styled 1689-1709 Visct. Woodstock; suc. fa. 23 Nov. 1709 as 2nd earl of PORTLAND; cr. 6 July 1716 duke of PORTLAND
First sat 9 Dec. 1709; last sat 7 Mar. 1722
MP Southampton 1705-8, Hants 1708-23 Nov. 1709
b. c.1682, 2nd but 1st surv. s. of Hans Willem Bentinck, later earl of Portland, and 1st wife Anne (d.1688), da. of Sir Edward Villiers of Richmond, Surr. educ. travelled abroad (Italy, Germany; tutor, Paul Rapin de Thoyras) 1701-3.1 m. 9 June 1704 (with £60,000),2 Elizabeth (d.1737), da. and coh. of Wriothesley Baptist Noel, 2nd earl of Gainsborough, 2s. 3da. d. 4 July 1726; will 9 Aug. 1722, pr. 14 Feb. 1728.3
Gent. of the bedchamber 1717-d.
Freeman, Southampton 1705.4
Capt. 1st tp. and brev. col. Life Guards 1710-13; gov. Jamaica 1721-d.5
Associated with: Bulstrode Park, Bucks.; Place House, Titchfield, Hants; St James’s Sq., Westminster, 1704-9.6
Henry Bentinck was the heir of William III’s principal Dutch favourite, Hans Willem Bentinck, created earl of Portland in April 1689. From that time the young man was styled by his father’s subsidiary title of Viscount Woodstock. In January 1698 Woodstock accompanied his father on his embassy to Paris. Later that year William III presented a bill to the Irish Parliament to convey to Woodstock 135,820 acres of the forfeited Irish estates of the Jacobite army officer Donough Maccarty, 4th earl of Clancarty [I].7
Woodstock embarked on a grand tour from 1701-3, under the tutelage of the Huguenot historian Paul de Rapin de Thoyras and shortly after his return married (under the name ‘William Henry Bentinck’) the English heiress, Lady Elizabeth Noel, one of the coheirs of Wriothesley Baptist Noel, 2nd earl of Gainsborough. She was rumoured to have brought with her to the marriage a fortune of £60,000 and the Titchfield estate in Hampshire. At the same time his father settled on him an income of £10,000 p.a.8
He first stood for Parliament for Southampton on the Noel interest in 1705, for which election he spent £500.9 Charles Spencer, 3rd earl of Sunderland, considered his victory a gain for the Whigs, and he was again classed as a Whig on two separate lists at the time of the 1708 election, in which he was returned for both Southampton and Hampshire. He chose to sit for the county.10 On 23 Nov. 1709, shortly after the beginning of the second session of the Parliament, Woodstock succeeded to the earldom.
The new earl of Portland came into a substantial inheritance. His father had left the principal Dutch estates to a younger son (by his second wife) but the 2nd earl of Portland came into the family’s English estates. He gained possession of the principal seat in Bulstrode in Buckinghamshire and estates in Cheshire, Cumberland, Hertfordshire, Norfolk, Sussex, Westminster and Yorkshire, worth in all about £850,150. 11 Unlike his younger brother, Portland made his career and settled his family in Britain.
