Thomond’s mother had remarried after the death of his father and it was on his stepfather’s interest (Henry Howard*, 6th earl of Suffolk) that he was first returned to Parliament. With his earldom Thomond inherited substantial property in Ireland as well as the Great Billing estates in Northamptonshire. He was generally included on party lists as a Whig and it was undoubtedly his warm support for the Hanoverian succession that secured him the addition of a British viscountcy among George I’s coronation honours. Details of his career will be considered in the second part of this work.

The Emerton marriage and the Revolution 1674-89

Dunblane’s Scottish peerage of December 1674 followed the surrender of the title by his father and its re-grant to Dunblane.¹⁴ It was seen by some as a bargaining tool in the marriage market, as his father attempted to provide for his younger son (as he was at that time). Sir John Wray’s heir, worth £2-3,000 a year, was one of those mentioned as a possible bride.¹⁵ However, a more enticing prospect was Bridget Hyde, the step-daughter of Sir Robert Vyner, whose fortune was a reputed £100,000.¹⁶ Sir George Lane specifically referred to the viscountcy as being procured ‘in order to that match’. She was wealthy enough to have been touted as a bride for Charles II’s natural son, Charles Fitzcharles*, earl of Plymouth. However, Vyner’s wife and her sisters had other ideas, and had secretly married her at the age of 12 to Lady Vyner’s nephew, John Emerton, in October 1674.¹⁷ Vyner was left claiming he knew nothing about it and as John Verney^‡, the future Viscount Fermanagh [I]; aptly noted, ‘the courtiers are frustrated by a City dame.’¹⁸ To provide for Dunblane, Danby had already secured the reversion of the chancery post of clerk of the patents held by Sir Richard Piggott.¹⁹ Further in December 1674 he secured the reversion of the lucrative office held by Sir Robert Howard^‡ of auditor of the exchequer, provision even being made to put the office in trust in case Howard should die before Dunblane reached his majority.²⁰

Meanwhile Dunblane was developing an enduring interest in nautical matters. His father used his ministerial position in September 1675 to procure ordnance for his yacht, the Sophia.²¹ Despite being under-age, Dunblane secured election to the Commons for Berwick in a by-election in March 1677. He was attached to the French embassy of Ralph Montagu*, the future earl and duke of Montagu, but was quickly recalled, Danby requiring his vote in Parliament.²² He was elected for Corfe Castle in February 1679, only to be unseated in April.²³ Thereafter he played an important role in supporting his father while he was imprisoned in the Tower, particularly in lobbying peers to obtain support for Danby’s various attempts to secure a release from custody.²⁴

Meanwhile, neither Dunblane nor his father had given up on Bridget Hyde. Although the court of king’s bench had granted the Emertons temporary possession of the Hyde estates, Vyner himself had custody of Bridget.²⁵ Dunblane had access to her and Bridget herself petitioned the lord chancellor, Heneage Finch*, Baron Finch, in February 1676 against her marriage, accusing Emerton and his uncle, William, of despoiling her estate while delaying the hearing of the cause in the ecclesiastical courts.²⁶ In July 1680 the court of delegates found for the Emertons, but Bridget refused to accept the decision and sought the protection of her ‘kinsman’ Henry Hyde*, 2nd earl of Clarendon, claiming that she had been forced into the marriage.²⁷ An appeal was launched and while this case was being considered by the court of delegates, Dunblane married her in April 1682. This marriage was acknowledged on 12 July 1682, just prior to a decision by the court of delegates in the case. Danby, incarcerated in the Tower, wrote to the lord chancellor in December of Dunblane’s ‘undutifulness in marrying her not only without my privity but against my express command’.²⁸ The long-drawn out saga was ended in April 1683 with Dunblane’s father buying off his rival and the court of delegates acquiescing in the decision.²⁹

In 1685 Dunblane served at Sedgemoor, and in March 1686 his yacht was used to carry off the new wife of George Fitzroy*, duke of Northumberland.³⁰ Following his wife’s miscarriage in October 1686, Dunblane left her and fled to the continent to escape his creditors.³¹ In mid January 1687 he told Danby that he was returning from Brussels.³² According to his later account, some of his trips were to carry messages from his father to William of Orange.³³ The result of this incident was that Dunblane’s finances came under his father’s control, so much so that in January 1688, at least one of Dunblane’s creditors applied to Danby because ‘all his lordship’s business lay in your lordship’s hands now’.³⁴

In March 1688 Dunblane was granted a pass to travel beyond the seas, but only after James II had initially refused him permission to visit Holland.³⁵ On this occasion he did not get to pass on Danby’s letters directly to the prince, and remained in Flanders.³⁶ In late September Dunblane was with his father at Ribston, Yorkshire, the seat of Sir Henry Goodricke^‡, a close ally of Danby’s.³⁷ He took part in the northern rising against James II.³⁸ Given his prominence, he was able to secure election to the Convention for York. Following the death of his elder brother in February 1689, Dunblane became his father’s heir and was now styled earl of Danby. 

On 20 June 1689, at the request of his father, the secretary of state, Daniel Finch*, 2nd earl of Nottingham, issued a warrant for Danby’s arrest on the grounds of high treason. This appears to have been a device to prevent Danby from using the ship he had been fitting out for use as a privateer.³⁹ After being examined before a committee of the Privy Council, he was bailed by his father.⁴⁰ As Danby was a member of the Commons this led to an investigation by the lower House as a possible breach of privilege.⁴¹ Although preparations were in hand for Danby to contest York at the 1690 election, and there were rumours that he intended to contest Hertfordshire, where his wife’s estates were located, he did not stand, possibly owing to the publication of the list that showed that he had voted against the ‘vacancy’ of the throne on 5 Feb. 1689.⁴²

The Parliament of 1690

Osborne was summoned to the Lords in his father’s barony of Osborne of Kiveton on 3 Mar. 1690 before the election took place. Confusingly, for some time he was recorded in the Journal by the territorial appellation of Kiveton rather than as Osborne. He was introduced on 20 Mar. by John West*, 6th Baron De La War, and Henry Yelverton*, 15th Baron Grey of Ruthin. On 21 Apr., together with Philip Wharton*, 4th Baron Wharton, he introduced his cousin, Robert Willoughby*, Baron Willoughby de Eresby into the House. He attended on 44 days of the session, 81.5 per cent of the total and was named to six committees.

With a French invasion threatened, in July 1690 Danby was given the command of the dragoons ordered to be raised and assembled in Hyde Park.⁴³ On 12 Sept. 1690, his son, William (d. 1711) was baptized at North Mimms, Hertfordshire, with Nottingham standing as proxy for the king. Danby was present at the opening of the 1690-1 session on 2 October. He attended on 23 days of the session, 30 per cent of the total and was named to six committees. On 21 Oct. the House was informed of a quarrel between Danby and Charles Granville*, then styled Viscount Lansdown (later 2nd earl of Bath), but who sat in the House under a writ in acceleration as Baron Granville. Both were ordered to be taken into custody. The origins of this conflict, said to be ‘an old quarrel’ are obscure.⁴⁴ It may have had its origins in the breakdown of Lansdown’s marriage to Danby’s sister, Martha (d. 1689), but there was also bad feeling between their fathers over the lack of rewards received by the Granvilles after the revolution. Danby proved elusive and on 23 Oct. black rod was given authority to search houses to bring him into custody. Still evading the officers of the House, on 27 Oct. he was ordered to surrender within seven days or a proclamation would be issued for him. He was absent from a call of the House on 2 Nov., but attended the following day, whereupon both men ‘shaked hands and promised before the several peers not to quarrel any more’.⁴⁵ During an extended absence in December 1690, it was reported that he had gone to Chatham to attend the court martial on 10 Dec. of Arthur Herbert*, earl of Torrington.⁴⁶ Torrington was acquitted, but remained out of favour and at the end of 1690 Danby was granted his marine regiment.⁴⁷ On 31 Dec. 1690 Danby intercepted a vessel bound for France, one of the passengers being Richard Grahme^‡, Viscount Preston [S], James II’s former secretary of state, an incident that his father was able to exploit to his advantage.⁴⁸ In March 1691, Danby was rumoured to be the replacement for John Wildman^‡ as post-master general but although Danby had apparently been granted this office by the king under the sign manual before Wildman’s appointment, the king had changed his mind.⁴⁹

