GODOLPHIN, Sidney (1645-1712)

GODOLPHIN, Sidney (1645–1712)

cr. 8 Sept. 1684 Bar. GODOLPHIN; cr. 26 Dec. 1706 earl of GODOLPHIN

First sat 19 May 1685; last sat 13 June 1712

MP Helston 15 Oct. 1668-1678; St. Mawes 1679 (Mar.-Oct.); Helston 1679 (Oct.)-1681

bap. 15 June 1645, 3rd surv. s. of Sir Francis Godolphin^‡ (1605-67), of Godolphin Breage, Cornwa. and Dorothy (d.1668), da. of Sir Henry Berkeley^‡ of Yarlington, Som., bro. of Sir William Godolphin^‡, 1st bt. and Francis Godolphin^‡. educ. Oxford MA 28 Sept. 1683; travelled abroad (Italy) 1664; L. Inn 1669. m. 16 May 1675, Margaret (1652-78), da. and coh. of Thomas Blagge of Horningsheath, Suff., maid of honour to Queen Catherine of Braganza, 1s. suc. bro. 1710. KG 6 July 1704 d. 15 Sept. 1712. will 23 July 1688; pr. 7 Nov. 1712.1

Page of honour 1662-68; groom of the bedchamber 1670-78; master of the robes 1678-79; ld. chamberlain to Queen Maryof Modena 1685-Dec. 1688; mbr. of council to Queen Catherine 1687-?91.

Cornet, Prince Rupert’s horse 1667.

Special ambassador, France Mar.-Apr. 1670, Nov.-Dec. 1671; envoy extraordinary to Louis XIV Apr.-Nov. 1672, Spanish Netherlands, and Prince of Orange Mar.-July 1678.

Ld. of treasury 26 Mar. 1679–24 Apr. 1684, 4 Jan. 1687–18 Mar. 1690, first ld. 9 Sept. 1684–16 Feb. 1685, 15 Nov. 1690–31 Oct. 1696, 9 Dec. 1700–11 Nov. 1701; ld. treasurer 8 May 1702–8 Aug. 1710; secretary of state (S) Apr.-Aug. 1684; PC 4 Feb. 1680-Feb. 1689, 20 Nov. 1690-d.; ld. justice 1695, 1696, 1701.

Commr. Tangier 1680-4;2 commr. chan. duchy of Lancaster, 1687; prize appeals, 1695; Union with Scotland Apr. 1706.3

Freeman, Portsmouth 1668, Liskeard 1685; ranger Cranbourne Chase, Windsor forest July 1688-1698;4 ld. lt. and custos Cornw. Apr. 1705–15 Sept. 1710; gov. Charterhouse 1707;5 commr. Greenwich Hosp. 1695.6

Associated with: Godolphin House, Stable Yard, St. James’s Palace, Whitehall; Newmarket, Suff. and Tilshead Lodge, Wilts.

Likenesses: oil on canvas, by Sir G. Kneller, c. 1705-10, NPG 5179.

Godolphin was one of 16 children born into a family of royalist and Anglican gentry, part of ‘the intricate network of kinship which linked the Killigrews, the Berkeleys and the Jermyns’. As a younger son, in receipt of only a small annuity upon the death of his father, he had to seek his own fortune, although family connections provided an entrée at court.7 To begin with he pursued several career paths, including military service against the Dutch. He may have been admitted to the Inner Temple in 1668 and on 5 Aug. 1669 he was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn at the request of Sir John Howell, the recorder of London, then reader at the Inn.8 His Cornish family links provided him with a seat in the Commons at a by-election in 1668. Godolphin proved to be an adept courtier: he was a fine horseman and tennis player, a composer of witty verse, and a devotee of the turf and the gambling that went with it. Despite this facility he never abandoned his Anglican piety nor embraced the libertinism of the court. He had influential kinsmen, such as Robert Spencer, 2nd earl of Sunderland, and gained patrons such as Henry Bennet, earl of Arlington, the latter of particular use in forwarding his diplomatic career.9 Perhaps Godolphin’s most impressive quality was his aptitude for royal service, coupled with discretion. In Charles II’s words, ‘he was never in the way and never out of the way’ and to Gilbert Burnet, bishop of Salisbury, he was ‘the silentest and modestest man that was perhaps ever bred in a court’.10

Godolphin was married in the Temple Church on 16 May 1675, by Mr Lake, ‘chaplain to the duke’, presumably Dr John Lake, the future bishop of Chichester.11 At the end of July 1678 it was reported that Laurence Hyde, the future earl of Rochester, had sold his mastership of the robes to Godolphin for £6,000, while Godolphin sold his own position of groom in the bedchamber place to George Rodney Brydges^‡ for £4,500.12 His wife died on 9 Sept. 1678, after the birth of his son, Francis Godolphin, the future 2nd earl of Godolphin.

During the Exclusion Crisis Godolphin was very much associated with his fellow ‘chits’ Sunderland and Hyde. He opposed the first exclusion bill, but followed Sunderland in supporting exclusion in 1680, although he did not suffer the consequences, the king blaming Sunderland for his actions. His reputation for financial acumen stood him in good stead and when he left the treasury to become secretary of state in April 1684, his fellow commissioner, Sir Edward Dering^‡, thought ‘the removing of Godolphin is taking out a cornerstone, which if it do not ruin and dissolve doth at least much weaken the building’.13 He was back in the treasury in September, as first lord and with a peerage. His tenure as first lord was short-lived because the king’s death in February 1685 saw Hyde, now earl of Rochester, restored as lord treasurer and Godolphin made chamberlain to the new queen.14 Even then, according to Paul Barillon, the king intended to continue to consult Godolphin, as well as Rochester and Sunderland, on matters of high policy.15 Godolphin’s friendship with the queen continued after the Revolution and according to William Legge, earl of Dartmouth, he ‘kept a constant correspondence with her to his dying day’, which was to cause him some difficulties in the following reign.16 Faced with the dilemma of attending the queen to mass, Godolphin conducted her to the door of the chapel but remained outside.17 He played a role in facilitating a gift of £16,000 from James II to help pay off the debts of Princess Anne, evidence of a growing closeness to the Churchills and the Princess which would see him eventually become ‘Mr Montgomery’ in the private correspondence between the group.18

On 19 May 1685 Godolphin was introduced into the Lords by Robert Shirley, 8th Baron (later Earl) Ferrers, and William Maynard, 2nd Baron Maynard. He attended the House every day before the adjournment on 2 July, 31 days in total, and was named to 10 committees during that part of the session. On 25 June he acted as a teller, in opposition to Charles Cornwallis, 3rd Baron Cornwallis, on the question of whether to call in counsel in Eyre v. Eyre. Two days later he acted as a teller, again in opposition to Cornwallis, on the question of whether the committee on the bill reviving acts should sit at the time to which it had been adjourned. He attended the adjournment on 4 Aug., and on every day following the resumption of the session on 9 Nov. until the prorogation on 20 Nov., being named to one further committee.

On 14 Jan. 1686 Godolphin was one of those peers who found Henry Booth, 2nd Baron Delamer, not guilty of treason.19 He attended the prorogations on 10 Feb., 10 May and 22 November. In October Evelyn visited Cranbourne, ‘a Lodge and walk of my Lord Godolphin’s in Windsor Park’, which he had purchased early in James II’s reign.20 On 26 June 1688 a warrant was issued for a grant for 31 years to Godolphin of the position of keeper of the lodge and chase of Cranbourne.21 When talk surfaced in October 1686 of the removal of Rochester as lord treasurer, those considered for the replacement commission included Godolphin, ‘who understands it and must teach others’.22 It was as an ally of Sunderland that Godolphin returned to the treasury at the beginning of 1687, with Princess Anne opining to her sister, ‘I am sorry the king relies so much’ on Sunderland and Godolphin.23 Observers of the regime were paying close attention when the commissioners of the treasury, Godolphin, Sir John Ernle^‡ and Sir Stephen Fox^‡ took the Test on 8 Feb. 1687: according to Roger Morrice they did so together and ‘with good attendance’. It was thought, he wrote, that they had as a result offended the king.24 The Dutch ambassador, Van Citters, confirmed this when he reported that the Protestant commissioners ‘having performed the oath of the Test and allegiancy in due form’, the king had ‘in no small degree shown his displeasure to Lord Godolphin about it’.25

Despite his protestantism, Godolphin was perceived as a loyalist, and various commentators have assumed that he was in favour of the king’s policy of repealing the Test acts; his name appears on four lists compiled between January 1687 and January 1688 implying his support. Godolphin’s closeness to Sunderland can only have perpetuated this opinion; it was underlined by his presence early in January 1688 at the marriage of Lady Anne Spencer to James Hamilton, earl of Arran [S], the future duke of Hamilton.26 Nor did he shirk his duty as a privy councillor. He was present on 26 Oct. 1687 when the king in cabinet delivered the three questions to various lord lieutenants and again on 4 May 1688 when the order was given for the Declaration of Indulgence to be read in church.27 He was also present on 8 June when the order was made to prosecute the seven bishops, reportedly having signed the warrant committing them to the Tower.28 He attended the birth of Prince James (the future Pretender) on 10 June 1688, although he later deposed that he stood in a position whereby he could see nothing.29 The duchess of Marlborough later explained that his presence at the birth was the reason why Godolphin ‘was no way concerned in making the Revolution and disliked it very much’.30

Godolphin remained at the centre of events as the regime contemplated a change of policy and seems to have welcomed a turn back to the old alliance with the Anglican establishment. On 22 Sept. 1688 Henry Hyde, 2nd earl of Clarendon, recorded in his diary that the lord chancellor, George Jefferys, Baron Jeffreys, had written the Declaration resolved upon on the previous day to accompany the issuing of the writs calling a Parliament and that although Sunderland, Charles Middleton^‡, 2nd earl of Middleton [S], George Legge, Baron Dartmouth, and Godolphin had agreed it, amendments had been made in council, and that ‘Lord Godolphin had broke loose from him and endeavoured to trim in the new wording some clauses.’31 On 24 Sept. Sunderland told the papal nuncio that Godolphin and the other Protestants of the court had resolved on supporting James’s designs in Parliament.32 On 16 Oct. Godolphin attended the Cabinet which finalized the proclamation restoring the corporations.33

Godolphin’s closeness to the regime put his position at some risk as the king tried to satisfy his domestic opponents. On 12 Nov. 1688 Van Citters reported that rumours that Jeffreys and Godolphin ‘were to be removed from their offices, but as these gentlemen are in possession of many secrets, it is thought the king will not make up his mind to this so easily now things are placed in such an extreme point’. Two weeks later, on 26 Nov. Van Citters reported that ‘some of the cabinet council’, including Godolphin and Richard Graham^‡, Viscount Preston [S], had ‘ventured to advise the king, to assemble his Parliament without delay’.34 Godolphin was apparently responsible for excluding its Catholic members from the meeting of the council on 27 Nov., and was one of those at the meeting in favour of calling a Parliament.35 Following a ‘great council’ on 27 Nov., James II named Godolphin, George Savile, marquess of Halifax, and Daniel Finch, 2nd earl of Nottingham, as his commissioners to negotiate with William, to whom Godolphin was already well known. The commissioners met the Prince at Hungerford on 8 Dec., where they remained until the 10th. They had almost reached London on their return journey on 11 Dec. when they received news of the king’s flight. Godolphin did not reach London for the first meeting of the provisional government of peers at the Guildhall on that day. He was present on each occasion that the lords met on 12-15 Dec., and again on 21-22, 24-25 December.36 In the interim, on 16 Dec., along with such loyalists as Middleton and Preston he signed a proclamation in the king’s name, inserted into the London Gazette, ordering local office-holders to prevent buildings from being attacked.37

The Convention, 1689-90

Godolphin was present when the Convention convened on 22 Jan. 1689. On the crucial issue of the settlement of the Crown, Godolphin was entirely consistent: on 29 Jan. he voted in favour of a regency; on 31 Jan. he voted against declaring the prince and princess of Orange king and queen; on 4 Feb. he voted against agreeing with the Commons that the king had ‘abdicated’. On 6 Feb. Clarendon noted him as one of the peers that ‘usually support the king’, who were absent from the Lords, using the excuse that he had to attend the prince of Orange at the treasury.38 However, the Journal recorded him as present, and Thomas Bruce, 2nd earl of Ailesbury, recorded him as voting against agreeing with the Commons in using the term ‘abdicated’. On 2 Mar., however, Godolphin took the oaths to the new monarchs. He continued to administer the treasury along with Ernle and Fox, until his appointment to a new treasury commission on 9 April.39

On 20 Apr. 1689 Godolphin was named to report from a conference on the amendments made by the Lords to the bill abrogating oaths, duly reporting back later in the day. He was then named to a committee to draw up reasons for adhering to the amendments and to manage the resultant conference on the 22nd. On 31 May he voted against the bill to reverse the judgments against Titus Oates, and on 30 July he voted against adhering to the Lords’ amendments to the bill. On 13 July he was named to a committee to draw up reasons in support of the Lords’ views on the house of Hanover in the bill settling the succession of the Crown, and was named to a conference on the bill on the 16th. On 10 Aug. he acted as a teller in opposition to Cornwallis on an instruction to the committee on the bill prohibiting trade with France to bring in a clause to give the king power to dispense with the act. He attended on 149 days of the session up to the prorogation of 21 Oct. 1689, 91 per cent of the total. He was named to a further 33 committees.

As one contemporary put it, Godolphin was ‘the only man that had the cunning or else the good fortune to be at once in some favour with both the king and Prince of Orange’.40 William certainly had a high opinion of his abilities as a minister of finance, despite his previous service to Charles II and James II, which made him a target of Whig attacks in the Convention.41 When William was considering the composition of his first treasury commission, he asked Halifax ‘if he had a mind to keep Lord Godolphin in, who should hinder him?’ Halifax noted that ‘he ever showed an inclination to Lord Godolphin’.42 The new commission therefore included Godolphin, the only experienced hand, together with four Whigs.43 Two of his Whig colleagues, Delamer and Charles Mordaunt, earl of Monmouth, were unhappy because they ‘soon saw that the king considered him more than them both. For, as he understood treasury business well, so his calm and cold way suited the king’s temper’. As Athur Onslow^‡ noted, the treasury commission was ‘ill-composed’, with Godolphin having supported James II and opposed the abdication.44 Godolphin himself may have been unhappy as early as August 1689, when Halifax recorded that the king ‘seemed to believe [Godolphin] desired to live out of employment’.45 Whatever misgivings he may have had, Godolphin attended the board with great regularity between April 1689 and the demise of the treasury commission in March 1690, rarely missing a meeting. This pattern was resumed when Godolphin rejoined the board in November 1690.46 This was in keeping with his reputation for routine; in December 1689 Cary Gardiner advised Sir Ralph Verney^‡ that Godolphin ‘is ever to be found between eight and nine o’clock in the morning’ at his house.47

Godolphin was present on the opening day of the second session of the Convention, 23 Oct. 1689. On that day, Henry Fitzroy, duke of Grafton, registered his proxy with Godolphin (as he did also on 5 Dec.). On 25 Oct. he acted as a teller in opposition to Thomas Grey, 2nd earl of Stamford, on whether the House should resolve itself immediately into committee of the whole House on the bill against clandestine marriages. He attended on 57 days of the session, 78 per cent of the total, and was named to 14 committees.

The Parliament of 1690

Godolphin persisted in his desire to retire.48 In an attempt to dissuade him the king utilized Marlborough as his advocate; on 27 Jan. 1690 Marlborough wrote to the king, ‘I have let no day pass without speaking to "Lord G." about what you command, nor will I be rebutted in it, though I do not prevail much with him, save that I make him melancholy; your kindness to him has most weight with him’.49 Parliament was dissolved on 6 Feb., and before the new one met Godolphin had been left out of the treasury commission announced in March, although it seems that he was instrumental in ensuring that Fox was available to supply his financial expertise.50 That the new treasury commission was composed of only four men suggested that there was a ready-made vacancy for Godolphin should he signal his wish to return.51 Sometime between October 1689 and February 1690, before the new Parliament met, Thomas Osborne, marquess of Carmarthen (later duke of Leeds), drew up a list of the lords which seemed to suggest that Godolphin was among the opposition (at least to Carmarthen).

Godolphin was present when the new Parliament convened on 20 Mar. 1690. On 2 May Clarendon recorded that Godolphin went away without voting ‘in the matter which was upon the tapis’, presumably the bill securing the king and queen against King James.52 On 8 May Godolphin asked one of the questions posed to the judges concerning the implications of the regency bill.53 He was named on 12 May to draw up reasons for the Lords’ amendment to the bill, and also to manage the resultant conference on the following day. On 10 May Grafton again registered his proxy with Godolphin. Godolphin attended on 51 days of the session, 94 per cent of the total, and was named to 10 committees. In May 1690 he was named as one of the trustees of the prince and princess of Denmark’s children.54

Despite being out of office, Godolphin’s name was never far from the thoughts of political commentators. In May 1690 Roger Morrice reported that ‘it’s highly probable’ that when William left on campaign, Carmarthen, Nottingham and Godolphin would be entrusted with ‘the conduct of all affairs under the queen’. In June Morrice heard that Henry Sydney, Viscount Sydney, and Godolphin had been instrumental in removing Sir John Maynard^‡ and replacing him as a commissioner of the great seal by Sir John Trevor^‡, although ‘I know not well upon what grounds’. Godolphin, Sydney and Trevor attended the king to Tring on the first stage of his journey to Ireland, and Sydney and Godolphin had brought Sunderland to kiss the king’s hand at Northampton on the same journey.55

Godolphin was afflicted with kidney stones in the summer of 1690, recuperating at Cranbourne Lodge and then Tunbridge Wells, where Morrice noted his presence among ‘a great number of the English nobility and gentry’. Godolphin’s companions included Shrewsbury and Thomas Wharton, the future 5th Baron Wharton, who all ‘lodged together, and were very much in conversation at Tunbridge’.56 On 8 Aug. Godolphin wrote to Halifax that both he and Shrewsbury intended to remain in Tunbridge to take the waters for a full six weeks. He seems to have stayed there until late August.57 On 24 Aug. Halifax recorded that Godolphin had told him that ‘he would do all that was possible to avoid employment at the king’s return, but he was not sure it could be avoided’.58 On 23 Sept. Clarendon was informed that there were rumours that Godolphin would be appointed secretary of state and that he was ‘resolved to enter again upon the matrimonial state, and to that end makes love to the Lady Mauleverer, a fine young widow’.59 She was the widow of Sir Richard Mauleverer, 4th bt., (d. May 1689), who subsequently married John Arundel, 2nd Baron Arundel of Trerice, and then Thomas Herbert, 8th earl of Pembroke. Godolphin seems to have come close to marrying her, for Evelyn even wrote to him on 20 Sept., ‘upon report of his having married the lady which did not prove true’ and about October the countess of Scarbrough reported that ‘my Lord Godolphin’s match goes on now very fast, and I believe they will marry before Christmas’.60 Godolphin’s proposed remarriage was his main defence against being enticed back to the treasury. After he had attended the adjournment on 8 Sept. and the prorogation on 12 Sept., he returned to Cranbourne Lodge, where in mid-September the king stayed with him while on a hunting trip and no doubt consulted him about a return to the treasury.61 Godolphin was named as one of the trustees for the young Charles Fitzroy, 2nd duke of Grafton, at the death of his father, the first duke, on 9 October.62

Godolphin was present when Parliament met on 2 Oct. 1690 and a draft of the king’s speech in Godolphin’s hand is extant, giving credence to the claim of Charles Montagu, the future earl of Halifax, that he was in great credit with the king.63 On 6 Oct he acted as a teller in opposition to Monmouth on whether to desire the concurrence of the Commons in the address thanking the king for going in person to Ireland. Also on the 6th he voted against the motion that Henry Mordaunt, 2nd earl of Peterborough, and James Cecil, 4th earl of Salisbury, should be discharged from their imprisonment as their impeachments had lapsed. This had significant implications for Carmarthen, who noted on his list apropos Godolphin that ‘his majesty knows best’, suggesting how he could be brought into line.64 On 15 Nov. Godolphin returned to the treasury as first lord, ‘to all his friends’ wonder’: Edward Harley^‡ who wrote that ‘the restitution of the Lord Godolphin to the treasury gives occasion to many to hope for great changes at court’.65 On 16 Dec. a newsletter reported that Godolphin and Prince George, duke of Cumberland, had been added to the Cabinet Council.66 On 23 Dec., William Penn was already speculating that the appointment of Henry Sydney as one of the secretaries of state would mean that ‘Godolphin and he will have great share’ in government ‘when King William is gone’.67

On 11 Dec. 1690 Godolphin was named to draft two clauses to be added to the bill against the export of gold and silver. On 17 Dec. he was named to manage two conferences on the Lords’ amendments to the mutiny bill. On 3 Jan. 1691 he reported from the committee of the whole on the bill for encouraging the distilling of brandy and spirits from corn. On the last day of the session, 5 Jan., he was named to manage several conferences on the Lords’ amendments to the bill suspending part of the act of navigation, and was then named to a committee to draw up reasons for the Lords insisting on their proviso to the bill. He had attended on 48 days of the session, 66 per cent of the total, and been named to 23 committees. On 8 Jan. a newsletter reported that Godolphin was one of those named by the king to be the council for the administration of affairs during his absence.68 During the past session he had encouraged the attacks made by Admiral Edward Russell, the future earl of Orford, on Carmarthen. In February and March 1691 he tried to block Carmarthen’s pension on the Post Office.69 The treasury’s refusal to pass the warrant provoked Carmarthen to lament ‘how few friends I have in the treasury’.70

Having only just returned, following the end of the session, Godolphin evinced a desire to retire again from the treasury. The king asked Marlborough to persuade him to stay in office. On 2 Feb. 1691 Godolphin hoped that the king would ‘let me live the summer at least in the country; the occasion admits of no delay’, and on 3 Feb. Sydney affirmed that Godolphin wished to retire using his forthcoming marriage as an excuse, it not being ‘convenient for a man of business that is not very young to bring a wife near the court’.71 On 6 Feb. William III wrote from The Hague to assure Godolphin of his friendship and support: ‘I cannot convince myself that you desire to continue in this resolution [to quit] and that you have too much affection for me to abandon me at such a juncture’.72 In reply, on the 13th, Godolphin reiterated his request, adding ‘how long my natural temper and inclination will suffer me to remain in the retirement I propose to myself, I cannot be answerable for, till I have tried it’. On 24 Feb. Marlborough reported that Godolphin ‘continues very obstinate’ in his determination to resign and on 6 Mar. Sydney informed the king that Godolphin’s ‘quitting your service is now no secret’, and noted that ‘his proceedings in other places [than the treasury] are not with that zeal for your service, as might be expected from him; he scarce comes to council, and never to the committees upon the taking of several ill-affected persons, and at the examination of them he never was present’.73 Not that Godolphin was short of complaints. On 13 Mar. he protested against Carmarthen’s pension being paid out of the Post Office, and ‘the finding of £16,000 towards’ the arrears of John Granville, earl of Bath.74 Nevertheless, he did not resign, and on 27 Apr. Penn thought ‘Godolphin is the man of sway, whether good or bad news.’75 He was named as one of the council of nine to advise the queen during William’s absence on campaign.76 When the death of William Jephson^‡ on 7 June 1691 left a vacancy as secretary of the treasury, James Vernon^‡ felt that although many people wished well to Charles Montagu, ‘I don’t see what they can contribute to it, unless they could engage my Lord Godolphin who in probability espouses Mr [Henry] Guy’s^‡ Interest’.77 Guy was indeed appointed, and replaced at the customs’ board by Charles Godolphin^‡.78 Montagu joined the treasury board in March 1692, and in later years the duchess of Marlborough credited Godolphin as the person ‘who first brought him into the treasury’.79

In the summer of 1691 Godolphin was preparing to suggest that the financial difficulties of the government should be met by legislating for a general excise on domestic commodities, and at the beginning of July encouraged a scheme by Dr Charles Davenant^‡. He also asked permission to visit Tunbridge in eight or ten days.80 This was granted and later in July he attended the Prince and Princess to Tunbridge, along with the countess of Marlborough.81 It was from Tunbridge that he wrote again to William on 10 Aug., that as ‘business in the treasury can be as readily, and as carefully, dispatched in my absence’, he wished to persist in his request to retire, especially as the waters at Tunbridge could not hope to free him from the distemper that troubled him.82 On 20 Aug. he insisted that the post of cashier to the customs was ‘of too great consequence to be given to anybody because they want a place, but ought to be filled with such a one as is best able to execute it’.83 Back in Whitehall, on 8 Sept., he remarked to the king that ‘my health makes me anxious for leisure’.84

Godolphin was present on the opening day of the session, 22 Oct. 1691 and there is an extant draft of the speech in his hand broadly similar to the one delivered by the king on that day.85 On 10 Nov., a newsletter noted that Godolphin’s friends in the Commons had joined with those of Halifax and Rochester, and with Sir Edward Seymour^‡ and Sir Thomas Clarges^‡, to try to exclude Carmarthen from influence with the king.86 Following a debate at the report stage of the bill regulating treason trials on 3 Dec., Godolphin was named to a committee to re-draft a clause concerning impeachments. Also on the 3rd he was named to a committee to draw up reasons for the Lords’ amendment to the bill abrogating the oath of supremacy in Ireland, and was named to manage the conference on the 5th. On 17 Dec. he was named to draw up reasons for insisting upon the Lords’ amendments to the bill regulating treason trials, chiefly the addition of a clause on peerage trials. On 30 Dec. he reported from the committee of the whole the Lords’ amendments to the bill granting an aid to the king.

Godolphin was one of those implicated by the Jacobite defector William Fuller’s testimony to the Commons on 9 Dec. 1691, but was exonerated on 24 Feb. 1692.87 On 18 Dec. he intervened in the debate in committee of the whole on the report of the commissioners of accounts in order to explain why tallies were allowed before the receipt of money.88 On 12 Jan. 1692 he entered his dissent to the decision to receive the divorce bill of Henry Howard, 7th duke of Norfolk. On 27 Jan. he acted as a teller in opposition to Cornwallis on the amendment of a clause at the report stage of the public accounts bill and on 2 Feb. he was named to a committee to draw up reasons for disagreeing with the Commons on the bill, and was named to manage the resultant conferences on 5, 8, 10 February. On 19 Feb. he reported from the committee of the whole on the bill for better ordering and collecting the duties upon low wines. On 20 Feb. he reported progress from the committee of the whole on the quarterly poll bill, and was named to a committee to consider expedients for the preservation of the privileges of the House in relation to the bill. He then reported from the committee of the whole on the bill on the 23rd. He had attended on 80 days of the session, 82 per cent of the total, and was named to a further 29 committees.

Following the dismissal of Marlborough from his posts on 20 Jan. 1692, Godolphin continued his avowed friendship with the disgraced man. Indeed, on 29 Jan., Princess Anne received a letter containing the postscript ‘it has been taken great notice of Lord Godolphin and Cherry Russell’s being at Lord Marlborough’s lodgings so late the night he was turned out.’89 He was one of those who advised the countess of Marlborough to accompany the princess in her visits to the king and queen on 4 Feb., which precipitated the crisis which resulted in the princess abandoning the court for Sion House.90 On 9 Feb. Marlborough registered his proxy with Godolphin, as did Francis Newport, Viscount Newport, the future earl of Bradford, on 16 February.

Godolphin wrote to the king on 13 May 1692 that ‘among many other mortifications’, he had suffered ‘a very severe fit of the stone, which for some days made me unable to write or do anything’, so that ‘my ill health, as well as other reasons, make me desire to be at liberty’.91 On 21 June Nottingham noted that of the cabinet council, only Godolphin and Rochester defended the East India Company and did not endorse the advice to the king to proceed to frame a new charter to be offered to Parliament.92 On 28 June Godolphin asked for leave to travel into the country to ‘drink the waters’, although in the event he does not seem to have gone. He continued to socialize with Marlborough and on 12 July Sydney told the king that ‘Godolphin is angry upon my Lord Marlborough’s account’, and reported that ‘the Club … are framing some design that is not for your service; whether my Lord Godolphin be in it or no I cannot tell, but he has put off his journey to Tunbridge, which he was fond of a month ago and that gives me some suspicion’.93 On the next day Godolphin told the king that ‘you will find Parliament very uneasy to pay a greater number of troops in Flanders, for they grumble too much already at the great sums of money that go out of England; they will never repine at any charge of invading France and with a fleet of their own’. A month later he advised the king that with the revenue falling short of its anticipated yield, and expenditure continuing to rise, there was a need for the king ‘to fix the day for the meeting of Parliament here and also for your own return upon which will depend all preparations which are requisite to that matter’.94 In August Godolphin dined at Pontack’s with Marlborough, Shrewsbury, Russell and others.95 By the end of August Godolphin was engaged in acquiring loans from the City to tide the government over until Parliament met, and also advising the king on the disposal of the posts vacant by the death of William Harbord^‡, which impinged on the efficient running of the treasury.96

In the autumn of 1692 Carmarthen included Godolphin implicitly in his list of the government’s supporters, noting that the commissioners of the treasury were to ‘speak to all their friends and to attend diligently’.97 It was reported that on 5 Sept. at Newport’s house at Twickenham ‘great preparations’ had been made for a dinner for Godolphin, Richard Jones^‡, earl of Ranelagh [I], Charles Beauclerk* 523], duke of St Albans, and ‘Lady Mazarin’, presumably the duchess of Mazarin.98 It was perhaps a measure of Godolphin’s reliability and reputation for administrative competence that it was suggested in September that he might be appointed one of a commission to command the fleet, albeit in company with some experienced seamen, in an attempt to nullify the political consequences of the failure to capitalize on the victory at Beachy Head.99 In early October he was rumoured to be in line for the vacant secretaryship.100

Godolphin was not present when the Lords met on 4 Nov. 1692, attending the next sitting on 7 November. He was named to manage a conference on 20 Dec. to deliver to the Commons the papers brought in by Nottingham and to the resultant conference on 21 December. Following the report of this conference he was named on 22 Dec. to inspect the Journal in relation to free conferences and on 29 Dec. he was named to a committee to consider whether the resolution of the Commons, delivered to the Lords at a conference the 21st, was consistent with the usual procedure, and to consider of what was to be said at a free conference on the matter. He was named to manage the resultant conference on 4 Jan. 1693. On 21 Dec. 1692, following the report of the committee of privileges on the petition of the lord chief baron (the then Speaker of the Lords) concerning the auditing of the customs accounts, Godolphin was heard as to the transactions of the treasury in the case. On 31 Dec. he voted against committing the place bill.

At the turn of the year Godolphin was forecast as a likely opponent of the Norfolk divorce bill. On 3 Jan. 1693 he attended a private dinner with the king held at the house of William Russell, 5th earl of Bedford, where Sunderland, among others, was present, an indication of the re-emergence of Sunderland as an adviser to the king.101 On 16 Jan. he reported from the committee of the whole on the land tax bill that a clause should be added on the self-assessment of peers and he was then deputed to draw one up. He produced it on the 17th. On 18 Jan. he was named to manage a conference with the Commons on the amendment, and on the following day he was named to a committee to consider what should be offered at the conference when the Lords receded from their amendment, and was named a manager of the resultant conference on the 20 January. Also on the 16th he was named to a committee to draw up a clause on the bill for triennial Parliaments. Meanwhile, also on 17 Jan., he acted as a teller twice on the claim to the earldom of Banbury, both times in opposition to John Egerton, 3rd earl of Bridgwater: first in favour of hearing all the judges, and second on putting the question whether the petitioner had the right to the earldom. He entered his dissent on the outcome of both votes. On 24 Jan. he reported from committee of the whole House on the bill levying an excise on beer, ale and other liquors. Also on 24 and 25 Jan. he was named to manage conferences on Burnet’s King William and Queen Mary Conquerors, which had been adjudged libellous. On 4 Feb. he found Charles Mohun, 4th Baron Mohun, not guilty of murder.102 On 9 Mar. Godolphin reported from the committee of the whole on the progress of the bill continuing the acts for prohibiting trade and commerce with France and encouraging privateers. On the following day Nottingham wrote to him asking him to be at the Lords ‘tomorrow by 10 or a little after’, so that ‘we might dispatch the bill of privateers, which his majesty desires to have finished as soon as possible’.103 He reported the bill on the 11th, and it passed the House with amendments and was returned to the Commons. On 10 Mar. Godolphin reported from the committee of the whole on the bill to review the quarterly poll and he was named to report a conference on the duchy of Cornwall bill, and subsequently to a committee to draw up reasons for insisting on their amendment. He had attended on 88 days of the session, 86 per cent of the total, and been named to 21 committees.