Portland first sat in the House on 9 Dec. 1709, less than a month after the session had started, and continued to sit for 46 per cent of its meetings. During this period he was also trying to wrap up the outstanding affairs of his father’s estate, and he kept in close correspondence with the family’s trusted friend and agent in the Netherlands, Mr. d’Allonne, who had also served in England under the first earl of Portland as secretary for Dutch affairs. Throughout 1710 Portland wrote to d’Allonne on family matters and with news of British politics, especially regarding the war and Britain’s increasingly tense relation with its leading ally the United Provinces. On 27 Jan. he reported a long conversation he had had with John Somers, Baron Somers, concerning the state of the war. Both had agreed that it would help if the United Provinces could provide an example for Britain to emulate by its own vigorous prosecution of the war – although Portland was at pains to point out that the Dutch were already stretched to their limit. On parliamentary matters he informed d’Allonne on 10 Feb. 1710 of the debate the previous day on the Commons bill to secure the ‘freedoms of Parliament’ by limiting the number of crown officers who could sit in the Commons. ‘The Lords rejected the act’, he reported, ‘without the slightest hesitation, which, as I can imagine, greatly pleased the court’. Most of his time from the end of February was taken up with the trial of Dr Sacheverell, which, as he made clear to d’Allonne, he saw as an onerous chore. ‘I would be very pleased if it had already finished’, he wrote on 28 Feb. but ‘those whom the lower house have named to prosecute the accusation have done it with such good arguments, and such eloquence, that I do not know when it will end’. He, along with the majority of the House, was named to a number of very large select committees concerning the impeachment, and on 17 Mar. he complained to d’Allonne that, the night before, proceedings in the House had lasted until 11 at night – and had taken up all of that day as well. On 20 Mar. 1710 he joined the Whigs in voting the Doctor guilty and reported to d’Allonne that ‘we gave him a very light sentence; he did not expect to have one so favourable. I hope that others will not be encouraged by that to preach the same doctrine’.12
Portland was only too happy to have Parliament prorogued: he could then finally devote himself entirely to matters regarding his father’s estate. His letters to d’Allonne of the summer of 1710, however, which largely concern domestic matters, go through a transformation as Portland went from absolute certainty that, despite the rumours, there would be no change to the ministry to an increasing concern that Britain’s known penchant for political instability would lead to a disastrous overturning of the political order.13 One change of this summer directly benefited him when he was made brevet colonel of the Life Guards on 26 July 1710.14 The previous colonel, Arnold Joost van Keppel, earl of Albemarle, had been appointed to the post in 1699 as part of his inexorable rise in William III’s favour which had led the first earl of Portland to resign all his English posts. By 1710 Albemarle was firmly settled in the Netherlands once again and requested to hand in his commission. Portland’s appointment in his place could be seen as the first earl of Portland’s retrospective revenge on his rival, but it is difficult to explain why Anne, working with Robert Harley, later earl of Oxford, and a rising political group which was soon to show itself so hostile to Dutch interests, would have replaced one resented Dutch follower of William III with the son and heir of an even more hated follower of the late king.15
Portland was later accused of ‘over-meddling in elections’, but there is little direct evidence on his involvement in the elections of the autumn of 1710.16 In later years he does appear to have been engaged in electioneering in Buckinghamshire, where his principal seat of Bulstrode Park was located. Nevertheless, any role he played there for the unsuccessful Whigs in the 1710 elections was overshadowed by his very active colleague Thomas Wharton, earl (later marquess) of Wharton, and has left no trace.
In the weeks preceding the new Parliament, Harley considered Portland an opponent of the new ministry, and so he proved to be as and when he took part in parliamentary proceedings. For although Portland attended the new Parliament from its first day, he sat in just fewer than half of the meetings of the first session. In committee of the whole House on 12 Jan. 1711 he acted as a teller for the majority contents on the question whether to agree to address the queen for permission to hear evidence from members of her cabinet council on the events leading to the battle of Almanza in 1707.17 His letters to d’Allonne show a lively concern for the continuing prosecution of the war against France, but surprisingly Portland did not sign any of the protests against the resolutions condemning the former Whig ministry’s conduct of the war in Spain.18 Later, on 9 Mar. 1711, he was appointed one of 28 managers for a conference on an address concerning the recent assassination attempt on Harley. From 17 Apr. Portland held the proxy of his brother-in-law William Byron, 4th Baron Byron, for the remainder of the session. He briefly held his full complement of two proxies when, on 2 May, George Hamilton, earl of Orkney [S], also registered his proxy with him, but this was vacated a week later upon Orkney’s return to the House.