In March 1691 Sir Robert Howard’s ill-health gave Sidney Godolphin*, the future Baron Godolphin, pause for thought about the reversion of the officer of auditor of the exchequer to Danby, which, as he informed the king, ‘I have often been told is not good in law’. Clearly he had an unfavourable opinion of Danby:

I take it for granted that you, unless obliged by law, would never choose out the earl of Danby of all England to fill that officer’s place, through whose hands all your own revenue, all the public money of the kingdom, and all the accounts of both the one and the other are to pass; and for these reasons, if the case does happen, I shall think it my duty to refuse him admittance till the right of the patent is determined, unless you signify that you would give him the position, though there were no patent in the case, which I confess I think you would no more do, than make him a bishop.⁵⁰

Danby was in combative mood while attending the Aylesbury by-election in April 1691 in support of his brother-in-law, James Herbert^‡, notably telling Thomas Wharton*, the future 5th Baron Wharton, that a ‘jockey’s whip became him better than a white staff.’⁵¹ In May Danby was listed as captain of the Resolution in the Anglo-Dutch fleet, but Admiral Edward Russell*, the future earl of Orford, was concerned at his absence from the fleet and wondered whether he would be serving at sea at all during the summer. Danby did join the fleet, capturing a French boat while serving under Russell in July.⁵²

Danby was absent from the opening of the 1691-2 session. Throughout the session as a whole, he was present on 26 days, 26 per cent of the total, and was named to four committees. On 16 Nov. 1691 George Rodney Bridges^‡ informed the Commons that Sir Ralph Delaval^‡ ‘had lately taken a French boat going for Ireland, with papers of dangerous consequence to the government,’ naming Danby as the source of his information, he having seen the captured papers.⁵³ Although it was reported about town that Bridges had ‘accused Carmarthen’s son of sending information to the French fleet’, the person really implicated was Nottingham, to whom the papers had been sent, particularly as Danby had seen a letter from Nottingham to Delaval purporting to reveal his sailing orders.⁵⁴ A motion to ask Danby about these matters was defeated in the Commons in favour of a conference with the Lords.⁵⁵ At the conference on 17 Nov., the Commons ‘out of respect for the peerage’ laid the matter before the upper House. The Lords ordered Danby to attend, which he did on the following day, his first appearance of the session. Following Danby’s account of the matter, the Lords communicated the relevant papers to the Commons at a conference on 19 November. On 23 Nov. Delaval told the Commons that Danby must have been mistaken ‘for I saw no letter of the Lord Nottingham unto me amongst them.’⁵⁶ On that date Delaval was ready to testify before the Lords, but the matter was postponed because Danby was ‘not in town.’ Danby was eventually heard in his place on 5 Dec., saying ‘that he did verily believe he had seen a copy of a letter from the earl of Nottingham in the packet taken on board the French vessel, as he had formerly informed this House.’⁵⁷ He was then named to a committee to oversee what would be entered into the Journal about the affair, which merely recorded that Danby had been heard in his place.⁵⁸ Finally after a conference on 15 Dec., the Commons also resolved that no copy of any letter from Nottingham to Delaval had been taken on board the French vessel.⁵⁹ However, after some debate it was decided to avoid any criticism of Danby, so as ‘not to cast a reflection’ on him ‘to say he was mistaken when it is not very material to the vindication of the Lord Nottingham’.⁶⁰

Danby served at sea in the campaign in 1692, both at the battle of Barfleur and in sending fire ships into La Hogue.⁶¹ He first attended the 1692-3 session on 14 Nov. 1692, and was present for 29 days of the session, 21 per cent of the total. On 21 Nov. he was one of the peers ordered to attend on the 26th for issuing protections, in his case for seven men. When he attended on 23 Nov. he claimed ignorance of the rules, promised to extend no more protections and asked for the existing ones to be removed. His only committee appointment was on 10 Dec. to examine the papers brought into the House by Nottingham pursuant to an address to the king. On 31 Dec. Danby fought a duel with Captain Thomas Stringer^‡ (who had been appointed to Danby’s marine regiment in April 1691), wounding him in the thigh.⁶² On 4 Feb. 1693 he voted Charles Mohun*, 4th Baron Mohun, not guilty of murder, believing it to be manslaughter.⁶³ He last sat on 16 Feb. 1693, when he gave his proxy to his father. 

In January 1693, it was reported that Danby was to be one of three flag officers, but in early February this was disregarded. As compensation for being passed over, he received permission to fly a special pennant, and the promise of the next flag office.⁶⁴ Danby was duly named as rear-admiral of the red in July, following the death of Ashley, and rear admiral of the blue in October.⁶⁵ As such he played no role in the disaster that befell the Smyrna convoy, although he was able to point to his desire for a proper reconnaissance of Brest, and did come under some suspicion of fomenting discontent against the admirals in charge of the fleet.⁶⁶

Danby was present on the opening day of the next session, 7 Nov. 1693 but was excused attendance when the House was called on 14 November. On 4 Dec. he acted as a teller in opposition to John Churchill*, earl (later duke) of Marlborough, in the committee of the whole on the place bill on whether the word ‘declared’ should stand of the bill. On 19 Dec. it was reported that he had gone to Chatham to hold a court martial. Another distraction was reported on 2 Feb. 1694 when he went to Woolwich to take Prince Louis of Baden to the launch of the Royal Charles. He last sat in that session on 9 Feb. 1694, giving his proxy to his father on 23 February. He had attended on 18 days, 14 per cent of the total and been appointed to two committees. In June Carmarthen (as he was now styled after his father’s promotion to duke of Leeds in May) was involved in the projected attack on Brest and the abortive landing in Camaret Bay, publishing his account as Journal of the Brest Expedition (1694).⁶⁷ After having been ill of a fever, in September, he asked to be put in command of the squadron charged with conveying the king back to England, a task which occupied him in October and November.⁶⁸

Carmarthen was again absent from the opening of the new parliamentary session, first sitting on 29 Nov. 1694. He attended on 18 days of the 1694-5 session, 14 per cent of the total. At the end of February 1695 he fought another duel with Stringer. He was absent between 15 Mar. and 22 Apr. 1695, giving his proxy to his father on 10 April. Part of his absence may have been due to naval duties, and then, perhaps, to ill health.⁶⁹ Meanwhile Carmarthen’s waywardness was having serious implications for his marriage and his relationship with his father. In March 1695 various witnesses to Carmarthen’s marriage at St Mary Le Bone on 25 Apr. 1682 made depositions of the fact.⁷⁰ This was probably connected to Carmarthen’s relationship with someone else: in August 1695, the duchess of Leeds wrote to her daughter-in-law of Carmarthen’s claims that he had been ‘bewitched’ by a woman, perhaps Mary Hill Morton, who would later allege that she was married to him.⁷¹ While at sea during the summer, he was the subject of complaints from merchants concerning their losses, which had parliamentary ramifications in the following session.⁷² As Gilbert Burnet*, bishop of Salisbury put it, this ‘extravagant man, both in his pleasures and honours… fancied the French fleet was coming up to him, which proved to be only a fleet of merchant ships; so he left his station and retired into Milford Haven’, exposing English shipping to the predations of French privateers and himself to the fury of its owners.⁷³ In October Carmarthen attended the Aylesbury election, in his father’s coach, in support of his brother-in-law Herbert, where he again clashed with Wharton. He then attended at the Wendover election as well.⁷⁴

The Later Parliaments of William III, 1695-1702

After again missing the beginning of the 1695-6 session of the new Parliament, Carmarthen first sat on 2 Dec. 1695. On 4 Jan. 1696 he was ordered to have copies of the admiralty papers read before the House that day relating to the complaints of losses of the merchants over the previous summer, which were referred to a committee. The admiralty commissioners had been critical of Carmarthen’s conduct in failing to protect merchant shipping in papers submitted to the Lords committee established on 13 Dec. 1695 to review the merchants’ complaints, and Carmarthen was forced to defend himself before the committee.⁷⁵ A report from the committee on 6 Feb. decided, however, that Carmarthen had ‘behaved himself in the last summer’s expedition at sea with courage, conduct and fidelity.’ According to one account, Carmarthen ‘was generously acquitted by the peers of those imputations he was charged with for want of conduct’, and suggested that the attack had really aimed at his father, the duke of Leeds.⁷⁶ He was absent from 14 Feb. until 2 Mar., when he signed the Association. He had attended on 34 days of the session, 27 per cent of the total and had been named to a single committee. 

