enmity of George Jeffreys, Baron Jeffreys, who had earmarked that post for his brother, James Jeffreys. The ease with which the king’s opinion of Mr. Hill the printer had been transformed on learning of his conversion must have provided Peterborough with a potent example of the quickest and easiest method of retaining James’s goodwill.

On 14 Oct. 1688, when the court was in a state of panic over the prospect of imminent invasion, Peterborough made his will, leaving all his property to his wife. A contemporary ditty suggested that he had been forced to do so by his wife, and that the elderly earl was in poor health resulting from venereal diseases contracted in a series of infidelities. The only other reference to such infidelities relates to threats of a duel in 1677, when Peterborough wanted to issue challenges to Robert Leke, then styled Lord Deincourt (later 3rd earl of Scarsdale), and Sir George Hewitt for insulting a ‘lady of pleasure’ said to be under his protection.68 A rather more likely explanation for drawing up the will, in which he referred to his wife in terms of affection and respect, was that he believed civil war to be imminent. He had been stockpiling arms and ammunition at his Northamptonshire home for just such an eventuality.69

Peterborough probably also feared reprisals. As one who had dedicated almost the whole of his public life to the service of James II, he was well aware that he shared his master’s unpopularity. He had good reason to be afraid; he was indicted by a grand jury under the terms of a long unused statute for high treason in being reconciled to Rome.70 Like other supporters of the king he received a pardon in October. In December he obtained a pass for his family and servants and fled towards Dover, but he was captured and committed to the Tower. On 22 Jan. 1689 an attempt by his nephew Charles Mordaunt, 2nd Viscount Mordaunt (later earl of Monmouth and 3rd earl of Peterborough) to secure his release on bail failed.71 Meanwhile in Northamptonshire his house and chapel at Drayton were attacked. The existence of his armoury was clearly an open secret and his steward, threatened with being burned alive, disclosed that guns and gunpowder alike had been thrown into the fishponds. Dragging a single pond allegedly revealed sufficient arms to equip 150 men.72

Impeachment and death

Peterborough was impeached in October 1689 but there was no attempt to bring him to trial. Even so he remained in the Tower for another year.73 After his release in 1690 he played no further part in public life. In March 1691 it was rumoured that he was about to flee to France with Richard Grahme^‡, Viscount Preston [S], but he did not.74 He did not renounce Catholicism, however, and seems to have made no secret of his continuing connections with the exiled court. In 1692 he showed Evelyn a picture of the prince of Wales, recently received from France; a letter to him from Mary of Modena was intercepted the following year.75 He was suspected of complicity in the assassination plot of 1696 and was confined to his house as a precautionary measure but no charges were brought against him.76

At Peterborough’s death in 1697, the earldom passed to his nephew Charles Mordaunt. Presumably there was little in the way of liquid assets for in September 1689 Peterborough’s self-assessment for taxation purpose stated that he had no personal estate. Lands worth £4,000 a year also went to the new earl who was nevertheless disappointed (and litigiously inclined) by Peterborough’s decision to leave substantial lands to his daughter.77

R.P.