In May 1693 Godolphin opposed a descent on France on financial grounds. On 19 May he wrote to the king that ‘I have been so unwell the last two or three days, that I am forced to go out of town for a little rest and air, but hope to be back again the beginning of the week to receive your commands’.104 On 4 July Godolphin was out of town at Windsor, but expected the next day.105 Once back in London, he had to deal with the news of the losses suffered by the Smyrna fleet. ‘The consternation [is] so great in the City at present’, he wrote to the king, ‘that it is impossible to hope for any money from thence’.106 Part of the summer was spent in political discussion, one meeting at Althorp in August causing much comment. Godolphin’s presence was noted among a varying cast of ‘great men’, including Shrewsbury, Rochester, Marlborough, Wharton, Montagu, and Russell. Halifax was told on 29 Aug. that ‘every politick is making his own reflection about it’, one of the more interesting being that Godolphin would be lord treasurer in a scheme of alterations for the ministry.107 Not that Godolphin confined his attention to Althorp: according to information from Richard Hampden^‡ on 26 Aug. Godolphin, Marlborough and Russell went on from Sunderland’s house to Montagu’s at Boughton, en route for Wharton’s abode in Buckinghamshire.108

Godolphin attended on the opening day of the 1693-4 session, 7 Nov. 1693. On 24 Nov. Godolphin brought into the House the observations of the treasury upon the report of the commissioners for public accounts, which were read and a copy sent to the commissioners. On 11 Jan. 1694, after the House had debated the intelligence failures that were the cause of the Smyrna convoy disaster, Rochester and Godolphin were deputed to ask the king to allow the ‘lords of the council’ to provide an account of when the intelligence of the sailing of the Brest fleet was sent to the English fleet. On 15 Jan. Godolphin and other members of the cabinet had to explain that they had assumed that the intelligence presented to them by Nottingham had been conveyed to the fleet by Secretary Sir John Trenchard^‡.109 Godolphin reported from committee of the whole on 24 Jan. on the land tax bill, and on 5 Feb. on the million bill. On 8 and 12 Feb. he was named to manage conferences on the intelligence that had been received about the sailing of the Brest fleet. Also on 8 Feb. he was one of five peers deputed to draw up the reprimand of the judges for not attending the House.110 On 17 Feb. he voted in favour of reversing the court of chancery’s dismission in the cause of Montagu v. Bath, and entered his dissent to the decision to dismiss the Montagus’ petition and to affirm the judgment. On 24 Feb. he entered his dissent to the order dismissing another petition from Montagu. He reported from the committee of the whole on the tonnage bill (23 Apr.) and the paper duties bill and the bill licensing hackney coaches (24 April). In all, he had attended on 99 days of the session, 77 per cent of the total, and was named to 12 committees. In May Godolophin was made a trustee when Marlborough executed the deed which transferred the estate of the mother of the countess of Marlborough to her sole use.111

Before the king left England, he designated Godolphin as one of the ‘cabinet council’ to the queen, though he may have been irritated to have been excluded from the small committee of council charged with advising the queen, which he was not summoned to attend until late in the summer.112 During the spring and summer Godolphin had to grapple with the details of the establishment of the Bank of England, the ‘thing being new in itself and against the interests of many particular persons, meets with great opposition; and besides the Act of Parliament was made in such haste, as that several parts of it are defective, and have not been so well considered as they ought to have been’.113 Narcissus Luttrell^‡ specifically records him coming to town to a treasury meeting on 14 May to agree on a method of settling the Bank.114 In June he was preoccupied with the details of the subscription for the Bank, reportedly advancing £7,000 himself towards it.115 A printed list confirmed that he had subscribed over £4,000, sufficient to qualify for election as a governor.116

Godolphin was also annoyed by the purges planned in the revenue departments by the Whig ministers. On 28 May 1694 Sunderland told Hans Willem Bentinck, earl of Portland, that ‘there is but small progress made in the business of the commissions and the justices, the first will go on as slowly as [Lord Godolphin] can make it, who by the way has been mistaken in everything and is very much out of humour’.117 In June Godolphin met with Trenchard, Sir John Somers, the future Baron Somers, and Shrewsbury to consider the composition of the commissions of customs and excise. Godolphin made clear his opposition to ‘removing some men that are of one party and gratifying some that are of another,’ without reference to their qualifications and ability to do the job. In particular he defended Sir John Werden^‡, a commissioner of the customs, from accusations of corruption and employing subordinates disaffected to the government, treating his omission as a great surprise and ‘a greater mortification to me, tho’ of late I am pretty well used to them’.118

Nevertheless, by July Godolphin was impressed with two of ‘our new brethren at the treasury’, John Smith^‡ and Sir William Trumbull^‡, who ‘are in a very different temper from those we parted with’, Hampden and Seymour, ‘for these love dispatch in business as well as the others did trifling, so that if we had wherewithal to work upon, I should flatter myself you would be satisfied with our endeavour, but it is hard to make bricks without straw’.119 August saw the usual political meetings, centred around Althorp. Marlborough and Godolphin intended to meet Wharton there on the 14th where ‘some suspect there is a project to reconcile Sunderland and Lord Rochester’.120 In late August Shrewsbury and Godolphin had approached Robert Harley, the future earl of Oxford, and Paul Foley^‡ in an attempt to ‘prevent miscarriages in Parliament, especially relating to excises’.121 In mid-September, Godolphin reported to the king that he had discussed with Thomas Coningsby^†, the future Baron Coningsby, ‘very fully all my notions concerning the money to be raised for next year, and of the funds which I think are most proper, if they can be obtained; so that I need not give you any trouble in repeating the particulars’.122

Godolphin attended the prorogation on 18 Sept. 1694 and the opening day of the 1694-5 session, 12 November. On 21 Jan. 1695 he acted as a teller twice in the committee of the whole on the treason trials bill, both times in opposition to Richard Lumley, earl of Scarbrough, on the rights of peers to be summoned to trials.123 On 16 Feb. he was named as a reporter at a conference on the Lords’ amendments to the bill; on 20 Feb. he was named to a committee to draw up reasons for adhering to some of their amendments and on 23 Feb. he was a manager of the resultant conference, as he was again on 15 and 20 April. On 25 Jan. the Lords considered the state of the nation: one of the subjects of contention was ‘the ruin of trade that was threatened by the Bank’, which ‘was defended by my lord president [Leeds] and Lord Godolphin and a question at last being put whither they should appoint a day to consider further of it. It was carried in the negative by 10 voices’.124 According to one report Godolphin also defended the government’s naval strategy by comparing it favourably with the problems experienced under Nottingham’s secretaryship.125 On 6 Feb. Godolphin reported from committee of the whole House on papers delivered by the officers of the Mint and goldsmiths during the discussion of ways to prevent clipping and debasing of money. He was then named to the committee charged with drafting a bill to prevent the exportation of money. On 9 Feb. he reported from the committee of the whole House on the land tax bill. On 19 Mar. John Verney^‡ reported to Christopher Hatton, Viscount Hatton, on the House’s consideration of the case of Richard Verney, who would eventually become 11th Baron Willoughby de Broke, that after the House had agreed that in the complicated circumstances matching those of Verney’s case there was a right to a summons to Parliament, effectively reversing the previous decision to which the House had come on 10 Jan., ‘Godolphin moved that the vote in Sir R. Verney’s case might be withdrawn that the votes might agree which he thought the house was in honour obliged to’, though no decision was reached on his motion.126

Godolphin attended on the day the House adjourned for Easter on 21 Mar. 1695, and on the first day after the recess (27 Mar.), but then there was a gap in his attendance until 8 Apr., when he was presumably taking a break at Newmarket. On 13 Apr. he was named to report a conference concerning papers to be delivered by the Commons about Sir Thomas Cooke^‡, who was at the centre of allegations concerning the misappropriation of East India Company funds. On 16 Apr. he was named to draft a bill indemnifying Cooke for any discoveries he might make. On 17 Apr. he was named to draw up reasons for a conference on the Commons’ bill to oblige Cooke to account for money received from the East India Company, and also to manage the resultant conference. On 22 Apr. he was elected in equal last place (with 26 votes) to the joint committee appointed under the act to examine Cooke.127 He was named on 24 Apr. to a conference on the examination of Cooke. He was then named to a committee to join with Members in taking the examinations of others involved in the scandal. On 2 May he was named to draw up reasons for a conference on the amendments to Cooke’s bill. On 29 Apr. he was named to draw up reasons for a conference over the bill prohibiting trade with France and encouraging privateers, and was named on 1 May to manage the resultant conference. On 3 May he was named to a conference on the impeachment of Leeds. Also on 3 May he reported from the committee of the whole on the bill levying duties on glassware. He had attended on 99 days of the session, 83 per cent of the total, and was nominated to 23 committees.

On 5 May 1695 Godolphin attended the first meeting of the commissioners for building Greenwich Hospital, being the ‘very first of the subscribers who paid any money towards this noble fabric’.128 Following his appointment to the regency in May, the Dutch agent L’Hermitage characterized Godolphin as a trimmer. On 14 May he reported that Godolphin and William Cavendish, duke of Devonshire, had gone to Newmarket to attend the horse races, returning on the 17th.129 At the end of May Godolphin, Sunderland and the new Speaker, Paul Foley^‡, agreed to meet to discuss public affairs, particularly the parlous state of the public finances.130 By the autumn the silver coinage had deteriorated so badly that it was having a serious effect on the supply of the army in Flanders. In the discussions that ensued, Godolphin appeared to favour coupling a recoinage with a devaluation. In the event, the scheme proposed by William Lowndes^‡ and backed by Godolphin was rejected, though Lowndes was more successful in preventing action being taken by proclamation, rather than by Parliament.131

The Parliament of 1695

According to Harley, on 20 Aug. 1695 all the lords justices ‘who can write, have written for a new Parliament or at least their opinion, except Lord Godolphin’.132 Godolphin outlined his own anxieties to William Blathwayt^‡ on 23 Aug.: ‘God send a good issue of the siege of Namur’, he wrote, ‘for without it, we are more ruined here at home, than abroad’. Victory would create ‘a will to struggle and do all that is in our power to overcome’ any difficulties: ‘one of the greatest … next winter will be the exportation of so much money, as is required for the support of the army and the allies.’133 Godolphin was expected to go with the king on his progress to Newmarket on 17 Oct., and thence to Althorp and Nottingham, and he was absent from the treasury board on 23 Oct. and 1 November.134

Godolphin attended on the opening day of the new Parliament, 22 Nov. 1695, and was described as one of the ‘lords of the council who met about the king’s speech’, which was delivered on the following day. The speech asked Parliament to take action on the coinage.135 On 3 Dec. he spoke in the debate in the committee of the whole House on the state of the nation in favour of hearing evidence of the pernicious effect of the establishment of the Scottish East India Company. On 13 Dec. he was named to a committee to amend an address against it, and was then named to manage the subsequent conference. On 4 Dec., in the debate in the committee of the whole House on the state of the coin, Godolphin seconded the motion of Arthur Herbert, earl of Torrington, for an address against importing English coin. He emphasized the need for regulating the coinage: ‘peace in the nation cannot be preserved without it’. After a further intervention, he was named to draw up an address on the ill state of the coinage, and was named on 5 Dec. to manage the resultant conference on a joint address.136 On 27 Dec. the Lords gave a first reading to the bill regulating the silver coinage, Godolphin speaking ‘against several parts of it’.137 Following the second reading on 30 Dec. he was named to a committee to amend a clause in the bill, which was given the task of amending further clauses on 31 Dec. and 1 Jan. 1696. On 2 Jan. Godolphin played a leading role when the Lords extensively amended the Commons’ bill, and on 3 Jan. he was one of those given the task of drawing up reasons for a conference on the amendments. Subsequently, this committee managed the conferences on 3 and 7 January. On the 9th he was named to a committee to prepare reasons for a further conference, especially the Commons’ denial to the Lords a right of inflicting pecuniary penalties, and he was named the following day to manage the conference itself. Refusing to accept the interference of the Lords in what they considered to be a money bill, the Commons abandoned the bill and started afresh, with the new bill passing into law in January.138 Godolphin reported this bill from the committee of the whole on 18 January.

On 28 Jan. 1696 Godolphin acted as a teller in a division on the East India Company bill in the committee of the whole House in opposition to Cornwallis, in favour of a motion that the trade should be carried on by a joint-stock company by act of Parliament.139 On 24 Feb. he was named to draw up an address following the king’s speech informing Parliament of the Assassination Plot, and to manage the subsequent conference. The Plot may well have been a key event in turning Godolphin away from Jacobitism.140 He signed the Association on 27 February. On 6 Mar. he reported from the committee of the whole House on the bill for continuing several duties on wine, vinegar, tobacco and East India goods. On 31 Mar. he reported from the committee of the whole House on the bill granting a duty on houses to make good the deficiencies in clipped money, and on the bill to encourage bringing plate into the Mint. Godolphin did not attend between 31 Mar. and 8 Apr., and was absent from the treasury board on 3 Apr., so he was presumably taking his usual trip to Newmarket.141 On 14 Apr. he was named to draw up reasons to be offered at a conference for the Lords insisting on some of their amendments to the bill continuing the acts prohibiting trade and commerce with France. Godolphin last attended on 23 Apr., having been present on 99 days of the session, 80 per cent of the total, and been named to 28 committees.

When discussing the regents, on 1 May 1696, L’Hermitage characterized them as all Whigs, except Pembroke and Godolphin, whose views were ‘beyond the ability of the most penetrating to discern’.142 Questions of public credit and war finance dominated Godolphin’s summer, as did the viability of the land bank. The treasury and lord justices refused to allow the land bank commissioners to raise part of the subscription in clipped money. Godolphin opined on 22 May that some people were ‘not as uneasy as I am’ about the failure of the subscription and that some had been ‘full of objections and difficulties’. His main concern was to ensure that the troops were paid, and therefore he was inclined to be more conciliatory than most of his treasury colleagues. Frantic negotiations continued involving Godolphin and in the end the army was supplied by the Bank of England.143 On 1 Sept. Godolphin wrote to Wharton that he ‘was in great hopes of being able to wait on you the 9th of this month’, seemingly for some horse racing, and on the 13th Wharton referred to Godolphin and Marlborough having recently left for Althorp.144 Godolphin left London for Newmarket on 26 Sept., where he was on 29 September.145

Meanwhile, Sir John Fenwick^‡, who had been arrested in June 1696 for his part in the Assassination Plot, had made several discoveries under interrogation in early August, which implicated Godolphin among others. Although the king professed to discount his allegations, Fenwick made a fresh confession on 23 Sept., again accusing Godolphin. With the town awash with speculation, another of those allegedly implicated, Monmouth, reacted by spreading rumours about Shrewsbury, Russell and, especially Godolphin.146 By the end of October Sunderland had been ‘engaged again in the old business of removing my Lord G[odolphin]’ in order to protect Shrewsbury and Russell if Monmouth was able to entice the Whigs to use Fenwick against Godolphin. Sunderland’s tidy solution was to manoeuvre Godolphin into offering his resignation as a mere gesture, but to ensure that the king accepted it. Thus, Godolphin was ‘directly tricked in this matter, and has suffered himself to be cozened into an offer to lay down, and is surprised in having his offer accepted’ into quitting on 31 October.147 His resignation surprised Edmund Gibson^†, the future bishop of London, who wrote on 3 Nov. that ‘all people are amazed at my Lord Godolphin’s laying down’, adding that ‘it seems my Lord has been for resigning any time this twelve month and has endeavoured it five or six times.’148 L’Hermitage confirmed that, as in the previous year, Godolphin had asked the king’s leave to resign, and this time after enumerating the indispositions which prevented him from carrying out his duties the king had agreed. Despite his great abilities, his having been chamberlain to Queen Mary, plus his adroit manner, had led to his loyalty being suspected.149 To Vernon, perhaps closer to the action, his resignation was ‘no very great surprise to people, they having been prepared for it by what has been talked of this day or two’.150 By 10 Nov. Wharton thought Godolphin ‘sensible now that he was not very well advised in it; and I am apt to think there never was more management than in bringing that about’.151

Godolphin had not been present on the opening day of the 1696-7 session, 20 Oct., first attending on the 26th. After his resignation, he went to Windsor, and was absent until 23 Nov., the date upon which he had been ordered to attend at a call of the House on 14 November.152 On 4 Dec. he was one of seven peers named to mediate in the dispute between Normanby and Devonshire over the purchase of Berkeley House, a report being made of their recommendations on the 9th.153 Meanwhile, it had been decided to proceed against Fenwick by a bill of attainder. When Fenwick appeared before the Commons on 17 Nov., he was ‘told by the Speaker that the House commanded him to ask me some questions of what I knew of any peers of this realm who had acted anything against the government in particular what I knew of my Lord Godolphin’.154 Vernon noted that Hugh Boscawen^‡ (Godolphin’s brother-in-law) ‘first moved for my Lord Godolphin [to be heard at the Bar] and prevented my Lord Coningsby, but they altered the method of the questions, and took a better’, so Godolphin was not summoned.155 On 1 Dec., at the first reading stage of Fenwick’s attainder bill in the Lords, L’Hermitage reported that Godolphin spoke to justify himself, accepting that he had been one of the last people to abandon King James, but had abandoned him when he recognized that service to him was not in accordance with the interests of his country and of his religion.156 On 8 Dec. Godolphin, along with other peers, questioned whether an attainder bill was the correct method of proceeding, though the House agreed to address the issue after the evidence had been heard.157 On 23 Dec. Godolphin voted against the passage of the bill. He entered his dissent against it, one of 12 peers objecting to it on the narrow grounds that ‘bills of attainder against persons in prison, and who are therefore liable to be tried by law, are of dangerous consequence to the lives of the subjects, and, as we conceive, may tend to the subversion of the laws of this kingdom’.To Vernon this vote was ‘less wondered at’ than some others ‘since it was consistent with his vote against the second reading’ on 18 December.158

Meanwhile, Monmouth’s intrigues had been exposed by Fenwick’s relatives and he was called to account for his actions. Monmouth had suggested to Fenwick a series of ways he might help to defend himself by publicizing his allegations, and that he should request that the king be asked to lay before the House the letters from the late king and queen, and others in France, intended for Godolphin, which had come into his possession, as well as evidence against Marlborough and Shrewsbury and others. The aim was to charge Godolphin ‘with a correspondence with the late queen, and to prove it, the earls of Portland and Romney were to be examined what they knew of intercepted letters, that had been shown to the king’. Papers in which Monmouth’s scheme was discussed were read out in the House on 9 Jan. 1697. Marlborough and Godolphin spoke on behalf of themselves and of Shrewsbury. On 12 Jan. Godolphin defended Shrewsbury again when Monmouth’s associate, Matthew Smith, attended the House and spoke about how he had first revealed evidence of a plot to Shrewsbury the previous February. Godolphin defended Shrewsbury’s conduct and Smith himself denied knowing anything incriminating against Godolphin when questioned by the House.159 Following further examinations, and a debate in which Godolphin joined Leeds, Rochester, Nottingham and Marlborough in arguing that Monmouth was ‘the contriver of those papers, and the judgment of the House ought to be formed accordingly’, it was resolved that Monmouth be committed to the Tower.160 Godolphin was then named to the committee to draw up a representation to the king on their resolution. As Godolphin wrote to Shrewsbury on 16 Jan. ‘it would be endless to repeat to you all the idle and frivolous impertinences as well as the strange and extravagant madnesses and contradictions which we have heard upon this occasion’.161 On 22 Jan. he was named to draw up an address to the king for a reprieve of one week for Fenwick.

On 10 Feb. 1697 Godolphin and Rochester raised their concerns about the ineffective protection of shipping. Vernon believed that ‘something … like to what the House of Commons were framing last year’ was intended.162 On 19 Feb. St Albans registered his proxy with Godolphin. On 20 Feb. Godolphin acted as a teller in opposition to Wharton in the committee of the whole on the bill prohibiting Indian silks; on 5 Mar. he was named to a conference on the same bill and on the 9th to a committee to draw up reasons for insisting on the Lords’ amendments. Presumably he was a manager of the conference on 13 March. On 8 Mar., both Charles Lennox, duke of Richmond, and Charles Seymour, duke of Somerset, registered their proxies with Godolphin. On 10 Mar. Godolphin reported from committee of the whole House a bill concerning partition of land. After 27 Mar., he attended once only, on 14 Apr., before the end of the session on 16 Apr., doubtless taking advantage of his lack of official duties to spend longer than usual at Newmarket. He had attended on 79 days of the session, 69 per cent of the total, being named to 24 committees.

Godolphin spent the early summer of 1697 with the Marlboroughs at St Albans.163 From there in late June he was picked up by Sunderland on his way to Althorp from London.164 Godolphin then joined the Marlboroughs and Princess Anne at Tunbridge in July. Tunbridge was a convenient place for politicking: on 31 July the company staying with Philip Sydney, 3rd earl of Leicester, at Penshurst – Sunderland, Romney, Coningsby and Lord Edward Russell – came to dine with Marlborough, and on the following day Godolphin, Marlborough and George Churchill^‡ made a return visit to dine at Penshurst.165 On 2 Nov. a newsletter recorded that ‘it is confidently said my Lord Rochester, Godolphin and Marlborough are reconciled, and some people are to be engaged by honours to be done to the family at St James’s’.166 Godolphin was at St Albans again on 8 November.167

Godolphin first attended the 1697-8 session on 6 December. On 30 Dec. John Methuen^‡ wrote to Galway that Godolphin approved of his conduct in Ireland, and that this would be passed on to the king, ‘with whom my Lord Godolphin is very well, although not like as yet to be employed.’168 On 13 Jan. 1698 Godolphin was named to manage a conference on the bill for continuing the imprisonment of Counter and others for their role in the Assassination Plot. On 3 Mar., in the second reading debate on the bill punishing Charles Duncombe^‡ for false endorsement of exchequer bills, Godolphin, Normanby and some others argued ‘for retaining the bill, tho’ they did not think they should be for it as it was drawn’.169 On 5 Mar. Godolphin was named to a committee to prepare for a conference on Duncombe, and also to manage the conferences on 7 and 11 March. On 8 Mar., a newsletter reported that Duncombe’s bill’s was likely to be thrown out, with Godolphin ‘and a great many other speaking peers’ against it, though when Robert Yard^‡ reported that Duncombe’s bill had been lost by one vote, he noted Godolphin’s support for it and Godolphin’s name appeared on a list of those in favour of committing the bill.170 On 17 Mar. Godolphin entered his dissent to the resolution that the appellant should enjoy Cary’s estate for the life of Mrs Bertie in the cause of Bertie v. Falkland. On 24 Mar. he was named to a conference on the attendance of James Bertie^‡ on the matter of a libel in the case.

After 2 Apr. 1698, the day on which a bill to overturn the will of Sir William Godolphin’s passed the House, he attended the king to Newmarket, the party arriving on 4 April.171 During the king’s stay, ‘a new scheme of ministry [was] discoursed of; if the duke of Shrewsbury takes the stick, as it is believed he will do, Lord Godolphin shall come into the treasury again, and Mr Chancellor [Montagu], be made secretary of state’.172 Godolphin returned from Newmarket to London on 16 Apr., having also played host to Shrewsbury in his house there.173 That Godolphin remained close to royal counsels was revealed by Methuen on 16 Apr. when he told Galway that the king would go on 19 Apr. to Windsor, where Shrewsbury intended to meet him and that ‘as soon as my Lord Godolphin is come I shall know all that hath passed between the king and my Lord Shrewsbury and how far my Lord D[uke] will himself meddle with business’ as Godolphin had ‘promised me to speak effectually to my Lord Shrewsbury for that purpose.’174

Following his return to London, Godolphin on 18 Apr. 1698 settled Pell Mell Fields (later St James’s Market House and Market Place) on his son as part of his marriage settlement with Lady Henrietta Churchill.175 He was next present in the Lords on 19 and 20 April. On 6 May Methuen wrote that ‘we have been much frightened about the woollen bill, but I have at last engaged’ Godolphin, Rochester and Marlborough ‘to secure it for this session and they kept their words, and have put it off a week in such manner that I hope we shall certainly gain our point’.176 On 10 May Godolphin was named to manage a conference on the amendments to the bill for erecting hospitals and workhouses in Colchester. On 17 May he wrote to John Lowther, Viscount Lonsdale, that ‘there’s a great project depending before the House of Commons at present which I find people are willing to flatter themselves may shorten the sessions, but I must own myself not sanguine enough to expect the public will have any great advantage by it’.177 On 24 May he was named to manage a conference on the bill for the more effectual suppression of blasphemy. On 31 May Methuen wrote to Galway that Godolphin had been out of town, evidently on a visit to Sunderland at Althorp.178

In the summer of 1698 ‘the unfortunate book of Mr Molineux’s’ (as Methuen called it in a letter to Galway), The Case of Ireland’s being bound by Acts of Parliament, addressed the issue of England’s right to legislate on Irish matters, raised in particular by a bill that had passed the Commons to restrict Irish woollen exports. Godolphin helped to reduce the impact of Molyneux’s publication on the delicate issue, arranging for Methuen to show Rochester and others ‘a new draught of the linen bill’, and ‘instructed them’, as a result of which on 3 June, ‘upon a long debate the bill is openly and fairly laid aside for this session, declaring that if they in Ireland do not settle the matter before the next session it shall be again begun there’.179 On 7 June, Vernon reported on the introduction of the bill for raising £2m, which included the incorporation of the new East India Company, adding that he believed Godolphin and Marlborough had ‘mediated’ an accommodation between the old company and the new subscribers, which if it succeeded would facilitate raising the money ‘with greater certainty and much less clamour’.180 This may not have been the case, however, for on 1 July Godolphin entered his protest against the bill’s second reading. On 15 June Godolphin was named to manage a conference about the trial of John Goudet, and was again on the 20th, adding to Rochester’s report from the conference on the 22nd.181 On 22 June he was named to a committee to examine what had been usually the method of proceedings between the two Houses after a free conference and to manage conferences on Goudet’s impeachment on 28 June and 2 July. He reported from the latter. On 20 June he was named to manage a conference on the bill for Alverstoke waterworks. On 28 June Godolphin reported from the committee of the whole on the bill to abolish ‘smoak silver’ and other payments at ‘the sheriffs’ tourne’.

In May and June 1698 Godolphin helped to promote the Aire and Calder navigation bill. He wrote to the absent Lonsdale on 17 May, promising ‘to attend very carefully the bill your Lordship was pleased to mention. Some of the northern lords in our house seem to think it against their particular interest but surely the making a river navigable in any country has a face of being for the good of the public’?182 On 2 June he reported that ‘we committed the bill yesterday and the majority is for it’; however, Somerset, Normanby, Peterborough and Scarbrough among others, ‘think they have an interest against it, but I think you may depend the bill will pass in this sessions or the next’.183 On 30 June George Compton, 4th earl of Northampton, registered his proxy with Godolphin, just a few days before the end of the session, and just before the second reading of the East India bill. Godolphin had sat on 102 days during the session, 80 per cent of the total, and was named to 38 committees.

The Parliament of 1698

In late August 1698, Godolphin and Marlborough visited Wharton at Winchendon for Quainton races.184 By the end of October Godolphin was at Newmarket.185 At the turn of the year, Godolphin was seen by the countess of Sunderland as an essential mediator in the marriage negotiations between the Spencer and Churchill families which led to the marriage of Charles Spencer, the future 3rd earl of Sunderland, and Lady Anne Churchill.186 Godolphin was present when the new Parliament opened on 6 Dec. 1698. On 3 Jan. 1699 both Edward Harley and Vernon reported rumours that he had been made secretary. Vernon noted that the Whig party seemed ‘mightily alarmed’ at the news, and questioned ‘whether he be of a humour to accept it, especially as our present circumstances are’.187 On 27 Jan. Godolphin was named to manage a conference on the amendments to the bill to prohibit the exportation of corn for one year. Around this date he told Lonsdale that the disbanding bill had been committed in the Lords and that ‘I believe it will pass, not but that the force maintained by it is generally thought too small, but that so great a division and distraction as the loss of that bill would have proved of worse consequence, and harder to be retrieved again’.188 It may have been in this debate that Normanby reflected on Godolphin, accusing him of acting for private ends, only for Godolphin to tell him ‘that those who live in glass-houses, should not be the first to throw stones’.’189 On 20 Mar. he advised John Evelyn to come to an agreement with his brother, George, and thus avoid the need for the bill which was currently before the Lords, and which lapsed before counsel were heard on it.190 On 29 Apr. Godolphin was named to manage a conference on the amendments to the Legg naturalization bill. On 3 May he was named to a conference on the bill levying a duty on paper. He had attended on 62 days of the session, 76 per cent of the total, being named to 27 committees.

Godolphin was present at the opening of the 1699-1700 session, 16 November. On 7 Dec. Godolphin wrote to Harley returning a book, and also making a reference to the proceedings against Thomas Watson, bishop of St Davids, the Lords on the 6th having voted that the bishop should not be allowed his privilege. Godolphin wrote that ‘the strength of the argument in the matter relating to the archbishop’s power of depriving a bishop, seemed to me to be of one side, but it must be owned the strength of votes was much greater against us’.191 On 15 Dec., Godolphin was one of the friends of Shrewsbury who supported the motion that Matthew Smith’s Remarks on the D - of S -- ‘s Letter sent to the House of Lords was ‘scandalous, false, injurious to their House’ and to Shrewsbury, and should be burnt.192

When Peterborough took notice on 10 Jan. 1700 of the Darien scheme and raised the prospect of Union, ‘the gravest men’, such as Godolphin ‘were for setting apart another day to consider the business’, which was appointed for 16 January. On A month later, on 16 Feb., Vernon wrote to Shrewsbury, ‘I find there are as great jealousies of my Lord Sunderland as ever, which my Lord Marlborough and Lord Godolphin are involved in’.193 On 23 Feb. Godolphin was appointed to draw up heads to be offered at a conference on the delivery of the bill authorizing commissioners to treat for a Union with Scotland. He chaired the committee, and reported from it on 28 February.194 About the same month he was forecast as likely to support the bill for continuing the East India Company as a corporation. On 23 Feb. he voted in favour of adjourning to allow the House to go into a committee of the whole to discuss amendments to the bill. On 12 Mar. he entered his dissent to the passage of Norfolk’s divorce bill. He last sat this session on 25 Mar., having attended on 51 days of the session, 65 per cent of the total, and been named to 24 committees.

The illness and death of the lord privy seal Lord Lonsdale in July 1700 provoked speculation of a return to government for Godolphin as part of a revamped ministry.A return to the treasury was blocked by his refusal to serve under the first lord, Ford Grey, earl of Tankerville.195 Other offices, such as the secretaryship, did not seem to interest Godolphin and the king wanted Godolphin at the treasury.196 On 16 Aug. Edward Villiers, earl of Jersey, informed Marlborough that the king had not altered his view, but that what he had been told about Rochester would ‘persuade my Lord Godolphin to submit to the trouble of the treasury, but nothing will be said to him of it till I hear that you have made him easy in this affair which certainly will be very much for the king’s service’.197 This seemed to refer to a quarrel between Godolphin and Rochester, patched up early in September. Henry Guy served as an intermediary between Harley, Godolphin, Rochester and Sunderland as they discussed a ministerial reshuffle.198 A solution was found to the problem of the treasury commission by moving Tankerville to be lord privy seal. On 12 Sept. Jersey wrote that Godolphin was ‘to come into the treasury, but not till the king returns; he desires that the vacancy may be in the treasury some little time before he goes in, which is the reason that the privy seal is given to my Lord Tankerville’.199

Godolphin was expected to be in town on 14 Oct. 1700, preparatory to discussion with his political allies, in readiness for the king’s return and the sitting of Parliament. He was supposed to meet Rochester on the 15th, before they met Harley together.200 On 29 Oct. L’Hermitage reported that, following William III’s return to England, Tankerville had been made lord privy seal. This prompted a belief that Godolphin would succeed him as first lord of the treasury.201 However, nothing happened: on 6 Nov. Trumbull was informed that the ‘report continues of my Lord Godolphin’s succeeding my Lord Tankerville in the treasury.’202 When the council met on 14 Nov., it was decided that Parliament should be further prorogued until 21 Jan. 1701. To James Lowther^‡, ‘it was looked upon as pretty certain a fortnight ago’ that Godolphin would return to the treasury and the ‘warrant was accordingly prepared for the king to sign, but this matter is not yet determined. Whatever the meaning of it, it makes people think he has no mind to come in alone’.203

Meanwhile, Godolphin, Harley and Rochester continued to meet with each other, and with the king, to hammer out further details of the new ministry.204 On 15 Nov. Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd earl of Shaftesbury, thought that since the end of the last session there had been

a beginning with a Tory ministry and an essay made of this kind by first throwing out the chancellor [Somers] and afterwards others. Now since this Lord Godolphin … Lord Rochester and the rest of that party have been esteemed the undertakers and to be the managers in a new Parliament chosen by their interest.205

On 24 Nov. Godolphin sent Harley a letter from Rochester arranging a meeting for the 26th. There was another request for a meeting on an unnamed Sunday, for the three of them to meet the king at eight in the evening.206 Godolphin seems to have helped Harley’s accession to the Speakership, sounding out Sir Edward Seymour and proposing Harley to him; Seymour did indeed nominate Harley to be Speaker.207 Although Tankerville received the privy seal on 5 Nov. Godolphin was not sworn into the cabinet until 1 Dec. and a few days later first lord of the treasury. Parliament was dissolved on 19 December. One reason for the delay may have been Godolphin’s insistence that the king should accept the will of Carlos II and recognize Louis XIV’s grandson, the duke of Anjou, as king of Spain, arguing that the new monarch would soon become a ‘Spaniard’.208

The two Parliaments of 1701

Before the new Parliament met, Guy expected Godolphin in London on 15 Jan. 1701, from where both Godolphin and Rochester urged Harley to attend to make arrangements in readiness for the new Parliament.209 On 3 Feb. 1701 Godolphin and the other treasury commissioners took the oaths of office in Chancery.210 Godolphin was present on 10 Feb. when the new Parliament opened, and supported a ‘tepid’ address in response to the king’s speech of 11 February.211 On 14 Mar., both Godolphin and Rochester mildly criticized the partition treaty of 1700 and the king’s failure to take proper advice on it.212 Godolphin was then named to the committee to draw up an address on the treaty. During these discussions on 18 Mar. he opposed an addition proffered by Wharton, and he duly dissented from the resolution which declared that the French king’s acceptance of the Spanish king’s will was a manifest breach of the treaty.213 At the end of March Godolphin transmitted to Harley the contents of a letter from the English ambassador in The Hague, which outlined on the French response to Dutch security concerns and the Dutch decision to invoke their 1677 treaty with England. Godolphin told him that it ought to be ‘forthwith communicated to the House of Commons’, helpfully providing the lines of a proposed address to the king.214 Sir Charles Hedges^‡ presented the information to the Commons on 31 Mar., and the Commons on 2 Apr. advised the king to continue the negotiations on the basis of the 1677 treaties, and resolved in the committee of supply to enable him to do so.

Godolphin was consistent in his support for the impeachment of the Whig Lords. He made a series of protests and dissents against decisions limiting the impeachment: on 3 June 1701 he dissented from a resolution insisting on the right of the Lords to limit the time for bringing the charges before them; on the same day he dissented from including in the Lords’ response to the Commons a suggestion that the Commons should not act in a way which might tend to the interruption of a good correspondence between the Houses; and on 9 June he dissented from the decision not to appoint a committee to meet with a Commons’ committee regarding the impeachments. On 17 June he entered his dissent from the resolution to proceed with the trial of Somers in Westminster Hall and to the resolution to put the question acquitting him, and then he voted against the acquittal itself.

Writing to Lord Nottingham on 8 June, Godolphin said that he had been visited by a number of Members that there was some dissatisfaction in the country ‘with the proceedings of the Parliament’, the chief criticism being that ‘they do nothing but quarrel with one another to the neglect of the public business.’ Worried that the sentiment might make the king more susceptible to the suggestion of a fresh election, he proposed that the Commons should ‘pass some vote before the conclusion of the session which may leave a good impression with both’ the people and the king, possibly in a response to the speech to be made by the king when giving royal assent to bills; he suggested that Nottingham should approach Thomas Thynne, Viscount Weymouth, ‘or any of our friends of the House of Commons’, to arrange it, so that ‘when I wait upon you tomorrow your Lordship will have put it into such a form as may be proper to receive the opinion of all our friends together at our next general meeting’. Following the king’s speech on 12 June, the Commons’ address duly referred to the king’s ‘approbation of the proceedings of your Commons’.215 He had attended on 79 days of the session, 75 per cent of the total. He had been named to 18 committees.