At the beginning of July 1696 Carmarthen went to serve in the army as a volunteer in Flanders.⁷⁷ He had arrived back in England by mid September, reportedly having ‘come over in his own vessel. Says the French King is well again, and that they do not talk so much of peace as lately.’⁷⁸ His mother reported him ‘busy at the admiralty fitting his vessel’, and wished that he had the time to see his father.⁷⁹ Carmarthen missed the opening of the 1696-7 session, giving his proxy to his father on 25 November. He first sat on 8 Dec., the day in which proceedings against Sir John Fenwick^‡ were begun, and attended on each day in December on which the matter was discussed. He did not join his father in entering a protest but did vote against the bill at its third reading on 23 Dec. 1696. In all he attended on 23 days of the session, 20 per cent of the total, and was named to three committees. 

Carmarthen missed the first month of the 1697-8 session, taking his seat on 3 Jan. 1698, attending for only two days, and not returning to the House until 10 March. Some of his absence can be attributed to his attendance upon the Czar Peter I, who had arrived in England on 11 Jan. 1698. Carmarthen was already known to Peter as the designer of the Royal Transport yacht, which William III intended to present to the Czar as a gift. As such he was an ideal companion for the Czar, fascinated as he was by technical matters. As one correspondent put it, Carmarthen was ‘a strange gentleman, who has found the way to put himself in his good favour arranging various entertainments on water as well as in town.’⁸⁰ He was certainly with the Czar on a number of occasions from the end of January 1698.⁸¹ Early in February it was reported that he had escorted the Czar to Deptford, where time was spent on one of the yachts that Carmarthen had designed. On 15 Mar. he voted against the committal of the bill to punish Sir Charles Duncombe^‡. Some of his absence in late March and April may also be explained by his entertainment of the Czar.⁸² As a reward he received a valuable grant of the tobacco trade to Russia for seven years, which he sub-let to a group of London merchants.⁸³ He last attended on 1 June, registering his proxy on 14 June with his brother-in-law, William Fermor*, Baron Leominster. On 29 June this was transferred to Willoughby de Eresby. In all he attended on 17 days of the, 12 per cent of the total, and was named to four committees. One reason for his absence that month may have been a wound he sustained in a duel on 5 June with a Captain Nash, which was reported to be still troubling him early in July.⁸⁴

The long-awaited demise of Sir Robert Howard at the beginning of September 1698 saw Carmarthen attempt to claim his reversion as auditor of the exchequer. The treasury lords, chief among whom was Charles Montagu*, the future Baron Halifax, refused to honour the claim and instead appointed Montagu’s own brother Christopher Montagu^‡, albeit in trust for himself.⁸⁵ Leeds immediately protested to the king and to Arnold Joost van Keppel*, earl of Albemarle, in Flanders, and retained counsel, but could not reverse the decision.⁸⁶ The main stumbling block appears to have been the probability that Christopher Montagu and the treasury lords would claim parliamentary privilege should Carmarthen institute legal proceedings.⁸⁷

Carmarthen was present for the opening of the next session on 6 Dec. 1698 and attended on 52 days, 60.5 per cent of the total. His only significant period of absence was in January, as he did not appear after the Christmas recess until 24 Jan. 1699. He was present in February when the Lords considered the bill for the relief of the creditors of Sir Robert Vyner, which was amended to include a clause relating to the accounts of his wife and Vyner. On 23 Mar. he acted as a teller in opposition to Richard Savage*, 4th earl Rivers, during the debate in committee of the whole House on Desborow’s petition complaining that he had been unjustly removed from his naval command and subsequently on the 27th was appointed to the committee to address the king on the case. On 14 Apr. John Clements, a fishmonger, was ordered into custody for having spoken opprobrious words of Carmarthen as Master of the Company of Fishermen, particularly the previous day in the lobby and in ‘soliciting so many lies as were printed in the paper he dispersed’.⁸⁸ After apologizing, Clements was discharged on the 19th. The incident was no doubt related to a bill in which Carmarthen took an interest: on 25 Apr. he was named to draw up reasons for a conference in which the Lords were to insist on their proviso for the bill making Billingsgate a free market for the sale of fish. He was named to a further 11 committees during the session. In April 1699, Narcissus Luttrell^‡ reported that John Somers*, Baron Somers, the lord chancellor, was disputing Carmarthen’s patent for the reversion of the office of clerk of the patents.⁸⁹ Thus Carmarthen found himself baulked of a second reversion.

Carmarthen attended the opening day of the 1699-1700 session, 16 Nov. 1699, but was only present on eight days of the session, nine per cent of the total, and was named to a single committee. At the beginning of December it was reported that Leeds had arrested Richard Hill, a recently appointed treasury commissioner, and significantly the only one not covered by parliamentary privilege, in order to try Carmarthen’s patent as auditor of the exchequer.⁹⁰ Carmarthen left the House on 22 Jan. 1700, two and a half months before the session ended. Nevertheless, at the beginning of February, he was forecast as likely to oppose the bill to continue the East India Company as a corporation. 

At the beginning of April 1700, more evidence of Carmarthen’s chaotic personal life tumbled into the public domain when William Crisp petitioned the Crown on behalf of his daughter, Mary Morton, who, it was alleged, Carmarthen had ‘forcibly removed’, and ‘who still forcibly detains her, living lasciviously with her, and not only threatens to murder her, but daily beats and abuses her’. Crisp claimed that he could not get any peer to present his petition to the Lords. The petition was referred to the lord chief justice, Sir John Holt^‡, for comment, who presumably advised that the law be allowed to take its course.⁹¹

At the start of October 1700 Carmarthen’s newly designed ship was almost ready, and he planned to wait on the king on his journey back from Holland.⁹² The Peregrine Galley was being used for reconnaissance in February 1701.⁹³ It had been built ‘at the king’s charge out of the waste timber, &c. in one of the king’s yards’, in the hope that he would be granted the vessel in lieu of his arrears of his pension, then standing at £9,000, or that the king would take the vessel and grant him a pension of £1,000, double that granted in 1674, while he waited for the auditor’s office to become vacant.⁹⁴ In the event William III took the ship shortly before his death, leaving Carmarthen to petition Queen Anne for his reward in August 1702. She seemed favourably inclined to give him the ship, only for the admiralty to object, and Carmarthen was rewarded with only £500. Even then he had the ignominy of being refused when he attempted to turn this into a pension in April 1703.⁹⁵

Carmarthen missed the opening of the February 1701 Parliament, attending for the first time on 20 Feb. 1701. In all he was present on 32 days, 29 per cent of the total, and was appointed to three committees. On 3 Mar. he was able to insist on his privilege to protect his secretary, James Hadder, and steward, Richard Gerling, who had been arrested, the perpetrators being ordered into custody, some of them being discharged on 8, and another on 31 May. On 4 Mar., Benjamin Harris, the printer of the Post Man, was ordered to attend for some expressions made concerning the Peregrine Galley. After hearing Harris on 7 Mar., the House ordered a further hearing on 10 Mar. but Carmarthen did not attend again until 26 Mar. and the affair was either forgotten or some compromise was reached. On 2 Apr. he was named to manage a conference on the treaty of partition. It is unlikely that he attended the second conference, held on 10 Apr., as he did not attend the House between 9 and 15 Apr., nor between 18 Apr. and 14 May. On 17 June he voted for the acquittal of Somers.