As the heir to one of William III’s principal Dutch ‘favourites’ and an advocate of the Dutch alliance, Portland was a target for the Tories in the Commons. On 24 Apr. 1711 a bill was brought up from the Commons which directly threatened him by proposing the resumption for public use of all the grants of lands made by William III. This may have been particularly aimed at Portland, who was one of the most conspicuous recipients of the forfeited Irish lands. The Lords threw the bill out on its first reading on 13 May, allowing Portland to write with relief two days later to d’Allonne of ‘the good success that we have had in the House of Lords in regard of the act concerning the grants, or gifts, of the late king. Although I was not very alarmed by it, nevertheless it is a great happiness to see it have an end such as we would wish’.19
Portland came to even fewer meetings of the following session (1711-12), with an attendance level of only 42 per cent. On the key issues concerning the peace, he acted against Oxford, but on other issues not directly affecting the war he was less determined. Oxford noted that Portland voted in favour of the ‘No Peace without Spain’ clause in the address to the queen on 9 Dec. 1711. He later forecast that Portland would vote against James Hamilton, 4th duke of Hamilton [S], on the question whether he could sit in the House as a British peer, but on 20 Dec. 1711, Portland instead ‘went out’ of the chamber rather than cast a vote. Two days later, on 22 Dec., he was appointed to a small select committee of 17 peers assigned to draw up an address to the queen requesting her not to make a separate peace with France and to find a means to preserve a union with the Allies.
Portland controlled the proxy of his brother-in-law Byron from 5 May 1712, and at about the same time Portland was threatened by another attempt from the Commons to ‘resume’ his grants of Irish land. On 6 May William Berkeley, 4th Baron Berkeley of Stratton, a moderate Tory, reported to Thomas Wentworth, earl of Strafford, at The Hague, that ‘some warm men’, disappointed at the failure of the resumption bill in 1711, now planned to tack it on to the lottery Bill that was then making its way through the Commons. This would have made a convulsion in the House of Lords, and the court ordered the Commons manager to send up the two bills separately. Berkeley, who was closely connected to the dowager countess of Portland, the 2nd earl’s stepmother (she was Berkeley’s sister-in-law both by his late brother, her first husband, and by his own wife, her sister), commented that ‘the chief aim is at my Lord Portland, who hath provoked a set of people, by his over-meddling in elections, for the sake of those who would give him up at the first opportunity’.20 In this session the resumption bill made it past a second reading in the House but was once again rejected by the House at the third reading on 20 May 1712. A week later, on 28 May 1712, Portland voted with the Whigs in favour of the address requesting the queen to lift the ‘restraining orders’ she had placed on her new commander-in-chief James Butler, 2nd duke of Ormond, prohibiting him from engaging in battle with the French.21
Portland was most likely seen as a member of the second rank of Whig peers, on whose support the Junto relied in difficult situations. In February 1712 the Whig leader Charles Montagu, Baron Halifax, hosted a ‘great consult’ at his house at which Portland was present. Other attendees were Charles Seymour, 6th duke of Somerset, Henry Grey, duke of Kent, Hugh Cholmondeley, earl of Cholmondeley, Talbot Yelverton, 2nd Viscount Longueville (later earl of Sussex), along with five other peers, as well as the Tory renegades Daniel Finch, 2nd earl of Nottingham, and Heneage Finch, Baron Guernsey (later earl of Aylesford).22 On the other hand, the Tory satirist Jonathan Swift placed Portland among the members of the ‘Calves-Head Club’, reputedly (if it even existed) a group of extreme Whigs who gathered annually to celebrate the execution of Charles I. Swift described the transforming effect of inebriation at these meetings, where ‘wine can give Portland wit’.23
The following session of spring 1713, when the Treaty of Utrecht was presented to the House, was Portland’s most poorly attended to date. He came to only 39 per cent of its 77 sittings. The absence of the proxy register for this session precludes knowing whether he gave or even received any proxies during this session. Oxford predicted that Portland would vote against the French commercial treaty, a measure that was voted down by the Commons even before it reached the Lords to face the Whig opposition. On 7 July 1713 just before the session ended, and perhaps in protest against the Utrecht treaty, Portland resigned his colonel’s commission in the Life Guards to be replaced by John Ashburnham, 3rd Baron (later earl of) Ashburnham, who had previously been passed over in preference to him.24