Godolphin spent the summer of 1701 in London and Windsor, dealing with business relating to the treasury and his role as a lord justice. In August he was sufficiently worried about the direction of royal policy to fear that the ministry did not have the king’s full confidence, and even informed Marlborough of his intention to resign when the king returned to England. He was particularly concerned about a turn towards the Whigs and its concomitant the dissolution of Parliament. On 9 Sept., at Marlborough’s instigation, Godolphin wrote a letter to him (to be shown to the king) that defended the record of the Parliament and its support for the king’s foreign policy.216

On 22 Aug. 1701 Godolphin wrote to Harley that he, Lord H[alifax] and Mr [Gilbert] Heathcote^‡ ‘will attend you at your own house this night between 7 and 8. I have just written to Sir Thomas Cooke^‡ to desire his company at the same hour.’217 This meeting related to the search for a compromise between the two East India Companies; during the first two weeks of September Godolphin, Harley and representatives of the two companies struggled to reach a compromise. By the middle of the month it was reported that they had referred the matters under dispute to Godolphin, Charles Montagu, who had been created Baron Halifax at the end of 1700, and Lord Keeper Wright.218 In late September, one newspaper reported that seven of each company had waited on Godolphin and Halifax.219 Yard reported Godolphin and Halifax as being present at a meeting held on 1 Oct. of the committee of seven of both East India companies which decided that Lowndes should draw up a charter for a third company to be formed out of the two existing ones.220 On 21 Oct. Godolphin confessed that Lowndes’s scheme was ‘so very long that I have not had time to read it’. Once an abstract had been made, he wrote, ‘I suppose we will have a general assembly’.221

On 3 Oct. 1701 Godolphin was writing from St Albans about the king’s imminent return from Holland. He was back in London on 20 Oct., although at the end of the month Marlborough assumed that he had gone to Newmarket.222 Godolphin arrived back in London on 7 Nov. from Newmarket, and went on the 8th to Hampton Court.223 There is no question that Godolphin advised William III against a dissolution aimed at fostering a more forceful coalition against France, although he was absent from the cabinet held at Hampton Court on 9 Nov. to discuss whether to dissolve Parliament: he was at Windsor instead, having been told the day before to begin drafting a speech for the next session. When he returned on the 10th, the king informed him of his decision in favour of dissolution, and Godolphin intimated his intention to resign. He did so following the council’s narrow approval of the dissolution on the 11th.224 Some Tories were angry at Godolphin for his precipitate resignation.225 Marlborough, too, it seems, was critical of Godolphin for being over hasty, as the Tories were optimistic of securing a majority in the new Parliament.226

The election was inconclusive, and Godolphin on 4 Dec. 1701 encouraged Harley to come up to town in good time, as ‘the choice of a speaker will be a very decisive stroke in this ensuing Parliament’: he added that he was about to write to Jonathan Trelawny, bishop of Exeter, ‘to muster up his squadron so as to have them here by the 30th.227 On 9 Dec. he thought ‘we have a vary fair expectation of taking such a step in the very first day of the sessions as may be a sufficient indication of all that is like to follow’.228 On 12 Dec. Methuen, in Dublin, recorded a general view that the result of the elections would mean that the king would need to involve Rochester, Godolphin and Marlborough ‘in the conduct of his affairs’.229 It was the clear import of Godolphin’s letters that Harley should stand again for the Speakership, as the Tory candidate.230 However, the king made his preference clear by supporting Sir Thomas Littleton as Speaker and filling the seat left vacant by Godolphin’s resignation with Charles Howard, 3rd earl of Carlisle.231

Godolphin attended on the second day of the new Parliament, 31 Dec. 1701, and signed the address on 1 Jan. 1702 against the Pretender being recognized by Louis XIV. Indeed, Godolphin drafted a reply for the Commons in response to the speech, although the address actually adopted on 2 Jan. bore little resemblance to it.232 His attendance was somewhat irregular and after 12 Jan., he only attended once, on 21-22 Jan., before 11 Feb., and he was then absent again until 28 February. However, his political manoeuvring did not stop: on 25 Jan. he wrote to Harley asking for a meeting with himself and Marlborough the next evening, adding the news of Rochester’s dismissal from the lord lieutenancy of Ireland that morning. On 4 Feb. he wrote to Harley to inform him that Rochester was ‘ready to meet those gentlemen at your house’ on 8 February.233 On 8 Mar. he was named to a conference on the death of William and the accession of Queen Anne, an event which transformed Godolphin’s position.

As a long-term adviser to the new queen and a confidante of the Marlboroughs, Godolphin was the obvious choice for the treasury. Although not officially appointed lord treasurer until 8 May 1702 he was active as a royal adviser from the beginning of the reign: he was sworn a privy councillor on 18 March.234 Even before that he had assumed an important position as a domestic adviser to the queen. On the 8th, he referred to a conversation with Speaker Harley in the Commons about the queen’s speech, and suggested that Harley draw up his own version, which could be discussed the following evening. On the 9th he added: ‘we must desire to come to your house tonight to show the draught. You may speak to whom you like to have there’.235 By 19 Mar. Godolphin had adopted the cares of a leading minister, fretting about the passage of the bill settling the civil list, and on the following day noting that he had used ‘all my endeavours’ to convince Members that the matter of the king’s debts should be left to the new monarch.236 Matters of high finance and politics limited his attendance in the chamber, though other matters did too: following the recess on 2 Apr., Godolphin was not present when the House resumed on the 10th, until 8 May. Part of the time had been spent at Newmarket: it was reported on 11-14 Apr. that his horse had won £3,000.237 On 1 May he had written to Speaker Harley about the declaration of war against France that:

The cabinet council was to have considered this evening of the communication to be made to the Parliament. I have not yet had any account of what they have done. The enclosed draught contains some of my notions upon that matter. I should be glad you would freely tell me how far it agrees with the form you think ought to be given to it and send it me again tomorrow morning with your alterations. If no supply be asked, perhaps the form of a message is best, but if a supply be asked, I doubt it should be desired from the throne.238

Godolphin was much involved in political management, particularly meetings with Tories. Of one such meeting on 15 May he wrote, ‘I am glad the gentlemen had any satisfaction in last night’s conversation; I had very little’.239

On 18 and 20 May 1702 Godolphin was named to manage conferences on the prevention of correspondence between England and the allies with France and Spain. Also on 18 May, Thomas Wentworth, 2nd Baron Raby, was given leave to withdraw his appeal of 19 Jan. against several proceedings in the Irish court of chancery, as it had been agreed to refer the matter to Rochester and Godolphin, who having heard counsel, made an award on 20 April. On 20 May Godolphin wrote to Harley that ‘Lords N[ottingham] and R[ochester] desire to meet tomorrow night at your house to consider of the queen’s speech’ at the end of the session, adding on 21 May, ‘I take it I am to be at your house tonight about the speech’.240 He had attended on 33 days of the session, 33 per cent of the total, and was named to eight committees.

As soon as the session had ended, Godolphin complained to Harley about the ‘humours so changeable and uncertain’ of Sir Christopher Musgrave^‡, whom ‘I never took so many pains in my life to satisfy’, over a place in the ordnance and a tellership of the exchequer. His heartfelt wish was ‘that four or five of these gentlemen that are so sharp set upon other people’s places had mine amongst them to stay their stomachs.’241 Patronage requests were to become the bane of Godolphin’s existence. He once remarked that ‘I can’t help reflecting upon what I have sometimes heard fall from the late king viz, "that he wished every man that was in any office, immortal".’242 Although Godolphin was accounted a Tory (a distinct advantage with the queen), it did not mean he was keen on changing personnel for political reasons; on 2 June a newsletter noted that it was ‘observable’ that Godolphin ‘has made no alteration in any of the commissioners relating to the management of any branch of the revenue.’243 In December, James Lowther found the Tories ‘not a little angry with Lord Godolphin for keeping so many in their offices as he has done’ and a newsletter of January 1703 described him as ‘that great man not being given to change.’244 Although not a party man, Godolphin was always interested in electoral matters, especially where the return of Members useful to the management of government business was concerned. In the election of 1702, Godolphin pressed the bishop of Exeter to ensure that Richard Jones, earl of Ranelagh [I], was again returned for West Looe.245 What he did not do was to throw the weight of the court behind the Tories, a policy which engendered further criticism from their ranks.246

As treasurer, Godolphin was called upon to adjudicate between the competing claims of Peregrine Osborne, Baron Osborne, styled marquess of Carmarthen, and Halifax for the lucrative post of auditor of the exchequer. After a hearing on 3 July 1702, Godolphin refused to admit Carmarthen to the post, but also declared Halifax’s possession of the office should not be construed so as to prejudice Carmarthen’s claim when it came to be tried in Westminster Hall.247 By June Godolphin was facing a challenge from the Tory wing of the ministry, particularly Rochester. In August Marlborough was in agreement with Godolphin that Rochester would ‘always be endeavouring to give mortifications’ to both of them, and that if he continued ‘disturbing underhand the public business’ he should be sent to his government in Ireland.248 In the late summer, Godolphin embarked on a peripatetic existence. On 14 Aug. he was at St Albans, from where he seems to have issued an appeal for Marlborough to return to England a fortnight before Parliament was due to open.249 On 18 Aug. he wrote to Harley to thank him ‘for the hint of appointing somebody to write for us. I have spoken of it to Lord Nottingham who has promised to take care of it, indeed it is his business.’250 He was at St James’s for a short while, before going on to Bath. On 28 Aug. Weymouth recorded that Godolphin had ‘called here for almost an hour this day, in his way from his running horses to Bath’.251 He wrote to Harley from Bath on 16 Sept., enclosing ‘a rough draught of what I have prepared for her majesty’s speech to the approaching Parliament… being also extremely desirous of your thoughts and amendments upon it before it be exposed to anybody else’.252 Before Godolphin left Bath on 27 Sept., he thanked Harley for his ‘hints … relating to the queen’s speech’, and informed him that he had the queen’s leave to spend a week at Newmarket.253 He was with his brother at Eton on 29 Sept., returning to St Albans and then proceeding to Newmarket, where he arrived on 2 Oct. having been ‘all the way in a kind of a struggle betwixt indisposition and health.’Having arranged to meet Nottingham on 14 Oct., he was back in London on the previous day.254 No treasury board was held between 24 Aug. and 14 October.255

The Parliament of 1702: the 1702-3 session

On 19 Oct. 1702 Godolphin wrote to Harley about Convocation. He had left a book with Harley that had been given to him by Archbishop Tenison, which showed, Tenison had told him, how Convocation showed little interest in accommodation. Godolphin hoped that the Speaker could find a way to quieten the matter, as ‘all matters of difference at this time must needs have very ill consequences both in Church and State’. He himself was not ‘willing… to meddle with it one way or another’.256 Godolphin’s main preoccupation in the days leading up to the opening of the Parliament was the queen’s speech. On 19 Oct. he complained to Marlborough that he was ‘hurried out of my life … with long reasoning upon what was proper for Mrs. Morley [i.e. the queen] to say to her dear friends’, the speech having been drafted in consultation with the lords of the Cabinet and then approved in Cabinet by the queen.257

Godolphin attended the opening of the new Parliament on 20 Oct. 1702. He would keep up a regular correspondence with Harley about the management of the House of Commons, particularly at the beginning of the session. He was immediately determined to ensure a favourable address in response to the queen’s speech of 21 October. On 22 Oct. he wrote to Harley,

to me it seems not a matter of much difficulty, the words of the speech leading so naturally to it. Why might it not run in words to this effect; that this state will stand by and assist her majesty in the just and necessary war in which she is engaged for the support and encouragement of her allies and for disappointing the boundless ambition of France.258

The address agreed to in the Lords on the 22nd did not use these phrases, though it referred particularly to the success of the allies under Marlborough’s command: on the following day Godolphin sent for John Granville, the future Baron Granville, told him of the Lords’ address and made clear his hope that the Commons would follow suit ‘in which I thought he would have an opportunity of doing a thing very agreeable to my Lord Marlborough, if he would take care he might be as honourably mentioned by them as by the other House’.259 Although Godolphin told Granville that he had not spoken to anyone else, he had in fact approached Sir Edward Seymour as well as Harley.260 In the event, although the gist of the resolution from the Commons on 23 Oct. was the same, the wording was different, although the phrase ‘boundless ambition of France’ was incorporated; the address itself, agreed in the Commons on 26 Oct., was more fulsome in its tribute to Marlborough than the Lords’ version had been.

On 3 Nov. 1702 Godolphin wrote to Harley that he was detained at Nottingham’s office till after the Commons had sat, so that ‘I cannot speak to the persons necessary to move anything this morning there, upon the subject of your letter, but will take all the care I can that they shall be furnished with all the necessary papers for the information of the House’: Ranelagh, Coningsby, Hedges and Blathwayt would meet at the treasury ‘to adjust what shall be opened to the House before they go into the committee, and by whom, unless you offer me a more proper method’. As planned, when the order of the day was read on the 4th for the Commons to go into a committee of supply, the House agreed an address to ask for copies of the treaties relating to the war. These were provided on the 6th and included detailed breakdowns of the financial commitments of the crown to the allies. Meanwhile on 4 Nov. Godolphin grumbled to Harley about ‘how untowardly we proceed about our land forces’, having complained to the solicitor general, Sir Simon Harcourt, the future Viscount Harcourt, who seemed to think another meeting at Harley’s might adjust matters. In response Godolphin noted that he was ‘so out of patience with Sir Edward S[eymour] that I am sure I can meet him nowhere but to scold’.261

Nevertheless, by 7 Nov. 1702 Godolphin could write to Harley, presumably apropos the committee of the whole on supply in the Commons, that

the votes of yesterday with the assurances which I have had that no angry thing shall be stirred in the House of Lords without further provocation from the House of Commons, give a fair prospect of a speedy and quiet end of this session, of which I am extremely glad for many reasons that you need not be troubled with particularly till I see you, and I wish that might be either at your own house or mine Sunday about nine at night, as will be most easy to you.262

Three days later Godolphin asked Harley ‘if the bill about occasional conformity is to extend to any persons that are not her majesty’s natural born subjects’, because Granville had asked the queen ‘if the prince would have any clause offered to exempt him from the force of the intended act’.263 More evidence of Godolphin’s attention to parliamentary management exists in his notes to Secretary Nottingham. On 19 Nov. he thought Nottingham should ‘take the queen’s commands before she rises from Council’, to get Wright, Pembroke, Buckingham, Nottingham and himself ‘to wait upon her in her lodgings within, to consider of an answer to each House’, presumably to the conflicting requests on the position of William Lloyd, bishop of Worcester, as lord almoner, following the complaints of the Commons over his interference in the elections. Later that day Godolphin reported on the presentation of the Lords’ address: the queen had resisted their desire for an immediate answer ‘and took time to consider of it till tomorrow’; she hoped that the Commons would not present their address that night, ‘that she might have time to think of her answer to each House’. On the following day, ‘from the treasury chambers before nine’, he wrote that ‘if the gentlemen of the House of Commons are to meet this morning at your office, I should be glad to speak one word to you before they come’.264 On 24 Nov. Godolphin reported to Harley that Nottingham had laid before the House of Lords the papers relating to the Cadiz expedition, which ‘they have been so calm as to appoint Thursday [26 Nov.] for the reading of them’. He added that if the Commons ‘suffer no new incident to interfere with the dispatch of the supplies I am not out of hopes but the session may yet end with the old year’ [i.e., by March 25th].265

Following the arrival of Marlborough in England at the end of November 1702, plans for the forthcoming campaign went forward rapidly, as did the queen’s desire to provide the material basis for Marlborough’s dukedom.266 This involved some complicated parliamentary management: on 9 Dec. Godolphin asked Harley if the queen’s request that Marlborough’s pension should be for her life should be communicated to the Commons by a written or a verbal message. On the 10th he arranged for Harley to have a sight of the message Hedges was to deliver to the Commons. By the 12th Godolphin was evincing concern ‘at the little success which I find the queen’s message is like to meet with’, and again asked Harley’s advice. On the 14th he thanked Harley for ‘your patience last night when I had so little and for your calm and sincere advice’, and having ‘full power’ from Marlborough he left the matter in Harley’s hands ‘to give it the form tomorrow which you think will be least disrespectful to the queen’. As Harley was meeting Members that evening, the main thing was to avoid division and added the suggestion of ‘an address to the queen showing an uneasiness for not complying with the message from the inconvenience of the precedent and at the same time a satisfaction in Lord Marlborough’s services.267 Godolphin was keen to avoid any delay to supply, ‘which will undo us if it does not pass before Christmas.’268

On 9 Dec. 1702, at the third reading of the bill against occasional conformity in the Lords, Godolphin was one of those arguing that although the bill was ‘just in itself’, yet it was ‘now unseasonable.’269 Writing to Harley on 10 Dec. of ‘the madness of yesterday’, Godolphin hoped to consult with him that evening: ‘does anybody think’, he added, that ‘England will be persuaded that the queen won’t take care to preserve the Church of England? And do they forget that not only the fate of England but of all Europe depends upon the appearance of our concord in the despatch of our supplies’, something put at risk by the raising of this issue in so provocative a way.270 On 18 Dec., before the debate on whether the Lords should insist upon their amendments to the bill, Godolphin ushered Leeds into the Prince’s chamber, whereupon they emerged for the debate, ‘without offering an objection or not content to any one of the questions’.271

A new issue arose on that day: Godolphin wrote to Harley, ‘I am told advantage is taken from the clause added this day to the prince’s bill to blow up the House of Lords into the thought that this is a tack against which they have lately declared themselves so positively’ (on 9 December). This was the decision in the Commons to add a clause to the bill for settling a revenue on Prince George of Denmark, to make clear that he was not affected by the provisions in the Act of Succession disabling those born outside the kingdom from holding office. Godolphin warned Harley that the clause risked the loss of the bill, which would upset the queen; ‘I do not see how to prevent it unless upon the report so many other saving clauses be offered as will tire the House and give them a handle to leave out all the clauses of the bill and this amongst the rest.’ On 19 Dec. Godolphin wrote again more cheerfully that since the prince’s bill was not to be reported in the Commons until 21 Dec., ‘there’s no danger of its being in our House so as to disturb our passing the bill for the land tax before the holidays’. A free conference about the occasional conformity bill could also, he hoped, be put off till after the adjournment, which it was. However, on 24 Dec. (the day after the Commons had added numerous clauses to Prince George’s bill, as Godolphin had envisaged) he again complained about the action in the Commons, and warned that ‘if the prince meets with a disagreeable opposition in the House of Lords to his bill, he is obliged to his own servants for it. The whole proceeding of that House [Commons] yesterday looks to me as if they were afraid the time were too short for madness and extravagance’.272

The House adjourned on 23 Dec. 1702, and on the 26th Godolphin went to St Albans to bring Marlborough back to town with him on the 27th.273 He attended on 29 Dec., whereupon the House adjourned until 7 Jan. 1703, although Godolphin did not attend again until 19 Jan. (the day the House sat as a committee of the whole on the prince’s bill), owing to ill-health. On 6 Jan. he wrote to Harley, `I am now able to crawl about my own room, tho’ not without pain. As soon as I am able to go abroad I shall be glad to come to you.’274 On 14 Jan. Godolphin wrote ‘I find by the stopping of the money bills the queen’s servants in both Houses are vying who shall be maddest’, which made a meeting with Harley even more necessary. Meanwhile, he asked that the Commons should delay their consideration of the bill sent down that day to clarify the Act of Succession ‘till we have tried our strength once more in the House of Lords upon the Prince’s bill’.275 About January 1703 Nottingham adjudged Godolphin as likely to support the bill against occasional conformity. On 16 Jan. he was listed as voting against adhering to the Lords’ amendments to the bill, which were widely seen as wrecking its chances of success, although he was not listed as present in the Journal. On 23 Jan. he wrote to Harley on the occasional conformity business and the progress of supply.276 On 24 Jan. he received the sacrament from William Nicolson, bishop of Carlisle, at St Martin’s-in-the-Fields.277

Despite it being reported at the beginning of February 1703 that a chapter of Order of the Garter had been appointed for choosing Godolphin, it was an honour he did not accept until the following year, probably because he wished first to be made an earl.278 Godolphin last attended the Lords this session on 12 Feb. before the prorogation on the 27th. Part of his absence can be explained by his close friendship to the Marlboroughs, Godolphin being the only person allowed to visit St Albans following the death on 20 Feb. of his godson, the marquess of Blandford.279 In all Godolphin had attended on 34 days of the session, 39.5 per cent of the total, and been named to four committees.

No meetings of the treasury board were held between 25 Mar. and 6 Apr. 1703 and on 27 Mar. it was reported that Godolphin and ‘most of our great men’ were going to Newmarket for ‘the horse racing the next week,’ where he duly lost ‘the great horse race … for 1,000 guineas’ to John Campbell, 2nd duke of Argyll [S].280 Godolphin was again at Newmarket in April: on 20 Apr. he ordered 100 guineas to be paid to Wharton ‘for the plate run for at Newmarket’, and no treasury board was held between 20 and 26 April.281 Not that Godolphin could relax his guard too much. In June Marlborough felt it necessary to warn him that conversations with Count Wratislaw had led him to believe that Nottingham ‘will upon all occasion do 26 [Godolphin] what hurt he can with his party’.282 Godolphin had also to be aware of the threat to the duumvirs’ war policy from Rochester (recently dismissed from office), Seymour and Buckingham. He also had to deal with the Scottish parliament held in the summer of 1703, which saw him struggling to exact a supply without acceding to Scottish demands for an act of security. In the event, deadlock ensued and the Scottish parliament was adjourned on 16 September.283

On 17 July 1703 a newsletter reported that Godolphin would attend the queen to Bath.284 However, he was taken ill at Windsor on 25 July with ‘a sort of dizziness in his head, and a sickness in his stomach’.285 He had returned to London by 13 Aug., and left again on the 20th in order to spend six weeks at Bath for the recovery of his health.286 He stopped en route at Windsor, where he penned a letter to Nottingham on Scottish affairs, before arriving at Bath on 22 August. His convalescence, though, was interrupted by his passion for the turf, Blathwayt writing on the 25th that ‘Godolphin found himself this morning somewhat indisposed by a cold he thinks he got last night upon Lansdowne’, a nearby race course.287 His health improved slowly while at Bath, and on 26 Sept. he announced his intention to leave Bath for Newmarket and to be in London by 15 Oct., while claiming to Harley how indifferent he was to ‘the hot men of either party’, and propounding a theory that the anger of the parties did not ‘arise from the same grounds; one side being moved by an inveteracy of a deep root, against anything that is uppermost but themselves, and the other only by the immoderate pride and ambition of a few men’.288 He left Bath on 28 Sept. and went via Eton and St Albans, with the intention of being at Newmarket on the 30th.289 On 12 Oct. he wrote from there, ‘I am better than I have been, God be thanked, tho’ not well enough to write much’ and asked Harley to ‘prepare the heads of what is proper to be said to the Parliament’.290 On 15 Oct. he was still at Newmarket, but he was back at St James’s by 21 October.291 His autumnal correspondence contained many references to the trouble expected from the Tories when Parliament resumed.292

The session of 1703-4

Perhaps owing to the enhanced threat to his position, on 4 Nov. 1703 Godolphin outlined a plan of parliamentary management to Harley for the ensuing session: he had left with Hedges ‘the paper of names and settled the method he is to take in concerting matters from time to time’; Hedges was willing to ‘receive his instructions from you’. Sir Edward Seymour, he suggested, had to be called to two or three meetings at least, till his opposition asserted itself. ‘Besides these meetings and those agreed upon last night to be at your house’, Godolphin continued, ‘it is necessary above all the rest that the duke of Marlborough and you and I should meet regularly at least twice a week if not oftener, to advise upon everything that shall occur.’293 Although Godolphin did not often attend these meetings, he regarded them as of singular importance, writing to Harley probably in 1707, that unless the ‘meetings be kept up constantly and those who are called come willingly to them, and with a desire to agree, I cannot think it possible to succeed’.294 On 9 Nov. 1703, Godolphin wrote to Harley that Hedges had sought to ‘have consulted with me about forming the address of the House of Commons but I told him it was not proper for me to meddle in that means and desired [him] to go and take his instructions from you’. Godolphin did obtain a draft of the address on the following day before it was submitted to the House.295

He attended the Lords on the opening day of the 1703-4 session, 9 November. At the end of November and beginning of December Sunderland forecast that Godolphin was likely to support the occasional conformity bill. On 7 Dec. Methuen reported that Godolphin had told Seymour that ‘it was an ill time to press this bill and if it did pass the Commons it would not pass in the Lords’.296 On 14 Dec. Godolphin was listed as voting for the bill, entering his protest twice against the resolution not to give the bill a second reading and against its rejection. A report of 16 Dec. confirmed this, noting that he had ‘declared the bill to be unseasonable, that he opposed its bringing in, but at the same time allowed it to be a good bill, and voted for its second reading’.297 On Christmas Day, Godolphin arranged to meet Harley at his house on the following day about 5pm, before the cabinet council.298 He added that ‘I am glad to hear you talk of calming people in these holidays, and should be glad to have your directions what part I could be able to take towards making men a little more moderate’.299

Godolphin attended on the first day after the Christmas recess, 12 Jan. 1704. There is a draft in Godolphin’s hand of the queen’s speech to the Commons on 21 Jan., which he had sent to Harley the day before with the request that ‘you would let me know your sense of this, or what alterations or objections you would propose because the words will not be finally settled till night’. The speech remained Godolphin’s in essence, but with subtle changes of tone which bore the hallmarks of Harley.300 On 10 Feb. Godolphin wrote to Harley, ‘Lowndes tells me we had so good a day yesterday in the House of Commons’, presumably in the committee of ways and means, ‘that I think I shall scarce need to trouble you any more this session about the business depending there, though I know very well that matter must always be watched from hour to hour, and there’s no such thing as safety till the black rod knocks at the door.’ He complained of a cough, which he hoped to throw off with some fresh air, proposing to visit Eton the following day; he would, he wrote, return to meet Harley on Sunday 13th. He sent a draft of the answer to the address of the Commons upon the queen’s message, with a request for any amendments to be sent back to him that night.301 The answer, which encouraged the establishment of Queen Anne’s bounty, was reported to the Commons on the 12th, virtually unchanged from Godolphin’s draft. On 11 Mar. Godolphin delivered into the Lords an account of the yearly value of the first fruits and tenths, which was referred to the committee on the bill establishing the bounty.302

Sir William Simpson reported that in the Lords on 25 Mar. 1704, ‘a question was put and carried that the lords of the cabinet, in not committing Robert Ferguson upon the evidence which appeared against him and his own confession when he was first brought before them tended to the endangering the constitution and other hard words’ Simpson added that neither Godolphin nor Marlborough had been present at the relevant meeting, but that they ‘laboured mightily to oppose the vote by which the cabinet was censured though not concerned.’303 Godolphin entered his protest against the resolution. Godolphin got into trouble with the duchess of Marlborough when he supported the pretensions of Ralph Stawell, 3rd Baron Stawell, to a place in the prince’s bedchamber without realizing that he was brother in law of William Bromley^‡, Member for Oxford University, and a central high Tory partisan. Godolphin nevertheless thought that he could control Stawell ‘in every vote’.304 Godolphin last attended during the session on 29 Mar., although on 30 Mar. he was ordered to lay before the queen the House’s report on the methods of keeping public records. He had attended on 51 days of the session, 52 per cent of the total, and been named to a further 16 committees. On 5 Apr. he held a meeting of the treasury board and then went to Newmarket, returning on the 13th, the treasury board sitting the next day.305

Over the spring Nottingham’s dissatisfaction with the ministry and its policies was coming to a head, particularly his claims that the queen was being hindered from following a Tory agenda by Godolphin and Marlborough. On 18 Apr. 1704 Godolphin revealed that he had ‘had a very long conversation’ with Nottingham, replete with some threats and a demand that Archbishop Tenison and Somerset be removed from the Cabinet and the earl of Carlisle from the lieutenancy. This did not deflect the queen from ordering the removal of Seymour and Jersey, and thus preparing the way for Nottingham’s resignation and his replacement by Harley, whom Godolphin, ‘contrary to the advice of all his friends’, promoted in his place.306 On 29 Apr., Godolphin went to St Albans and then to Newmarket ‘to divert himself with the racing and other sports’ for a week.307 No treasury board was held between 28 Apr. and 9 May.308 The failure of the queen to replace the displaced Tories with Whigs put Godolphin under some apprehension that ‘I am now to learn that till they have the power in their hands, they will always be against everything that may be an assistance to the queen and the government.’309

In July Godolphin recorded his support for the appointment of Francis Atterbury, the future bishop of Rochester, as dean of Carlisle, noting to John Sharp, archbishop of York, that it had been done ‘as an earnest only’ of the queen’s intention to promote him further.310 It was done at the behest of Harley, in the hope that it might ameliorate the disputes in Convocation. It did, however, create more problems with William Nicolson, bishop of Carlisle: Godolphin in September noted of Atterbury’s superior that ‘the bishop of Carlisle’s perverseness is very unaccountable, but a discreet clergyman is almost as rare as a black swan’.311

As early as late August there is evidence that Godolphin, Marlborough and Harley were being ‘called the triumvirate and reckoned the spring of all public affairs’.312 There were no meetings of the treasury board between 25 Aug. and 5 Sept. 1704 as Godolphin visited Wharton’s house at Winchendon to attend the Quainton race-meeting.313 After a sitting of the treasury board on 28 Sept. he was ‘taken ill with a pain in his side’ while at Windsor.314 On the 29th Jack Howe^‡ described his gout as so ‘violent that he despaired of going to Newmarket, which will be the greater loss to his Lordship, the season proving fair beyond what has usually been known’.315 James Brydges^†, the future duke of Chandos, confirmed that he had been ‘very ill of the stone and gravel, insomuch that he was forced to defer his journey to Newmarket, a sure sign of his being bad’.316 He was ‘much better’ on the 30th, setting out for Newmarket via St Albans and arriving on 1 October.317 On 6 Oct. Hedges wrote that Godolphin was ‘still at Newmarket’, but was expected at Windsor on 11 October.318 While at Newmarket, Godolphin considered the scope of the queen’s speech. Harley was asked for his suggestions on 7 Oct., and the speech was eventually approved by cabinet on the eve of the session.319 He held his next treasury board on 16 October.320

The Session of 1704-5

Godolphin attended on the opening day of the 1704-5 session, 24 Oct., when he registered the proxy of James Butler, 2nd duke of Ormond. In about November his name appears on a list which may have been a forecast of those likely to support the Tack. Having returned to London on 5 Nov., Godolphin found ‘the hot, angry people continue obstinate in endeavouring to give all the disturbance they can’, although Harley had been ‘very industrious’ in working against them.321 On 7 Nov. Godolphin moved that something should be done to prevent the chaotic scenes that had happened on the attendance of the queen, which led to an order for the committee of privileges to consider the erection of galleries. On the following day, in the committee of the whole House Godolphin opposed the suggestion of putting into execution the orders of the House excluding spectators. On 10 Nov. he reported on what had been done in response to an order of the House of 30 Mar. about the records in Caesar’s Tower. He commented on a ‘manifestly concerted’ motion for an address to ask the queen, in negotiating the exchange of the Bishop of Zuebec and the other ecclesiastics taken in the ship La Seine the previous summer, to have regard to the poor French protestants in the galleys of Louis XIV. The French king, he pointed out, could hardly exchange the one for the other, the latter being his subjects; but he nevertheless supported the address, as a way of showing an ‘acceptable concern’ for Protestant refugees.322

On 12 Nov. 1704 Godolphin informed Harley that with Seymour `being at last come to town’, the 14th ‘is designed for the day of battle,’ when leave would be asked to bring in a bill against occasional conformity.323 The bill was indeed introduced on the 14th, and on 16 Nov. Godolphin wrote to Harley, ‘I find plainly it was in the power of the queen’s servants to have kept out the occasional bill’, although he did not ‘apprehend they can carry a tack or put a stop to the money, but when the bill is thrown out in the House of Lords, they will make use of that handle to throw dirt and stones at whom they have a mind to bespatter’. At least this was reassuring, for he had reported to Harley a week before that at a meeting on the 6th at the Fountain Tavern 150 Members had ‘resolved that the money bill should lie upon the table till the bill of occasional conformity be passed.’324 Godolphin was more worried at the prospects for the introduction of a tack by 21 Nov., when, finding Henry Boyle^‡ ‘much alarmed’, he agreed to meet the following evening at Secretary Hedges’, ‘with those gentlemen of the House of Commons, to consider if anything can be proposed to defer it in that House, and at the same time to think what course can be taken to stop it in the other’. On 25 Nov. he wrote to Harley with some detailed instructions for last minute lobbying: ‘I have sent to the queen that she may please to speak to the prince to make his servants attend. I have likewise spoken to Mr Churchill to speak to him, he answers for Mr Nicholas, but not G. Clark, not Tom Conyers, the last you are to answer for’. Churchill had promised to speak to three other Members, and Godolphin had spoken to Lowndes to speak to five Members and to all the prize commissioners. Hedges had also been drafted in, and together with Harley, was ‘to summon for tomorrow night … the gentlemen of the House of Commons, who usually meet at his house and Mr Churchill particularly should be there, where they may concert who should more be spoken to and by whom, and what is there resolved may be put in practice the next day’.325 After much lobbying, on 27 Nov. Godolphin felt able to report that the tack would be defeated, and that although those servants of the queen and the Prince that had voted for it should not be shown ‘present resentment’, nor threatened, ‘when the session is over, I shall never think any man fit to continue in his employment, who gives his vote for this tack’.326 When the bill to prevent occasional conformity, minus the tack, reached the Lords, Godolphin declared on 15 Dec. that it was, like the previous year, ‘unseasonable, but being brought up, he thought it might be made a good one’ and he voted for a second reading.327

