RICH, Edward (1673-1701)

RICH, Edward (1673–1701)

styled 1673-75 Ld. Rich; suc. fa. 10 Apr. 1675 (a minor) as 6th earl of WARWICK and 3rd earl of HOLLAND

First sat 20 Nov. 1694; last sat 26 Feb. 1701

b. 1 Sept. 1673,1 5th but 1st surv. s. of Robert Rich†, 2nd earl of Holland, being o. s. with 2nd w. Anne, da. of Edward Montagu, 2nd earl of Manchester. educ. Exeter Coll. Oxf. 1688; travelled abroad (France, Italy) 1682, 1691, 1693.2 m. bet. 15 and 18 Feb. 1697 (with ?£20,000), Charlotte (d.1731), da. and h. of Sir Thomas Middleton‡, 2nd bt. of Chirk Castle, co. Denbigh, 1s. d. 31 July 1701; will 14 July, pr. 12 Sept. 1701.3

Capt. Queen’s Regt. of horse (brig.-gen. Henry Lumley‡) 1694–5.4

Associated with: St James’s Sq. Westminster;5 Essex Street, Westminster.6

Likeness: mezzotint by J. Smith, after W. Wissing, 1684, NPG.

Edward Rich’s succession to his father’s honours and estates was not easy. According to his uncle (Cope Rich), the real Edward Rich, who inherited the peerage when barely two years old, had died while an infant and his mother had substituted another child to ensure her continued control of the Warwick and Holland estates. Cope Rich estimated the estate to be worth £8,000 a year clear of all charges, but what little evidence there is suggests that even in the lifetime of the 2nd earl of Holland the annual income was rather less than £4,000 a year.7 Rather than try his claim to the lands at common law or bring his claim to the peerage before the committee for privileges, Cope Rich chose to harass individual tenants, attempting to collect rents from them and commencing (but never finishing) actions of ejectment against them. Rich’s actions may have been an early sign of what was later described euphemistically as ‘discomposure of mind’ but they nevertheless posed a serious threat to the quiet enjoyment of the estate.

A further drain on the Warwick and Holland finances was the revival of litigation involving Joseph Garrett, the erstwhile steward of the Holland estates. It may have been a sign of financial strain that the young earl’s guardians claimed creation money (for both titles). In February 1678 a bill was submitted to Parliament to enable Warwick’s guardian to make leases during his minority and in May his mother was forced to appeal to Parliament for her privilege to be upheld after one of her servants was arrested. It is possible that it was to avoid such disagreeable problems that in May 1682 Warwick was taken by his mother to France.8 A further indication of the state of Warwick’s finances is indicated by an inventory of debts due to Christopher Monck, 2nd duke of Albemarle, at his death, which includes the sum of £5,500 due from Warwick for lands in Devon.9 In or about 1695 Warwick sold some of his Essex properties, which might also indicate a degree of indebtedness.10 Nevertheless it seems unlikely that he was in serious financial difficulties for he retained his lands in Middlesex as well as the most valuable of his properties at Smithfield in the City of London, which carried with them rights over both the livestock market and Bartholomew Fair.11 He was also able to secure a wife reputed to be worth £20,000.12

Even as a young child Warwick’s name appeared on lists of supporters and opponents compiled by Anthony Ashley Cooper, earl of Shaftesbury (who listed him initially as ‘vile’ but then erased the comment) and Thomas Osborne, earl of Danby (later duke of Leeds). In 1683 his mother’s house was searched for suspected persons in the wake of the Rye House Plot, but it seems likely that the search stemmed more from the reputation of her family than because of any overtly political activity.13 The most significant pressures in Warwick’s early years, however, concerned his education. In September 1686 Lady Pen Osborne circulated a request for a tutor and chaplain for the young earl. If he proved satisfactory, it was expected that he would accompany Warwick on a forthcoming European tour.14

There is no particular evidence of Warwick, still only a teenager, being involved in the events of the 1688 Revolution. By the following summer he was orphaned while still a student at Oxford and in September, when he responded to a request to all peers to provide a self-assessment of their personal estates, he stated simply that he was underage and had nothing to declare.15