In March 1701 it was reported that Carmarthen had declined to serve at sea during the summer unless given a flag.⁹⁶ However in April he was listed as the captain of the Peregrine Galley.⁹⁷ His naval employment must have been an important source of income, especially given his escalating debts. On 23 July, Leeds wrote to Lady Carmarthen to warn her that her husband’s creditors were intent on obtaining payment, but ‘finding that the mortgage I have upon all the lands will hinder their extents’, they would perhaps seek to secure their money on his personal estate.⁹⁸

Carmarthen attended on the second day of the second Parliament of 1701, 31 Dec. 1701, and was named to the committee to draw up the Address on the King’s Speech, duly signing the address on the pretender being owned by France on the following day. At the end of January 1702, it was reported that Carmarthen would receive a commission as admiral.⁹⁹ He was present on 11 Mar. 1702 to take the oaths to Queen Anne. His last attendance of the session was on 16 Mar., when he was named to his only other committee. In all, he had been present on just six days of the session, six per cent of the total.

The Early Parliaments of Queen Anne 1702-10

The accession of Queen Anne revived the possibility of Carmarthen reclaiming the office of auditor of the exchequer. On 12 May 1702 a caveat was entered at the relevant offices to prevent Halifax from being confirmed in his place and two days later a memorandum was drawn up for an approach to Lord Treasurer Godolphin. At this point the process stalled as in order to obtain his father’s backing, Carmarthen was forced to ‘leave his woman’, a reference to Mary Morton, and to sign over the office in trust for the use of Leeds, no doubt as a means of reducing his debts. After some wrangling, Carmarthen duly did both on 22 June.¹⁰⁰ The following day Leeds wrote to Godolphin to arrange for Carmarthen to be admitted and sworn into the office.¹⁰¹ In July after an extensive hearing, with counsel deployed on both sides, Godolphin decided not to admit Carmarthen to the office, but he also ruled that Halifax’s current possession of the office should not ‘be construed to the prejudice of the other’s claim when the right comes to be tried in Westminster Hall.’¹⁰² The dispute then moved into the court of exchequer. Halifax was ordered to appear on 23 Oct., but was able to avoid appearing because the parliamentary session was about to begin and Carmarthen’s agent ‘durst’ not force him to attend. Following the prorogation of Parliament, in April 1703, Carmarthen tried again, but Halifax delayed matters before bringing in a demurrer on the last day of the Easter term. On 2 July, the court allowed the demurrer, mainly on the grounds that the lord treasurer had not admitted Carmarthen into the office. This left Carmarthen with no legal recourse, except to print his case in order to explain his actions.¹⁰³

Carmarthen was reported to be going to sea in June 1702. Although he was in London on 20 Sept. he was absent at the beginning of the 1702-3 session and did not take his seat until 11 November.¹⁰⁴ During the debate on occasional conformity on 9 Dec. his father clashed with his old foe, Ralph Montagu, now earl of Montagu. Halifax (and presumably Carmarthen) joined in the repartee. According to Thomas Coventry*, 2nd earl of Coventry, Leeds told Halifax that ‘his family was raised by rebellion, but his own suffered by it’. At the rising of the House it was said that a challenge had been given as a result (though it was unclear by whom), and Halifax was said to have been ordered to be confined to his house in the custody of black rod, although no order was entered in the Journal.¹⁰⁵ On the following day while the House was debating whether to confine Halifax further, Carmarthen came into the chamber and ‘protested he knew of no quarrel (but in relation to a suit at law) that was between them. He confessed he had written a letter last night, on this last mentioned subject, to the Lord H[alifax], but never intended it, as it appeared to be understood, for a challenge.’¹⁰⁶ Both men were forced to give their word to the House not to prosecute the quarrel, and Carmarthen then stayed away from the Lords for a week. In January 1703, Nottingham forecast Carmarthen as likely to support his bill against occasional conformity. On 16 Jan. he voted against adhering to the Lords’ wrecking amendment to the penalty clause in the bill. He last attended on 18 Feb., having attended on 36 days, almost 40 per cent of the total. He also attended the prorogation on 22 April.

In April 1703 Carmarthen returned to the fray against Halifax, exhibiting a bill in exchequer ‘for some of the perquisites of the auditor’s place.’ On 1 July the judges ruled that Halifax did not have to give any account of his profits from the place of auditor to Carmarthen until he made good his title to the office.¹⁰⁷ On 7 May Richard Warre noted that ‘Carmarthen is not to command at sea this summer, but will however enjoy his pension.’¹⁰⁸ This seems to have been in part due to the need to attend to his lawsuit with Halifax. Because of the illness of Sir George Rooke^‡ it was decided that George Churchill^‡ and Sir Stafford Fairborne^‡ would replace him.¹⁰⁹ As John Ellis^‡ confirmed, ‘by this revolution the marquess of Carmarthen is left on shore for this summer, much against his will, as he says.’¹¹⁰ He petitioned over his lack of employment, and in June it was ordered that he receive full pay as vice-admiral of the red.¹¹¹ In May 1703 Leeds seems to have made an in-depth inquiry into his son’s debts and possible ways out of his encumbrances, and then tried to sort out his son’s affair with Mary Hill Morton, who claimed to be his wife, and to ensure that any children from that relationship did not threaten his family’s estate. Carmarthen’s misconduct had forced Leeds to make a third revision of his settlements.¹¹² In June Leeds sought the advice of Sir William Trumbull^‡, about how to prevent Mary Hill Morton from continuing to claim that she and Carmarthen were married and the consequent doubt thrown upon Carmarthen’s marriage to Bridget Hyde. Trumbull, who had long since given up practicing in the ecclesiastical courts, replied cautiously, suggesting that the best course was for Carmarthen to be persuaded to bring an action of jactitation in his own name.¹¹³

Carmarthen attended the prorogation on 4 Nov. 1703 and the opening day of the 1703-4 session on 9 November. He was then absent until 9 December. In or about November, he was forecast by Charles Spencer*, 3rd earl of Sunderland, as likely to support the bill against occasional conformity, although there was a query against his name, which may relate to his absence. Sunderland again forecast him as likely to support the bill in late November or early December, and Carmarthen duly voted for it on 14 December. Between 4 Jan. and 9 Feb. 1704 he attended only once, on 14 Jan. when he acted as a teller in opposition to Evelyn Pierrepont*, 5th earl of Kingston, on whether to reverse the judgment in the case of Ashby v. White. On 16 Mar. he entered his dissent to the passage of both amendments seeking to alter the names of commissioners in the public accounts bill (although he was not listed as present in the Journal). He last attended on 25 Mar. 1704, having been present on 28 days of the session, 28 per cent of the total. Carmarthen’s attempts to regain his naval command for the 1704 campaign were thwarted by the promotion of his junior, Fairborne, ahead of him.¹¹⁴

Carmarthen attended on the opening day of the 1704-5 session, 24 Oct. 1704. He was forecast as likely to support the Tack in a list compiled about November. However, he only attended twice more before the turn of the year, on 29 Nov. and 15 Dec. (the day the occasional conformity bill was rejected). A veritable burst of activity saw him present on several occasions in January and February 1705, before his activity tailed off after 10 February. In the middle of this, on 30 Jan., he received the proxy of his father.¹¹⁵ He last attended on 10 Mar., having been present on 22 days of the session, 22 per cent of the total. On 18 Feb. Leeds recorded that Carmarthen had ‘received orders to go to sea in command of a squadron’, and on 25 Mar. he departed from Wimbledon to take command of the convoy transporting Marlborough into Holland.¹¹⁶

Some idea of the scale of Carmarthen’s debts can be gleaned from a diary entry of his father on 19 Mar. 1705, which recorded that Leeds gave a Mr Vernon (probably his agent) a note for £300 as payment of Carmarthen’s interest on a loan of £12,000 (£5,000 from John Ashburnham*, Baron Ashburnham and £7,000 from a Mr Emilie), for the half-year that had ended on 2 Mar. 1705. In December 1709, it appears that Ashburnham’s share of this mortgage was transferred to a Jon Trymme of Wimbledon, as a trustee for Leeds.¹¹⁷ Carmarthen embarked on the Cleveland yacht early in June 1705, on convoy duty.¹¹⁸ At the end of July Carmarthen, through the secretary of state, Robert Harley*, the future earl of Oxford, was able to obtain ‘an opportunity to justify himself with relation to his late conduct’, before the admiralty.¹¹⁹ In August, the admiralty was able to report that they had received no complaints from merchants or others of his conduct.¹²⁰