Meanwhile, in the Lords, on 23 Nov. 1704, after Godolphin had laid before the House accounts of parliamentary grants for the previous three years, John Thompson, Baron Haversham, launched a general attack on the ministry, which included reference to the passage of the Scottish act of security.328 Godolphin’s contribution to the debate was to suggest that these criticisms were designed to prevent a ready grant of supply from the Commons, with Dartmouth later recalling that when Nottingham attacked Godolphin ‘in answer he talked nonsense very fast, which was not his usual way, either of matter or manner; but said much as to the necessity of passing the money bill’.329 Halifax then moved for an adjournment, and the House ordered a committee of the whole for the 29th. This adjournment facilitated negotiations between Godolphin and the Whigs, with John Montagu, styled Viscount Monthermer, the future 2nd duke of Montagu, acting as the intermediary. Godolphin’s ill health kept him away from the House until the 29th, at a time when his position was exposed because, under pressure from Scottish ministers, he had reluctantly advised the queen to give the royal assent to the Scottish act.330 As Francis Hare^†, the future bishop of Chichester, later put it, Godolphin defended the queen’s acceptance of the act of security on grounds of necessity, given the ‘melancholy face of things’ between the battle of Schellenberg and Blenheim: ‘the Scotch Parliament would give no money nor do any public business if the queen would not give them that act. The Scotch ministry declared they could not answer for the quiet of the kingdom an hour if the bill were refused.’331 On 28 Nov. it was expected that the debate on the following day on the state of the nation with regard to Scotland would see ‘whoever hath been an adviser in it may expect to be sorely whipped’.332 Simpson recorded Godolphin’s saying in the debate on 29 Nov. that ‘what had been done was to prevent a greater mischief’; it had happened before Marlborough’s recent victory at Blenheim ‘and the ministry were assured that an insurrection was unavoidable in Scotland (if they were not ratified in these bills of security etc.) which could not be suppressed but by recalling other troops from abroad where they could not be spared’.333 From the Scottish perspective, John Ker, duke of Roxburghe [S], observed that Godolphin not only refuted the arguments used against the Scottish legislation, ‘but declared that the passing of the act of security was absolutely necessary, and said, their meddling in our business would do but harm; whereas if they would let it alone, he believed the queen might easily bring the affairs of that country to a happy settlement’. Roxburghe added that the matter was put off to 6 Dec. by the intervention of Somers, ‘in order to get a thorough conjunction’ between Godolphin and the Whigs: during the debate first Wharton and Somers, and finally Halifax had discussions with Godolphin, and concluded a deal which resulted in the debate being adjourned.334

On 1 Dec. 1704 Godolphin wrote to Harley about plans for a meeting at Secretary Hedges’ two days later ‘about the roll of sheriffs’, to be followed by another on the 4th ‘of the gentlemen of the H. of Commons to concert what should be done next day about the Aylesbury business and about making the recruits and getting the 5,000 men’: he added that ‘it may not be amiss also to think of what shall be said about the business of Scotland upon which I find by Mr Sec. Hedges the angry gentlemen are very keen’. He ended the letter with the thought that ‘some measures should be speedily concerted to contain our present majority to the end of this Parliament which might also lay a foundation of having one of the same kind in the next’.335 When the debate on Scotland resumed in the Lords on 6 Dec. the Tories renewed their attack on Godolphin and pressed for a vote on the Scottish act of security; the Whigs countered by suggesting ‘new acts to secure England’, such as a bill to make the Scots aliens, thereby cutting off their trade, which Godolphin supported as he thought it ‘would make the Scots wiser another time’.336 When the House turned again to Scotland on 11 Dec., Godolphin supported Wharton’s proposal for the queen to issue a new commission to negotiate a Union. Godolphin survived a censure vote on 12 Dec., in committee of the whole in the Commons ‘touching the Scotch acts,’ by 209-152, ‘the Whigs and no-tackers joined against it; for if it had carried there would have been an address to the queen to know who of the English ministers had advised the act’. As James Johnston^‡ wrote, Godolphin ‘was never known to have been so uneasy’: he had now, however, ‘made up’ with the Whigs.337

On 15 Dec. 1704 Godolphin presented to the Lords an account of quotas of ships furnished by the States General the previous summer. On 5 Jan. 1705 he wrote to James Ogilvy, earl of Seafield [S], excusing himself for not being able to meet on the next day (when he was to go into the City for Marlborough’s feast) and arranging to meet him instead on the 7th, along with Marlborough.338 On 9 Jan. he was hopeful that the Irish parliament might grant revenue for three years, ‘in case our Parliament here allows them to export linen to the West Indies, which I hope they may be willing to do’.339 Godolphin attended the second sitting of the Lords after the Christmas recess on 10 January. On 11 Jan. he presented to the House the instructions given to Sir George Rooke^‡ between November 1703 and May 1704, which were referred to the committee on the state of the nation. Also, on 11 Jan. he suggested a form of words by which the queen might respond to the vote of the Commons the previous day for an address in favour of Marlborough, but this was rejected in favour of a holding reply, delivered to the House on 13 Jan., and a more considered response on the 17th.340

On 25 Jan. 1705 Godolphin wrote to Harley, `I am very much concerned and troubled at yesterday’s easy defeat’—meaning the passage of the place bill through committee in the Commons—‘and the business of this day coming so immediately upon it’, meaning the security of the kingdom from acts passed in Scotland: ‘I must own I think these bills will bring the greatest difficulties imaginable on the queen.’ Possibly hearing that the third reading of the place bill had been put off until 27 Jan., later that day he passed on Marlborough’s request for him to meet them that evening after nine, ‘that we may think a little what is next to be done.’341 On 27 Jan. St Albans registered his proxy with Godolphin. On 7 Feb. the Lords committed the place bill ‘after a great debate’, in which Godolphin ‘and the courtiers spoke against the bill’, and ‘such amendments were ordered to be made to it as ‘tis thought will hardly be complied with by the Commons.’342 When the committee sat on 10 Feb. Godolphin wrote that the Lords had ‘left out the first clause in the bill of offices, upon the uncertainty and absurdity of it, and have passed the second relating to the prize office with some considerable amendments, one of which puts the judgment of offences against that act into the courts of Westminster Hall.’343 After apologizing to Harley for failing to attend ‘your meeting tonight’, on 12 Feb., he added ‘I hope the judges will do well tomorrow, and that you will not agree to our amendments to the prize office bill’.344 On 14 Feb. the Commons disagreed to the first amendment of the Lords, whereupon the bill was adjourned and never discussed again, despite a reminder from the upper House.

Godolphin was absent for a few days in February 1705, going on the 14th with the court to Windsor and then to Woodstock.345 Upon his return, there is evidence of him attempting to manage the Aylesbury case, which threatened to disturb a quiet end to the session. On 24 Feb. Godolphin responded to Harley’s letter of that morning in which he had ‘wished the Lords might be induced to peace, I had not quite lost all hopes of easing our present difficulties, because I found a very good disposition in some of the chiefs to have been very tractable, but what has passed since’—an address in the Commons condemning the use of a writ of error in an attempt to free those who had been arrested for breach of privilege against the Commons—‘will I fear make all compromise impossible’. The queen ‘must either deny a petition of right or else she must refuse the address of the H. of Commons in the tender point of privilege’. Further, the action of the Commons that day in ordering those involved in soliciting the writs of error into custody had made the queen’s position worse. In an attempt to find a solution, Godolphin asked Harley to visit him after dinner and before the cabinet council, ‘and I will endeavour to get the duke of Marlborough to meet you there.’346 On 27 Feb. the Lords passed six resolutions on the case and Godolphin was named to consider heads for a conference regarding upon the resolutions. When he had returned from the Lords on the 27th, he wrote to Marlborough about the current position of the case, although the matter remained unresolved even after a series of conferences.347 Godolphin last attended on 12 Mar., having attended on 69 days of the session, 70 per cent of the total, and been named to 15 committees. The Parliament was prorogued two days later, and then dissolved on 5 April: elections took place in May.

The 1705 election

On 24 Mar. 1705 Godolphin wrote to Harley asking him to come to his house about 7 in the evening, one reason for the visit being the disposal of the ‘great seal’, which ‘must not lie as long as it does; I wish you would think what ought to be done in it, as soon as you can’ (the lord keeper, Sir Nathan Wright, had come under extreme pressure from the Whigs, and would be replaced in the autumn).348 In advance of the general election, a warrant was issued on 2 Apr. for Godolphin to become lord lieutenant of Cornwall.349 His son became warden of the Stannaries in May.350 As early as 1693 Nottingham had thought that Godolphin would not care to be lord lieutenant, and it seems that his appointment was designed to make a political point against supporters of the Tack.351 It did not signal a partisan review of local government under his auspices as he did not remodel the bench, no commission being issued between July 1705 and July 1709, and it was not until 1 May 1706 that a warrant was issued to him for a new lieutenancy commission.352 No treasury board was held between 7 and 25 Apr. and by 12 Apr. 1705 Godolphin was at Newmarket again. He was still there on the 20th.353 On 24 Apr. Simpson reported that ‘the queen was entertained and complimented by the University of Cambridge and it is a great question whether her interest is sufficient to make Mr Godolphin [Francis Godolphin, later 2nd earl of Godolphin, Godolphin’s son] a Parliament-man there’. Simpson added that ‘people of all sides are angry at my lord treasurer but I suppose he had rather everybody were angry than that anybody should have him in their power.’354 On 27 Apr., the chancellor of the university, Somerset, thought ‘there is no dispute’ that Francis Godolphin would be chosen for the university.355 This turned out to an over-optimistic: Arthur Annesley, the future 5th earl of Anglesey, was returned with Dixie Windsor^‡, defeating Godolphin junior and Sir Isaac Newton^‡. His father pronounced it ‘no small mortification to me’, and on 22 May Halifax found Godolphin still ‘truly moved at the behaviour of the University‘.356

Godolphin was concerned to see that public approbation of ‘Tackers’ did not in any way aid their re-election to Parliament; thus on 2 May 1705 he suggested to Harley that the promotion of several Tackers to be serjeants-at-law should be put off until the term following the election.357 Given the triumph of Hugh Boscawen^†, the future Viscount Falmouth, in Cornwall, there was even talk of Francis Godolphin being drafted in to challenge Seymour at Exeter, although wiser counsels prevailed.358 Godolphin was also concerned to bring in other Members who would prove useful in managing government business in the Commons: Secretary Hedges was accommodated by Godolphin at West Looe, courtesy of Bishop Trelawny.359 Godolphin may have more directly assisted in the election of Major-General Maine in 1705 by paying his election expenses.360 However, he was discerning in his choice of whom to back, and a master of prevarication and dissimulation if necessary: Jack Howe’s hopes of a seat on the Boscawen interest were seemingly encouraged, but quietly allowed to drop.361 Godolphin was also engaged at Woodstock in support of Marlborough’s nominee, William Cadogan^†, the future Earl Cadogan, though it proved a difficult contest: Godolphin wrote on 11 May that the ‘battle at Woodstock vexes me very much, what good will it do us to have Lord Marlborough beat the French abroad if the French at home must beat him’.362 On elections, more generally, James Johnston recorded Godolphin noting that the Triennial Act had ‘spoiled all affairs in England, as they find, he says, by experience’.363

The results of the elections were evenly balanced. Given that, and Godolphin’s view of the Tories following the ‘tack’, it was essential that the Whigs be brought into a closer relationship with the ministry, and in order to ensure that, to replace Lord Keeper Wright with the Junto Whig, William Cowper, later Baron and then Earl Cowper. Johnston thought in July, however, that Godolphin ‘begins to neglect 6 [the Whigs] here, and they grow very mutinous’.364 Godolphin’s neglect arose from the trouble he had in getting the queen to agree both to Cowper, and to Sunderland’s appointment as envoy extraordinary to Vienna.365 During the summer, Godolphin often took refuge at Windsor, where he received visits such as one on 20 June 1705 from James Douglas, 2nd duke of Queensberry [S], who would become his closest political ally in Scotland.366 In order to facilitate the management of the new House of Commons, at the end of July Harley sent out letters inviting ‘about 30 of the principal officers of the Crown’ to a meeting at the office of ‘Mr Boyle’. Godolphin addressed those assembled ‘in a warm speech’, that ‘there was a party that nothing would satisfy but wresting the administration out of the queen’s hands, vizt, the tackers’, and recommending John Smith for the Speakership, ‘in a very obliging manner as to himself, and in very pressing terms for the queen’s and public’s service’: Smith would be the court candidate with Whig support for the Speakership in 1705, rather than a party nominee endorsed by the court.367 As an extra precaution, by the end of August Godolphin was pressing Marlborough to be in England two weeks before the start of the parliamentary session.368

In August 1705 the publication of Dr James Drake’s The Memorial of the Church of England caused Godolphin some anguish as it pictured him as an enemy of the Anglican establishment.369 Archbishop Sharp recorded that ‘he said he hoped in his distress he might have recourse to me, or words to that effect. He was often, as I thought, in great concern, and very near weeping’.370 In the event, the pamphlet was condemned to be burnt in September by a grand jury of Middlesex as ‘a false, scandalous, and traitorous libel’.371 From 27 Aug. to 12 Sept. 1705 no treasury board was held and at the end of August Godolphin attended the queen at Winchester.372 Parliament was not far from his mind, though, and on 3 Sept. he wrote to Harley concerning the latter’s intentions of speaking ‘fully and particularly’ to Somers and Halifax, and the ‘unreasonable things’ Harley expected them to insist upon. Godolphin was happy to find the proposed Speaker, Smith, ‘very reasonable and very moderate’.373 On 19 Sept. Godolphin was in London attending to yet more minutiae of parliamentary management, asking the duchess of Marlborough to write to Lady Grandison ‘in order to give her son’, John Fitzgerald Villiers, 5th Viscount Grandison [I], some ‘good advice as to his carriage in the House of Commons’, though it was to no avail as the House decided against his double return for Old Sarum in December.374

On 24 Sept. 1705 Godolphin went from Windsor to Woodstock, intending to go on to Newmarket on the 26th for his pre-sessional entertainment.375 No treasury board was held between 25 Sept. and 10 October.376 He had arrived in Newmarket by 27 Sept. and on the 30th he wrote to Harley about the ‘thousand difficulties’ he foresaw about Parliament. He was still in Newmarket on 4 Oct., but expected to be at St Albans on the 8th and arriving back in London on the 9th.377 Marlborough thought that although Rochester and Bromley would be ‘as malicious as they can’, any attack on Godolphin personally would ‘not find one half of their party stick to them’.378 Johnston noted on 2 Oct. that Godolphin ‘towards the meeting of the Parliament, courts 37 [Whigs] and will do everything in 74 [Scotland] to please, or will delay everything till he be at more liberty; as for instance till 26 [Marlborough] come, he says, you cannot have a general’.379

Throughout the summer, Godolphin had continued to press the claims of Cowper to succeed Wright. He finally prevailed in October, thereby fulfilling his part of the deal in which the Junto had rescued him over the Scottish act of security.380 On 10 Oct. 1705 Godolphin visited Cowper and on the 11th met Cowper again to confirm the conditions upon which he was made lord keeper, and, after Godolphin had showed Cowper and Halifax a letter from the queen to Marlborough favourable to the Whigs, the two men went to Kensington to see her.381 Following Cowper’s appointment, Wharton ‘jestingly’ told Godolphin that ‘he was now got into the net and must either make his way through, or else he might be in danger of being hanged in’t’.382 This may explain why on the matter of Cowper’s appointment Simpson thought Godolphin ‘very uneasy as I believe, but it seems there is a necessity of gratifying the party in everything’.383 As Cowper later put it himself, ‘Marlborough and Godolphin by interest of [the] late duke of Montagu applied to some of the principal lords under William and who were Whigs to carry on the queen’s business in Parliament in return for offices and great seal put into hands of Mr Cowper’.384 Whatever Godolphin’s misgivings they did not prevent a public demonstration of his agreement with the Whigs, for when he accompanied Cowper into Westminster Hall on his first day as keeper on 23 Oct., ‘the conversation between them appeared very gay and entertaining which was no small mortification to the Tories.’385

The session of 1705-6

As the parliamentary session grew closer, Godolphin devoted more time to his scheme of management. He wrote to John Holles, duke of Newcastle, on 11 Oct. 1705, ‘this day fortnight being appointed for the meeting of Parliament, you will give me leave to put you in mind that your grace’s assistance will be very necessary, as in other particulars so in choice of a Speaker’.386 On 13 Oct. he sent Harley ‘the list of the Cornish Members which I received from Mr Boscawen’ (Hugh Boscawen^‡, Godolphin’s nephew).387 After Parliament sat, Godolphin continued to monitor election cases in the Commons. He helped to manage the campaign which saw Henry Killigrew^‡ unseat John Gape^‡ at St Albans in November.388 On 19 Nov. he wrote to Harley, having been informed that some of his friends, such as Henry Paget, the future earl of Uxbridge, and the Foleys, were likely to vote for Sir John Garrard^‡ in the Amersham election case: ‘there is not a more perverse man against us in the whole House and for my Lord Cheyne [William^‡] I have power to assure he is quite out of the case, and there won’t be the least word said against his election by the counsel or any of the witnesses.’389 He complained about the failure to unseat the Tacker, James Winstanley^‡ at Leicester, on 8 Feb. 1706, the House overturning the committee’s resolution: ‘I must needs say I think it is a great contre-temps, to fall out among ourselves, when all our strength united is not sufficient to defeat the whimsical clause’, which he felt ‘is a very weak and foolish behaviour of those who are in office to say no more’.390 Godolphin had no success either in overturning the Bewdley election, where his efforts in favour of Hon. Henry Herbert, the future 2nd Baron Herbert of Chirbury, whom Peter Wentworth actually termed a ‘lord treasurer’s whig’, were counterbalanced by the efforts of Harley and his Foley allies on behalf of their relative, Salwey Winnington^‡.391

Godolphin attended the opening of the new Parliament on 25 Oct. 1705, asking Harley’s leave after ‘the hurry and anxiety of this day’ to ‘put you in mind that the draught of the speech must not be brought tomorrow to the Cabinet Council in my hand, and besides the amendment you may have made to it, there are some, which, upon reflexion, I think myself, more proper to be made’. Further, the winning margin on the speakership had not been ‘so great, but that it will concern the court not to be either negligent or imprudent, any false step will easily spoil this session’, and although ‘so many of our friends have played the fool… unless we have a mind to so too, it must not be resented’.392 After 31 Oct. he did not attend again until 12 November. At the cabinet on 4 Nov., Godolphin passed to Cowper ‘a note across the table, desiring me to use my interest with my friends in the Commons House, to stop the bill against officers, and particularly to deal with’ Peter King^†, the future Baron King, country Whig and leading advocate of the place clause and its inclusion in the regency bill.393 Godolphin obtained Cowper’s agreement, but was then worried that this would be jeopardized by a defeat in the election for the chair of the Commons’ committee of privileges and elections. As he noted on 6 Nov., ‘it will be very necessary to take a little pains with our friends, not to mistake their interest tomorrow about the chairman of the committee of elections’: he worried about the impact of a defeat for the court candidate Spencer Compton^†, the future earl of Wilmington, by Sir Gilbert Dolben^‡, on Cowper’s ability to exercise any persuasion over King and others like him.394 Compton was, however, elected on 7 November.

Godolphin then faced a problem with the chairmanship of the committee of ways and means, the key position in managing supply legislation through the House. From December 1699 this had been John Conyers^‡, and Godolphin must have acquiesced in his continuance when he returned to the treasury in 1700. Conyers, though, voted against the court in the contest for the chair of the committee of elections on 7 Nov., raising fears that the Whigs would not back his re-election. As Godolphin wrote to Harley on 8 Nov., ‘I am sorry to hear, Mr Conyers played the fool last night, but I could wish that might not be so resented as to contest against his coming into the money chair tomorrow, since his being there will, in my opinion, make the session a month shorter than else it will be’.395 On the 9th, Godolphin added: ‘I hope there will be no great difficulty today in fixing Mr Conyers in his throne tho’ at the same time his behaviour shows we ought not to have taken such pains in the matter but for [our] own sakes’.396 As Simpson reported on 12 Nov., ‘there was much ado to get Mr Conyers into the money chair because he is under their displeasure though my lord treasurer and Mr Lowndes had a great mind to him’.397 Conyers triumphed owing to the lobbying campaign on his behalf, conducted by Godolphin, who wrote to Bishop Burnet on 10 Nov. that he had informed the queen of ‘what readiness both your Lordship and Mr [Robert] Dormer^‡ had both shown in putting an end to the contest about the chair of supply, which would perhaps have been very inconvenient’.398 Dormer’s agreement to be absent from the vote in return for the promise of promotion to the bench seems to have secured Conyers’ re-election.399

In the Lords, Nottingham moved on 12 Nov. 1705 to address the queen to lay before the House the proceedings of the Scottish Parliament on the succession and union. There was a long debate over whether it should encompass only the Acts of Parliament, or the whole proceedings: Godolphin, who, Cowper wrote in his diary ‘was most concerned in what passed in the Parliament there’, proposed the words used in the address, which were general and did not even mention the Scottish Parliament.400 Godolphin only had two days notice of Haversham’s intended motion on 15 Nov. 1705 for an address asking the queen to invite the electress of Hanover to England. Tactically this was designed to damn Godolphin and Marlborough in the eyes of the queen (if they supported it) or of Hanover (if they did not). On the 13th Godolphin wrote to Newcastle ‘to prepare ourselves with some defences against my Lord Haversham’s great guns’. To that end he wanted Newcastle to ask Charles Powlett, 2nd duke of Bolton, ‘whose house lies in your way and is convenient for this purpose, to desire his grace to send to such Lords as you and he shall think proper, to meet you there tomorrow morning before you go to the House’, to settle how to approach the question.401 Having concerted his response with the Whigs, Godolphin successfully managed to secure an amendment of the motion so that it would instead require the appointment of a day to consider the better security of the Protestant succession, especially during the interim after the death of the queen and the arrival in the country of her heir.402 Burnet later claimed to have proposed the motion, with Godolphin seconding it.403 The House consequently considered the issue in committee of the whole on 19 Nov.: Wharton proposed several heads for a regency bill, to ensure the orderly transition to the heir; Godolphin moved for the judges to be called, and then intervened to ensure that particular lords justices should be named in the bill ‘for order’s sake’.404 Perhaps in preparation for the debate, on 17 Nov. Somerset registered his proxy with Godolphin.

Debate on the state of the nation continued in the committee of the whole on 22 Nov. 1705, with Nottingham criticizing the disappointing campaign of the last summer. It occasioned a four hour debate, chiefly between Nottingham and Godolphin, before the committee rejected the motion, in favour of one promoting good relations between the allies.405 On 24 Nov. Godolphin told Harley that the letters brought by James Stanhope^†, the future earl of Stanhope, from the king of Spain and the earl of Peterborough should be communicated to Parliament, and that ‘I believe the best way of doing it will be by the queen from the throne but then it cannot be done till Tuesday morning, the House of Lords being adjourned to that time.’ He asked Harley to come to meet him to discuss it.406 The letters were presented to the House on the 27th. On 26 Nov. Henry Grey, 12th earl (later duke) of Kent, registered his proxy with Godolphin. When leave was sought on 28 Nov to bring in an appeal (that of John Doulbin and his wife Beata) after the time had elapsed for hearing it, Godolphin resisted various expedients suggested for dealing with it, successfully moving that it might be considered on 1 Dec. when some Lords might be better informed on the issues.407 He also reported to the House that the queen had agreed to print the letters laid before the House on the conquest of Catalonia, and that she would receive the address of both Houses about the allies the following afternoon.

On 6 Dec. 1705 Godolphin intervened in the debate on the ‘Church in danger’ to prevent it becoming diverted by Archbishop Sharp’s motion to ask the opinion of the judges on how the law stood in relation to dissenting schools and seminaries. Godolphin pointed out that ‘the order of the day determines what is the main question and that is to take place of any incidental question. The main question is whether the Church be in danger from her majesty’s administration’.408 The Tories would be forced to contradict the queen, who had declared that the Church was not in danger. Godolphin was then named to a committee to prepare for communicating the resolution to the lower House for their concurrence, and to manage the succeeding conferences. When the Commons debated joining in with the Lords resolution that the Church was not in danger on 8 Dec., William Bromley attacked Godolphin, claiming that he had signed the warrant for sending the bishops to the Tower in 1688, and that he had been named ‘in all the papers of plots etc. since the Revolution’.409 Tory tempers had not cooled by 19 Dec. when, during the debate in the Commons on the regency bill, Charles Caesar^‡, attacked Godolphin ‘in a long tedious speech of railing’, for which he was sent to the Tower.410 On that day Godolphin wrote to Harley of his agreement that ‘the Commons should adjourn rather than be put to find business for themselves’, and to that end he sent him a ‘draft of a speech’ for his amendment at his leisure.411 Both Houses adjourned on 21 December.

On 5 Jan. 1706 Godolphin visited Halifax, who was engaged in the middle of a management meeting with the Speaker and other, presumably Whig, Members in preparation for the resumption of business after the recess.412 On the following day he attended a dinner with Harley, Halifax and others designed to reconcile Harley with Halifax and Somers.413 On 7 Jan. Simpson reported that Godolphin thought ‘the Whigs were stronger by 20 since the House sat by their attending the committee of elections’, and that ‘the daily injuries and provocations he receives from the Tories here have made him as is believed a perfect Whig’.414 Godolphin attended on the first day following the Christmas recess, 8 January. On 21 Jan. Nicolson implied that Godolphin had been asked to prevent progress on the bill sent up from the Commons on sheriffs’ accounts: it was indeed dropped.

The major preoccupation over January and February was the progress of the regency bill, and the attempt by the ‘whimsical’ whigs to insert a clause excluding officer holders from the Commons. On 22 Jan. 1706 Godolphin wrote to Harley, ‘I don’t hear when they intend to proceed upon the place bill, but my thought is that the sooner it comes the better’, while the previous day’s committee of the whole on the regency bill was fresh in Members’ minds: ‘I am apt to think gentlemen will be more easy than if you give them time to harden one another’.415 It was not a place bill that was eventually proceeded with: on 25 Jan., Godolphin wrote again following the completion of the report stage of the regency bill the previous night when the so-called ‘whimsical clause’, which would have disqualified all but about 40 named office-holders from the Commons after the Queen’s death, had been added to the bill. ‘You fought it so stoutly last night, and brought it so near’, he told Harley, ‘that I hope the House of Lords will be encouraged to ruffle the clause pretty handsomely, before they meet you upon it, in the painted chamber’. The Lords considered the Commons’ amendments on 29 Jan., but adjourned the debate on the whimsical clause. On 30 Jan. Godolphin told Harley that he hoped ‘we shall yet be masters of this bill in the House of Lords’. The Lords amended the clause on 31st, but the Commons rejected their amendments on 4 February. On 7 Feb. Godolphin was named to manage the resultant conference, and afterwards to draw up reasons for the Lords adhering to their amendments and the subsequent conference on 11 February. On 15 Feb. he wrote to Harley, ‘I have had this morning an account of a long tedious meeting betwixt the heads of the whimsicals and some lords of our House’, in which a compromise was thrashed out, with specific offices excluded from the Commons, rather than a blanket exclusion with certain exceptions. The Lords told them they might exclude negatively whatever they would in the next reign provided they would not disturb the queen and the present reign’, and ‘after much wrangling’, the two sides came to an agreement. Godolphin went on to ask that Harley, Boyle and Hedges take `as much pains as you can to agree this matter today, for nothing will be so uneasy to the queen as losing this bill’.416 The Commons postponed consideration of the crucial clause until the 18th, when amendments including the exclusion of several offices including the prize office were passed, but the key demand of the whimsicals lost.417 Godolphin was then named to the resultant conference on 19 February. On the 15th Godolphin had sent to Harley a draft of the queen’s speech to be read when royal assent was given to the supply bills for ‘your correction’, with alternative wording depending on whether the regency bill had been agreed: if it had, ‘all the bills may pass together upon Monday’; if it had not, ‘the money bills may pass tomorrow’. He ended with the heartfelt observation that ‘we live the life of galley slaves.’418 Since the regency bill was then still in the balance, the money bills, including the annuities bill which helped to shift the government’s debt from the short-term to the long-term, were given royal assent on 16 Feb., when the queen made a short speech.419

On 21 Feb. in the Lords, Godolphin (with Wharton, Halifax and Marlborough) opposed Lord Rochester’s motion (supported by Somers and Nottingham) to dispense with the standing order allowing 14 days after the commitment of a private bill.420 After 25 Feb. he did not attend until 4-5 Mar., and then he was absent until the last two days of the session on 18-19 March. In the interim he was involved in facilitating the loan to the Emperor through a commission authorizing trustees to collect contributions. He subscribed £5,000 himself, even though to do so he was ‘obliged to sell my stock in the Bank’ held under the name of Mr Hall.421 He retained some stock under his own name, a printed list from 1710 showing that he had an investment of over £4,000.422 On 10 Mar. he told Harley that ‘I go to Newmarket tomorrow for four or five days and I had a mind to have shown you a draught of a speech for the queen to make at the close of the session, which I shall now leave in the duke of Marlborough’s hands for your correction’. No treasury board was held between 6-18 Mar., and Godolphin wrote from Newmarket on 14 Mar. acknowledging Harley’s amendments to the speech and expressing the hope that the Commons would ‘take some effectual resolution about manning the fleet, since that matter does but too plainly want their immediate care’.423 He added that he expected to be in London on 16 March.424 On 18 Mar. he was ordered to attend the queen with their address concerning the Cotton Library. By the end of the session on the 19th, he had attended on 56 days of the session, 59 per cent of the total and been named to 20 committees.

By the end of the session, the germ of future disagreement between Godolphin and Harley can be discerned. On 22 Mar. 1706 Godolphin replied to a letter from Harley concerning political strategy: with 190 Tories, 160 Whigs and 100 ‘queen’s servants’, Godolphin thought ‘our business is to get as many [as] we can from the 190, without doing anything to lose one of the 160’. The behaviour of the Tories in the previous session had ‘shown as much inveteracy and as little sense as was possible’, and even if some of them could be separated from their fellows they would be unreliable. Any move towards them would result in a loss of Whig support.425 Such matters were of practical import as ministerial changes were expected. On 30 Mar. Ralph Bridges reported the queen’s imminent return from Windsor, ‘where the two great ministers have accompanied her majesty these holidays, in order, as they say, to determine the changes in the ministry so long discoursed of, which are also to be accompanied with several new honours and all they say in favour of the Whig party.’426 On 2 Apr. Simpson believed that ‘Godolphin ‘has taken pains with the Whigs to reconcile them to him, which was easier to do because the solicitor [Harcourt] joined with them in the question about places and some other great points and now they talk of making him attorney’.427 No treasury board was held between 30 Mar. and 12 Apr., Godolphin paying a second visit to Newmarket, and asking ask Harley on 4 Apr. to ‘let me know precisely when you think the duke of Marlborough will go, because my coming or stay here depends upon the certainty of it’.428 When nothing happened Godolphin evinced some concern on 16 Apr. over the pressure he was coming under from Somers ‘and his friends’ for ministerial changes, mainly the inclusion of Sunderland at the expense of Harley, ‘and I am sorry to say they are not all so reasonable as is certainly very necessary, for their own sakes as well as for everybody else’. No doubt, too, he had to deal with Sarah’s advocacy of Whig claims, saying on 19 Apr. that the main reason for his trip to Windsor was ‘to let her see the unreasonableness of her friends in some particulars’. Godolphin’s concerns were magnified by the knowledge that the queen would resist Junto demands for office: the ‘matter goes so much uphill with her, that she will hate one for endeavouring to persuade her to half of what is really necessary for her own good’.429

On 23 Apr. 1706 Godolphin recorded that ‘we gave yesterday the first proposal for a union to the commissioners of Scotland’.430 On 30 Apr. Simpson reported that Godolphin had ‘returned late from meeting with union commissioners ‘and said that by endeavouring to unite others he should break himself. If we were in earnest for a union I don’t think our great man would take so much pains at conferences I am afraid all is but grimace.’431 Godolphin’s main political concern over the Union negotiations was to ensure that the Junto did not dominate the Scottish representation in the new legislature. He spoke on 12 June at a meeting of the commissioners on the proposed representation of the Scots in the Commons.432 Financially, one of his major tasks was to negotiate the Equivalent (compensation for Scotland having taken on the debts of England incurred before the Union), which was agreed in July.433 He was also involved in lobbying Scottish politicians, such Roxburghe, to support the Union, as well as nagging his English counterparts, such as Newcastle, to make the effort to be present to sign the treaty. 434 The the Treaty of Union was completed on 22 July, though Godolphin was well aware that the Tories would oppose it in Parliament and already ‘it begins to be preached up and down that the Church is in danger from this Union.’ To which he coupled the complaint that ‘there’s no end of … the folly of the other [the Whigs] in affecting to bring in none but their own creatures and not making the bottom broad enough to be durable’.435 The Scots had their uses, however, as Johnston revealed on 21 Sept.: the Whigs were upset that the Scottish commissioners had ‘betrayed’ to Godolphin what passed between them, Godolphin owning that ‘he never knew so much of 32 [the Whig Lords’] disposition with respects to himself, as he has done since 67 [the treaty].436

The prospect of taking Ostend in May 1706, and with it a direct link into the markets of the Spanish Netherlands, saw Godolphin keen to ensure that the possibilities for trade were enhanced by executive action and then parliamentary statute, with all laws dealing with the prohibition of lace being lifted in the following session. In early June Godolphin had to deal with a threat from Ormond to quit his Irish lieutenancy, an inconvenience given the pretensions of Wharton to the post. Also in June he expressed his concern at the influence of George Churchill^‡, Marlborough’s Tory-inclined brother, on Prince George, for although Churchill ‘had contributed to make some things easy’, the ‘uneasiness’ shown at times by the Prince was attributed to Churchill. On 5 Aug. Godolphin went ‘into Wiltshire for three or four days to see my horses’ at his stables at Tilshead.437

Godolphin accepted the implications of his analysis that the Junto should be compensated for its political support, recognizing that Sunderland should be accommodated in the ministry. During the summer of 1706 he attempted to persuade the queen of the efficacy of such an appointment.438 He utilized Marlborough’s influence to convince her, but she remained obdurate in her refusal to remove Hedges in favour of Sunderland, and it seems that Godolphin even offered to resign, on or about 20 August. In response the queen offered only to bring Sunderland into the cabinet, with a pension, until a post became vacant, while noting that ‘it is impossible to be more mortified than I am to see my lord treasurer in such uneasiness, and his leaving my service is a thought I cannot bear and I hope in God he will put all such out of his own mind.’439

On 27 Aug. Godolphin went to visit Wharton at Winchendon, where he was expected to stay until the 31st.440 However, on the 29th he was already at St Albans. Almost immediately he was drawn into mediating between Sarah and the queen over one of the duchess’s more trenchant letters on behalf of Sunderland, by explaining that the queen had misread Sarah’s atrocious handwriting, reading ‘notion’ for ‘nation’.441 On 30 Aug. the queen succinctly summed up Godolphin’s position: ‘you press the bringing Lord Sun[derland] into business that there may be one of that party in a post of trust, to help carry on the business this winter, and you think if this is not complied with, they will not be hearty in pursuing any service in the Parliament’.442 Marlborough thought that Godolphin’s ‘quitting’ was ‘wholly impossible’, pointing out ‘without flattery’ that ‘his reputation is so great in all courts as well as at home, that such a step would go a great way with Holland in particular, to make their peace with France, which at this time must be fatal to the liberties of Europe’.443 Godolphin’s position was made worse by his unwillingness to hide behind the queen’s intransigence in his dealings with the Whigs, who ‘do really not see the difficulties as they are and one cannot go about to show them those difficulties without too much exposing 83 [queen]’.444 Nor, as Godolphin told Sarah on the 14 Sept, could he find a way of making the queen ‘sensible’ of her ‘mistakes’. When the queen rebuffed a further attempt, he responded on 13 Sept.: ‘it gives me all the grief and despair imaginable to find that your majesty shows inclination to have me continue in your service, and yet will make it impossible for me ... I cannot struggle against the difficulties of your majesty’s business and against yourself at the same time’. He ended pathetically, ‘I have worn out my health, and, almost, my life, in the service of the crown.’445

After holding a treasury board on 23 Sept. 1706, the next day Godolphin set out from Windsor for Woodstock, from where on 25 Sept. he wrote to Harley, enclosing a letter for the queen, in which he again pressed for ministerial changes: ‘I propose nothing but what is necessary for carrying on your majesty’s business, especially in this next winter, which is like to be the most critical of your whole reign’, he had written, plaintively: ‘I doubt whether all we can do will be able to keep off the peace this winter’.446 From Woodstock, Godolphin went to Newmarket, via St Albans, arriving on 30 September. He was still there on the 9 Oct., arriving back at St James’s on the 12th. The plan now was to delay the parliamentary session to allow for the completion of the Union.447

The sessions of 1706-7

In the run-up to the session, Godolphin turned his mind to more specific issues of parliamentary management. He was interested in the possibility of a treasury nominee filling the Devizes seat of John Methuen, who had died in July. In October he used Simpson to dissuade Methuen’s son, Paul Methuen^‡, currently serving as ambassador in Portugal, from standing in the seat, and to persuade him to use his interest to secure the election of someone else who ‘might be useful to the government during your absence and quit it to you at the next election’.448 The broad difference of opinion between Godolphin and Harley on political strategy continued in the run-up to the session. On 10 Oct. Godolphin thanked Harley for his thoughts on the subject, ‘though I differ in opinion’. He wrote that in the last session, there had been ‘an averseness at bottom’ to do anything that was thought to advantage the Whigs, though ‘without them, and their being entire, the queen cannot be served’. Now, he worried, the Whigs would be made ‘jealous and uneasy, and at best but passive. The consequence of which is that the majority will be against us upon every occasion of consequence’.449

By the end of October 1706 Godolphin was anxious for Marlborough’s return ‘for several things which ought necessarily to be done before the Parliament. And your being here before their sitting down, must needs have a very great influence toward hastening their preparation for next year’.450 On 12 Nov. Johnston thought that Godolphin and the Whig Lords ‘having concerted matters as to their own Parliament, seem more one than ever’.451 On 15 Nov. Godolphin wrote to Harley that he did not think the Scots would ‘proceed upon the Union till they have perfected their act for security of their church’: in the meantime, he suggested ‘the pretext of the floods’ could be used for putting off the meeting of Parliament.452 On 19 Nov. Godolphin was ‘so taken up’ with Marlborough and two meetings of the council that he could not see Sir David Nairne about Scottish affairs.453 Before the session began, Godolphin and Marlborough finally persuaded Harley of the need for the appointment of Sunderland, rather than Harley’s alternative scheme, at a conference between the three men taking place on 20 November.454 At last the impasse was solved by the resignation of Hedges and the appointment of Sunderland on 3 Dec., the opening day in the 1706-7 session.