By the autumn of 1691 Warwick was overseas, undertaking his long-planned tour of Italy.16 There is little indication that at that point he had any interest in pursuing a political career. His ambitions seem always to have been military rather than political and, despite his family connections to some of the leading Presbyterian families, he acquired an unenviable reputation for violence and immorality. After his death he was one of the subjects of a poem by Defoe which emphasized the way in which he had turned from the virtues of his ancestors, so that their ‘gallant blood is dwindled to a rake’. In December 1693 he returned from Italy, where he had been present at the battle of Marsaglia, and where (according to Defoe) he had been captured.17 At that time he was said to be seeking appointment to one of the new regiments. He was gratified with a commission in General Lumley’s regiment in February 1694 and the following month it was announced that he was to go with his friend Charles Mohun, 4th Baron Mohun, to Flanders as a volunteer with Charles Gerard, 2nd earl of Macclesfield, and the king. In April he gave an early indication of his violent tendencies when he was arrested for his part in attacking and stabbing a hackney coachman. According to L’Hermitage he was released on payment of a £5,000 recognizance. No trial ensued.18

In September 1694 Warwick attained his majority. A newsletter of 9 Oct. reported his recent return from campaign along with several others, who had all narrowly avoided being lost at sea.19 Having escaped this mishap he took his seat in the House for the first time on the second working day of the next session. The question of his legitimacy appears to have been raised once again in March 1690, possibly by his cousin, the younger Cope Rich (Warwick’s uncle of the same name having died in 1676), but no objections seem to have been put forward when he finally took his place in the chamber.20 Despite his apparent eagerness to take his seat Warwick’s subsequent attendance was far from assiduous, though he was present on over 27 per cent of sitting days in his first session. There is little evidence of his activities in the House at this time. At the beginning of April 1695 he was reported to be very sick but he rallied in time to attend for the final few days of the session.21

Shortly after the close of the session, rumours circulated that Charlotte Middleton had absconded from her home and was believed by some to have taken up with Warwick. Over the next few days the newsletters sought information about the missing woman, whose marriage without her grandmother’s consent would, it was said, be likely to ‘cost her dear’. By the beginning of July the story came to a disappointing end with the news that she had been intercepted before she had been able to leave town. The incident was presumably an early manoeuvre in the negotiations that ultimately resulted in Warwick marrying her in February 1697.22

Warwick returned to the House at the opening of the subsequent session on 22 Nov. 1695 and was again present for approximately 27 per cent of all sitting days. He then attended the prorogation of 28 July 1696 before taking his place once more at the opening of the new session on 20 October. The session proved the zenith of his involvement in the House’s business, with him turning out on just under half of all sitting days. In December 1696 he voted to convict Sir John Fenwick‡. The following month he was noted among ‘12 or 13 dissenting peers’ who had objected to the address to the king for Charles Mordaunt, earl of Monmouth (later 3rd earl of Peterborough), to be censured.23 On 18 Mar. 1697 he entrusted his proxy to one of his fellow objectors, Charles Powlett, duke of Bolton, but it was vacated by Warwick’s presence in the House two days later. In the midst of the session, Warwick finally settled on a bride. His decision to marry Charlotte Middleton, with whom he had been associated two years earlier followed rumours several years before that he had been a suitor to Lady Mallet Wilmot, one of the children of John Wilmot, 2nd earl of Rochester.24

In October 1697 Mohun, who was on the run after killing a Captain Hill, was arrested at Warwick’s house in Essex Street. Warwick and Macclesfield were two of the four men who bailed him.25 Although Warwick took his seat at the opening of the new session on 3 Dec., later that month it was reported that he was soon to depart with Vere Fane, 5th earl of Westmorland, and Algernon Capell, earl of Essex, in the entourage of Hans Willem Bentinck, earl of Portland, who had been appointed ambassador to France. If Warwick did indeed attend Portland on his journey, his visit must have been fleeting as he attended the House on several days in January and February 1698 and was present in all on just under a quarter of sitting days in the session.26