Carmarthen attended on the opening day of the 1705-6 session, 25 October. On 6 Dec. 1705 Carmarthen spoke in the debate on the queen’s speech, apparently speaking of ‘fighting for the Church’, and entered his protest against the passage of the resolution that the Church was ‘not in danger’. He was subsequently listed as having voted that it was in danger. He quarrelled again with Halifax over the auditorship of the exchequer in December: a duel was averted by the captain of the guards.¹²¹ Godolphin noted that Prince George*, duke of Cumberland, had taken their word of honour that nothing further would happen in the matter, ‘but while such madmen are allowed to walk about and suffered to be among rational creatures, ’tis not possible for anybody to be secure from them’.¹²² Carmarthen attended on 19 days of the session, 20 per cent of the total and on 19 Mar. was appointed to the select committee to prepare an address to the queen on the manning of the fleet. 

In October 1706, Leeds criticized his daughter-in-law over a proposed marriage between her eldest son and Lady Elizabeth Hastings. It is clear from his comments that by this date Carmarthen had been cut out from the succession to most of his father’s estate.¹²³ Carmarthen was absent from the opening of the 1706-7 session, first attending on 20 Dec. 1706, and attending only three times before February 1707. Thereafter his attendance markedly improved and in all he attended on 29 days of the session, 32 per cent of the total, and was named to eight committees. He also became involved in trying to influence a committee appointed in the Commons on 5 Apr. to examine ‘piracies committed in the East and West Indies’. According to Carmarthen’s later testimony, ‘he printed his reasons, gave them to Members of the Commons, procured evidence to be given to a committee and obtained an address to the queen for the suppression of the pirates.’¹²⁴ The address to the queen for the suppression of the pirates of Madagascar was made on 8 Apr. and Carmarthen followed it up with a proposal for an expedition to affect the same, although nothing came of it.¹²⁵ He also attended on two days of the short session of April 1707, 20 per cent of the total.

Carmarthen missed the beginning of the 1707-8 session, first sitting on 12 Nov. 1707. He did not attend again until 2 Dec. eventually attending on 23 days of the session, 21 per cent of the total. On 29 Jan. 1708, he was one of only three English peers to support the Scottish Captain Kerr against the complaints of some merchants that while serving in the West Indies he had neglected their convoy.¹²⁶ From February 1708 until 1714, Carmarthen faced a struggle every quarter to ensure payment of his salary as admiral, against the claims of the bankers John and Joseph Newell, to whom he owed money, a matter complicated in turn by their own indebtedness to the Crown.¹²⁷ His need to make such solicitations may have made him open to the pressures applied to a poor lord, albeit an unreliable one. 

On 29 May 1708, James Hamilton*, 4th duke of Hamilton [S], informed Sunderland that Carmarthen’s presence at the election of Scottish representative peers ‘will do a great deal of hurt to our [proxies]’. Carmarthen had already given his proxy to John Gordon*, 16th earl of Sutherland [S], and as he would be present to recall his proxy, this would give credence to the claim by James Ogilvy*, earl of Seafield [S], that proxies could only be redeemed in person. In June 1708 when Carmarthen attended the elections in Edinburgh in his capacity as Viscount Dunblane [S], Patrick Hume, earl of Marchmont [S], ‘protested against the proxies from Lennox and Dunblane in the same terms as against the earl of Greenwich [John Campbell*, duke of Argyll]’, that is, that he was also a peer of England. In retaliation Carmarthen protested against Marchmont casting the proxy of Thomas Livingston, 2nd Viscount Teviot [S], ‘as not on stamped paper nor sealed according to the laws of England’.¹²⁸ At his father’s request, under importunity from Nottingham, Carmarthen voted for John Ker*, duke of Roxburghe [S], thus disappointing James Douglas*, 2nd duke of Queensberry [S].¹²⁹ Despite this, the ‘desperately thin’ Carmarthen was expected to return from Scotland in Queensberry’s coach. Meanwhile he had fallen out with Hamilton, and been noticeably indiscreet in general, so that the ‘limping admiral,’ as Sir Alexander Rigby^‡ described him, ‘may chance to get a Sc[otti]sh stick before he gets back to Berwick.’¹³⁰ At the end of July 1708, Carmarthen was suggested as the person most likely person to be able to smooth relations with the Czar following the arrest of the ambassador from Muscovy. Rather typically however, the secretary of state, Henry Boyle*, the future Baron Carleton, had to say ‘I cannot yet learn where he is to be met with’.¹³¹ In late August, it was reported that Carmarthen had been appointed ambassador to ‘the angry Czar,’ although this was not the case.¹³²

Carmarthen was absent from the first two months of the first, 1708-9, session of the 1708 Parliament, first sitting on 12 Jan. 1709. He was present to vote on 21 Jan. 1709 in favour of the resolution that a Scottish peer who possessed a British title had the right to vote in the election for Scottish representative peers. He attended only 10 days of the session, 10.5 per cent of the total. His poor attendance may have been a reflection of his interest in nautical matters, for on 14 Oct. Thomas Herbert*, 8th earl of Pembroke, as lord admiral, agreed that Carmarthen should receive the same allowance as a navy commissioner for his trouble in attending ‘at Woolwich, for ordering and giving the proper directions for the building’ of a ship, and on 4 Nov. he signed a receipt to the commissioners of the navy that he had ‘actually been attending, inspecting into, and giving directions about the building, rigging and fitting the Royal Anne galley’ for 343 days.¹³³ In February 1709 it was even reported that he had received a commission to command the fleet.¹³⁴

Carmarthen missed the first few days of the 1709-10 session, sitting first on 25 Nov., and only attending on four occasions before the middle of February 1710. Then he attended regularly, sitting 31 days of the session, 30 per cent of the total. The obvious reason for his improved attendance was the Sacheverell impeachment. On 10 Mar. the House had to intervene to patch up a quarrel between Carmarthen and William Cavendish*, 2nd duke of Devonshire, for some words which passed between them. On 14 Mar. he entered his dissent to the decision not to adjourn the House, and then against the vote that it was not necessary to include in the impeachment the particular words which were supposed to be criminal. On 16 Mar. Carmarthen subjected the House to ‘a tediously long speech’ recounting the events of 1688 and his role in them, which, when Charles Lennox*, 3rd duke of Richmond, interrupted to call it ‘a long story’, he replied ‘it was reason to him and he’d go on with it if he kept them to the morning.’¹³⁵ He entered protests against the proceedings on 16, 17 and 18 March. Not surprisingly, given the nature of his interventions, on 20 Mar. he voted Sacheverell not guilty of high crimes and misdemeanours and protested against the guilty verdict. On 21 Mar. he dissented from the censure passed against him. 