Portland took a prominent part in the contested Buckinghamshire election of 1713. A Tory account reveals Portland’s involvement for the Whig candidates Richard Hampden‡ and Sir Edmund Denton‡ against the Tories John Verney‡, Viscount Fermanagh [I], and John Fleetwood:‡,
We Tories carry the elections, everywhere, but the Buckinghamshire election has given occasion of the most talk and triumph. The Whigs there put wool in their hats, saying ’twas all going into France, and they resolved to keep some on’t, before ’twas all gone. Lord Wharton, Lord Bridgwater [Scroop Egerton, 4th earl (later duke) of Bridgwater], Lord Portland and Lord Essex [William Capell, 3rd earl of Essex], were all at the head of them with wool in their hats: and Lady Wharton with her own fair hands made up several cockades for the country fellows. The Tories had oaken boughs in their hats, and these jokes in their mouths against their adversary that their wits were gone a wool gathering, and that they looked very sheepish, and baa’d them out of the field.25
Portland was more than usually attentive to the first session of the new Parliament, which did not meet until February 1714; he came to over half of its meetings (57 per cent). On 14 Apr. 1714 his wife’s cousin Baptist Noel, 3rd earl of Gainsborough, registered his proxy with him, but it was vacated only three days later by Gainsborough’s death. Portland was still seen as an important second-tier Whig. On or about 7 May, as Oxford was engaged in negotiations with the Junto to shore up their support for him against the increasing rivalry of Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke, he summoned a meeting, ‘from 7 till 10’, of influential Whigs to garner their assistance. Interestingly, this group of Whigs is almost identical to the group which Oxford noted had met with Halifax in February 1712 – Somerset, Kent, Portland, Longueville, Cholmondeley and Guernsey among them, as well as Portland’s soon to be brother-in-law Evelyn Pierrepoint, marquess of Dorchester (later duke of Kingston).26 In the House itself, Nottingham forecast that Portland would oppose the schism bill, but when the bill was passed by the House on 15 June Portland did not sign the protest against it, even though he was marked as present on the day. Indeed, Portland’s name does not appear on a single protest or dissent in the entire period of Tory dominance in 1710-14, despite the many votes and resolutions with which he probably disagreed. Portland left the House on 25 June and on 28 June registered his proxy with William Cavendish, 2nd duke of Devonshire. The proxy was vacated on his return at the end of June, and he continued to sit in the House for the final week of the session. There was some speculation that he left the House at that time to settle the marriage negotiations of his sister Isabella to Dorchester, for Dorchester registered his proxy on the same day, and he and Portland left the House together.27 Portland attended the House on 1 Aug. 1714, the first day of the session following Anne’s death, but the following day, the day of his sister’s marriage to Dorchester, he assigned his proxy to the earl of Sunderland who held it until Portland’s return to the House on 13 August. After that Portland was absent from the House for the remainder of the session.
In the autumn of 1714 Portland became involved in the complicated negotiations conducted by Wharton and other Whig leaders to make an agreement with the Tories for the division of seats for Buckinghamshire. Portland acted as an intermediary between Wharton and the recalcitrant Whig, Richard Hampden, who threatened to upset the delicate negotiations. Meetings between Wharton and Hampden took place at Portland’s house in St James’s Square, and Hampden eventually deposited his proposals for a settlement with Wharton in Portland’s hands.28 A new compromise was reached, whereby Hampden was returned for the county, while Wharton’s original candidate, Richard Grenville‡, was returned for a borough seat in Hampden’s control.
Portland received greater favour under George I than he had under Anne. Portland’s father had been an early advocate and supporter of the Hanoverian Succession, and Portland himself had spent much time at Hanover and Celle while on his grand tour of 1701-3.29 As a reward for his family’s long service to the Hanoverians, he was created duke of Portland on 6 July 1716, and a gentleman of the bedchamber the following year.