In a list of promotions in the peerage in Godolphin’s hand on 29 Nov. 1706, Harley had inserted Godolphin’s advancement to an earldom.455 On 6 Dec. Harley sent to Godolphin’s son a draft by Erasmus Lewis of a preamble for his father’s patent, ‘my Lord’s great modesty made me afraid of displeasing him, therefore you will find only matter of fact mentioned without any embellishment: your great judgment in the language as well as the interest you have in it, makes me desirous to have it submitted to your correction’.456 In 1711 Peter Wentworth recalled that Lewis had drawn up Godolphin’s patent, which he had then given to Hare, ‘and after they had both modelled it, my Lord had the modesty to strike out above half, for as ‘twas to be supposed what the queen says, he thought ‘twas too many compliments for her to make to anybody’.457 Godolphin was introduced into the Lords as earl of Godolphin on 30 Dec. by Scroop Egerton, 4th earl of Bridgwater, and Charles Montagu, 4th earl Manchester. He attended on the first day after the recess, 7 Jan. 1707, and then only on 14 Jan. until 15 Feb., possibly in part due to ill-health for on 4 Feb. Johnston referred to him having been ill.458 On the 14th Kent registered his proxy with Godolphin, who on that day spoke against ‘Nottingham’s motion for the articles of the Union’, which ‘was quashed by [the] lord treasurer without a question’.459 According to Luttrell, Godolphin said that ‘the articles were near finished in Scotland, after which would be soon brought before the Parliament here’, and after being supported by Wharton, Somers and others, the matter dropped.460 On 17 Jan. Johnston thought that the Whigs had done so much for Godolphin that he seemed to be entirely for the Union.461 On 28 Jan. the Articles of Union were read in the Lords, along with the Scottish Act ratifying it, and the Scottish Act to protect the position of the Scottish church. Godolphin informed Harley that a bill for the security of the Church of England had been ordered by the House of Lords that day, and had been ‘brought in with very good intentions and chiefly to hinder the House of Commons from beginning with that matter. I am to see it tomorrow night. I think the shorter and plainer it is the better; but something of that nature seems unavoidable the Scots having done it’.462 On 29 Jan. Godolphin was present at a meeting at Sunderland’s with John Moore, bishop of Norwich, Charles Townshend, 2nd Viscount Townshend, the Marlborough, Wharton, Orford, and Halifax to consider the bill. They agreed the text, and made arrangements for its passage.463 On 15 Feb., the House took into consideration the articles of Union in a committee of the whole, where Godolphin was one of those against allowing the amendment of any of the articles.464

On 1 Mar. 1707 Nicolson recorded that Godolphin had spoken in favour of Nicholas Barnewall, 3rd Viscount Barnewall of Kingsland [I], during the debate upon his appeal, noting that Kingsland had married the duchess of Marlborough’s niece, Mary Hamilton, the daughter of the countess of Tyrconnell. Godolphin was not present on 8 Mar., preferring to attend at St James’s where Nicolson preached a sermon to commemorate the queen’s accession.465 On 4 Apr. Godolphin was confident that the session would end with the Whigs having ‘contributed to make the sessions so easy and so much to her majesty’s advantage’.466 He last attended on the final day, 8 Apr., when he was ordered to lay before the queen the report of a Lords committee on the keeping of records. He had been present on 38 days of the session, 44 per cent of the total, and had been named to three committees. Parliament was only prorogued until 14 Apr. because of ‘a wrangle betwixt the Lords and Commons’ over a bill concerning the drawbacks issue, the likelihood of customs fraud on goods transported between England and Scotland, and the desire to pass corrective legislation before the date the Union came into effect, 1 May.467 On 10 Apr. Godolphin wrote to Harley, ‘I think the prorogation of the Parliament puts us under very great difficulties, and some resolution must be taken quickly how to get out of them as well as we can.’ He also asked him to bring with him a copy of the queen’s speech.468 On 11 Apr. Godolphin wrote to Harley that ‘all the Scots will pour in upon us next week, I wish before they come we could pour out the English, and that I might go Monday to Newmarket’.469 No treasury board was held between 12-22 Apr. and Godolphin duly went to Newmarket on the 14th, for four or five days.470 Godolphin attended the brief session on 3 out of the six days, 21, 23 and 24 April.

The short April 1707 session failed to resolve the problem of fraud associated with the Union, which continued to exercise Godolphin. John Erskine, 22rd earl of Mar, reported on 29 July 1707 that Godolphin had said that favour would be shown to the Scottish merchants ‘which was not contrary to the opinion of the queen’s counsel learned, and further he nor none of the queen’s servants durst advise her majesty to do without hazarding their heads.’471 The Union also presented Godolphin with the problem of integrating the two systems of government, and the political problem of managing the expectations of Scottish politicians.472 On 2 May 1707 he was summoned to a meeting with Sunderland, Cowper, Pembroke ‘and some of the Scotch Lords to consider the constitution of the Privy Council’; on 14 May he was ‘endeavouring to fix the customs house officers for Scotland’.473 At the end of the month, Godolphin quarrelled with Kent ‘about the two Scotch dukes’ created before 1 May, ‘contrary to a promise made by the treasurer and which the marquess thinks to be a slur upon the English Peerage’. There had been, it was said, ‘high words about this betwixt them’, ‘they say even in the queen’s presence.’474 There was also the imminent session of the Irish parliament to consider, plus the military situation in Spain following the defeat at Almanza, and planning for the descent upon Toulon.475 The affairs of the East India Companies also came under the purview of the lord treasurer. Between February 1707 and September 1708 he was often called on to facilitate negotiations between the two companies, or to deal with the detrimental effect of their currency transactions on the remittance of funds for the payment of troops in Flanders.476 After Godolphin’s mediation, letters patent were issued of the agreement uniting the two companies in September.477

Ecclesiastical matters also intruded into Godolphin’s consciousness. The death of Peter Mews, bishop of Winchester, in November 1706 provided Godolphin with the opportunity to fulfil promises to his fellow Cornishman, Bishop Trelawny of Exeter, for advancement in the Church, in return for his electoral interest.478 However, Trelawny was not popular with the Whigs and there was competition for the vacant see from Burnet, and so Trelawny had to wait for his long promised the promotion.479 In February 1707, the death of William Jane, the regius professor of divinity at Oxford, saw Godolphin, Marlborough and the Whigs espousing the claims of John Potter^†, the future archbishop of Canterbury, but his promotion was put on hold because the queen preferred George Smalridge, the future bishop of Bristol.480 In February, following the death of Nicholas Stratford, bishop of Chester, the Whigs put together a compromise scheme whereby Samuel Freeman, dean of Peterborough would succeed Stratford; White Kennet^†, the future bishop of Peterborough, would succeed Freeman and Charles Trimnell, the future bishop of Norwich, would replace Trelawny.481 Unfortunately, the queen had already promised the vacant see of Exeter to Offspring Blackall, who would eventually become its bishop, and that of Chester to Sir William Dawes, who would also succeed there. She refused to break her word.482 The Junto interpreted the subsequent indecision as a sign of Godolphin’s bad faith.483 This was not helped by the fact that within a few days of the death of Simon Patrick, bishop of Ely, at the end of May, he was replaced by Bishop Moore of Norwich; Trelawny was translated to Winchester on 7 June; and later in June Godolphin secured the deanery of St Paul’s for his brother, Henry.484 As early as June 1707 Godolphin was hoping to leave the bishoprics of Chester, Exeter and Norwich vacant until Marlborough’s return, trusting that ‘before winter things will jumble into a better posture’.485 In the event, the issue was resolved in January 1708 when the queen kept her promise to Blackall and Dawes, Trimnell got Norwich, and Potter the chair of divinity.

By the end of June 1707 Godolphin feared a difficult winter in Parliament, as the queen’s ‘proceedings in some things will give 89 [Whigs] a handle to be uneasy and to tear everything in pieces if they can’t have their own terms’. Further, Harley hated Somers, Sunderland and Wharton so much ‘that he omits no occasion of filling 42’s [the queen’s] head with their projects and designs’. As usual when he faced difficulties with the queen, Godolphin urged Marlborough to return early from the campaign otherwise ‘there must be the greatest confusion imaginable in all the affairs of 88 [Parliament]’.486 By the middle of August Godolphin, writing to Marlborough, had fixed the blame for the queen’s intransigence on Harley’s ‘inclination of talking more freely than usually to 156 256 [Mrs Masham]. And this is laid hold of, and improved by 199 [Harley] upon all such matters, if not upon others, to insinuate his notions’ – notions of a different basis for the ministry.487

The session of 1707-8

On 25 Aug. and 1 Sept. 1707 Godolphin held meetings of the treasury board at Windsor. In between, on 27 Aug. he was at Wharton’s house at Winchendon, for the horse-racing at Quainton.488 On 1 Sept. Godolphin held a conference with Cowper, which ranged over matters of patronage and foreign policy, including the bishoprics crisis, wherein Godolphin revealed ‘how far he had gone to tell the queen the necessity of agreeing with the Whigs and court’, and the difficulties caused by ‘the queen’s personal inclination and engagements (one not being able when asked to tell her they were obnoxious to anyone)’. After a second meeting on 8 Sept., the two men also agreed ‘to consider heads for the queen’s speech’, which was ‘the best ground to speak to the queen upon [it] together’. Godolphin’s amendments to Cowper’s draft of 11 Sept., which was delivered by the queen on 6 Nov., are extant.489 On 4 Sept. Godolphin told Newcastle that he hoped to arrive in London by 4 Oct., ready to assist in ‘the many difficulties of the next session of Parliament’.490 Not the least of his problems was the need to set Parliament off on the right foot, for ‘in other years the encouragement to our allies abroad has often proceeded from their votes in the first week of the Parliament’.491 On 18 Sept. Marlborough summed up Godolphin’s predicament: ‘if he stays in his place and does not entirely govern 239 [the queen] he will be duped by 199 [Harley]; and if he does what is certainly best for himself, quit, he will do great hurt both to the business at home and abroad’.492 Godolphin did not hold a treasury board meeting between 26 Sept. and 20 Oct. and in late September he travelled to St Albans to pick up his son en route for Newmarket.493 While at Newmarket Godolphin considered whether it was possible to accommodate Marlborough by deferring the meeting of Parliament for a fortnight, ‘without doing more hurt than good’: such a delay would discourage ‘our friends, retarding all our preparations, and encouraging the opposing party’. Nevertheless, ‘nothing is fixed here to make 88 [Parliament] succeed, nor can 38 [Godolphin] do anything so shameful as to abandon 42 [the queen] but upon a joint measure with Mr Freeman [Marlborough]’.494 Godolphin arrived back in London on 17 Oct., having had ‘good fortune’, at Newmarket, ‘winning the queen’s plate and three other races’.495

Godolphin was present on the opening day of the session, 23 Oct. 1707. Both Whigs and Tories were now willing to unite in an attack on the ministry, for its military failures in Spain, the shortcomings of the admiralty and the attempt to tidy up Scottish government after the Union. Godolphin could count on a group of ‘lord treasurer’s Whigs’, comprising men such as Henry Boyle, John Smith, Sir Thomas Littleton, Spencer Compton, Hugh Boscawen, Thomas Coningsby, and Robert Walpole^†, the future earl of Orford, who defended Godolphin in the Commons from the attacks of the Junto Whigs.496 Godolphin’s scheme of management also involved independent Whig peers, such as Shaftesbury.497 After Sir John Cropley^‡ had met Godolphin in December, he reported to Shaftesbury that ‘the quarrel continues betwixt the Whig lords and the court’, with the queen reportedly saying that ‘she will never more return to consult them any more than Lord Rochester and that form of men, but will ever after trust herself in the hands of such as have never been on the stage in either party’. At the end of the month, Cropley added that Godolphin ‘has fixed his game to make a party of Whigs and Tories’, and was for ‘true Whigs that would be your Whigs and not the Junto’s’, with Newcastle having ‘gone into this scheme’ with Somerset and William Cavendish, 2nd duke of Devonshire.498

Godolphin was absent from the first three sittings of the House after the Christmas recess, 7-9 Jan. 1708, first attending on the 12th. On 16 Jan., Joseph Addison^‡ reported that both Marlborough and Godolphin attempted to blunt Peterborough’s lengthy and not entirely coherent criticisms of the war in Spain.499 By the end of the month, Godolphin and Harley had come to a parting of the ways, Godolphin feeling that he had been betrayed by Harley, possibly over the latter revealing to the queen the shortfall in the number of troops at Almanza.500 It had come on top of the growing disagreement between the two men on how to manage Parliament, and more specifically Harley’s plans for a new ministry. At some point in January Godolphin had realized that any plans for working with the Tories would not provide a majority. Harley, nevertheless, continued to work on a new scheme in secret.501 This set the scene for a power struggle, in which Harley attempted to force Godolphin from office with the assistance of the queen.502 Godolphin’s trump card in this battle for power was the support of Marlborough, who, although he may have wavered, came down decisively on the side of the lord treasurer, despite several appeals from Harley pleading for the opportunity to justify himself.503 On 6 Feb. Godolphin and Marlborough told the queen they could not serve with Harley. Before the Cabinet met on 8 Feb. Godolphin resigned. The queen refused to accept, giving him until the following day to reconsider, but adding that ‘then he should do as he pleased, with all she could find enough glad of that staff’. When Marlborough, in turn, resigned, he was told that he ran his sword through her head. The cabinet refused to consider important business in their absence, signalling their lack of support for Harley.504 The queen only abandoned Harley when ‘upon the first report of my lord treasurer laying down, many of the Members had resolved not to go into the committee of ways and means that day, so that the day was spent in business of little moment’ and the Lords threatened to enquire more deeply into the treason committed by Harley’s under-secretary, Greg.505 Harley resigned on 11 February, allowing Godolphin and Marlborough to resume their roles.

Before the crisis, Godolphin had been negotiating with the Bank for a new subscription, on the one hand and drafting a proposal to the House for raising the remainder of the supply. On 4 Feb. Boyle reported that the Bank had agreed to open their books for an additional subscription of £2,200,000, ‘which will make the way easy for them to supply the government in the method my lord treasurer proposes.’506 On 5 Feb. Vernon reported that at the report stage of the annuity bill a new clause was offered ‘to enact what my lord treasurer had ordered already’, that no names should be taken as money received before the act was passed.507 A major preoccupation in the Lords was the abolition of the Scottish Privy Council, on which the Commons had resolved on 11 Dec. 1707. As the most effective instrument of executive control in Scotland, Godolphin fought to preserve it when the legislation reached the Lords.508 On 5 Feb. 1708 the Lords had ‘a long debate’ in the committee of the whole House on the bill for ‘completing the Union’ over whether the council should be dissolved on 1 May or 1 Oct.: ‘it was carried for the day already fixed in the bill by 50 votes against 45. It was chiefly argued by my lord treasurer and Lord Somers, who were of different opinions’.509 After the adjournment of the committee, Godolphin tried to use the influence of the court to overturn the vote. Thomas Fane, 6th earl of Westmorland, was lobbied by Prince George on 6 Feb. following Godolphin’s late night visit to the queen.510 The attempt was unsuccessful. After further sessions on the bill in the committee of the whole on the 7th, Cropley noted that the Lords had passed ‘our Scotch Bill taking away the council without any amendments,’ although Godolphin ‘spoke five times against this bill’.511 He duly entered his dissent to the bill’s passage.

On 14 Feb. 1708, Godolphin, on the advice of Cowper and Somers, proposed the adjournment of the committee of the whole on the cathedrals bill, promoted by Nicolson to overcome his current dispute with his high Church dean, Francis Atterbury, later bishop of Rochester, until the 19th to allow time for the queen to be informed of its import. On 17 Feb., when Bolton reported from the committee of the whole and an address critical of the management of the admiralty was moved by Wharton and supported by both Whigs and Tories, it was carried without a division after ‘a faint opposition’ from Godolphin.512 As Cropley reported it, Rochester seconded the motion ‘saying the errors and mismanagements had been so notorious he blushed to name them considering the person that was at the head of the sea administration’ (who was Prince George); to which Godolphin replied ‘he should have hoped he might have blushed in making so severe a reflection on that person now at the head of the administration’.513 On 2 Mar. Godolphin informed John Erskine, earl of Mar [S], that he could not attend the committee that morning on the bill establishing a Scottish court of exchequer because he had to attend at Kensington. However, he had written to David Boyle, earl of Glasgow [S], ‘to make my excuse to the committee and to give the papers there which they expected from’ him, which Glasgow duly presented to the committee.514

By the end of March, the ministry were hoping for progress on a bill to improve recruitment for the army. Not present, however, at a meeting of Members on 29 Mar., held under the auspicies of secretary of state, Henry Boyle, he received a report of it on 30 Mar., and wrote that ‘they will do nothing tomorrow that will be worth delaying to put an end to the session in expectation of what they may do farther’.515 On 31 Mar. he attended a meeting at Speaker Smith’s at which it was decided to prorogue Parliament on the following day, given ‘the difficulty, if not the impossibility of getting any effectual bill to pass for the better raising the recruits’.516 Parliament was prorogued accordingly and on 2 Apr. Addison reported that Godolphin had gone to Newmarket.517 He had attended on 74 days of the session, 69 per cent of the total, and been named to 16 committees. No meetings of the treasury board were held between 31 Mar. and 12 April. Godolphin returned to London on the 10th.518 Godolphin had hoped that Marlborough would be back in London upon his return in order to assist in persuading the queen to admit both Somers and Wharton to office.519 Upon his return the writs for the new Parliament were expected to be issued. Parliament was duly dissolved on 15 April.520

The 1708 election

Harley’s resignation had done little to reduce the pressure from the Whigs on Godolphin; and suspicions of Harley’s continuing influence with the queen were an additional irritant. Already Arthur Maynwaring^‡ was arguing that the inclusion of Somers in the cabinet in place of Pembroke would nullify Harley’s influence with Abigail Masham, because he agreed so perfectly with Godolphin, Sunderland and Boyle.521 The queen, still resistant to Somers, was equally reluctant to advance Halifax’s brother, Sir James Montagu^‡, to be attorney general. Godolphin feared that the failure to include Somers would cause divisions among the Whigs, and hence make it more difficult to manage Parliament. On 15 Apr. 1708, Cropley told Shaftesbury that Godolphin was the

most open, plain man, the freest of art and trick I have ever known. The more heartily zealous and open this Lord is, the worse and worse he grows with the queen and the higher are the terms and demands from the Oaks [Junto Whigs] when even at the same time they do own he does all he can, that never man run greater hazards than he has done to serve them… You may have wagers that we shall see this Lord sacrificed at last and Mr Harley restored and in this Lord’s place.522

And indeed, on 6 May, having read to the queen another supportive letter from Marlborough, Godolphin recorded a conversation of two hours with her in which she resisted ‘all the plainest reasons and arguments that ever were used in any case whatsoever’, while disclaiming ‘any talk of the least commerce with Mr Harley, at first or secondhand, and positive that she never speaks with anybody but 41 [Prince George] upon anything of that kind.’523 About May Godolphin was classed as a court Tory on a list analysing the first Parliament of Great Britain. On 18 May he held a treasury board meeting and then went to Newmarket for a few days, where the ‘great quiet and little company’, he found there, coupled with a ‘very discouraging letter’ from the queen persuaded him to stay until the 24th. On 31 May he reported another long conversation with the queen over the merits of appointing Montagu to the attorney-general’s post, ‘which ended with the greatest dissatisfaction possible to both’.524

As usual, Godolphin took a close interest in the 1708 election. In mid May, he had ‘little reason to doubt, but the next Parliament will be very well inclined to support the war and (I hope) to do everything else that is reasonable, if they can have but reasonable encouragement. All seems to turn upon that’, but the queen remained ‘very inflexible’.525 To aid in the management of the Cornish elections, he replaced his son as warden of the Stannaries with his nephew, Hugh Boscawen. Facing opposition at Hereford, James Brydges was hopeful of a Cornish seat, having ‘presumed to lay my case before my lord treasurer and to have recourse to his Lordship’s favour for refuge in case of a disappointment at the city I served for before.’ Brydges was, in fact, successful at Hereford, and wrote to Marlborough of his gratitude for their recommendation at Truro on the Boscawen interest.526 On hearing news of Robert Molesworth’s^‡ defeat at East Retford, Godolphin suggested him (albeit unsuccessfully) for a seat in Cornwall.527 Following Sir Henry Peachey’s^‡ return for both Sussex and Arundel, Godolphin promoted first Littleton and then Thomas Hopkins^‡ to succeed him at the latter.528 Godolphin likewise paid careful attention to the election for Scottish representative peers, to be held in mid-June. As early as 26 Apr. he had noted that George Hamilton, earl of Orkney [S], wished to have leave from the army to attend the election.529 On 7 May, by Godolphin’s ‘desire’, Seafield sent Marlborough the form of a proxy to use in the Scottish peerage election.530 On 8 May, the duke of Hamilton wrote to Sunderland that he had been told that Godolphin did not ‘approve of’ James Douglas, 2nd duke of Queensberry [S], being given the British dukedom of Dover.531 On 3 June Henry Alexander, 5th earl of Stirling [S], reported a private meeting with Godolphin wherein ‘his lordship requested that I would give my proxy to any of the five he had named, whereupon I left it wholly to his lordship, who hath chose my Lord Seafield’. Godolphin then arranged a meeting for the following day at the treasury, where ‘he would there have the Scotch secretary to direct and assist me in the form and method of doing it. All which is done accordingly, and tomorrow I am to take the oaths and all is to be finished. And his lordship hath ordered the proxy to go down in his own packet’.532 Godolphin himself wrote to Seafield, ‘I have taken some pains to send you my Lord Stirling’s proxy, which Sir David Nairne will take care shall come to you in time.’533

Tensions between Godolphin and the Whigs were such that in mid-July 1708, Roxburghe referred them as being ‘quite broke’, owing to the queen’s ‘aversion’ to the Junto, and Godolphin’s belief that he could construct a party from the Whigs and the Tories, which Harley supported. The Whig Lords ‘laugh at it’, he wrote, because the Tories could not be gained: Nottingham was especially averse to an alliance and recently, he recounted, Godolphin had ‘sent a message to Bromley, but that he refused to treat with him’.534 Godolphin’s attitude may explain why he felt able to write to Seafield on 25 June, ‘if you will keep my counsel, I will confess ingenuously to you, that I like your election much better than if you had carried your whole list’.535 Scotland was indeed a source of potential support for Godolphin. Robert Pringle told Patrick Hume, earl of Marchmont [S], that Somers ‘seemed to be very sensible’ that Godolphin’s ‘little regard’ to the Junto’s recommendations was a departure from ‘his ordinary road of a cautious, and prudent management between parties’. Somers attributed to Godolphin’s changed attitude to a belief that he would receive ‘support in a Parliament from those whose interest he espouses so much’—Queensberry and his court party—who had convinced the lord treasurer that ‘of the 45 Members returned from the North at least 40 are at their devotion’, although he was confident that Godolphin would be disappointed in this.536 Pringle added on 2 Aug. that the ‘situation’ at court ‘appears pretty odd’; Godolphin, ‘who has the sole management, seems to have little deference for the Whig Lords, of which they seem themselves very sensible, and at the same time it is hard to imagine how he shall be able to support himself without them’. He continued that there were ‘some talks of attempts and interviews towards a good correspondence betwixt him and the Tories, which still seems more odd, that he should take a party by the hand, that seems weaker this, then they were the last session of Parliament.’537 It is in the context of these manoeuvres that in June Somerset was involved in an attempt to detach Wharton from the Junto, by suggesting he take office instead of Somers. Godolphin was rumoured to have sanctioned this approach, and Maynwaring for one feared that Wharton might believe it to be the case.538

Hamilton thought that Marlborough’s victory at Oudenarde on 11 July would make Godolphin ‘see the advantage of 166 [the Whigs’] assistance and will therefore do everything to put them in good humour’ and ‘mind what 134 [Sunderland] says more than ever’: he advised Sunderland that he should insist ‘that nothing should be disposed of here’ until Sunderland’s allies had arrived; Queensberry had been trying to pre-empt it.539 On 27 July, Queensberry’s adherent Mar reported that Godolphin ‘was very kind and civil as he used to be’ with ‘no measures yet taken in order to the Parl[iament] and what or when they will be is uncertain; but I’m told the Junto is as high as ever and abated nothing by the victory [of Oudenarde]’.540

On 2 Aug. 1708 Godolphin announced that the following day he would travel to Wiltshire for three or four days. On the 4th he was at Tilshead. No meetings of the treasury board were held between 2 and 18 and 20-30 August.541 On 24 Aug. he went to Winchendon, ‘to Quainton plate’, from whence he intended to be at Althorp on the 26th, and then return to Windsor on 28 August.542 At about this time he organized another letter for Marlborough to dispatch to the queen advocating the employment of the Junto.543 On 20 Sept. Godolphin received fresh proposals from the Junto for accommodating their differences with the court.544 On 25 Sept. Sunderland was clearly expecting some political discussions to take place at Newmarket in early October: a few days later Erasmus Lewis^‡ reported that a ‘council of the Junto’ would be held at Newmarket ‘and not till then shall we know who will be Speaker’.545 The decision was in fact pre-empted at a meeting of the Junto and Godolphin, in London, on 30 Sept., in which they ‘pitched upon Sir Richard Onslow^‡ to be Speaker, and Sir Peter King is to be otherwise considered’.546 No meetings of the treasury board were held between 4-18 Oct., and on the 5th Godolphin went to Newmarket, in the company of his son Francis, now styled Lord Rialton, and Somerset.547 He had informed Marlborough on the 3rd that a proclamation had been issued for Parliament to meet on 16 Nov., ‘later than usual, in the view that you may be here some time before’. Godolphin, it seems, still held to the view that until Marlborough arrived ‘there is no meddling’ with Parliament ‘by any means in the world. This is a matter for which I think one cannot prepare you too soon’.548 With the decision over the Speaker already made, Harley was informed on 5 Oct. that though it had originally been supposed that Godolphin ‘would fix measures and capitulate with the Junto at Newmarket, but it’s said now that that work will be delayed some time and it’s probable that none of these Lords will go thither except those who are concerned in the diversions of that place’. Some people thought that Godolphin ‘finds great difficulties with the Whig lords, that the queen is very stiff and inflexible and will not consent to any treaty, believing that no terms which she can grant will be accepted by them’: he had even, it was said, offered to resign.549

Godolphin was under considerable pressure in early October because of a looming financial crisis, with the Bank thought to be scarcely able to survive until Christmas. He was said to have urged Marlborough to do ‘something of éclat’ to encourage public credit: ‘the scarcity of money has frightened him out of his wits, and there is nothing he will not do to oblige the Junto’. Private meetings had been held at Godolphin’s direction about raising money, with agreement that no loans could be raised on the general mortgage or almost any other fund: ‘in this exigency they could think of nothing but exchequer bills to be circulated by subscriptions, the interest to be secured by the malt tax for perpetuity, with the proviso usual in mortgages, redeemable however by Parliament.550 Godolphin was expected back in London on 16 Oct., although Maynwaring reported that Somerset had returned the previous day with him, ‘whether in anger to him or not I can’t tell’: Somerset was apparently ‘displeased’ that he had not been invited to a meeting at Newmarket, at the bishop of Ely’s.551 On the 16th Harley wrote ‘that there has lately been a meeting of some great persons, and the lord treasurer has not only promised entirely to comply with the Junto but also to sacrifice the duke of Queensberry to them’. Harley had never had any doubts that Godolphin would ally to the Junto, for ‘he has for a long time been contriving to do it, though he at the same time exclaims against them, as they do him’.552 A couple of days later Maynwaring revealed that one of the topics of discussion at Newmarket had been a reform of the admiralty. Godolphin had proposed a scheme to make the Prince’s council ‘responsible by a new law’, but this had been rejected as being ‘liable to as many objectors as the present administration and will not cure the evil, but will affront his Highness as much as anything else’. But the Junto insisted on reform, threatening that without it ‘they will not come into the measures of the court, not so much as in the first step of choosing a Speaker’. Nothing but the prince’s resignation, ‘even before the session’, would satisfy them.

The difficulties between Godolphin and the Junto were becoming more and more difficult to overcome: Wharton wrote in a letter to the duchess of Marlborough that at one point, possibly during his visit to Winchendon in August, Godolphin ‘had so little disposition to speak to him that if he had not forced himself into his room at six a clock in the morning [the] day he was to go away he had not had a word’s conversation with him. And [wh]at he said to him then was very dry and disagreeable’.553 On 19 Oct. Sunderland reported to Newcastle on a meeting at Althorp between Godolphin, the Junto and several of their lieutenants, in which Godolphin had been issued with an ultimatum—no further support for the court would be forthcoming unless Whig grievances were met.554 But the illness (and death, a week later) of Prince George weakened the queen’s willingness to resist. On 20 Oct. Maynwaring facilitated a meeting between Godolphin and Wharton for the following day, and later reported that he had met Godolphin ‘at Mr Boyle’s, who told me he had seen the other lord, and that they had had a very long conference, and that he believed they were both satisfied with one another, and he seemed to be in good humour and I in good favour’. Optimistically, Maynwaring felt that ‘there being nothing ill at bottom’, when ministers and the Whigs ‘are brought to understand one another, and to converse more openly and plainly together, I think they cannot disagree’. Maynwaring continued to believe that Godolphin and Marlborough ‘had acted a very sincere part in endeavouring to bring Lord Som[ers] into the Council’.555 This improvement in the relationship between Godolphin and the Junto was partly the result of the appointment, finally, of Halifax’s brother, Sir James Montagu, as attorney general on 21 Oct. 1708, the queen having ‘at last come to allow 38 [Godolphin] to make such condescensions, which (if done in time) would have been sufficient to have eased most of our difficulties, and would yet do in great measure, if 89 [the Whigs] will be but tolerably reasonable’. The admittance of Somers and Wharton to office followed in November.556 Pembroke’s acceptance of the admiralty in succession to Prince George was thought to be essential, balancing the advances of the Junto, for the session to be manageable: Maynwaring in late November ‘thanked God that Lord Pemb[roke] had accepted and that the lords [of the Junto] had not carried their admiral too, for then [the] lord treasurer could not have stood three months’. It had been ‘a necessary means of his own preservation’.557 Over the next few months, Godolphin appears to have attempted to survive through dividing the Junto, exploiting the discontent of Halifax and Orford at their continued exclusion from office while Wharton and Somers had achieved it, and relying heavily on his own remaining allies in the Commons, the ‘lord treasurers’ whigs’.