Mrs Morton and the death of the old Duke of Leeds, 1710-12

In May 1710, Sunderland minuted allegations by Mr Crisp, brother-in-law of Mrs Morton, concerning Carmarthen and commissions from the Pretender. Information was also given of some indiscreet words allegedly uttered by Carmarthen during the Sacheverell riots, to the effect that ‘when the mobs were up they were fools, for if they would have been governed by him and other gentlemen with them they should have gone to the Bank for to get the treasure of the nation in their hands was everything.’ It was also reported that Crisp had been told that ‘his sister might be as great as any woman in England if she would consent to Lord Carmarthen’s engaging, that he was willing, but she was against it.’¹³⁶ Further allegations from ‘Mrs Crisp’ (in fact Mary Hill Morton) were reported in August, to the effect that Carmarthen had threatened to kill the queen and Sunderland, although she claimed that he had said he could head a mob to seize the guards and Sunderland. After a report from the attorney and solicitor generals in October, Carmarthen was called before the council on 8 Nov., where he clarified that he had heard of articles from the Pretender some years before and that he believed that the Whigs would bring him in at the time of the Sacheverell trial. Further, he had wondered that the mob had not attacked the Bank rather than Burgess’s meeting house.¹³⁷

In early November 1710, ‘Mrs Crisp’ preferred articles in queen’s bench against Carmarthen. He appeared in court on 14 Nov., supported by Henry Somerset*, 2nd duke of Beaufort, Nicholas Leke*, 4th earl of Scarsdale, Other Windsor*, 2nd earl of Plymouth, and William North*, 6th Baron North, where he gave bail for his good behaviour. He also declared ‘the greatness of his misfortune to have been so long seduced by so base and infamous a woman’. Leeds hoped now to put an end to her claim to have been validly married to Carmarthen.¹³⁸ In December, Queensberry was attempting to question ‘Mrs Mary Hill Morton, who calls herself Lady Carmarthen’, over some treasonable matter.¹³⁹ In December when the queen was given an account of Carmarthen’s ‘saying, that he was going to bring over the prince of Wales’, the queen responded that ‘there was no such thing under his hand: that it was spoke when he was drunk, and in the night with his mistress.’¹⁴⁰ On 23 Jan. 1711 Carmarthen and Morton were hauled before the lord chief justice, Sir Thomas Parker^†, the future earl of Macclesfield, where ‘she was discharged and he continued under bail’.¹⁴¹

Meanwhile, seven months earlier on 23 June 1710, Leeds recorded that Carmarthen had gone on board his new ship, the Royal Anne galley, which underwent trials in early July. In September there were rumours that he might command the fleet.¹⁴² He was not appointed, though he did get, Sir Stafford Fairborne complained in June 1711, £1,000 a year from the navy, even though he had ‘never served at sea in a better post than myself and his lordship has not been honoured with better commissions.’¹⁴³ On Harley’s list of 3 Oct. 1710, Carmarthen was assessed as being expected to support the new Tory ministry. On 6 Oct., a memorandum of Harley’s included a note about Dunblane’s proxy for the election of the Scottish representative peers.¹⁴⁴ Queensberry had sent the proxy to David Boyle*, earl of Glasgow [S], but there was a consensus that it should be transferred to David Wemyss*, 4th earl of Wemyss [S], ‘for being in the other’s hands may be of bad consequence’. It was Glasgow, however, who cast Dunblane’s votes at the election held on 10 Nov. 1710.¹⁴⁵

Carmarthen attended on 28 days of the 1710-11 session, 25 per cent of the total, half of his appearances coming in May and June at the end of the session. On 23 Mar. 1711 Carmarthen wrote to John Holles*, duke of Newcastle, of ‘the extreme unhappiness of my condition’, hoping for a favour that would ‘rather pity than expose my unhappy circumstances.’¹⁴⁶ At the end of March 1711 Leeds took out an exemplification of the sentence of the spiritual court on 24 Mar. confirming Carmarthen’s marriage to Bridget Hyde in April 1682.¹⁴⁷ At the beginning of August 1711, Trumbull was given the news that Carmarthen’s daughter, Betty, would be married to the duke of Beaufort.¹⁴⁸ Not coincidentally, on 22 Aug. Leeds received from Carmarthen, via Beaufort, ‘an instrument of renunciation of all appeals made by him against that sentence which was pronounced of his marriage in February the last 1710/11 and was then recorded in the spiritual court’, preventing a future challenge to his daughter’s legitimacy.¹⁴⁹ On 24 Aug. Carmarthen’s proctor renounced all future appeals in the spiritual courts against his marriage in 1682.¹⁵⁰ His daughter’s marriage took place on 14 Sept. 1711, with Leeds making the arrangements for the marriage portion to be paid.¹⁵¹ In late October 1711, when Leeds renewed the lease on Wimbledon, Carmarthen was removed from the reversion in favour of Leeds’ two grandsons and a cousin.¹⁵² This was in preparation for a comprehensive re-working of his settlements in January 1712, together with a new will, both of which confirmed Carmarthen’s exclusion in favour of his son and heir, also named Peregrine Osborne*, the future 3rd duke of Leeds.¹⁵³ In March 1712 Carmarthen publicly disowned Mary Hill Morton in the London Gazette as having ‘no manner of pretensions to the name of Carmarthen’.¹⁵⁴

Crucially, Carmarthen was absent on the opening day of the 1711-12 session, on 7 Dec. 1711, when the House voted in the division on ‘No Peace Without Spain,’ being ‘at a tavern and came too late to vote.’¹⁵⁵ Having been ‘sought’ by the ministry, he was in attendance the following day, when, along with Rivers, he ensured that a division was started on whether to reverse the previous day’s decision, which was subsequently abandoned. As Arthur Charlett was informed ‘Carmarthen was absent yesterday, but today was there and gave occasion for more confusion and disorder than has been usual in that honourable House.’¹⁵⁶ He entered his dissent to the address because of the ‘No Peace without Spain clause’. On 19 Dec. he was forecast as likely to support Hamilton’s right to sit in the Lords under his British title. He voted accordingly the following day and entered a protest when the motion disabling Hamilton was passed. He was listed by Oxford as one of those Lords to be contacted during the Christmas recess, to what effect is uncertain, for although he was present on 2 Jan. 1712 to argue on the court side in favour of complying with the queen’s request that the House adjourn until 14 Jan., he was then absent until 7 Mar. 1712, registering his proxy on 12 Jan. with his son-in-law, Beaufort.¹⁵⁷ From 3 Apr. he was absent for another month, attending again on 5 May, when he secured the release of a servant from custody under parliamentary privilege, the offending bailiff being discharged on 22 May. He then attended regularly until the end of the session. He acted as a teller in opposition to Francis Seymour Conway*, Baron Conway, on 19 May in a division on the grants bill in committee of the whole House, and voted on 28 May against a Whig motion for an address that Ormond be ordered to act offensively in Flanders, in the wake of the discovery of the restraining orders. Carmarthen had attended on 37 days of the session, 33 per cent of the total and been named to six committees. 

Carmarthen attended the prorogation on 8 July 1712. On 26 July his father died, unexpectedly, while en route to Yorkshire. Having been excluded from the estate by his father’s settlement, the new duke nevertheless travelled to Yorkshire to take possession of the family estates, which he did in the early hours of 28 July.¹⁵⁸ Clearly expecting trouble, on 23 Aug. the now duchess of Leeds wrote to Oxford craving the queen’s protection for herself and her son (now styled marquess of Carmarthen). Oxford was an obvious person to appeal to as arrangements were being made for Harley’s daughter Elizabeth to marry the new heir. Early in October 1712, after an approach by Montagu Bertie*, 2nd earl of Abingdon, and Philip Bisse*, bishop of St Davids, to attempt to persuade the new duke of Leeds to meet his son Carmarthen, Carmarthen (with the advice of Oxford) adopted a conciliatory line pointing out to his father that the first duke had ‘long determined this manner of settlement and had taken thereon the best advice England could afford… this was no sudden resolution of my grandfather’s, so the trustees find themselves sufficiently supported in law and equity.’ Further, although Leeds had taken possession of Kiveton, ‘the usual methods of dispossessing your grace are yet foreborn by the trustees, which is designed as an instance that an accommodation is heartily desired.’¹⁵⁹ In November Leeds was still holding out for a settlement of part of the family estates.¹⁶⁰ His father had left him only £2,000 p.a. (leaving most of his estate to his grandson), and in return for not contesting the will Oxford promised him the continuation of his father’s post office pension of £3,500 a year. Leeds agreed to the marriage but when the promised pension did not materialize, later claimed that Oxford had tricked him, having never approached the queen on his behalf, although it seems likely that Oxford could not persuade the queen to grant the reversion.¹⁶¹ On 7 Dec. Oxford received proposals from Leeds for a settlement. Leeds at that stage wanted to be master of the ordnance, describing himself as ‘far better qualified for that employment than any other person whose quality can entitle him to such a pretention,’ as well as his father’s post office pension and the use of Wimbledon for five years. In return Kiveton would be returned within two months, his father’s ‘pretended will’ accepted and his wife’s patrimony secured.¹⁶² With the marriage imminent, on 10 Dec. Leeds wrote to Oxford with some urgency desiring an immediate interview, threatening that ‘now I am my own master’, he would not countenance the marriage without reconciliation with his son. Oxford in response denied any underhand dealings, especially in relations between father and son, claiming ‘the late duke by deed directed everything relating to the settlement at his grandson’s marriage.’¹⁶³ Carmarthen’s marriage led to some speculation upon Leeds’ role in the ministry and in late December, Leeds was rumoured to be likely to be made the first commissioner of the admiralty.¹⁶⁴ Oxford could have been under no misapprehension of the scale of Leeds’s indebtedness: in January 1713 he even received a letter complaining of debts contracted in 1691 ‘to pay the draper for liveries and the goldsmith for 14 badges for his watermen when he was steward of the Yorkshire feast, like a man of his quality, where his now duchess, the countess of Plymouth and most of his noble family were present.’¹⁶⁵

