suc. fa. 10 Nov. 1710 as 2nd Bar. GRIFFIN.
Never sat.
MP Brackley 1685.
bap. 15 Dec. 1667, s. of Edward Griffin, (later Bar. Griffin) and Essex, da. and coh. of James Howard, 3rd earl of Suffolk. educ. unknown. m. 29 Nov. 1684 (with £10,000),1 Anne (d.1707), da. and h. of Richard Raynsford‡ of Dallington, Northants. 3s. 2da. bur. 31 Oct. 1715; will none found.
Groom of the bedchamber to James II 1685-1702, to James Stuart (the Old Pretender, titular James III) 1702.
Capt. indep. tp. 1685; maj. horse gds. 1686, lt. col. Dec. 1688.
Associated with: Dingley, Northants.
Griffin never claimed the barony of Griffin. His father had died in the Tower, where he had been imprisoned following his capture during the abortive invasion of 1708. By that time the peerage was considered extinguished after the 1st Baron’s outlawry under William III. It was only in 1727 when this was reversed by writ of error that the peerage was revived and only in this sense that Griffin came to be considered posthumously as the second holder of the honour.
Griffin may have gone into exile with his father at some point in the 1690s. Having served James II as a groom of the bedchamber prior to the Revolution, he seems to have retained the place in the court in exile and even to have been continued in office (briefly) after James II’s death. Unlike his father, he also appears to have been a Catholic. It seems unlikely that he was synonymous with the ‘Captain Griffin’ who was sought on suspicion of plotting the king’s death in May and referred to in a newspaper report of June 1698 concerning the arrest of his wife, who had travelled back from France without a pass.2
Griffin was living in England by the beginning of Anne’s reign by which time he had aligned himself with the Tories of Northamptonshire. In January 1702 he wrote to Christopher Hatton, Viscount Hatton, delighting in the news that ‘contrary even to our expectations’ both seats at Northampton and at Higham Ferrers had gone to Tories in the general election. The county contest was expected to be trickier and Griffin sought Hatton’s assistance in ensuring that John Cecil, 5th earl of Exeter, employed his interest on behalf of their preferred candidates.3
The death of Griffin’s father in 1710 brought to the surface financial difficulties that had plagued him since the mid 1690s. In June 1711 Griffin presented a memorial outlining his problems. In it he made reference to an act of 1705, enabling trustees to make leases out of the manor of Dingley, that he had been forced to resort to in order to raise funds for the payment of debts and which he had sought to have amended only the year before. Eager to underscore his own loyalty to the queen, it may have been as a result of this approach that plans to overturn the 1st lord’s attainder were first broached.4 Rumours about it seem to have been afoot in 1712, though it is possible that these were spread as part of the campaign of vilification of Robert Harley, earl of Oxford, by those who were eager to emphasize that none of the rebels of 1708 had as yet been punished.5
By the time of Griffin’s death in the autumn of 1715 he appears to have been in serious financial difficulties. Shortly before his demise he was said to have offered the remaining equity in Braybrooke Castle, following the redemption of a mortgage, to one of his creditors in satisfaction of a debt for £58. The fact that this had been amassed in purchasing wine helps to confirm an assessment of him that he was ‘a plain drunken fellow’.6 He was succeeded by his heir, Edward†, who was ultimately successful in securing the revival of the peerage.
R.D.E.E.