The session of 1708-9

Godolphin was present on the opening day of the new Parliament, 16 Nov. 1708. On 24 Nov. Johnston reported to Trumbull that ‘this day Conyers lost his chair of the committee of supply because he’s the treasurer’s man, say some’: the Whigs pressed the cause of their candidate, William Farrer^‡.558 Godolphin’s preoccupations at the beginning of the session, included the problem of recruiting soldiers for the army. He closely monitored the recruitment bill in the Commons, reporting back to Marlborough on 6, 10, 14, 17, 21 December. He was just as assiduous in detailing the progress of the augmentation of troops voted by the Commons, having managed to get it inserted in the queen’s speech.559 He told Marlborough that the Commons’ Address of 23 Nov. was ‘as full as you can desire, and cannot fail, I hope, of having a good effect.’ On 19 Nov. Godolphin had predicted that ‘I doubt we shall have no money next year under six per cent, even upon the land tax’ and it would seem he saw the necessity to defend the rate of return; on 10 Dec. Johnston wrote that in the committee of the whole considering the land tax bill ‘Mr Montagu of Wiltshire’ moved that only five per cent interest should be given for money on the land tax, ‘but the treasurer’s people carried six [per] cent. There appears no concert’. The six per cent interest clause was overturned at the report stage on 15 December. Johnston also noted that Anthony Hammond^‡ had been ‘thrown out as a creature of the treasurer’s’: the Whigs had found an excuse to expel him on the grounds that as a commissioner of the navy ‘employed in the outports’ he was ineligible from sitting in Parliament under the Regency Act.560

Godolphin was in attendance right up until the Christmas recess on 23 Dec. 1708, when he acquainted the House that the queen would receive their address on the capture of Ghent that evening. On 24 Dec. Godolphin warned Marlborough that although things appeared ‘to be upon a very good foot here, as to the support of the war; yet with relation to the credit of the government and the administration at home, they are in a very uncertain precarious condition’. He complained that the queen’s ‘intimacy and conversation seems to lean only to those who are enemies to all that are most useful in the public service’, and those willing to support the government were in consequence uncertain as ‘to whom they should apply, or upon whom they can depend’.561 Scottish affairs continued to occupy Godolphin. On 23 Dec. papers on the failed Jacobite invasion were ordered to be considered by the Lords on 12 Jan. 1709. Godolphin co-ordinated the response to the order, arranging on 5 Jan. for Mar, Seafield and Hugh Campbell, 3rd earl of Loudon [S], to meet the lords of the council on the following day to consider those papers it might be proper to place before Parliament ‘pursuant to their address before the recess’.562 Meanwhile, there was the question of who would be appointed Scottish secretary, the nominee of the treasurer or the Junto. The Junto favoured James Grahme, duke of Montrose [S], but the post eventually went to Queensberry. His appointment was to have been declared on 30 Dec. 1708, but on the 29th Godolphin took Somers with him to see the queen. Godolphin ‘seemed to be against Queensberry and to convince my Lord Somers of this went with him to the queen… and got a stop put to it, but whether it be only delayed or quite broke I know not’. For Johnston, this was a battle over the alignment of the Scots in Parliament and of decisive importance for Godolphin, ‘they being the only body of men which seem entirely to trust my lord treasurer, if he part with them, which he says he will not do, I know not where he can find such sure cards’. For this reason the Junto ‘will not trust such a strength in his hands for thus they say the Union would ruin all’.563

Over the Christmas recess Godolphin continued to worry about the recruitment bill: on 4 Jan. 1709 he recorded a meeting of two hours with Somers and ‘some gentlemen of the House of Commons, hearing Mr Lowndes read over the recruit bill which he has prepared… It will be ready to be offered to the House of Commons at their first meeting after the present recess,’ as indeed it was. In some apprehension, Godolphin on 6 Jan. admitted to ‘the spleen’ at ‘the prospect of nothing but difficulty and trouble in the course of this sessions from the very great unreasonableness one meets with in most people’. By virtue of the late start to the session, he also warned Marlborough that ‘our supplies will be more backward this year, than they were the last. There is only the land tax past hitherto, and the money does not come in upon that so fast as it used to do in former years’.564

Godolphin attended on the first day after the recess, 10 Jan. 1709, despite Johnston writing that ‘the treasurer has the stone and voids blood by urine and spits it too.’565 On 11 Jan. Sir Henry Shere told Trumbull that ‘there seems to be a confederacy and combination of both parties to distress the little great man in the Park nor do there want symptoms in both Houses of small devotion to his colleague abroad’.566 On 14 Jan., Godolphin admitted that ‘my head has been for some days much out of order’, not helped by the passage of several resolutions in the Commons on 12 Jan. relating to expenditure on the war: ‘people who have a mind to be troublesome in both Houses’, he complained, ‘are very busy in enquiries concerning the late invasion, Scotland, and the application of the money in Spain and Portugal’.567 On 21 Jan. Godolphin voted in favour of the motion that a Scots peer who possessed a British title had the right to vote in the election of Scottish representative peers, in favour of the rights of Queensberry. As John Tucker noted, he was joined by the archbishop of York, Rochester ‘and a great many other Lords, who used not to vote together (I hear) were on the same side in this division; and on the other side Lord Wharton, Lord Somers &c.’568 For the Junto, supporting Queensberry’s right to vote was part of a strategy to unify the party behind Orford’s claims to office; Godolphin marshalled the court vote behind Queensberry’s pretensions.569 James Johnston added that the Junto were helped to defeat the motion by ‘the Jacobite Tories… who would have their revenges on the treasurer for his diligence against Sir Simon [Harcourt]’, who had been unseated on petition in January.570

There were further battles over Scottish issues, especially the contested election for Scottish representative peers, in February. On 4 Feb. 1709 Johnston wrote that he was now ‘cock-a-hoop’ at having fooled the Junto in the business; he lost a first division by eight votes on a procedural motion on 26 Jan., but on the 28th ‘he carried it by four’ that a peer of Scotland who took the oaths within Edinburgh Castle was thereby qualified to vote at the election of the 16 representative peers; Johnston thought he would have won by a bigger margin in a vote on the following day, but it was not pressed to a division. As a result of the four who had petitioned against the result of the election, only William Johnston, marquess of Annandale [S], was calculated as having been elected ‘and he the only man of the four whom the Juncto did not desire and thought to have kept out’. At this outcome, ‘hard words’ passed between Godolphin and the Junto, but the quarrel was patched up, Queensberry being declared Secretary, John Kerr, duke of Roxburghe [S], and John Campbell, 2nd duke of Argyll [S] and earl of Greenwich, put on the council and Montrose made privy seal in Scotland. The Junto were said to have conceded that they had ‘given the treasurer 16 votes’: ‘the truth is’, Johnston wrote, ‘they are partly out-witted, not knowing Scotch business as he does.’571

On 25 Jan. 1709 John Smith, the former Speaker, and one of Godolphin’s allies, told Marlborough that ‘I must do that justice to my lord treasurer to say that all endeavours that the prudence of man can use to quiet men’s minds or to gratify their desires, he has done’.572 The death on 22 Jan. Henry Herbert, Baron Herbert of Chirbury, leaving a vacancy in the council of trade, illustrated his predicament: he had been inundated with about 50 applications, ‘but it is impossible to dispose of that till after the end of the session without disobliging 49’ of them. Meanwhile, supply was being held up by the failure to vote on the estimates for the war in Spain and Portugal while the expenditure on previous years was enquired into; until the total was fixed the committee of ways and means could not sit.573 On 15 Feb. one of the correspondents of Edward Harley^†, the future 2nd earl of Oxford, wrote of the ‘very great heats between the treasurer and his new friends’.574 On 18 Feb. Godolphin told Marlborough that his presence in England necessary, even though the supply measures had almost passed into law: many things had been left undecided, ‘which require to be settled before the beginning of this summer, which can never be well done without you, and it is likewise so necessary that we should adjust with you the measures proper to be followed this summer in order to another sessions of Parliament’.575

Godolphin and the Junto could close ranks to meet specific attacks: on 24 Feb. Gibson informed Humphrey Humphreys, bishop of Hereford of plans for a debate in the Lords on Haversham’s speech earlier in the session, in which he pressed for an enquiry into the preparations for meeting the Jacobite invasion. It had been resisted by Godolphin’s allies who argued that it was designed only ‘to perplex and lose time’; though a debate was conceded instead on ‘the present state of North Britain of which I suppose the ministry will be able to give a better account.’ He added that in the last three weeks ‘it has been understood that the treasurer and the Whig lords or Junto as they call them, were breaking, and a country party forming, of Whigs and Tories, in opposition to the court’. However ‘by the turn given’ to Haversham’s motion of the 18th, ‘it appeared plainly enough that they were together; though I am afraid the union is but loose, nor like to continue long, unless my Lord Marlborough’s coming closes some breaches that are made and making’.576 On 26 Feb. Godolphin survived an attack on his stewardship of the treasury in the Commons instigated by Bromley’s report from a committee examining the arrears of the land tax receivers. It ended in a motion for an address for a state of arrears of the land taxes for 1706-8 and for royal orders that more effectual care be taken to prevent the like arrears for the future. Backed by Sir Thomas Hanmer^‡ and Annesley, the motion was watered down by Godolphin’s defenders, organized by Walpole, who turned the blame on to the receivers and amended the address merely to ask that the money be better collected.577

Godolphin only attended eight out of 18 sittings of the Lords in February 1709. After attending the first three sittings in March, 1st-4th, he next attended on 22 March. On 7 Mar. Johnston wrote an interesting commentary on the address sent by the Lords to the Commons on 1 Mar. ‘for the preservation of the repose and quiet of Europe’. The Commons sent it back on the following day with an amendment relating to the destruction of Dunkirk. According to Johnston, the Junto claimed to have ‘resolved and proposed the address without my lord treasurer’s knowledge, that they believe he takes it ill, but they say they can’t help it, for having saved him this winter in both Houses, if that do not satisfy him nothing can.’ Though the address was popularly believed to present an argument for continuing the war, the Junto conceded that the inclusion of a reference to the demolition of the fortifications at Dunkirk by ‘may indeed delay the Peace’, but disclaimed responsibility for the passage demanding the removal of the Pretender from the French dominions (Mohun, they said, ‘is not theirs’. ‘In short’, Johnston concluded, ‘this motion of theirs may have proceeded from their jealousy of which my Lord Somers seems full and Wharton to have none at all, or from a design not to be outrun by Rochester and Haversham, or in concert with the ministry as all the world believes.’578 On 11 Mar. Godolphin was reported to be ‘in good humour’ following the vote in the Commons on the previous day vindicating the ministry’s actions in response to the threatened attack on Scotland, which ‘has given him all the glory of our deliverance’.579

On 22 Mar. Godolphin was one of those successfully arguing in the committee of the whole that the clause in the bill improving the Union relating to treason trials, which allowed the accused a list of witnesses before the trial, should be thrown out because it made a dangerous change at such a time. On 25 Mar. he voted in favour of Seafield’s proposal to consider the validity of Scottish marriage settlements under the new treason law.580 He wrote that day ‘we are yet one step further in the Scot treason bill, but if at last it does go through both Houses, I believe it will not be without a good deal of difficulty’. On 1 Apr. he added that opposition to the bill had united ‘all the different parties of that nation’, and that it had been committed in the Commons ‘by so slender a majority that I don’t expect it should pass’, and if it did ‘all the fruit it is like to have will be to make some of our friends in that House angry with us’. With the session not predicted to end until late April, Godolphin took a short break to Newmarket. He had intended to leave on 5 Apr., but he was recorded as present in the Lords on 7 Apr., although he wrote a letter from Newmarket that day. He returned on the evening of the 9th.581

Following the Commons amendment of the bill for improving the Union by adding clauses against forfeitures for treason and for providing the accused with a list of witnesses ten days before the trial, the Lords on 14 Apr. 1709 voted that the clauses should commence from the Pretender’s death. Johnston revealed that Godolphin ‘spoke four times for the amendment’: the Scottish peers spoke against it, hoping thereby to lose the bill.582 The Commons agreed to the Lords amendments by six votes on 18 Apr. after the court had assembled ‘all their forces, the lame and blind and all’.583 Godolphin attended the last sitting of the session on 21 Apr., having been present on 58 days, 63 per cent of the total, and been named to four committees. The end of the session coincided with Marlborough’s arrival in London, and on the 25-28th Godolphin accompanied the duke to view the building work at Blenheim. He attended the prorogation on 19 May. Although by late May Godolphin was deeply engrossed in following the peace negotiations with France, he was sufficiently sceptical of French sincerity to remain relatively unmoved by the refusal of the French to sign the peace preliminaries.584

The 1709-10 Session and the Trial of Sacheverell

Following the end of the session, the Junto stepped up pressure on Godolphin to obtain the admiralty for Orford. On 20 May 1709 James Craggs^‡ told Marlborough that Somers had been deputed to speak to him ‘very plainly on this subject.’ The ‘Junctonians’ argued that the next session could not ‘be carried on without it, for as the majority are in the Whig interest, they will not be easy without being of a piece, for though there may be some few whimsicals yet the main would be put in good humour by it’.585 Godolphin seemed to share their analysis for on 5 June he noted that although everyone had been distracted by the peace, shortly the problem of putting the admiralty under new management would become acute as ‘the present is not to be supported next winter’: blame for the queen’s reluctance to employ Orford would fall upon himself.586

On 4 July, Godolphin explicitly linked military success to public credit, worrying of a shortfall of £1,200,000 on the supplies voted for the war.587 No meetings of the treasury board were held between 1-11 July and on the 5th Boyle reported that Godolphin had gone to Wiltshire.588 He was at Tilshead on 6 July, ‘to see his horses’ and had returned to Windsor on the 9th. He told Marlborough that the peace preliminaries had been sufficiently liked in England for the latter to resume negotiations on that basis should the French seek renewed terms.589 But Godolphin was worried about meeting Parliament without knowing if preparations had to be made for another year of war. His political intelligence network had also picked up notice of Harley’s tactics for the forthcoming session; from Rivers he learnt that Harley planned to portray Godolphin and Marlborough as implacably opposed to peace upon any terms. Thus the duumvirs would be at fault whether peace or war followed.590 On 17 Aug. he wrote from St James’s to Cowper about the peace negotiations.591 He only held one meeting of the treasury board during August, on the 22nd, and towards the end of the month he retired again to Wiltshire.592 On 15 Sept., Godolphin felt that ‘one good effect’ of the battle of Malplaquet was to create the favourable conditions for an approach to the Bank of England to circulate £600,000 worth of Exchequer bills as allowed by statute.593

By September 1709 the Whigs were confident that Godolphin and Marlborough ‘could not propose any safety but in the Whigs’.594 Whig pressure in support of Orford built up as the session approached. No meetings of the treasury board were held between 22 Sept. and 5 Oct. and on 29 Sept. Godolphin announced his departure shortly for Newmarket, where he had arrived by 3 October.595 On 4 Oct. Addison reported Wharton as ‘now going to Newmarket’ to see Godolphin.596 Godolophin remained there until at least 14 October. On 18 Oct. he was at Windsor, acknowledging that the queen had read a letter from Marlborough urging the appointment of Orford, but that she had ‘never once opened her lips to me upon the subject’, whereupon ‘I have not thought proper to begin with her till you come, and we have an opportunity of concerting what is best to be done’.597 Meanwhile, Sunderland awaited Godolphin’s return to discuss with the details of Orford’s admiralty commission—if ‘the affair should break’, he wrote to the duchess of Marlborough, ‘I don’t at all doubt but the world would censure my Lord Orford, for insisting upon a trifle, and also [the] lord treasurer, for breaking for a trifle’. He wrote again on 13 Oct. suggesting that the matter should be settled between Godolphin and Orford while at Newmarket: ‘if he comes away, leaving it quite unsettled there, I will venture to say there will be no end of it.’598 This underestimated Godolphin’s difficulties with the queen and the delay increased Orford’s uneasiness.599 By the end of October, however, the queen had been brought to agree to the appointment, although the make-up of the admiralty commission of which Orford would be head was still causing problems at the beginning of November, specifically with relation to Sir George Byng^†, the future Viscount Torrington, and Sir John Jennings^‡, the queen being ‘inflexible upon the two knights’.600 Sunderland blamed Godolphin for the impasse: ‘it is plain to a demonstration that notwithstanding it’s put upon the queen, it is nothing but his own pique to those two men, because they refused being of the prince’s council, when he had a mind to have drawn them in that snare’. In response Somers had ‘laid the matter very plain, and very home to him’, whereupon Godolphin had written to the queen on 5 Nov., who remained unmoved. Sunderland wanted the duchess of Marlborough to come to town to pressurize Godolphin, the fear being that unless Godolphin persuaded the queen, Orford would lose patience and leave London.601 Eventually, a compromise was reached which omitted Jennings from the new commission issued on 8 November. On 12 Nov., Godolphin’s client Molesworth penned a panegyric to Godolphin in a letter to Shaftesbury:

never shall any man ever persuade me that the public minister who fixes a liberty of conscience, who unites two discordant nations, who promotes public registers, procures general naturalization, encourages the increase of people, the navigation of rivers, manages the public treasure so well, restores lost credit to a miracle, loves liberty, keeps secrets to a degree not known in England since Queen Elizabeth’s time, provides for all the war in its distant parts, bears disappointments, lives frugally, but not covetously, gives not into the designs of priestcraft of any kind, can do these through any bad intentions or be anything like a Tory.

‘It would be the greatest happiness that can possibly befall these nations’, Molesworth went on, reflecting on recent experience, if Godolphin could be preserved from being ‘ground between two parties like two millstones’.602

Godolphin was present on the opening day of the next session, 15 Nov. 1709. It seems likely that he played a role in the motion following the queen’s speech in the Commons on that day for Maynwaring referred to a meeting at which a paper he had prepared for Lord Coningsby was not considered, ‘for Mr Smith brought another paper in the lord treasurer’s hand, upon which they sat in consultation till twelve o’clock; and it was moved by Sir John Holland^‡, with some small alteration’.603 Even in mid-session, Godolphin took cognisance of elections for the Commons: on 1 Dec. Bolton wrote to Thomas Jervoise^‡ that ‘my lord treasurer has sent to desire the bishop [Trelawny] to be for you, I was present when he did it’, a reference to the by-election pending for Hampshire.604

In the crisis engendered by the death of Algernon Capel, 2nd earl of Essex, and the disposal of his posts in January 1710, Godolphin and Somers tried, but failed, to persuade the queen not to appoint Jack Hill^‡, the brother of Abigail Masham, to the vacant regiment and thereby undermine Marlborough’s authority in the army.605 Following Marlborough’s furious departure to Windsor Lodge on 15 Jan., Godolphin counselled Marlborough against threatening to resign unless Masham were dismissed.606 On 16 Jan., Godolphin had ‘hunted’ Somers out and ‘hindered him from coming to the other lords’, who were meeting over the crisis, in order that Somers could wait on the queen.607 Godolphin was later at the House at the hearing of ‘Lord Bath’s cause’ over the Albemarle estates, and tried to formulate a united Whig response, marshalling a series of Whig grandees to put pressure on the queen. A compromise was ultimately worked out in which Hill obtained a pension rather than a regiment and Marlborough responded to a royal request to return to court.608 On 19 Jan. Maynwaring noted that Godolphin had shown ‘the greatest desire imaginable not to bring this thing to extremity’, although he had ‘endeavoured to show the ruinous consequences of the indifference and little notice’ that the queen showed of Marlborough’s ‘mortification and concern for her unkindness’.609 Sunderland, who had wanted to force the issue, ‘spoke very warmly’ to Godolphin saying ‘that he was sure none that had ever pretended to be Whigs would fail in this dispute, except 200 [Boyle] and Mr Compton, to which 38 made no reply, but seemed much nettled’.610

On 16 Feb. 1710, when the Lords took into consideration the appeal of James Greenshields concerning the right to hold Episcopalian services in Scotland, Rochester ‘moved to send for the proceedings in Scotland and the person to make out the allegations of his petition’, and, according to Mar, Godolphin ‘and those who were for delaying the affair’ supported it. However, Rochester insisted that he had also proposed sending for Greenshields and the Edinburgh magistrates, which was seen as tantamount to accepting the appeal: a motion for adding the words was lost by 42-39, and the original motion was then passed by a great majority.611 Also on 16 Feb., the Lords agreed to join with the Commons in addressing the queen for Marlborough’s immediate departure for Holland: the motion said that he was ‘the most capable’ of executing the twin trusts of general and plenipotentiary; Coningsby thought that Godolphin had been responsible for changing it from Marlborough ‘alone’.612 The queen’s answer to the address, reported to the Commons on 20 Feb., had, according to the duchess of Marlborough, been the subject of strenuous negotiation between Godolphin and the queen. ‘Godolphin and the honest men’, she wrote,

had prepared a better in respect to what she said concerning the duke of Marlborough, but when he came to receive her directions about it she had been first prepared by Mr Harley and his cousin [Abigail] and she would have some things altered, some quite left out and would have put in something that was not true, and that would have been a mischief to the duke of Marlborough, upon which my Lord Godolphin argued it with her, and in the debate she said to him that upon her soul what she had desired was from herself and her own thoughts purely, which was not possible to have been true, and Lord Godolphin so far got the better in this as to have the speech tolerable and to do no hurt.613

Nevertheless, the duchess was still being urged to put more pressure on the treasurer: as soon as Marlborough had departed on the 19th Sunderland pressed him to persuade the duchess to come to London, criticizing Godolphin for ‘a slowness and coldness about him, that is really terrible, and therefore all that can be must be done, to keep him up, and to animate him’.614

The most important domestic issue on which Godolphin needed animation was the impeachment of Dr Sacheverell for a sermon preached on 5 Nov. 1709, on The Perils of False Bretheren. Sacheverell had taken particular note of ‘the crafty insidiousness of such wily Volpones’, a clear reference to Godolphin, who had been tagged with this uncomplimentary nickname since at least 1707.615 Swift captured Godolphin’s ‘passionate pique’ at being dubbed a ‘wily Volpone’, and it was this sensitivity to charges of disloyalty to the Church which perhaps persuaded him to back the use of impeachment as a counter-measure, as proposed by Wharton and Sunderland.616 The prosecution surprised Dr Stratford who ‘could not have thought this prosecution had come directly’ from Godolphin and Marlborough.617 Dartmouth agreed, noting that neither Sacheverell nor the doctrine of passive obedience would have been questioned if the term ‘Volpone’ had not been used.618 Godolphin never dealt easily with criticism, especially in printed form, and the sermon quickly became a best-seller. As Maynwaring told John Oldmixon in 1710, ‘Godolphin had the last contempt for pamphlets, and always despised the press’.619 On 4 Feb. the Commons had voted to attend the trial as a committee of the whole House, thereby removing it from the bar of the Lords to the public arena of Westminster Hall. Godolphin’s initial reaction was apparently to drop the trial, rather than accede to the Commons request, but the Whigs decided to accept the challenge.620 By 21 Feb. Godolphin’s antennae had picked up an inkling of the intrigues taking place between some Whigs and Harley. A week later he remarked that ‘everybody’s whole time from morning to night [is] being taken up with Mr Sacheverell’s trial’.621

He was certainly an active participant, for on 1 Mar. he moved for the adjournment of the trial till the next day after a tour de force of a speech by Sir Thomas Parker^†, the future earl of Macclesfield.622 On 3 Mar. he noted that during ‘this troublesome trial’, he had not time ‘either to eat or sleep in any regularity’.623 On 4 Mar. he was ‘fiery for’ sending Judge Powell to the Tower for admitting to bail a person suspected of countenancing the riots, but instead a motion was passed that he had done his duty according to law.624 By 5 Mar. Godolphin felt that the trial was impairing his health and its outcome was ‘uncertain’, especially as ‘the great majority’ in the Lords, ‘which we had in the beginning of this sessions, encourages people to commit follies’. On 6 Mar. he was forced to leave the trial early ‘with very great pain of the gravel’. The last day of the trial on 10 Mar. brought little relief as Godolphin thought ‘the debate of that matter in the House of Lords will require two days more at least’.625 On 11 Mar., after the House had voted ‘to judge of the said impeachment according to the usage of Parliament, and the law of the land’, Godolphin moved that ‘the clerks should make out extracts of the books of Parliament of parallel cases’, ready for proceeding further.626 On 14 Mar. he wrote at nine o’clock having ‘just this moment come home from the House of Lords, where we sit every day almost to the extinguishing of nature’.627

On 16 Mar. 1710 Godolphin argued against Nottingham’s proposal for voting on the articles of impeachment in Westminster Hall, preferring it to take place in the Lords.628 As he reported, on 16 Jan., the House sat until ten o’clock, with the first article agreed by 68-52. On the 17th the other three articles were carried without a division: ‘the main question is still behind us, whether he be guilty of high crimes and misdemeanours, which they intend to debate with us tomorrow, as long as is possible’.629 On 20 Mar. he voted Sacheverell guilty of high crimes and misdemeanours.630 Following the verdict, Bishop Wake recorded that ‘we met [the] lord treasurer and lord president in the Prince’s Chamber; and agreed upon Dr S.[’s] censure. I wish I could have made it lighter: I did all I could for him.’631 Godolphin recognized the risk that if the punishment, to be considered on the following day, ‘be not made lighter than (in itself) is reasonable’, some of the trial’s supporters might desert.632 On 21 Mar. Godolphin seconded Carlisle’s motion detailing the punishment of Sacheverell, debarring him from receiving ecclesiastical preferment and preaching for seven years, plus three months imprisonment and the sermons to be burnt: in the event, a milder punishment was substituted.633 For Godolphin, the punishment had ‘dwindled’ so much ‘that all this bustle and fatigue ends in no more but a suspension for three years but from the pulpit and burning his sermons at the old Exchange’.634

Godolphin last attended on the penultimate day of the session, 4 Apr. 1710, having sat on 66 days, 71 per cent of the total, and been named to 12 committees. He then went on his usual trip to Newmarket, setting out on the 6th ‘for eight or ten days’ and returning on 16 April.635 In his absence the queen appointed Shrewsbury as her lord chamberlain, leaving people ‘divided in opinion whether it was without his knowledge or no’.636 On 17 Apr. Sir William Trumbull’s correspondent Thomas Bateman recorded that although Godolphin had been written to on the 13th ‘that t’would be done, but (tis said) [he] knew nothing before. This occasions variety of discourse, and especially about more removes, and the Lady’s [Masham] hand is said to be in it.’637 In fact the queen had written to Godolphin on 13 Apr. that ‘I have not yet declared my intentions of giving the staff and the key to the duke of Shrewsbury because I would be the first that should acquaint you with it.’638 Godolphin responded to her pointing out that Shrewsbury’s appointment, ‘just after his being in a public open conjunction in every vote with the whole body of the Tories, and in a private constant correspondence, and caballing with Mr Harley in everything’, would make every member of the Cabinet Council except Somerset and Queensberry ‘run from it, as they would from the plague’. Further, she should consider the ‘effect this entire change of your ministers will have among your allies abroad’, and on the conduct of war ‘by those who have all along opposed and obstructed it, and who will like any peace, the better, the more it leaves France at liberty to take their time of imposing the Pretender again upon this country.’639 Despite his objections, Godolphin, according to Coningsby, offered to enter into a ‘strict confidence’ with Shrewsbury.640 To Marlborough, he wrote on the 17th that although ‘mortified’, he hoped to be able to keep the Whigs ‘from flying out on this occasion into any measures that would ruin all the affairs abroad irrecoverably and do no good to those at home’. He felt that Shrewsbury would like to live easily with the duumvirs, although it was ‘plain’ that he came into office by the influence of Harley and Somerset.641 On the following day he suggested that Shrewsbury’s appointment might in fact eclipse Somerset at court.642 Sunderland, too, agreed with him ‘that we must endeavour to weather it, as well as we can, in order to preserve the Parliament from being dissolved’.643

Dismissal, 1710

Godolphin had by now realized that the queen would never be reconciled to the duchess of Marlborough.644 He finally seems to have persuaded her supporters to accept that there was no point in his taking up her cause. On 30 Apr. Maynwaring told the duchess of his belief that if the Whigs spoke to Godolphin ‘upon your subject, he would desire them not to meddle, tell them they do not know you (as he did Lord Coningsby) and rather than you should be reconciled by their means, he would never have it done.’645 Godolphin was aware that the animosity of the Marlboroughs and the Whigs to Abigail had led the queen to look to the Tories and others to protect her. He knew that Shrewsbury’s suggestion that the Whigs offer assurances to the queen that ‘she should not be made uneasy’ over Abigail, were unacceptable to the Marlboroughs. Godolphin’s loyalty to the duchess thus made him vulnerable. He plainly suspected Somerset of undermining him and Marlborough: Somerset’s close proximity to the queen allowed him to ‘tell lies and make impressions when nobody else has the opportunity of setting it right’. In the light of this, Godolphin advised ‘we must take care so to keep out temper as not to suffer ourselves to be provoked by the injuries done us by others, to make a wrong or unseasonable step; for that would not only be the greatest gratification imaginable’ to Somerset, Richard Savage, 4th Earl Rivers, and Argyll, ‘but also draw the blame of any ill consequence upon ourselves’. Indeed, Godolphin adopted a form of political quietism; he professed to stand ‘stock still, and makes the same answer to abundance of applications of all sides, and even from the very best of 84 [Tories]; viz that while Mr Freeman [Marlborough] is absent, he can only thank them but not enter into any engagements without him’.646

The intimation, possibly as early as 12 May 1710, that there were plans to replace Sunderland, was a direct provocation. Godolphin realized that Marlborough ‘must look upon it as personal’ and couched his counter-argument in terms of the ‘hurt’ it would do abroad and the mortification it would be to Marlborough, while urging the duke that he should not be ‘provoked to any rashness or precipitation by any rumour from hence’; in return Godolphin would ‘obey your commands in not being wearied out of my life, as long as flesh and blood can bear it’. On 8 June Godolphin floated the idea that the grand pensionary of Holland, Heinsius, should write to Ambassador Vrijbergen that rumours of Sunderland’s impending dismissal were aiding the peace party in Holland. (His suggestion led to a memorial from the States and Heinsius, presented by Vrijbergen, which backfired: Godolphin had to report to Marlborough on 3 July that Shrewsbury and Somerset had persuaded the queen that they had ‘taken too much upon them’.)647 When the queen informed Godolphin of her decision to replace Sunderland on 14 June, Godolphin signed a joint letter with the Whigs urging Marlborough not to resign over his son-in-law’s dismissal.648

A dissolution of Parliament and new elections was particularly a matter for concern. On 16 June Godolphin was still hopeful of avoiding a dissolution, noting that the argument that a new Parliament would support the war was fallacious because once Parliament was dissolved ‘all the allies are in despair, and making their own terms, before it is possible for 88 [Parliament] to come again and to declare his intentions’. On 22 June Godolphin stressed to Marlborough that with a victory over the French ‘all this may yet come right again, and no other way do I see any prospect of it’. With some subtlety Godolphin realized that those Whigs who wished to show the queen that public credit was falling due to the ‘mortifications’ given to Godolphin and Marlborough, although acting out of good will, were mistaken, as public credit ‘once broken’ would take time to recover and ‘in the meantime the whole must be ruined’.649 Godolphin received his own ‘mortification’ in June when the queen decided that Emanuel Howe’s^‡ replacement at Hanover was not to be Godolphin’s nephew, Sir Philip Meadowes^‡, but Harley’s nominee, James Cresset.650

The political uncertainty was indeed creating a crisis of credit, as Godolphin’s problems at the treasury showed. On 15 June he had requested a routine loan from the Bank of England, which had been refused on the 22nd, and only agreed to a week later after two meetings of the directors. On 18 July he reported that ‘the credit continues to sink and the difficulties to increase, and unless there be a speedy remedy, the government will be very soon in the greatest extremities’. On that day he wrote to Seafield that ‘the continued noises of a speedy dissolution continue to have a most pernicious effect upon all our public credit here.’ When the Bank directors approached Godolphin on 3 Aug. for an assurance that the current Parliament would be continued, he asked them to put their request in writing. Armed with their memorandum, Godolphin saw the queen, but failed to get the assurance he wanted.651

The undermining of Godolphin’s position continued. Coningsby’s replacement as vice-treasurer of Ireland by Anglesey he interpreted on 9 July as ‘another very disagreeable alteration’, caused by Coningsby’s ‘firm adherence’ to himself and to Godolphin, and by the need to compensate Anglesey for the failure to appoint him as Sunderland’s successor. On 12 July Godolphin reported to Marlborough an approach from James Vernon, on behalf of Shrewsbury, which he thought might be about the duchess’s relationship with the queen, a subject Godolphin thought ‘ought not to be treated with by anybody but’ Marlborough. On 21 July Godolphin reported that Shrewsbury had told Halifax that the queen ‘was resolved to make’ Godolphin and Harley ‘agree’, but that this resolution had been ‘delayed, if not retracted’.652 Despite his opposition to a dissolution, Godolphin had one eye on preparations for an election. He responded to a request from Seafield by asking Marlborough on 30 June to ‘speak to all the North Britons in the army, to give us their help by joining with my Lord Seafield in the elections either of peers or commoners’ whenever they should come on.653 On 24 July he told Seafield that he was glad ‘you think we may not despair of a favourable election of the Commons, in case of a new Parliament, which threatens us more and more every day, as the reason increases against it’.654 Godolphin had attended the prorogations on 2 May, 20 June and 1 Aug., reporting that the prorogation to 26 Sept. had encouraged some people by the ‘remoteness of the day’. He comforted himself with the observation that the ‘reasons for continuing it grow every day stronger, by the renewing of the war in all places’. Meanwhile, Marlborough asked Godolphin to arrange the election of Stanhope should Parliament be dissolved. In September he issued the like request for Boyle.655 Neither of them were elected with Godolphin’s help, although it appears that Onslow acknowledged Godolphin’s help in securing a bolt hole at St Mawes.656

The process by which Harley eased Godolphin from office was not straightforward. On 3 July 1710 Harley drew up a memorandum for an interview with the queen in which he wrote ‘you must preserve your character and spirit to speak to [the] lord treasurer. Get quit of him’.657 However, it was over a month later on 5 Aug., when Harley wrote to Newcastle, ‘this is plain, it is impracticable 32 [the queen] and 37 [Godolphin] can live together. He every day grows sourer and indeed ruder to 32 [the queen] which is unaccountable, and will hear of no accommodation, so that it is impossible he can continue many days’.658 In the event, as Henry St John, the future Viscount Bolingbroke, recorded in his Letter to Wyndham, personal reasons lay behind Godolphin’s dismissal—the queen had been alienated by ‘the personal ill usage which she received in her private life’, doubtless a reference to Godolphin’s well meaning attempts to reconcile her to Sarah and in particular his behaviour at cabinet on 30 July.659 On 7 Aug. the queen wrote to Godolphin, ‘the uneasiness which you have showed for some time has given me very much trouble, tho I have borne it, and had your behaviour continued the same it was for a few years after my coming to the Crown, I could have no dispute with myself what to do’. However, ‘the many unkind returns I have received since, especially what you said to me personally before the Lords makes it impossible for me to continue you any longer in my service’. His dismissal was sweetened by the promise of a pension of £4,000 a year, ‘out of the privy purse’, and the command that ‘instead of bringing the staff to me that you will break it, which I believe will be easiest to us both.’660 In reply, on the 8th, Godolphin defended his conduct, being ‘not conscious of the least undutiful act, or of one undutiful word to your majesty in my whole life.’661 According to Sarah, the pension was never paid, so that ‘had not his elder brother happen to die he had been in very low circumstances’, Sir William Godolphin leaving him an estate worth a reputed £4,000 a year.662

On 14 Aug. 1710 Godolphin explained his dismissal in terms of the queen being ‘industriously wrought up’ to believe that Mrs Masham could never ‘expect any quarter’ from himself or Marlborough. He predicted the resignation of the Whigs following the dissolution.663 Although Bateman reported on 18 Aug. that Godolphin had ‘not been at council since he was out of office’, he did continue to help the government to finance its military commitments abroad, not least in facilitating the transfer of funds to pay Marlborough’s troops.664 Cropley wrote to Shaftesbury that the Bank had agreed to lend ‘at the earnest request of my Lord Godolphin’. Godolphin, he said, had also written to Marlborough ‘to give strong assurances to all princes the queen will go on with the war and that the next Parliament will support the war’.665 James Craggs the younger^‡ told Stanhope that when he had heard that Sir Henry Furnese^‡ and Sir Theodore Janssen^‡ had ‘refused to lend the new commissioners above £300,000 which they had agreed to lend my lord treasurer upon tallies’, Godolphin wrote them ‘a letter desiring them to keep to their bargain and support the nation’s credit, upon which they did give the money’.666 The day after his fall, Godolphin was busy speaking to the envoys of the Dutch and the emperor to encourage their war effort and arranging for a secure means for Marlborough to communicate with the queen, either via him to Boyle, or to Boyle directly.667

This did not mean that Godolphin was happy with what had happened. On 26 Aug. 1710 Harley wrote that Godolphin was ‘very peevish and makes Mr Secretary [Boyle] so’ and on 12 Sept. that Godolphin would not release Boyle from his ‘engagements’ to him.668 Swift, too, detected a similar demeanour, when following his arrival in London on 7 Sept., he recounted a visit to Godolphin on the 9th, who ‘gave me a reception very unexpected and altogether different from what I have received from any great man in my life; altogether short, dry and morose’, which was explained by his friends ‘that he was overrun by the spleen and peevishness upon the present posture of affairs, and used nobody better’.669 On 7 Sept. Maynwaring was desired by Devonshire and Sunderland to find out Godolphin’s views on how the other Whig ministers should behave, ‘for they would do, or not do, whatever he believed was best’.670 Godolphin’s view that the remaining Whigs would resign following a dissolution, was confirmed on 10 Sept., he having been ‘very lately in company’ with the Junto.671

The Harley ministry and the 1710 election

In September 1710, Godolphin turned some of his attention to the elections. He took part in ‘a great cabal’ at Althorp designed to promote a Whig challenge to Tory hegemony in Northamptonshire, although ultimately to no effect.672 On 12 Sept. he received a visit from Wharton and ‘some gentlemen of Oxfordshire’ who were keen to have Rialton stand for the county, but Godolphin thought it ‘wrong to go about it at this time’.673 On 13 Sept. he wrote to Seafield about the forthcoming Scottish peerage election.674 But in the latter part of the month, thoughts of recreation became uppermost. On 24 Sept. Godolphin wrote from Althorp to the duke of Kent to tell him of his plans of visiting him at Wrest the following week, and ‘of walking about your gardens and park all Friday, of going to Newmarket, Saturday’.675 By 2 Oct. Godolphin was at Newmarket. On 16 Oct. he wrote to the duchess of Marlborough perceptively analysing the tensions in the new ministry between Harley and Rochester. He described a dinner the previous day at Orford’s and characterized his own health as on the mend, although he could only bear the motions of a coach at walking pace.676 On 26 Oct. Walpole wrote from Newmarket that Godolphin was ‘much out of order with the stone and gravel’.677

According to Harley’s calculations of 3 Oct. 1710, Godolphin was expected to oppose the new ministry.678 However, Godolphin had told Marlborough that he did not expect to be in London until towards the end of November, and he was absent from the opening of Parliament on 25 Nov., first attending on 4 December.679 He attended a further three days in December, the last being the 18th. On 8 Dec. Peter Wentworth thought that some of the country gentlemen planned to impeach Godolphin, although ‘some great men… had art enough to get that waived’; on 19 Dec. Mungo Graham^‡ had heard nothing about an impeachment.680 Rumours of an impeachment were to resurface in March 1711.681 On 17 Dec. Godolphin penned a critique of current affairs, which was shown to the queen on 21 Dec., probably by Dr Hamilton.682 He dealt mainly with the resurgence of France, and accompanying ‘insolence’, which had been encouraged by the decline in public credit, the dissolution of Parliament and the expected removal of Marlborough from his military commands. He went on to warn that

talking never so big nor voting never so well signifies very little towards carrying on the war with effect, if there be not an entire conjunction and harmony betwixt her majesty and the allies abroad as it has been hitherto, and if, as the French have been already gratified in the first two points, they must also have further satisfaction of seeing assurances from their friends here made good by the duke of Marlborough’s not serving any more, this must needs give the finishing stroke to the drooping alliance, and make it fall to pieces immediately.