The Hanoverian Succession and Exile, 1713-27

Leeds attended the prorogations of 17 Feb. 1713, when he took his seat as duke of Leeds, and of 3 and 17 March. On Jonathan Swift’s list, annotated by Oxford, dating from mid March to early April 1713, Leeds was listed as being expected to support the ministry. He first attended the 1713 session on 21 Apr., sitting on 25 days, 32 per cent of the total. He was present on 5 June when the Scots’ attempt to put off the second reading of the malt tax failed by one vote, and was noted as one of those ‘wanting on the court side’. On 8 June 1713, when the bill was considered in committee of the whole House John Elphinstone*, 4th Lord Balmerinoch [S], accused Leeds of making ‘long speeches full of nonsense and compliments to us’, and added that ‘when all was over [he] told Seafield and me that we must be pleased and for that purpose that an act of Parliament must be made to rectify that affair of our peerage’.¹⁶⁶ About 13 June Leeds was forecast by Oxford as likely to support the bill confirming the eighth and ninth articles of the French commercial treaty. One of his closest political associates was William Paston*, 2nd earl of Yarmouth: when Robert Ferguson had intelligence that there would be an attack on Oxford on 26 June 1713, at which several peers would absent themselves, including Yarmouth, he added ‘that it is not to be doubted, but that in consequence thereof the duke of Leeds will be likewise’.¹⁶⁷

By June 1713 Leeds, or his agents, had been in possession of the Yorkshire estates for almost a year, and in that time they had been run down and the personal estate of the old duke squandered. For Carmarthen, Oxford was the key to acquiring possession of his estate, presumably by the lord treasurer persuading the queen to transfer his grandfather’s pension to Leeds.¹⁶⁸ By October even Oxford was beginning to evince some exasperation: ‘I long have seen the endeavours used to work upon his grace’s passions to hinder his making his family easy and himself happy’, he wrote, and suspected that ‘I find the more the duke is courted the more some people persuade him to stand off’.¹⁶⁹ On 13 Oct., however, Leeds wrote to tell Oxford that ‘I have this day executed the enclosed writings according to your Lordship’s desire’.¹⁷⁰ By 19 Oct. Oxford was working on the queen to provide for Leeds, while asking Carmarthen to exercise restraint in sending any servants into Yorkshire and thereby provoking his father.¹⁷¹

In November 1713, Leeds and Oxford were godfathers at the christening of their grandson, Thomas Osborne^†, the future 4th duke of Leeds.¹⁷² Allegedly, Leeds asked that the child not be given his name ‘because he thought he had been a very unfortunate man to his family.’¹⁷³ In December Leeds finally ceded possession of the family estates to his son.¹⁷⁴ On 20 Feb. 1714, the London Gazette carried a further repudiation of the claims that Leeds had been married to Mary Morton, making reference to two trials, one in the court of common pleas before lord chief justice Thomas Trevor*, Baron Trevor, on 12 July 1712, and the other before Lord Chief Justice Parker in February, which had found against her.¹⁷⁵

Leeds attended on the opening day of the 1714 session on 2 March. On 2 Apr. Oxford had Leeds listed in a memorandum as one of a number of peers to write to, and coincidentally he attended the Lords on that day for the first time since 19 March. On 13 Apr. Leeds proposed that the word ‘industriously’ should be added to the address to the queen so that it read that the fears for the protestant succession had been ‘universally and industriously spread’, which was carried by two votes.¹⁷⁶ On 28 Apr. Oxford gave Leeds £200 out of his own pocket ‘for the queen’s service.’¹⁷⁷ On 13 May Leeds received the proxy of his son, who had been summoned to the House by a writ in acceleration in January 1713. He was forecast by Nottingham as likely to support the schism bill at the end of May or the beginning of June 1714. In all he attended on 31 days of the session, 39 per cent of the total.

Leeds did not attend the short session of August 1714, but he was present at the prorogation on 23 Sept. 1714, taking the oaths. In November the treasury ordered that he be paid his salary as admiral up until the time of the queen’s death.¹⁷⁸ However, with his financial predicament still dire, on 27 July 1715 Leeds took ship for France.¹⁷⁹ According to one account his flight was the result of shooting his son’s steward, a Mr Bradshaw of the Temple, in a dispute over his annuity. Other reports had him accumulating arms, ammunition and horses and preparing commissions before his flight.¹⁸⁰ In 1716 he was appointed admiral and commander-in-chief of the Jacobite fleet, and spent some years in exile before returning and eventually resuming his career in the Lords in 1724.¹⁸¹ He died on 25 June 1729. John Macky, writing when Carmarthen was about 50, had summed up his character: after praising his skill as a sailor he added ‘but [he] is very rakish, and extravagant, in his manner of living, otherwise he had risen quicker; he is strong and active, with abundance of fire and does not want wit; he is bold enough to undertake anything.’¹⁸²

Osborne’s early life was dominated by his paternal grandfather, Thomas Osborne*, duke of Leeds. As head of the family, it was Leeds who dictated the education of his grandchildren, not least because of the unstable conduct of his son and heir. It was at Leeds’ behest that Osborne and his elder brother, William Henry, styled earl of Danby, left for Holland on 1 Dec. 1706 to continue their education abroad. The two brothers were based at Utrecht from January 1707, learning riding, maths, dancing, fencing and music. They travelled extensively in the United Provinces and in September 1710 paid a visit to the court of Hanover.⁵ Danby died of smallpox at Utrecht in August, a misfortune that caused Leeds to recall Osborne (now styled Lord Danby in his brother’s place) home. He had spent four years and ten months abroad and arrived back in Wimbledon in late September 1711.⁶

In January 1712 Leeds made a new settlement of his estate, which ensured that his wayward son was passed over in favour of his grandson. His will, made a few days later, confirmed his intentions.⁷ Leeds also paid off Danby’s accumulated debts to 25 Mar. 1712, and provided him with an allowance of £300 p.a.⁸ Meanwhile Danby continued his introduction into polite society, although there was one hiccup. On 6 Mar. 1712, Danby’s brother-in-law, Henry Somerset*, 3rd duke of Beaufort, proposed him for membership of Swift’s Society, only for Swift to oppose it successfully, on the grounds of his youth.⁹ Another setback occurred at the end of April 1712, when he was diagnosed with smallpox, but he had recovered by mid May.¹⁰ When the old duke of Leeds died somewhat suddenly on 26 July 1712, with his grandson (now styled marquess of Carmarthen) still a few months shy of his majority, the response of the new duke was to ignore the settlement and to take possession of what his wife described as ‘what doeth in no wise belong to him’, especially Kiveton and its contents.¹¹

The question of Carmarthen’s marriage now came to the fore. To Swift his merits as a spouse were clear: ‘the young fellow has £60,000 ready money; three great houses furnished, £7,000 a year at present, and about five more after his father and mother die.’¹² His trustees were able to attract the attention of lord treasurer Oxford and to suggest Carmarthen to him as a potential match for his daughter, Elizabeth. In mid September 1712, Oxford’s brother, Edward Harley^‡, discussed it in the following terms: ‘as to estate, circumstances and the portion insisted on nothing equal can ever be expected if the character given by the bishop be just, the virtue and good disposition of the person may in some measure counterpoise the embroils that have been and must be expected from the father.’¹³ The marriage was brokered by Philip Bisse*, bishop of St Davids, who had married Carmarthen’s aunt Dorothy Osborne, the widowed countess of Plymouth.¹⁴ On 12 Nov. 1712 Oxford sent a letter of congratulation on Carmarthen’s ‘coming of age.’¹⁵ A few days later news of the match began seeping into public consciousness.¹⁶

The problem for both Carmarthen and Oxford remained the necessity of persuading Leeds to accept the settlement of the family’s estates. After much effort on Oxford’s part, in which he denied any underhand dealings, Leeds accepted the match, presumably because Oxford promised his assistance in procuring a renewal of the 1st duke’s pension from the post office.¹⁷ The marriage took place on 16 Dec. 1712, in the presence of the queen in Lady Masham’s apartments at Kensington, the ceremony being conducted by Bisse.¹⁸ Carmarthen’s father was also in attendance and behaved well according to all accounts.