1 TNA, C 6/40/99.
2 TNA, PROB 11/439.
3 R. Halstead [H. Mordaunt], Succinct Genealogies, 405–12.
4 Succinct Genealogies, 404–5; CSP Dom. 1666–7, pp. 421–2; TNA, C 6/186/86, answer of Lady Peterborough, 10 Jan. 1670.
5 TNA, C6/184/87, Peterborough, 13 Apr. 1669; Succinct Genealogies, 404, 408.
6 Ailesbury Mems. i. 132.
7 Succinct Genealogies, 412; CSP Dom. 1660–1, p. 138.
8 CCSP, v. 497.
9 TNA, C6/186/86.
10 Succinct Genealogies, 412.
11 CSP Dom. 1664–5, p. 313.
12 Add. 17018, f. 129.
13 E.M.G. Routh, Tangier: England’s Lost Colonial Outpost, 1113–14.
14 Succinct Genealogies, 669–70.
15 Pepys Diary, iii. 110; CCSP, v. 230; Routh, Tangier, 25–26.
16 Succinct Genealogies, 413.
17 Pepys Diary, iii. 282–3.
18 Ibid. vi. 68–69; vii. 308, 335, 355; viii. 459–60; ix. 318.
19 CSP Dom. 1664–5, p. 313.
20 Succinct Genealogies, 414–15.
21 Pepys Diary, vii. 355; HMC 8th Rep. 280; Travels of Cosmo the Third, Grand Duke of Tuscany (1669) 390.
22 HP Commons, 1660–90, i. 340.
23 Stowe 396, ff. 178–90.
24 Chatsworth, Cork mss Misc. Box 2, Burlington Diary, 15 Oct. 1667.
25 Succinct Genealogies, 415.
26 Ibid. 416–17.
27 Verney ms. mic. M636/26, Sir R. Verney to E. Verney, 29 Sept. 1673; Succinct Genealogies, 431–2; CSP Dom. 1699–1700, p. 332.
28 TNA, E 134/25&26Chas2/Hil15.
29 Succinct Genealogies, 432.
30 State Trials, vii. 157–8.
31 HP, Commons 1660–90, ii. 113.
32 Macpherson, Orig. Pprs. i. 72.
33 HP Commons 1660–90, ii. 84.
34 Evelyn Diary, iv. 112.
35 Pepys Diary, viii. 460.
36 Succinct Genealogies, 434.
37 Eg. 3331, ff. 120–1.
38 Verney ms mic. M636/32, Dr. W. Denton to Sir R. Verney, 18 Nov. 1678.
39 Succinct Genealogies, 434.
40 Haley, Shaftesbury, 595; Succinct Genealogies, 438.
41 Bodl. Carte 232, ff. 51–52.
42 Burnet, i. 21.
43 HMC 14th Rep. X, 425.
44 Succinct Genealogies, 439–40.
45 HMC Ormonde, vi. 263, 330, 441.
46 Succinct Genealogies, 441.
47 Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 300–1.
48 CCSP, v. 657; TNA, C 212/7/2.
49 Add. 70013, f. 290.
50 Ailesbury Mems. i. 135.
51 HP Commons, 1660–90, iii. 734; NLW, Wynnstay family and estate C38, 47; Morrice, Entring Bk, iv. 84.
52 Morrice, Entring Bk, iii. 359.
53 Morrice, Entring Bk. iii. 96–98, 359, iv. 84.
54 Ellis Corresp. i. 181.
55 Duckett, Penal Laws, ii. 83–89.
56 HP Commons, 1660–90, iii. 2, 144.
57 Cartwright Diary, 1.
58 Add. 72481, f.109.
59 Verney ms mic. M636/41, J. Stewkley to Sir R. Verney, 31 Mar. 1687.
60 Verney ms mic. M636/29, J. to Sir R. Verney, 6 June 1676.
61 TNA, SP 29/93/64.
62 Ailesbury Mems. i. 153.
63 Succinct Genealogies, 408; CSP Dom. 1666–7, p. 174; G. Anstruther, Vaux of Harrowden, 478.
64 POAS, iv:155; J.M. Robinson, The Dukes of Norfolk, 145-7.
65 Christ Church, Oxford, Wake Mss, 10/175.
66 Verney ms mic. M636/41, J. to Sir R. Verney, 8 and 9 Dec. 1686.
67 Ailesbury Mems. i. 153, 187–92.
68 HMC Rutland, iii. 43.
69 Universal Intelligencer, 22–26 Dec. 1688.
70 Ailesbury Mems. ii. 192.
71 Kingdom without a King, 158, 162; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk, iv. 498.
72 Universal Intelligencer, 22–26 Dec. 1688.
73 HMC Lords, iii. 91.
74 Bodl. Carte 76, f. 69.
75 Evelyn Diary, v. 92; UNL, Pw A 1414.
76 Luttrell, Brief Relation, iv. 22; LJ, xv. 745.
77 Chatsworth, Halifax Collection B.71; Luttrell, Brief Relation, iv. 241.