The end result would be the allies negotiating separately with France. ‘When the alliance is once broken’, he argued, ‘can it enter into anybody’s imagination that the queen and the British nation will have any terms from France, but what shall be in favour of the Pretender’?683 In the first ceremony since his own installation in December 1704, in Windsor on 22 Dec. Godolphin officiated at the installation into the garter of the electoral prince, the future George II, then duke of Cambridge, as well as of the duke of Devonshire and the duke of Argyll.684

On 5 Jan. 1711 Godolphin spoke in the debate on the war in Spain in defence of Galway’s actions: Nicolson referred to his ‘puzzling remarks’.685 On 6 Jan. Dartmouth sent the queen’s commands to Godolphin that he comply with an order from the Lords for copies of his letters relating to the war in Spain and Portugal. Godolphin replied on the 7th that although he had written to Stanhope and Peterborough the letters contained ‘only my private thoughts’, and were of insufficient consequence to keep copies: orders to them from the queen ‘were always transmitted to them by the secretary of state’.686 This rather neatly removed the threat of his being censured ‘for using the queen’s name’ without her consent, or knowledge.687 On 9 Jan. he spoke in another debate on the Spanish war, when his motion that the House be cleared of strangers was rejected. On 11 Jan. he spoke in favour of hearing the petitions of Galway and Tyrawley on the conduct of the war and entered his protest against their rejection. He also spoke in the debate on the attribution of the blame for Almanza and protested against the conclusion that the defeat had been occasioned by the opinions of Galway, Tyrawley and Stanhope. He spoke in the censure debate on 12 Jan. to point out that it was important to distinguish between the cabinet council and the ministry: as ‘the word ministers was more copious, it was therefore improper in this case, because their Lordships ought to be sure whom they designed to censure’. He called, unsuccessfully, for an adjournment as it was late and ‘a person concerned in this debate was absent’. He later answered Peterborough, explaining why the earl’s project for an attack on Toulon had not been feasible.688 He entered his protest against the censure of the conduct of ministers for approving an offensive war in Spain. On 2 Feb. Kent registered his proxy with Godolphin, as did by James Berkeley, 3rd earl of Berkeley, three days later. On 3 Feb. he entered his protests against further motions relating to the Spanish war: that the two regiments on the Spanish establishment at the time of the battle of Alamanza were not properly supplied and that the failure of ministers to supply the deficiencies of men voted by Parliament amounted to a neglect of that service. On 8 Feb. he entered his dissent from the presentation to the queen of the House’s conclusions concerning the war in Spain.

Godolphin was absent from the House from 22 Mar. until 9 May. This was partly because of a visit to Newmarket, from whence on 30 Mar. he wrote to Kent, promising ‘a great deal of diversion next week, and a very great appearance’: two of his horses were slated to race on consecutive days on 26-27 April.689 On 9 Apr. Godolphin registered his proxy with Charles Fitzroy, 2nd duke of Grafton. The Tories, meanwhile, were planning a number of attacks on him. On 18 Apr. Poulett expounded a typical Tory view of Godolphin: ‘as the world is of all hands fully convinced Marlborough and Godolphin shifted only by setting mankind against one another and only throve by wars of all degrees and kinds’.690 The Commons on 24 Apr. voted that £35 million of public money was unaccounted for, and an investigation was launched. Godolphin’s defenders mobilized themselves in response, Arthur Maynwaring collaborating with Walpole on compiling a repudiation of the claims, and on 28 Apr., Walpole defended him from claims that procedures had not been properly followed, showing ‘how some accounts could never be passed in that form the exchequer required, and it was not possible the lord treasurer could compel an impossibility’.691 On 1 May Alexander Abercromby^‡ wrote to Marlborough, explaining his delay in joining the campaign: ‘Lord Seafield, Mr Boscawen and some others of my Lord Godolphin’s friends not only advised my stay hitherto but also for some days longer.’692 On 5 May it was reported to Robert Wodrow that the Commons had ‘come to two resolves one highly reflecting upon the late management of the treasury’, particularly on the late passage of accounts. ‘There was a great debate whether in the first resolve my Lord Godolphin should be named but upon a division it was carried in the negative.’693 According to Burnet, the missing £35 million could scarcely be attributed to Godolphin, who had ‘managed the treasury with an uncorruptness, fidelity and diligence, that were so unexceptionable that it was not possible to fix any censure on his administration’: he added, darkly, that the Tory-dominated Commons would not consent to allow the report of the committee on the arrears of taxes to be published, ‘for by that it would have appeared who had served well, and who had served ill.’694

Back in the Lords, on 10 May 1711 Godolphin was named to manage a conference on amendments to a bill for the preservation of pine trees in the American colonies. On 12 May he was named to two conferences on the bill for the preservation of game, as he was again on the 17th and 31st. On 15 May Maynwaring reported Godolphin ‘ill of a cold, and more touched by the removal of Lord Rialton than his own’ (his son having been dismissed as cofferer on the 13th).695 On 1 June in the debate in the committee of the whole on the Scottish linen cloth bill, according to John Elphinstone, 4th Lord Balmerinoch [S], the only significant point at issue was the prohibition of the export of unmanufactured linen yarn ‘from Scotland or Ireland or any foreign part’, which came under considerable attack from English peers of all sides. Godolphin was one of the few who stood up for the Scots, speaking for them twice, ‘very heartily and very well’.696 As well as removing the clause, the Lords added a clause allowing the exportation of linen from Ireland to the plantations for 11 years, something which, Baillie felt, would have seriously disadvantaged the Scottish linen trade. Only Godolphin, Shrewsbury and Buckingham had spoken against the amendment.697 Godolphin last attended that session on 4 June, having attended on 62 days of the session, 55 per cent of the total, and having been named to a further six committees.

Over the summer, Godolphin worked on defending his own and his ministry’s reputation, calling on 25 July 1711 for material from Cowper on the Bewdley charter dispute, ‘in order to set the late representation of the House of Commons in a truer light’ (the catalogue of grievances against the Whig ministry which had been compiled in the Commons and voted to be presented to the queen on 31 May, and which referred to the long-running issue of the replacement of Bewdley’s corporation charter).698 On 21 Sept. he was at St Albans and by 4 Oct. he was at Newmarket, where he was still on 25 October.699 Godolphin’s name occurs on Nottingham’s list of list of peers put together probably at the beginning of December, possibly in relation to Nottingham’s alliance with the Whigs against the ministry’s peace policy, or the passing of the occasional conformity bill.700 Godolphin attended on the opening day of the 1711-12 session, 7 Dec., speaking in favour of inserting into the address the ‘No Peace without Spain’ clause.701 He argued against the ministerial view that the matter should be postponed: the nation, he warned, could be bought and sold before it was considered; the outcome of the debate was being closely watched by the French.702 On 8 Dec. his name appears on a list either as an opponent of the court in the projected division on the Address or in favour of presenting it with the amendment of the previous day. On 19 Dec., on a forecast for the division expected on the following day on the Hamilton peerage case, Godolphin’s name was amongst the opponents, but with a query.703 In the event he left the House rather than vote on the validity of patents of honour granted to peers of Great Britain who were peers of Scotland at the time of the Union, and their entitlement to sit and vote in Parliament. In doing so he avoided voting against the royal prerogative, although partisan advantage might have demanded it.704

The tactical advantage of a short Christmas adjournment obtained by the Whigs on 22 Dec. 1711 was obviated on 2 Jan. 1712 when the court (bolstered by the new peerage creations) succeeded in winning a further adjournment. Godolphin spoke against the motion, ‘insisting upon the irregularity of adjourning one house and not th’other’, but it was carried by 63-49.705 In late January Godolphin seems to have been consulted by Somerset on whether the duke should insist upon his wife leaving the queen’s service following his own dismissal.706 On 15 Jan., Abercrombie reported that following the report of the commissioners of public accounts in the Commons there was ‘some talk of impeaching’ Godolphin, among others.707 On 17 Jan., after the queen’s message to the Lords on the diminution of her prerogative over the creation of British titles and the need to satisfy the Scots, Godolphin proposed it be debated in committee of the whole House the following day, as it would require some time.708 On 31 Jan. Thomas Pelham, Baron Pelham, registered his proxy with Godolphin, followed on 13 Feb. by John Hervey, Baron Hervey (later earl of Bristol). On 21 Feb. Godolphin made a motion to adjourn the House until the 25th, but this was lost after a tied division.709 After 13 Mar. he did not attend again until 13 May. He registered his proxy with Cowper on 28 March. One of his horses was slated to run at Newmarket on 30 April.710 After his return, on 28 May he seconded Halifax in the debate over the ‘restraining orders’ sent to Ormond and entered his protest against the resolution not to address the queen for an offensive war against France.711 On 7 June he spoke in the debate on the motion to address the queen thanking her for her speech concerning the peace negotiations, noting that although ‘he did not pretend to any great knowledge in trade’, yet he had observed that customs records showed that ‘the single trade of Portugal brought to England in times of war [was] double the wealth of the trade to Spain in times of peace’, so that it must be ‘presumed that the trade to Spain would still yield less for the future because the French had made themselves absolute masters of it’.712 He then entered his protest against the resolution not to amend the address on the queen’s speech concerning the peace. He last attended on 13 June, a week or so before the end of the session, having been present on 57 days of the session, 53 per cent of the total, and been named to a further nine committees.

On 26 June 1712 Godolphin sent a letter to Nottingham noting that ‘the second declaration of the duke of Ormond’s [presumably his announcement that he had received instructions to agree a ceasefire with the French for two months] makes a great noise here, and would have made a greater, I believe if it had not missed of its intended effect’.713 On 7 July Godolphin accompanied the Marlboroughs from the Lodge at Windsor to London.714 Upon their return to St Albans, Godolphin was present on 11 Aug. at a dinner held in Marlborough’s campaign tent on his bowling green.715 At the end of July, his sister referred to Godolphin intending ‘a thorough progress now he has nothing else to do’.716 This he seems to have undertaken, for on 18 Aug. he was visiting his niece, Dorothy Meadowes, near Winchester. He then moved on to Tilshead; and on 24 Aug. he was at Woodstock, dining with Sunderland, Maynwaring and Vanbrugh.717 He then returned to St Albans, no doubt looking forward to a foray to Newmarket, where on 10 Sept. it was announced that one of his horses would run against one of Wharton’s at Newmarket on 8 October.718

Godolphin did not live to see the race. He died at St Albans at 2 o’clock on the morning of 15 Sept., ‘having been long afflicted with the stone in the kidneys’.719 White Kennet rather gruesomely described how in the process of ‘riding cross the country 40 miles a day, the motion of the coach broke a stone in the kidneys and the pieces coming down in great torture obstructing and bearing upon one another, one of them so lodged in a neck of water as to mortify and kill without possible help’.720 His sister wrote that it was a ‘great happiness in the midst of this misfortune that my Lord Godolphin is ill in a place where he is so carefully and tenderly looked after’ by the duchess.721 L’Hermitage recorded that after his death they had opened him up and found a stone the length of a kidney.722 On 7 Oct. his body was taken from his house at St James’s Park to the Jerusalem chamber of the Palace of Westminster. The next evening, about 11 p.m., he was buried in Westminster Abbey. Marlborough, Richmond, Schomberg, and Devonshire held the corners of the pall, and a large number of other nobles came up from the country to attend.723 There had been a slight delay in the burial ‘till they could get six lords of the Garter together to carry up the pall’, there even being a suggestion that ‘they don’t find the Tory knights so ready to come to town a purpose’.724

An unblemished reputation

After his death, the new earl of Godolphin declared that his father ‘died with no more money by him than £1500 which all people wonders at.’725 This should perhaps been compared with Godolphin’s self-assessment of his personal estate ‘including money at interest’ at about £10,000 in October 1689.726 Kennet recorded that on his death ‘his effects beside the paternal estate are said not to be above 25 thousand pounds, yet considering his public employs and private way of life must argue an integrity singular in that office’.727 L’Hermitage thought that he left only £50,000, apart from £3,000 in rents inherited from his older brother.728 On 23 Oct. Godolphin’s sister, Jael Boscawen, wrote that she was ‘more sorry than surprised’ that Godolphin had ‘left no more money to those that come after, and that what was thought to be left is not theirs, especially if there be any debts to pay’. Further, the ‘poor old estate has had debts and encumbrances upon it, to near the value of it, since my remembrance, but yet even at that time the owners were never straitened but had always plenty of money and the last of them left £4,000 which he disposed of in legacies.’729 According to the duchess of Marlborough, Godolphin ‘never made any great expense for he won at play and mortally hated all things of show and grandeur, but he was very charitable and generous’. When he died ‘he had not in the world but about’ £14,000 in tallies, of which £11,000 was not his ‘and many other small sums which he took off helpless people who thought themselves safe in his hands, and when all his debts were paid there could hardly be enough to bury him’.730

In the immediate aftermath of his death, the duchess described Godolphin as ‘the truest friend to me and all my family that ever was, and the best man that ever lived’.731 Molesworth lamented that ‘the greatest man in the whole world for honesty, capacity, courage, friendship, generosity is gone’.732 Boyer recorded in September 1712 that Godolphin’s ‘administration was found thoroughly clear, sound and unattachable. So that, as he lived, he died, with an unblemished reputation, to which the most candid of his enemies paid a due respect’.733 The Flying Post recorded that ‘he has left behind him the character of an accomplished statesman and a frugal and prudent manager of the public money’.734 Swift recorded that ‘the Whigs have lost a great support’ by his death.735 Hearne noted that ‘he was a man that could keep his temper, but was one of the greatest Whigs in the kingdom, and did as much mischief as the duke of Marlborough, these two ingrossing the treasure of the nation to themselves’.736 In 1685 Jael Boscawen had written of his ‘silent manner of his expressing himself to his best friends, which to those that don’t know him very well may give just occasion to doubt of him’.737 Godolphin himself once remarked to Coningsby that his ‘countenance was none of the best at any time’, and Hare thought his ‘silence was very particular and almost without example’ when under provocation.738 He may have needed it to deal with the clamour of those who wanted his attention: Maynwaring described the scene at his levee: ‘when my Lord himself comes out, they all crowd about him, press to be heard, and stick close to his ear, till he is gone out into the court.’739 As the perceived fount of most ministerial patronage, Godolphin was always troubled by ‘so many unreasonable people, that it is impossible for a man in his station to satisfy them all’.740 Nor was he helped by Marlborough’s determination to keep out of most patronage matters, relying on Godolphin to shield him from the incessant importunities of suitors and their patrons.741 Nevertheless, if one could pierce his armour, Godolphin was loyal to his friends. Shaftesbury noted in 1709 that ‘once he has conceived a good opinion of a man, he will bear anything from him’.742 Or woman for that matter, for perhaps his closest friend was the duchess of Marlborough, on whom he relied for ‘comfort and companionship’. He saw her every day when she was at court and they corresponded every day when she was absent.743

Although extremely hard-working, Godolphin could also be good company and was known to enjoy card-playing and, especially horse-racing. Foreign diplomats, such as the Prussian Ezekiel, Freiherr von Spanheim, took particular note of his regular attendance at Newmarket in the spring and autumn of each year.744 Godolphin told Burnet that his love of gaming ‘delivered him from the obligation to talk much’. Political opponents regarded Godolphin’s famed coolness as a mask for hypocrisy, an ‘affectation’, according to Dartmouth, for ‘though he had the grimace of refusing everything before he received it’, yet he had benefited his family through alliance with the Marlboroughs.745 The squibs of his opponents, such as Brown’s The Country Parson’s Honest Advice addressed to Lord Keeper Cowper, poured doubts on his probity.746 However, most contemporaries regarded him, as did James Brydges, as a man of ‘wisdom, probity and deep experience’.747 To Burnet, Godolphin was ‘the man of the clearest head, the calmest temper, and the most incorrupt of all the ministers of state I have ever known’. Time seemed only to increase his reputation: Thomas Carte in 1724 noted that ‘Godolphin had certainly the best head and capacity for a minister of state of any man in England and was a man that no country in the world might be ashamed of. He had not the least tincture of avarice and was the uncorruptest man in his time’ in the treasury.748

The traditional view of Godolphin is that of a highly competent administrator, who presided over a treasury which raised unprecedented funds for military purposes, whilst managing the relationship between the executive and the legislature.749 During 1702-9, Parliament raised over £40 million for the war. Further, Godolphin managed the supply much more efficiently than his predecessors, with better record keeping, more attention to the management of tallies and the use of exchequer bills, long term borrowing by the sale of annuities, and an attempt to prevent excessive profiteering by those remitting funds to pay the armed forces. In this he was not essentially an innovator, but a bureaucrat who had fully mastered the workings of the system. As one historian put it, ‘his forte was administration rather than originality’.750 The weakness of Godolphin’s financial management was ‘the floating departmental debt’, which grew each year and ‘came after 1708 to imperil the structure of credit’.751 Even so, his reputation in this field was again higher 15 years after his death; looking back from the vantage point of 1727, a correspondent of Spencer Compton wrote that ‘a good judgment capable of weighing the several expedients that will always be proposed to it, is the chief quality required in a lord treasurer’, and Godolphin, ‘who knew but little of accounts, whose hand was perhaps one of the worst in England, and who did not even write at all without some difficulty, is generally allowed one of the best lord treasurers we ever had’.752

In political terms, Godolphin was reluctant to commit the court to a party campaign by sending signals of wholesale removals; what he did do, in Cropley’s words, was ‘dabble a little in a few particular places [to] influence, ’tis so gently done and unseen and so as really to signify very little’. In a sense, the objective was ‘to regulate the extent of official influence … in such a way as to leave one party victorious in the Commons but not uncontrollable’. If he had a weakness as a political manager, it was his distaste for the party battle.753 Around 1710, Raby referred to Godolphin as speaking ‘seldom in the House of Lords, but when he does is well heard, and speaks very handsomely and always much to the purpose’.754 This fits in well with the views of John Dunton that Godolphin was ‘a statesman of a profound and orthodox judgment’, and Abel Boyer, who at the end of a lengthy panegyric observed that Godolphin had ‘a very clear conception of the whole policy of the government both in Church and State’.755

S.N.H.