Warwick again provided bail for Mohun in April. In October the two were involved in a quarrel after a late-night drinking session. The resultant scuffle on a dark night in Leicester Fields barely qualified as a duel, as Warwick and his companions claimed it to be. During the fight a Captain Coote (possibly a relative of Richard Coote‡, earl of Bellomont [I]) was killed. It was by no means clear who had struck the fatal blow or even whether Warwick and Coote had been fighting on the same or opposite sides. Luttrell reported that Warwick and Mohun had both been acting as seconds for Coote.27 Warwick hid and later he and Mohun fled to France.28 Warwick excused his flight as having been caused by his belief that the absence of the king and Parliament not being in session would create a delay in the arrangements for his trial and force him to undergo ‘a long confinement’.29 He eventually surrendered himself to the House the following February and was committed into the custody of black rod, his hand having been forced after both he and Mohun had been ejected from Calais on suspicion of attempted rape.30 Their commoner companions had by then already been tried for murder at the Old Bailey and found guilty on a lesser charge of manslaughter. Warwick took full advantage of his status as a peer and petitioned to be tried before the Lords.31

The resulting trial, which was held before the House of Lords on 28 Mar. 1699, required extensive preparations, with scaffolding ordered to be erected to accommodate extra seating at a cost of £2,000.32 Luttrell speculated that the proceedings would be lengthy but in the event there was little evidence for the prosecution and it was all over in the space of a day.33 Witnesses testified that Warwick had been on good terms with Coote, that Warwick had attempted to prevent the fight and that he and Coote had fought on the same side. The prosecutor’s argument that the quarrel had been set up by Warwick and Mohun with the intention of luring Coote to his death was dismissed and, like his companions, Warwick was acquitted of murder and convicted instead of manslaughter. Mohun was subsequently found not guilty on both counts. Warwick pleaded benefit of peerage and therefore went free without punishment. John Somers, Baron Somers, who presided over the trial as lord high steward, was at pains to inform Warwick that the assembled peers had directed him to point out that benefit of peerage could not be claimed twice, and ‘to say, that they hope you will take a more than ordinary care of your behaviour for the future … that nothing of this kind will ever happen to you again’.

The earl’s acquittal of murder aroused considerable cynicism. There were minor discrepancies in the evidence of one witness as given in the House of Lords and at the Old Bailey. More significantly the trial established that, of all the swords inspected after the fight, only Warwick’s was bloody to the hilt. Warwick’s explanation, that this was on account of his own injuries, persuaded William North, 6th Baron North and Grey, but not surprisingly there was a general suspicion that it had been used to inflict the fatal wounds.34

After his acquittal, Warwick’s attendance at the House – never high – declined still further. No doubt distracted by the trial, he attended just once during the session of August 1698–May 1699, and he attended a mere 13 times during the 1699–1700 session (16 per cent of the whole). It is possible that his reluctance to sit at this time was related to the mistaken reports of the sickness and death of his wife in September. At least one correspondent recorded that ‘most people say she has a happy deliverance from her wicked husband’ but the reports proved not to be true and the countess survived to outlive her husband by three decades. Warwick was himself believed to be ‘dangerously ill’ early in 1700 but he rallied to take his place once more on 16 January.35 The following month he was expected to support the continuance of the East India Company as a corporation, but in the event he entered a dissent. He made two appearances in March 1700 but was thereafter absent from the remainder of the session.

That summer Warwick was said to have busied himself with negotiations with the corporation of London over the erection of booths in Smithfield, where he was lord of the manor, during Bartholomew Fair.36 He returned to the House at the opening of the new Parliament on 6 Feb. 1701 but attended just four times. The following month (though apparently not appearing in person) he was forced to rally himself once more in defence of his interests in Smithfield when both he and the City of London raised objections to a bill presented to the House for the granting of new markets at Brookfield and Newport. Warwick insisted that the new markets would deprive him of at least £500 per annum. On 31 Mar. he requested permission for his counsel to be heard at the committee for the bill and on 7 Apr. he petitioned the House again for his counsel to be heard prior to the third reading of the measure. The combined pressure of Warwick and the City proved too great for the bill’s promoters and on 15 Apr. it was thrown out.37