He continued to act as a Whig in the House. He supported the impeachment of the earl of Oxford, voted for the repeal of the Occasional Conformity and Schism Acts, and remained close to Dorchester, who was himself rewarded with the dukedom of Kingston-upon-Hull in August 1715.30 The two frequently exchanged proxies. On two occasions Portland also received the proxy of his other brother-in-law, Byron.31 A detailed account of his activities in the House and in elections after 1715 will appear in the volumes on the House 1715-90.
Portland lost a great deal of his substantial fortune through over-investment in the South Sea Company stock, and he accepted the post of governor of Jamaica in 1721 to earn some badly needed income after the bubble burst. He arrived there at Christmas time 1722, a few months after a hurricane had ravaged the island.32 His tenure as governor saw him on a fruitless quest to have the local Jamaica Assembly vote a ‘permanent revenue’ for the king. He died on 4 July 1726 at Spanish Town from a fever. His body was returned to England and was buried in Westminster Abbey, in the vault of the dukes of Ormond.33 His short will, written on 9 Aug. 1722, merely made his wife executrix. His eldest son William Bentinck, succeeded as 2nd duke of Portland.
C.G.D.L.- 1 Eg. 1706.
- 2 Luttrell, Brief Relation, v. 433; Add. 70075, newsletters, 1 and 10 June 1704.
- 3 TNA, PROB 11/620.
- 4 Southampton Archives, bor. recs. SC3/2, f. 41.
- 5 F. Cundall, Governors of Jamaica in the First Half of the 18th Century, xvi. 104-17.
- 6 VCH Bucks. iii. 278-81; VCH Hants, iii. 220-7; A. Dasent, History of St James’s Square, App. A.
- 7 Beinecke Lib. OSB, Blathwayt mss box 19, Vernon-Blathwayt letters, 28 Oct., 1 and 4 Nov. 1698.
- 8 Add. 70075, newsletters, 1 and 10 June 1704; Luttrell, Brief Relation, v. 433.
- 9 Longleat, Bath mss, Thynne pprs. 18, f. 50.
- 10 HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 184-5.
- 11 Ibid. 184-5; M.E. Grew, William Bentinck and William III, 414-16.
- 12 Eg. 1705, ff. 49-50, 54, 61-62, 69-72.
- 13 Ibid. ff. 81, 88, 106, 108, 111-12, 115-16, 118-19.
- 14 Clavering Corr. (Surtees Soc. clxxviii), 88-89.
- 15 Eg. 1705, ff. 122-3.
- 16 Add. 22220, ff. 28-9; Wentworth Pprs. 288-9.
- 17 HMC Lords, n.s. ix. 44.
- 18 Eg. 1705, ff. 41-127, passim.
- 19 Ibid. ff. 135-6.
- 20 Add. 22220, ff. 28-29; Wentworth Pprs. 288-9.
- 21 PH, xxvi. 180.
- 22 Staffs. RO, D(W) 1778/v/151; Brit. Pols. 295.
- 23 POAS, vii. 567.
- 24 Clavering Corr. (Surtees Soc. clxxviii), 88-89.
- 25 Wentworth Pprs. 351.
- 26 Add. 70331, Oxford memo, 7 May 1714; Holmes, ‘Great Ministry’, 387.
- 27 Add. 61463, ff. 85-86.
- 28 Add. 70292, notes by Wharton, from 9 Aug. 1714; Add. 70266, R. Hampden to Wharton, 16 Sept., 29 Nov. 1714.
- 29 Eg. 1706, passim.
- 30 BIHR, lv. 84; Add. 47028, ff. 264-5.
- 31 PA, HL/PO/JO/13/7.
- 32 Eg. 1711, ff. 115-16.
- 33 Carswell, South Sea Bubble, 162, 184; Cundall, 104, 115.