• 1 TNA, PROB 11/529.
• 2 CTB, 1681-5, p. 1253.
• 3 CSP Dom. 1686-7, pp. 886, 389; 1695, p. 112; CSP Dom. 1705-6, p. 110.
• 4 CTB, 1685-9, p. 1965; CTB, 1700-1701, p. 175.
• 5 G.S. Davies, Charterhouse in London, 354-5.
• 6 Evelyn Diary, v. 210.
• 7 R. Sundstrom, Sidney Godolphin, 11, 16; F. Harris, Transformations of Love, 119.
• 8 FAO, 578; L. Inn Reg. 305.
• 9 Harris, Transformations, 121.
• 10 CP, v. 748; Burnet, ii. 245.
• 11 MT Reg. (Harl. Soc. n.s. i), 68; T. Lever, Godolphin, 289; Evelyn Diary, iv. 63.
• 12 Verney ms mic. M636/31, J. to Sir R. Verney, 25 July 1678; Evelyn Diary, iv. 139.
• 13 Burnet, ii. 249; Sundstrom, 29-35; Dering Diary, 149.
• 14 CSP Dom. 1684-5, p. 131; 1685, p. 22.
• 15 Kenyon, Sunderland, 113.
• 16 Burnet, iii. 9.
• 17 Lever, 61.
• 18 Gregg, Queen Anne (2001), 39; Sundstrom, 57.
• 19 State Trials, xi. 593.
• 20 Evelyn Diary, iv. 527; Lever, 77.
• 21 CTB, 1685-9, p. 1965.
• 22 Verney ms mic. M636/41, H. Paman to Sir R. Verney, 14 Oct. 1686.
• 23 Sundstrom, 39.
• 24 CSP Dom. 1686-7, p. 362; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. iii. 363.
• 25 Add. 34510, ff. 14-16.
• 26 NAS, GD 406/1/7808.
• 27 HMC 12th Rep. IX, 91; NLW, Coedymaen mss I, 40.
• 28 Bodl. Carte 76, f. 28; HMC Portland, iii. 410.
• 29 Harris, Passion for Govt. 47; Gregg, Queen Anne, 57.
• 30 Harris, Passion, 61.
• 31 Clarendon Corresp. ed. Singer ii. 188.
• 32 Add. 34503, f. 12.
• 33 NLW, Canon Trevor Owen mss 160.
• 34 Add. 34510, ff. 164, 175.
• 35 Clarendon Corresp. ii. 211, 209.
• 36 Kingdom Without a King, 25-28, 35, 74, 79, 84-85, 92, 98, 105, 109, 115, 124, 153, 158, 165.
• 37 London Gazette, 13-17 Dec. 1688.
• 38 Clarendon Corresp. ii. 261.
• 39 CTB 1689-1692, p. 5, 25.
• 40 Bodl. ms Eng. hist. b. 205, f. 96.
• 41 Horwitz, Parl. Pol. 29, 40.
• 42 Halifax Letters, ii. 205.
• 43 Horwitz, Parl. Pol. 19.
• 44 Burnet, iv. 6-7.
• 45 Halifax Letters, ii. 234.
• 46 CTB 1689-92, pp. 26-78, 353-76, 425-36.
• 47 Verney ms. mic. M636/44, C. Gardiner to Sir R. Verney, 27 Dec.
• 48 Sundstrom, 47; Halifax Letters, ii. 246.
• 49 CSP Dom. 1689-90, pp. 430-1.
• 50 Sundstrom, 49.
• 51 Horwitz, Parl Pol. 52.
• 52 Clarendon Corresp. ii. 312.
• 53 HMC Lords, iii. 35.
• 54 CTB 1689-92, p. 958.
• 55 Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. 450, 455-7.
• 56 Lever, 79; Sundstrom, 48; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. v. 502, 529.
• 57 Add. 75366, Godolphin to Halifax, 8 Aug. 1690; Add. 78309, f. 109.
• 58 Add. 51511, f. 17.
• 59 Bodl. Clarendon 90, f. 46.
• 60 Lever, Godolphin, 297; Add. 61456, ff. 4-5.
• 61 Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. v. 528; Add. 78309, f. 111; Sundstrom, 50-51.
• 62 Verney ms. mic. M636/44, P. Osborne to Sir R. Verney, 28 Oct. 1690.
• 63 CSP Dom. 1690-1, pp. 134-5; TNA, SP 105/82, f. 21.
• 64 Browning, Danby, iii. 181.
• 65 Evelyn Diary, v. 39; Add. 70014, f. 361.
• 66 HMC Le Fleming, ii. 307.
• 67 WDA, Browne mss 234.
• 68 HMC Le Fleming, 310.
• 69 Sundstrom, 53, 55; Add. 70015, f. 19; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. v. 566.
• 70 CSP Dom. 1690-1, p. 259.
• 71 CSP Dom. 1690-1, p. 243; Dalrymple, Mems. ii. app. iii. 223-4.
• 72 Sundstrom, 56.
• 73 CSP Dom. 1690-1, pp. 258, 277, 295.
• 74 Dalrymple, Mems. ii. app. iii., 226.
• 75 WDA, Browne mss 82.
• 76 Horwitz, Parl. Pols. 67.
• 77 Bodl. Carte 79, f. 369.
• 78 Horwitz, Parl. Pol. 69.
• 79 Add. 61134, f. 201.
• 80 Horwitz, Parl. Pol. 93; CSP Dom. 1691-2, pp. 352-3 (misdated).
• 81 Harris, Passion, 61.
• 82 CSP Dom. 1690-1, pp. 480-1.
• 83 HMC Finch, iii. 220.
• 84 CSP Dom. 1690-1, p. 512.
• 85 CSP Dom. 1690-1, pp. 134-5.
• 86 HMC 7th Rep. 206.
• 87 Luttrell Diary, 67; HMC Hastings, ii. 221-2; HMC Portland, iii. 485; Sundstrom, 53.
• 88 HMC Lords, iii. 402.
• 89 Add. 61414, ff. 150-1.
• 90 Harris, Passion, 64.
• 91 CSP Dom. 1691-2, p. 281.
• 92 HMC Finch, iv. 251.
• 93 CSP Dom. 1691-2, pp. 341, 365.
• 94 CSP Dom. 1691-2, pp. 366, 405-6.
• 95 Bodl. Carte 79, f. 461.
• 96 CSP Dom. 1691-2, pp. 427-8.
• 97 Browning, Danby, iii. 183.
• 98 Bodl. Carte 79, f. 467.
• 99 Add. 70225, Foley to Harley, 17 Sept. 1692.
• 100 Luttrell, Brief Relation, ii. 586.
• 101 Luttrell, Brief Relation, iii. 5; Sundstrom, 62.
• 102 State Trials, xii. 1048; UNL, PwA 2381-2384.
• 103 HMC Finch, v. 57.
• 104 CSP Dom. 1693, pp. 140, 142.
• 105 HMC Finch, v. 183; Add. 61411, f. 110.
• 106 Horwitz, Parl. Pol. 116.
• 107 Add. 75375, f. 14; 29574, f. 216; Verney ms. mic. M636/47, A. Nicholas to J. Verney, 27, 31 Aug. 1693.
• 108 HMC Finch, v. 243.
• 109 Horwitz, Parl. Pol. 126.
• 110 HMC Lords, n.s. i. 314.
• 111 Harris, Passion, 74.
• 112 Luttrell, Brief Relation, iii. 299; Horwitz, Parl. Pol. 133.
• 113 CSP Dom. 1694-5, p. 145.
• 114 Luttrell, Brief Relation, iii. 310.
• 115 CSP Dom. 1694-5, pp. 168, 197; Add. 17677 OO, f. 279.
• 116 DZA, Bonet dispatch, 6-16 July 1694.
• 117 UNL, PwA 1234.
• 118 CSP Dom. 1694-5, pp. 179-85; UNL, mss PwA 472/1-2, 1238.
• 119 CSP Dom. 1694-5, p. 217.
• 120 HMC Portland, iii. 552; UNL, PwA 1240.
• 121 Horwitz, Parl.Pols. 135.
• 122 CSP Dom. 1694-5, p. 310.
• 123 HMC Lords, n.s. i. 418-19.
• 124 Add. 46527, f. 48; Add. 17677 PP, ff. 136-40; Luttrell, Brief Relation, iii. 431-2.
• 125 Sundstrom, 68; Horwitz, Rev. Pols. 152-3.
• 126 Add. 29565, f. 545.
• 127 HMC Lords, n.s. i. 551.
• 128 Evelyn Diary, v. 210, 249.
• 129 Add. 17677 PP, ff. 258-60, 264-8.
• 130 UNL, PwA 502.
• 131 Horwitz, Parl. Pol. 159-60; Sundstrom, 70-71.
• 132 HMC Portland, iii. 565.
• 133 Beinecke Lib. OSB mss 2, box 4, folder 74, Godolphin to Blathwayt, 23 Aug. 1695.
• 134 HMC Portland, ii. 174; CTB 1693-6, p. 1409.
• 135 HMC Downshire, i. 587.
• 136 HMC Hastings, iv. 311, 313.
• 137 Luttrell, Brief Relation, iii. 566.
• 138 Horwitz, Parl. Pol . 163-4.
• 139 HMC Lords, n.s. ii. 8.
• 140 Harris, Passion, 78.
• 141 CTB 1696-7, p. 1.
• 142 Add. 17677 QQ, f. 407.
• 143 Horwitz, Parl. Pol. 181-2.
• 144 Bodl. Carte 233, ff. 23, 25.
• 145 Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, i. 8; Add. 75370, Edward Southwell to Halifax, 29 Sept. 1696.
• 146 Horwitz, Parl. Pol. 182-3; Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, i. 13, 29, 33-34.
• 147 Horwitz, Parl. Pol. 184-5; Shrewsbury Corresp. 415, 420; CTB 1696-7, p. 67.
• 148 Bodl. Ballard 5, f. 101.
• 149 Add. 17677 QQ, f. 584.
• 150 Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, i. 39.
• 151 Shrewsbury Corresp. 429.
• 152 Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, i. 39; Shrewsbury Corresp. 420.
• 153 HMC Lords, n.s. ii. 260.
• 154 Add. 47608, ff. 3-4.
• 155 Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, i. 64.
• 156 Add. 17677 QQ, ff. 624-8; Shrewsbury Corresp. 439.
• 157 Add. 17677 QQ, ff. 629-33.
• 158 Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, i. 140.
• 159 Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, i. 138, 163, 169; Shrewsbury Corresp. 458.
• 160 Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, i. 173.
• 161 HMC Buccleuch, ii. 439.
• 162 Horwitz, Parl. Pol. 201.
• 163 Harris, Passion, 78.
• 164 Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, i. 293-4.
• 165 Add. 75369, R. Crawford to Halifax, 1 Aug. 1697.
• 166 HMC Portland, iii. 592.
• 167 Lever, 110.
• 168 Add. 61653, ff. 27-30.
• 169 CSP Dom. 1698, p. 129.
• 170 Longleat, Bath mss, Thynne pprs. 44, ff. 57-58; CSP Dom. 1698, p. 145.
• 171 Post Man,5-7 Apr. 1698.
• 172 CSP Dom. 1698, pp. 193-4.
• 173 HMC Lonsdale, 109.
• 174 Add. 61653, ff. 62-64.
• 175 Add. 28071, ff. 16-21.
• 176 Add. 61653, ff. 71-74.
• 177 HMC Lonsdale, 110.
• 178 Add. 61653, ff. 79-82.
• 179 Ibid. ff. 82-83.
• 180 Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, ii. 97.
• 181 HMC Lords, n.s. iii. 228, 230.
• 182 HMC Lonsdale, 110.
• 183 Cumbria RO (Carlisle), D/Lons/L1/1/36/7.
• 184 Correspondentie van Willem III en van Bentinck, ed. Japikse, I, ii. 89.
• 185 Lever, 110.
• 186 Add. 61442, ff. 132, 137, 139.
• 187 HMC Portland, iii. 600; Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, ii. 245.
• 188 HMC Lonsdale, 112.
• 189 Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, ii. 264-5; Bodl. Carte 228, ff. 282-3.
• 190 Add. 78307, ff. 149-50.
• 191 HMC Portland, iii. 613.
• 192 Add. 17677 UU, ff. 103-6.
• 193 Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, ii. 404, 435.
• 194 HMC Lords, n.s. iv. 107.
• 195 Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, iii. 97-98.
• 196 Add. 72498, f. 19.
• 197 Add. 61363, f. 26.
• 198 HMC Portland, iii. 626-7, 630.
• 199 HMC Bath, iii. 418.
• 200 HMC Portland, iii. 633.
• 201 Add. 17677 UU, f. 333.
• 202 Add. 72517, ff. 74-75.
• 203 Cumbria RO, D/Lons/W2/2/3.
• 204 HP Commons, 1690-1715, iv. 262.
• 205 TNA, PRO 30/24/20/36-37.
• 206 HMC Portland, iv. 8.
• 207 HMC Portland, iv. 14-15;.
• 208 Horwitz, Parl. Pol. 278-9.
• 209 HMC Portland, iv. 12-13.
• 210 Bodl. Carte 228, f. 365.
• 211 Sundstrom, 84.
• 212 Horwitz, Parl. Pol. 284; Add. 30000 E, ff. 91-92.
• 213 Horwitz, Parl. Pol. 285; Sundstrom, 84.
• 214 HMC Portland, iv. 15-16.
• 215 Northants. RO, Finch Hatton mss 4053; Horwitz, Parl. Pol. 291.
• 216 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 25, 27, 31-33.
• 217 Add. 70284, Godolphin to Harley, 22 Aug. 170[1].
• 218 HMC Portland, iv. 22-23; Luttrell, Brief Relation, v. 89.
• 219 New State of Europe, 25-27 Sept. 1701.
• 220 Beinecke Lib.: Osborn Coll., Blathwayt mss, box 20, [Yard to Blathwayt] 2 Oct. 1701.
• 221 HMC Portland, iv. 25.
• 222 Add. 70020, f. 104; HMC Portland, iv. 25; Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 43.
• 223 HMC Cowper, ii. 438.
• 224 Horwitz, Parl. Pol. 297; Add. 30000 E, ff. 395-8.
• 225 Add. 17677 WW, ff. 372-3.
• 226 Kent HLC (CKS), U1590/C9/1, A. to J. Stanhope, 18/29 Nov. 1701.
• 227 HMC Portland, iv. 28.
• 228 Horwitz, Parl. Pol. 298-9.
• 229 KSRL, Methuen-Simpson corresp. ms E82, Methuen to Simpson, 12 Dec. 1701.
• 230 HMC Portland, iv. 29.
• 231 Horwitz, Parl. Pol. 299.
• 232 Add. 70020, ff.143-4.
• 233 HMC Portland, iv. 33-34.
• 234 Harris, Passion, 86; Add. 70073-4, newsletter 19 Mar. 1702.
• 235 HMC Portland, iv. 34.
• 236 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 50-51.
• 237 Post Boy, 11-14 Apr. 1702.
• 238 Add. 70285, Godolphin to Harley, Fri. 1 [May 1702].
• 239 Longleat, Portland misc. f. 39.
• 240 Add. 70020, ff. 182-5.
• 241 HMC Portland, iv. 39.
• 242 Add. 61638, ff. 163-4.
• 243 Harris, Passion, 93; Add. 70073-4, newsletter, 2 June 1702.
• 244 Cumbria RO, D/Lons/W2/2/5; Add. 70075, newsletter, 23 Jan. 1702[-3].
• 245 Add. 29588, f. 79.
• 246 Pols. in Age of Anne, 351.
• 247 Add. 72498, ff. 47-48, 50; Add. 28086, ff. 42-45; Luttrell, Brief Relation, v. 190-1.
• 248 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 75, 99.
• 249 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 105, 108.
• 250 Add. 70020, ff. 206-7.
• 251 HMC Portland, iv. 44-45; Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 111; Add. 29588, f. 144.
• 252 HMC Portland, iv. 47.
• 253 Add. 61119, ff. 75-76; HMC Portland, iv. 48.
• 254 Add. 29588, ff. 279, 326; Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 118, 127.
• 255 CTB 1702, pp. 77, 80.
• 256 HMC Portland, iv. 48-49.
• 257 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 134, 137.
• 258 Longleat, Portland misc. f. 110.
• 259 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 138-9.
• 260 H. Snyder, ‘Godolphin and Harley’, HLQ, xxx. 247.
• 261 HMC Portland, iv. 49-50.
• 262 Add. 70020, f. 234.
• 263 HMC Portland, iv. 50-51.
• 264 Add. 29588, ff. 352, 354, 367.
• 265 HMC Portland, iv. 52.
• 266 Sundstrom, 110.
• 267 HMC Portland, iv. 53-54.
• 268 Longleat, Portland misc. ff. 63-64.
• 269 Nicolson, London Diaries, 141.
• 270 HMC Portland, iv. 53.
• 271 Nicolson, London Diaries, 147.
• 272 HMC Portland, iv. 54-55.
• 273 HMC Portland, iv. 55.
• 274 Add. 70021, ff. 1-2.
• 275 HMC Portland, iv. 57.
• 276 Add. 70087, Godolphin to Harley, 21 Jan. 1702/3.
• 277 Nicolson, London Diaries, 188.
• 278 Add. 70075, newsletter, 2 Feb. 1702/3; Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, iii. 235; Luttrell, Brief Relation, v. 328.
• 279 Add. 61432, f. 2; 70075, newsletter, 23 Feb. 1702/3; Harris, Passion, 98.
• 280 CTB 1703, p. 30; Add. 70075, newsletter, 27 Mar. 1703; Luttrell, Brief Relation, v. 285.
• 281 CTB 1703, pp. 40-41.
• 282 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 177, 199.
• 283 Sundstrom, 103-4.
• 284 Add. 70075, newsletter, 19 July 1703.
• 285 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 232-3n; Add. 78309, f. 136.
• 286 Add. 61119, ff. 197-8; 70021, f. 34; Luttrell, Brief Relation, v. 328.
• 287 Add. 61133, ff. 73, 75; 29589, ff. 97-98.
• 288 Add. 70021, ff. 39-40, 46; HMC Portland, iv. 69.
• 289 HMC Portland, iv. 69; Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 248-9.
• 290 Add. 70021, f. 54; HMC Portland, iv. 72.
• 291 Add. 61120, f. 50; HMC Portland, iv. 73.
• 292 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 242, 248, 251.
• 293 HMC Portland, iv. 75.
• 294 Pols. in Age of Anne. 366.
• 295 HLQ, xxx. 247-8.
• 296 Univ. KSRL, Simpson-Methuen corresp. ms C163, Simpson to Methuen, 7 Dec. 1703.
• 297 Add. 70075, newsletter, 16 Dec. 1703.
• 298 Add. 70021, ff. 69-70.
• 299 HMC Portland, iv. 77.
• 300 Longleat, Portland misc. ff. 176-8; Sundstrom, 133.
• 301 Add. 70021, ff. 82-83.
• 302 Add. 29589, f. 386.
• 303 Univ. KSRL, Simpson-Methuen corresp. ms C163, Simpson to Methuen, 25 Mar. 1704.
• 304 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 271.
• 305 Add. 70075, newsletters, 6, 15 Apr. 1704; CTB 1704-5, pp. 21-22.
• 306 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 274-5, 280-1; Archaeologia, xxxviii. 7.
• 307 Add. 70075, newsletter 2 May 1704.
• 308 CTB 1704-5, p. 28.
• 309 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 322-3.
• 310 Nicolson, London Diaries, 523.
• 311 Sundstrom, 139; HMC Bath, i. 63.
• 312 HMC Portland, iv. 119, 147.
• 313 Luttrell, Brief Relation, v. 462; CTB 1704-5, pp. 47-48.
• 314 CTB 1704-5, p. 51; Add. 70262, R. Warre to Harley, 30 Sept. 1704.
• 315 Add. 61363, f. 171.
• 316 HMC Cowper, iii. 48.
• 317 Add. 70262, Warre to Harley, 30 Sept., 3 Oct. 1704; HMC Bath, i. 63.
• 318 Add. 61121, ff. 3-4; UNL, Pw2 Hy 781.
• 319 Longleat, Portland misc. f. 117.
• 320 CTB 1704-5, p. 52.
• 321 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 396-7.
• 322 Nicolson, London Diaries, 221-4.
• 323 Add. 70285, Godolphin to Harley 12 Nov. [1704].
• 324 HMC Bath, i. 64-65.
• 325 Longleat, Portland misc. ff. 126-7, 196-7.
• 326 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 405.
• 327 Nicolson, London Diaries, 254.
• 328 Nicolson, London Diaries, 234.
• 329 Burnet, v. 182.
• 330 Nicolson, London Diaries, 210, 212; Add. 61123, f. 108. Riley, Union, 99-100; Burnet, v. 174; Lever, 174.
• 331 Add. 61464, ff. 45-46.
• 332 HMC Ormonde, n.s. viii. 120.
• 333 Univ. KSRL, Simpson-Methuen corresp. ms C163, Simpson to Methuen, 12 Dec. 1704.
• 334 Baillie Corresp. 12-13; Nicolson, London Diaries, 212; Burnet, v. 182-3.
• 335 Longleat, Portland misc. ff. 132-3.
• 336 Baillie Corresp. 16-17; Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, iii. 279-80.
• 337 Nicolson, London Diaries, 246, 249, 251; Baillie Corresp. 23, 26.
• 338 NAS, GD 248/572/7/8.
• 339 HMC 7th Rep. 776-7.
• 340 HMC Bath, i. 65.
• 341 Add. 70284, Godolphin to Harley, Thurs. 25, Thurs. 25 at 6 [Jan. 1705].
• 342 Add. 70022, ff. 34-35.
• 343 HMC Bath, i. 67 (misdated).
• 344 HMC Bath, i. 66.
• 345 Beinecke Lib. Osborne mss 163, box 1, Briscoe to Maunsell, 17 Feb.
• 346 Add. 70285, Godolphin to Harley, Sat at 7 [24 Feb. 1705].
• 347 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 410.
• 348 HMC Bath, i. 67.
• 349 CSP Dom. 1704-5, p. 234.
• 350 Post Man, 15-17 May 1705.
• 351 HMC Finch, v. 66.
• 352 Glassey, JPs, 177; CSP Dom. 1705-6, p. 126.
• 353 CTB 1705-6, pp. 4-5; Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 420; Add. 70262, Harley to Raby, 20 Apr. 1705.
• 354 Univ. KSRL, Simpson-Methuen corresp. ms C163, Simpson to Methuen, 24 Apr. 1705.
• 355 Add. 61134, ff. 53-4.
• 356 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 432-3; Add. 61458, f. 165.
• 357 HMC Bath, i. 69.
• 358 N. Sykes, ‘The Cathedral Chapter of Exeter’, EHR, xlv. 267-8.
• 359 Add. 61458, f. 163.
• 360 Add. 70315, ‘extract of a letter from York’, in hand of Erasmus Lewis [?to Robert Harley], 15 Aug. 1710.
• 361 Add. 61364, ff. 36-37, 42-43, 52-53.
• 362 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 417; HMC Portland, iv. 180.
• 363 Baillie Corresp. 121-2.
• 364 Baillie Corresp. 114.
• 365 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 418; Sundstrom, 147-8.
• 366 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 451.
• 367 Univ. KSRL, Simpson-Methuen corresp. ms C163, Simpson to Methuen, 31 July 1705; Churchill Coll. Camb., Erle mss 2/12; W. Speck, ‘The Choice of a Speaker in 1705’, Bull. IHR, xxxvii. 26-28.
• 368 HMC Portland, iv. 243, 247.
• 369 Nicolson, London Diaries, 284-5.
• 370 Life of Sharp, i. 366.
• 371 Luttrell, Brief Relation, v. 588; Sundstrom, 161.
• 372 CTB 1705-6, pp. 26, 29; Add. 61121, f. 202.
• 373 HMC Bath, i. 74.
• 374 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 499.
• 375 Add. 61124, f. 54.
• 376 CTB 1705-6, pp. 32-33.
• 377 Longleat, Portland VII, ff. 79-80; HMC Bath, i. 77-78; Add. 61124, f. 70.
• 378 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 502.
• 379 Baillie Corresp. 128.
• 380 Pols. in Age of Anne, 204; Burnet, v. 225.
• 381 Cowper, Diary, 5.
• 382 Add. 72490, f. 58.
• 383 Univ. KSRL, Simpson-Methuen corresp. ms C163, Simpson to Methuen, 16 Oct. 1705.
• 384 Herts. ALS, DE/P/F132, Cowper’s draft of his ‘Impartial Hist. of the Parties’.
• 385 Add. 70075, newsletter 23 Oct. 1705; Univ. KSRL, Simpson-Methuen corresp. ms C163, Simpson to Methuen, 30 Oct. 1705.
• 386 HMC Portland, ii. 191.
• 387 Longleat, Portland VII, f. 113.
• 388 HMC Portland, iv. 273.
• 389 Add. 70285, Godolphin to Harley, Mon. morn. [19 Nov. 1705].
• 390 HMC Portland, iv. 464 (misdated).
• 391 Wentworth Pprs. 69; BIHR, xlv. 48-49.
• 392 HMC Bath, i. 78-79.
• 393 Cowper, Diary, 10.
• 394 Add. 70285, Godolphin to Harley, Tues. at 2 [6 Nov. 1705].
• 395 HLQ, xxx. 249.
• 396 HMC Portland, iv. 278 (misdated).
• 397 Univ. KSRL, Simpson-Methuen corresp. ms C163, Simpson to Methuen, 12 Nov. 1705.
• 398 HLQ, xxx. 250, citing Bodl. Add. ms A191, f. 31.
• 399 Add. 61458, ff. 52-54; Cowper, Diary, 37.
• 400 Cowper, Diary, 13-14.
• 401 Add. 70501, ff. 177-8.
• 402 Nicolson, London Diaries, 287-8, 304.
• 403 Burnet, v. 232.
• 404 Nicolson, London Diaries, 306.
• 405 Nicolson, London Diaries, 308.
• 406 Add. 70285, Godolphin to Harley, Sat. night at 11 [24 Nov. 1705].
• 407 Nicolson, London Diaries, 311.
• 408 C. Jones, ‘Debates in the House of Lords’, HJ, xix. 768; Nicolson Diaries, 286-7, 324.
• 409 Univ. KSRL, Simpson-Methuen corresp. ms C163, Simpson to Methuen, 11 Dec. 1705.
• 410 Add. 61124, f. 126.
• 411 HMC Portland, iv. 275.
• 412 Nicolson Diaries, 348.
• 413 Cowper, Diary, 33.
• 414 Univ. KSRL, Simpson-Methuen corresp. ms C163, Simpson to Methuen, 7 Jan. 1706.
• 415 HMC Portland, iv. 281.
• 416 Add. 70284, Godolphin to Harley, Fri. noon, [25 Jan. 1706], 30 Jan. [1706]; 70285, same to same, Fri. at 12 [15 Feb. 1706].
• 417 Holmes, Pol., Relig. and Soc. 41-47.
• 418 Add. 70285, Godolphin to Harley, Fri. at 12 [15 Feb. 1706].
• 419 Sundstrom, 169.
• 420 Nicolson, London Diaries, 359, 382.
• 421 HMC Portland, iv. 289; Add. 61602, ff. 3-4; Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 518-19.
• 422 Eg. 3359 (unfol.).
• 423 CTB 1705-6, p. 63; HMC Portland, iv. 289-90.
• 424 Add. 70023, f. 80.
• 425 HMC Portland, iv. 291.
• 426 Add. 72494, ff. 11-12.
• 427 Univ. KSRL, Simpson-Methuen corresp. ms C163, Simpson to Methuen, 2 Apr. 1706.
• 428 CTB 1705-6, p. 67; Longleat, Portland VII, ff. 126-7.
• 429 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 519, 522, 525.
• 430 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 526.
• 431 Univ. KSRL, Simpson-Methuen corresp. ms C163, Simpson to Methuen, 30 Apr. 1706.
• 432 Sundstrom, 191; NAS, GD18/3132/78.
• 433 Sundstrom, 192.
• 434 Add. 72488, ff. 16-17; HMC Portland, ii. 194; Baillie Corresp. 160-1.
• 435 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 629-30.
• 436 Baillie Corresp. 160-1.
• 437 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 562-3, 576, 583, 594-6, 643, 646.
• 438 Nicolson, London Diaries, 388.
• 439 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 563, 603, 632, 654, 656n, 658; Add. 61417, ff. 27-28.
• 440 HMC Mar and Kellie, i. 275.
• 441 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 660-1.
• 442 Add. 61118, ff. 6-7.
• 443 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 669.
• 444 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 675.
• 445 Add. 61118, ff. 17-24.
• 446 CTB 1705-6, pp. 99; Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 692; Longleat, Bath mss, Portland pprs. 7, f. 170; Add. 61118, ff. 12-14.
• 447 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 696-7, 705, 709.
• 448 Parlty Lists of the early 18th Cent. 64.
• 449 HMC Bath, i. 107.
• 450 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 713, 724.
• 451 Baillie Corresp. 169.
• 452 HMC Bath, i. 124.
• 453 HMC Mar and Kellie, i. 326.
• 454 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 725-6, 728.
• 455 HMC Portland, iv. 362.
• 456 Add. 28055, f. 402.
• 457 Wentworth Pprs. 199.
• 458 Baillie Corresp. 186.
• 459 Nicolson, London Diaries, 409.
• 460 HMC Portland, viii. 278; Luttrell, Brief Relation, vi. 127; Timberland, ii. 167.
• 461 Baillie Corresp. 180.
• 462 HMC Portland, iv. 288 (misdated).
• 463 LPL, ms. 1770, f. 35.
• 464 Nicolson, London Diaries, 418.
• 465 Nicolson, London Diaries, 422-3.
• 466 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 744.
• 467 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 749-50.
• 468 Add. 70285, Godolphin to Harley, Thurs. noon [10 Apr. 1707].
• 469 HMC Bath, i. 169.
• 470 CTB, 1706-7, pp. 26-27; Add. 61124, f. 164; Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 751.
• 471 HMC Mar and Kellie, 406.
• 472 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 755-6.
• 473 HMC Portland, iv. 405, 407.
• 474 Add. 72494, ff. 31-32.
• 475 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 781.
• 476 HMC Fortescue, i. 27, 30; Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 913, 1108; Add. 61135, f. 109; 72494, ff. 48-49.
• 477 BL, IOR/A/1/63; Hants. RO, Heathcote mss 63M84/241.
• 478 Pols. in Age of Anne, 258; Burnet, v. 337.
• 479 G. Bennett, ‘Robert Harley, the earl of Godolphin and the Bishoprics Crisis’, EHR, lxxxii. 735-6.
• 480 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 733-4, 750.
• 481 Nicolson, London Diaries, 396.
• 482 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 833-4.
• 483 Nicolson, London Diaries, 431.
• 484 Sundstrom, 201.
• 485 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 811, 814.
• 486 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 830-1, 835.
• 487 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 884.
• 488 CTB 1706-7, pp. 42-43; HMC Bath, i. 179; Add. 61125, f. 39.
• 489 H. Snyder, ‘The Formulation of Foreign and Domestic Policy’, HJ, xi. 157-60; Herts. ALS, D/EP F135.
• 490 HMC Portland, ii. 200.
• 491 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 912.
• 492 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 917.
• 493 CTB 1706-7, pp. 46-47; Add. 61162, f. 123; Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 925, 927.
• 494 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 931.
• 495 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 936; Add. 61494, f. 22; Addison Letters, 79.
• 496 Pols. in Age of Anne, 229, 234.
• 497 Sundstrom, 209.
• 498 TNA, PRO 30/24/20/342-5, 356-7, Cropley to Shaftesbury, 15, 31 Dec. 1707.
• 499 Addison Letters, 86-87.
• 500 G. Holmes and W. Speck, ‘The Fall of Harley’, EHR, lxxx. 677-8.
• 501 EHR, lxxx. 684; Swift Corresp. ed. Woolley, i. 174-5 ; PRO 30/24/21/21-24, Cropley to Shaftesbury, n.d. [1708].
• 502 Sundstrom, 209-11; EHR, lxxx. 685.
• 503 EHR, lxxx. 687-8; PRO 30/24/21/12, Cropley to Shaftesbury, 7 Feb. 1707-8; Add. 70295, Harley to Marlborough, 28 Jan. 1708 [draft], 1 Feb. 1708 copy], 6 Feb. 1708.
• 504 EHR, lxxx. 694-7; Addison Letters, 91-92; Pols. in Age of Anne, 196.
• 505 Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, iii. 344.
• 506 Add. 61129, ff. 24-28.
• 507 Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, iii. 338.
• 508 Sundstrom, 214.
• 509 Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, iii. 341.
• 510 HMC 10th Rep. IV, 51.
• 511 PRO 30/24/21/148a, Cropley to Shaftesbury, 7 Feb. 1707/8; Addison Letters, 90.
• 512 Nicolson, London Diaries, 47, 452-3.
• 513 TNA, PRO 30/24/21/148b, Cropley to Shaftesbury [19 Feb. 1708].
• 514 HMC Mar and Kellie, 429; HL/PO/CO/1/7, f. 308.
• 515 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 943-4; Add. 61133, ff. 101-2.
• 516 Add. 61128, f. 7.
• 517 Addison Letters, 107.
• 518 CTB 1708, p. 14-15.
• 519 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 947, 943, 951-2.
• 520 Addison Letters, 107.
• 521 Add. 61459, ff. 20-23.
• 522 TNA, PRO 30/24/21/45-46 [Cropley to Shaftesbury, 15 Apr. 1708].
• 523 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 969, 974-5.
• 524 CTB 1708, p. 21; Add. 61128, ff. 37-39, 43; Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 987, 989, 999.
• 525 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 979.
• 526 Add. 61134, ff. 106, 108.
• 527 HMC Portland, ii. 204.
• 528 Add. 70025, ff. 111-12.
• 529 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 967.
• 530 Add. 61136, f. 107.
• 531 Add. 61628, ff. 80-85.
• 532 Add. 72540, ff. 118-19.
• 533 NAS, GD248/572/7/24.
• 534 Baillie Corresp. 193-4.
• 535 NAS, Seafield mss GD248/572/7/21.
• 536 Marchmont Pprs. iii. 332.
• 537 NAS, GD 158/1097/7.
• 538 Add. 61459, ff. 66-67; Pols. in Age of Anne, 238.
• 539 Add. 61628, ff. 132-4.
• 540 NAS, GD248/560/42/15.
• 541 CTB 1708, p. 37-38.
• 542 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1057, 1060, 1080; Add. 61128, ff. 140-1.
• 543 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1085.
• 544 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1108.
• 545 Gent. Mag. 1803, i. 304; HMC Portland, iv. 505.
• 546 HMC Portland, iv. 506.
• 547 CTB 1708, pp. 45-46; Add. 61127, f. 19; HMC Portland, iv. 506.
• 548 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1117, 1124.
• 549 HMC Portland, iv. 507.
• 550 Add. 70025, ff. 117-21.
• 551 Add. 61128, ff. 162-3; 61459, ff. 116-17.
• 552 HMC Portland, iv. 7 (misdated 1700).
• 553 Add. 61459, ff. 118-20, 124.
• 554 Lever, Godolphin, 210-11.
• 555 Add. 61459, ff. 125-8, 133-6.
• 556 Pols. in Age of Anne, 204; Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1137.
• 557 Add. 61459, ff. 147-52.
• 558 Add. 72488, ff. 35-36.
• 559 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1144-5, 1149, 1169, 1173, 1175, 1179, 1183; CJ, xvi. 5.
• 560 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1154, 1158; Add. 72488, ff. 38-9.
• 561 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1187.
• 562 HMC Mar and Kellie, 478-9.
• 563 Add. 72488, ff. 42-43; Surr. Hist. Centre, Somers mss 371/14/E/31, Godolphin to [Somers],29 Dec. 1708.
• 564 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1192, 1195-6.
• 565 Add. 72488, ff. 44-45.
• 566 HMC Downshire, i. 868.
• 567 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1201.
• 568 Add. 72482, ff. 100-1.
• 569 C. Jones, ‘Godolphin, the Whig Junto and the Scots’, SHR, lviii. 158-71.
• 570 Add. 72488, ff. 47-48.
• 571 Add. 72488, ff. 49-50.
• 572 Add. 61366, ff. 141-2.
• 573 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1212-13.
• 574 HMC Portland, iv. 520.
• 575 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1230.
• 576 NLW, Plas yn Cefn mss 2741.
• 577 Add. 61459, f. 163; Wentworth Pps. 77-78.
• 578 Add. 72488, ff. 52-53.
• 579 Wentworth Pprs. 78.
• 580 Nicolson, London Diaries, 488-9.
• 581 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1133, 1237, 1239, 1242, 1244.
• 582 Add. 72488, f. 61.
• 583 HMC Portland, iv. 523.
• 584 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1247, 1264, 1271.
• 585 Add. 61164, ff. 195-6.
• 586 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1275.
• 587 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1300.
• 588 CTB 1708, pp. 24-25; Add. 61129, ff. 123-4.
• 589 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1303, 1307, 1309.
• 590 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1321, 1324, 1339.
• 591 Herts. ALS, DE/P/54.
• 592 CTB 1709, p. 26; Add. 61129, f. 178.
• 593 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1370-1, 1376.
• 594 Add. 61460, ff. 23-26.
• 595 CTB 1709, pp. 27-28; Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1383, 1387-9.
• 596 Addison Letters, 186.
• 597 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1399, 1401.
• 598 Add. 61443, ff. 27-31.
• 599 Add. 61460, f. 92.
• 600 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1405-6.
• 601 Add. 61443, ff. 32-37.
• 602 TNA, PRO 30/24/21/101.
• 603 Add. 61460, ff. 118-20.
• 604 Hants, RO, Jervoise mss, 44M69/08.
• 605 Add. 61134, ff. 223-9.
• 606 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1408.
• 607 Add. 61460, ff. 154-7.
• 608 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1409-17.
• 609 Add. 61460, ff. 165-70.
• 610 Add. 61460, ff. 172-3, 176.
• 611 NAS, GD124/15/975/1, Mar to Ld. Grange, 18 Feb. 1709/10.
• 612 Yale Univ., Lewis Walpole Lib., Charles Hanbury Williams pprs. 80/57-59.
• 613 Add. 61460, ff. 183-4.
• 614 Add. 61127, ff. 99-100.
• 615 G, Holmes, Trial of Dr Sacheverell, 68.
• 616 Swift Works, ed. Davis et al., viii, 115; Holmes, Sacheverell, 84.
• 617 Add. 70025, ff. 192-3.
• 618 Burnet, v. 443.
• 619 HJ, xi. 259.
• 620 Holmes, Sacheverell, 113.
• 621 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1421, 1425.
• 622 Holmes, Sacheverell, 155.
• 623 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1427.
• 624 HMC Portland, iv. 535.
• 625 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1428, 1430, 1432.
• 626 Wentworth Pprs. 115.
• 627 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1434.
• 628 HJ, xix. 771.
• 629 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1437.
• 630 Add. 15574, ff. 65-68.
• 631 LPL ms 1770, f. 93v.
• 632 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1440.
• 633 Holmes, Sacheverell, 229.
• 634 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1440.
• 635 Add. 61127, ff. 101-2; Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1456, 1462.
• 636 Add. 72491, f. 6.
• 637 Add. 72499, ff. 146-7.
• 638 Add. 61118, f. 29.
• 639 Add. 61118, ff. 29-35.
• 640 Pols. in Age of Anne, 193; Archaeologia, xxxviii. 16.
• 641 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1464-55.
• 642 Add. 61460, ff. 214-17.
• 643 Add. 61443, ff. 46-47.
• 644 Harris, Passion, 169.
• 645 Add. 61461, ff. 14-17, 27-31.
• 646 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1492-4, 1497, 1502, 1509-10.
• 647 Add. 61461, ff. 39-42, 45; Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1493, 1515-16, 1518, 1520, 1554.
• 648 Add. 61118, ff. 41-42; 61134, ff. 202-3.
• 649 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1531-2, 1539, 1547.
• 650 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1580n.
• 651 EcHR. xxiv. 400-1; Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1572; NAS, GD 248/572/7/26, Godolphin to Seafield, 18 July 1710.
• 652 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1563, 1566-7, 1575.
• 653 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1552.
• 654 NAS, GD248/572/7/27.
• 655 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1589, 1591, 1625, 1627.
• 656 HMC 14th Rep. IX, 492.
• 657 Add. 70333, memo. 3 July 1710; Holmes, ‘Great Ministry’, 17.
• 658 HMC Portland, ii. 213.
• 659 Pols. in Age of Anne, 205; Sundstrom, 257.
• 660 Add. 61118, ff. 47-48.
• 661 Add. 28055, f. 432-3.
• 662 Add. 61118, ff. 47-48; Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1616; Longleat, Bath mss, Thynne pprs, 47, ff. 29-30.
• 663 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1603, 1632.
• 664 Add. 72499, f. 190.
• 665 TNA, PRO 30/24/21/165, Cropley to Shaftesbury, n.d.
• 666 Kent HLC (CKS), U1590/O140/12/73/18, Craggs to Stanhope, 9 Sept. 1710 n.s.
• 667 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1598.
• 668 HMC Portland, ii. 218.
• 669 Swift Corresp. i. 291.
• 670 Add. 61461, ff. 85-87.
• 671 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1604.
• 672 HMC Portland, vii. 18-19.
• 673 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1634.
• 674 HMC 14th Rep. III, p. 210.
• 675 Beds. Archives, L30/8/29/1.
• 676 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1645-8.
• 677 Add. 61133, f. 210; Wentworth Pprs. 151.
• 678 Add. 70333.
• 679 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1650.
• 680 Wentworth Pprs. 161; NAS, GD220/5/807/11a.
• 681 NLS. Advocates’ mss Wodrow pprs. Letters Quarto 5. ff. 140r., 142r-141v.
• 682 Sundstrom, 259.
• 683 Add. 28055, ff. 437-8.
• 684 NAS, GD 220/5/807/12.
• 685 Timberland, ii. 283; Nicolson, London Diaries, 530.
• 686 HMC Lords, n.s. ix. 23-24.
• 687 C. Jones, ‘Party Rage and Faction’, BLJ, xix. 156.
• 688 Timberland, ii. 283, 311, 313, 321, 333-4.
• 689 Beds. Archives, L30/8/29/2; Daily Courant, 23 Apr. 1711.
• 690 HMC Portland, iv. 674.
• 691 Wodrow pprs. Letters Quarto 5. f. 193.
• 692 Add. 61136, f. 165.
• 693 Wodrow pprs. Letters Quarto. 5. f. 194r.
• 694 Burnet, vi. 46-48.
• 695 Add. 61461, ff. 135-6.
• 696 Scot. Hist. Soc. Misc. xii. 135-6; HMC Lords, n.s. ix. 158-9.
• 697 Haddington mss. Mellerstain letters IV, Baillie to wife, 2 June 1711.
• 698 Herts ALS, DE/P/F54.
• 699 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1681-5.
• 700 Leics. RO, DG7 box 4960 P.P. 161.
• 701 BLJ, xix. 156.
• 702 Add. 17677 EEE, ff. 388-93.
• 703 Add. 70332.
• 704 Add. 70269; Wentworth Pprs. 229-30.
• 705 Wentworth Pprs. 240.
• 706 Herts ALS, DE/P/F56, Somerset to Cowper, Sat afternoon [?26 Jan. 1712].
• 707 NAS, GD248/572/1/10.
• 708 Holmes, Pol. Relig. and Soc. 98; Wentworth Ppprs. 253-4.
• 709 Nicolson, London Diaries, 589.
• 710 Post Boy, 22-24 Apr. 1712.
• 711 Bodl. Rawl. A. 286, ff. 413-6; Add. 17677 FFF, ff. 220-2.
• 712 Timberland, ii. 375-6.
• 713 Leics. RO, DG 7 Box 4950 bdle 24.
• 714 Flying Post, 5-7 July 1712.
• 715 Post Boy, 12-14 Aug. 1712.
• 716 Add. 78465, f. 31, J. Boscawen to Mrs. Evelyn, 28 July [1712].
• 717 Lever, 250-1.
• 718 Daily Courant, 10 Sept. 1712.
• 719 Leics. RO, DG 7 box 4950 bdle 24, Marlborough to Nottingham; Boyer, Pol. State, iv. 194.
• 720 Ch. Ch. Oxf., Wake mss 17, ff. 340-1.
• 721 Add. 61441, f. 113.
• 722 Add. 17677 FFF, ff. 349-51.
• 723 Add. 17677 FFF, ff. 377-8.
• 724 Add. 70055, L. Russell to ‘madam’, 11 Oct. 1712; Wentworth Pprs. 302.
• 725 Add. 70055, L. Russell to ‘madam’, 11 Oct. 1712.
• 726 Chatsworth, Halifax Coll. B.88, self-assessment.
• 727 Ch. Ch. Oxf., Wake mss 17, ff. 340-1.
• 728 Add. 17677 FFF, ff. 349-51.
• 729 Add. 61441, f. 123.
• 730 Add. 61118, ff. 47-48.
• 731 Harris, Passion, 5.
• 732 HMC Var. viii. 259.
• 733 Boyer, Pol. State, iv. 195.
• 734 Flying Post, 13 Sept. 1712.
• 735 Swift, Jnl. to Stella, 557.
• 736 Hearne, Remarks and Collections, iii. 459.
• 737 Add. 78309, f. 91.
• 738 Harris, Transformations, 121; Add. 61464, ff. 82-87.
• 739 Add. 61460, ff. 43-46.
• 740 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp 156.
• 741 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 388n.
• 742 Sundstrom, 92-93.
• 743 Harris, Passion, 92-93.
• 744 R. Doebner, ‘Spanheim’s Account of the English Court’, EHR, ii. 769.
• 745 Burnet, ii. 245; vi. 143-4.
• 746 POAS, vii. 158.
• 747 Add. 61134, f. 134.
• 748 Bodl. Carte 231, f. 34.
• 749 Sundstrom, 11; Brit. Pols. pp. xxvi-xxvii, 346; HLQ, xxx. 241-9.
• 750 Sundstrom, 92-93, 112-24; Dickinson, Godolphin, 2, 91.
• 751 P.G.M. Dickson, Financial Revolution in England, 361.
• 752 HMC Sackville, i. 378.
• 753 Pols. in Age of Anne, 351-2, 189-90.
• 754 Wentworth Pprs. 131.
• 755 Boyer, Anne Hist, 17.