Warwick’s achievement in halting the Brookfield and Newport bill proved to be his last action in Parliament. In July he composed a brief will providing for the disposal of his estate, and he died ‘very penitent’ the following month, aged just 28. He was succeeded in the peerage by his three-year-old son, Edward Henry Rich, as 7th earl of Warwick and 4th earl of Holland. Warwick’s widow won considerable encomiums for the generous way in which she fulfilled her late husband’s final wishes. She later married the author and prominent Whig politician Joseph Addison‡.38

R.P./R.D.E.E.

  • 1 TNA, E192/13/1, draft bill in chancery, [1675].
  • 2 Add. 72529, ff. 215–16; Luttrell, Brief Relation, iii. 241.
  • 3 TNA, PROB 11/462.
  • 4 CSP Dom. 1694–5, pp. 20, 435.
  • 5 Dasent, Hist. of St James’s Square, app. A.
  • 6 HMC Portland, iii. 592.
  • 7 E 192/13/9, draft bill of complaint; E 192/13/1, rentals 1670–2.
  • 8 HMC 9th Rep. pt. 2, pp. 100, 112; CSP Dom. 1682, p. 189.
  • 9 TNA, C 107/209.
  • 10 VCH Essex, vii. 15.
  • 11 Luttrell, Brief Relation, iv. 678.
  • 12 Ibid. iv. 160, 185.
  • 13 CSP Dom. 1683, p. 6.
  • 14 Verney ms mic. M636/41, Lady P. Osborne to Sir R. Verney, 4 Sept. 1686.
  • 15 Wood, Life and Times, iii. 305; Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 556; Chatsworth, Halifax collection, B63.
  • 16 Add. 72529, ff. 215–16.
  • 17 POAS, vi. 384–5.
  • 18 CSP Dom. 1693, p. 412; Luttrell, Brief Relation, iii. 240, 282, 297; Add. 17677 OO, ff. 247–50.
  • 19 Bodl. Carte 79, f. 647.
  • 20 Staffs. RO, D603/k/3/6.
  • 21 Add. 46527, f. 77.
  • 22 Verney ms mic. M636/48, A. Nicholas to J. Verney, 18 June 1695; Sir R. to J. Verney, 23, 30 June 1695; J. to Sir R. Verney, 3 July 1695.
  • 23 HMC Buccleuch, i. 439–40.
  • 24 Verney ms mic. M636/44, Lady P. Osborne to Sir R. Verney, 25 Nov. 1690.
  • 25 HMC Portland, iii. 592; Luttrell, Brief Relation, iv. 296.
  • 26 HMC Hastings, ii. 303.
  • 27 Luttrell, Brief Relation, iv. 368, 445; CSP Dom. 1698, p. 410.
  • 28 CSP Dom. 1698, p. 435.
  • 29 State Trials, xiii. 996.
  • 30 Add. 70081, newsletter, 28 Feb. 1699; Bodl. Carte 228, ff. 281, 286; LJ, xvi. 390.
  • 31 Bodl. Carte 228, f. 289.
  • 32 TNA, LC5/70; Bodl. Carte 228, f. 297; Luttrell, Brief Relation, iv. 493, 497; CSP Dom. 1699–1700, p. 98.
  • 33 Luttrell, Brief Relation, iv. 499.
  • 34 E192/15/15; State Trials, xiii. 966, 1036; Bodl. ms North, b.1, f. 319.
  • 35 Luttrell, Brief Relation, iv. 563, 565, 568, 603; Verney ms mic. M636/51, E. Adams to Sir J. Verney, 28 Sept. 1699.
  • 36 Luttrell, Brief Relation, iv. 678.
  • 37 HMC Lords, n.s. iv. 154.
  • 38 Verney ms mic. M636/51, C. Gardiner to Sir J. Verney, 28 Aug. 1701; Luttrell, Brief Relation, v. 76.