Newly of age, with a legal title to the Osborne patrimony and with a close affinity to the lord treasurer, Carmarthen was an obvious candidate for bolstering the strength of the ministry in the Lords and a writ in acceleration was dated 29 Jan. 1713.¹⁹ As Oxford explained to Carmarthen on 1 Feb.,

tomorrow being Monday your Lordship’s writ to call you up to the House of Lords will be sealed. The Parliament will meet on Tuesday, but be prorogued for a very few days, so that if your Lordship come to town tomorrow you may kiss her majesty’s hands, though I believe Lord Keeper will not be able to come to the House so that your Lordship cannot be then introduced.²⁰

In response Carmarthen proposed to wait on Oxford the following day, when Beaufort would be able to accompany him to thank Oxford for his ‘great kindness in advancing me to so unmerited an honour.’²¹

Carmarthen was eventually introduced at the prorogation on 3 Mar. 1713 by his brother-in-law, George Hay*, Baron Hay, styled Lord Dupplin [S] (also the future 8th earl of Kinnoull [S]) and Samuel Masham*, Baron Masham. He then attended the prorogations on 10 and 17 March. At about this time his name appeared on a list in the hand of Jonathan Swift, with Oxford’s additions, as one of those expected to support the ministry, and just prior to the session, on 3 Apr., he wrote to congratulate Oxford ‘on the success of this great and glorious work of yours the peace’.²² He was present when the 1713 session opened on 9 Apr., attending on 41 days of the session, 53 per cent of the total. By the time the parliamentary session formally opened, another significant honour had accrued to Carmarthen and one which emphasized that he, rather than his father, was in charge of the Osborne patrimony in Yorkshire. In March he was appointed as lord lieutenant of the East Riding and Hull.²³ Shortly afterwards, in May, he ordered a public entertainment at Wakefield, as lord of the manor, in honour of the peace.²⁴ On 1 June he introduced the civic officials of Leeds to present an address to the queen in favour of the peace and did the like for those from Doncaster on 2 June 1713.²⁵

On 13 June 1713 Oxford forecast that Carmarthen would vote in support of the bill confirming the 8th and 9th articles of the French commercial treaty but on that very day told him that he should not stir until he had recovered from an indisposition.²⁶ Carmarthen obeyed this injunction to the extent that he only attended on one occasion (15 June) between 9 and 23 June. Just what the indisposition was remains unknown, but from about this time it seems that his health became increasingly precarious. Ensconced at Wimbledon, he sent Oxford a missive on 18 June complaining that he found himself,

now under almost the same difficulties with my father as before I was happily allied to your Lordship, in whose power it has been long and is still (pardon my thinking so) to free me from, and make me as easy in my circumstances and affairs as you have made me happy in a wife.²⁷

Chiefly, his problems with his father revolved around his Yorkshire estate and the depredations of the followers Leeds had installed on the properties. Carmarthen hoped that Oxford would be able to remove these difficulties by judicious use of his power of patronage, in effect compensating Leeds from public funds with either the post office pension or some equivalent.

From at least as early as May 1713 a settlement was being negotiated between Leeds and his son (and Oxford). In June Oxford wrote to Carmarthen setting out the options: ‘you know the difficulty of treating with him, and there is but two ways, one by law, which will be very tedious and the other by treaty in which I have offered him great advantages.’²⁸ Matters dragged on, leaving Edward Harley to comment in late September: ‘from what I have heard from the bishop of Hereford [Philip Bisse] here and what I perceived in London, I heartily wish matters could be settled for Lord Carmarthen it is pity he should be soured.’²⁹ Oxford’s own memorandum from August 1713 showed that he was still pondering two possible solutions: either Leeds could be ejected by law, or matters composed by way of a pension from the crown.³⁰ On 15 Dec. the lawyer involved, Henry Farrant, informed Oxford that at a meeting the previous day Leeds had given ‘his finishing stroke, for the establishing my lord marquess in his noble possessions, and (as I hope) for a lasting union in the family.’³¹ In return for possession of the family patrimony, Carmarthen agreed to pay his father £500 per quarter.³² This was to be supplemented by the transfer of the 1st duke’s pension of £3,500 to Leeds.

The birth on 6 Nov. 1713 of a son, Thomas Osborne^†, the future 4th duke of Leeds, was a cause of great pleasure to Carmarthen and his father. Simultaneously, it was reported that ‘Mr Williams is in quiet possession of Kiveton, found everything much better than was expected ... the furniture is in good order.’ The death of his wife at Wimbledon on 20 Nov. 1713, following complications after the birth, left Carmarthen ‘the most dejected man living, does not care to see to speak to anyone’, and designing to take solace in Yorkshire.³³ By 17 Dec. Carmarthen had recovered sufficiently to solicit Oxford on behalf of his cousin, James Herbert^‡, for the vacant post of surveyor general. He spent the beginning of 1714 at Kiveton, writing to Oxford on 22 Jan. that he was happy ‘that you should at last think me worthy of your assistance.’³⁴

Carmarthen attended on the opening day of the 1714 Parliament on 16 February. He attended on 37 days of the session, 47 per cent of the total. On 8 Apr. Lady Dupplin reported that ‘Lord Carmarthen has had a cold but is better’, but on 10 Apr. he registered his proxy with Beaufort. He next sat on 28 April. He then registered another proxy on 13 May with his father. He did not sit again until 30 June, spending part of his absence in the country and part on a visit to Windsor.³⁵ Despite his absence, in late May or early June he was forecast by Daniel Finch*, 2nd earl of Nottingham, as likely to support the schism bill. Carmarthen was still sufficiently close to Oxford to be one of the first to be informed of his loss of office in July.³⁶

At the time of Queen Anne’s death, Carmarthen was at Badminton but travelled to London for the Parliament taking his seat on 9 Aug. 1714.³⁷ He attended on three days of the session, less than 18 per cent of the total. Carmarthen continued to suffer from poor health; in mid September 1714 he was reported to be ‘confined by his bile,’ and ‘in an ill way, his arm is to be opened again tomorrow. The surgeon says then he can make a judgment of it. It should have been done today but my Lord was unwilling to bear the pain.³⁸ He was still in town at the end of September 1714. Carmarthen’s health remained fragile, although it was reported at the end of October 1714, that he ‘mends daily’.³⁹ Having been reappointed lord lieutenant of the East Riding by the new regime in October 1714, he was superseded by the end of the year.⁴⁰

Carmarthen continued to have a difficult relationship with his father, who spent some years in exile as a Jacobite, always imploring his son for more funds. He succeeded his father in 1729, but always susceptible to bouts of ill health he was an irregular attender in Parliament in his latter years. He died on 9 May 1731, at his house in Pall Mall, of a ‘consumptive illness’ and was buried at Harthill.⁴¹ His widow married Charles Colyear^†, 2nd earl of Portmore [S], in 1732, and enjoyed a jointure of £3,000 p.a. for over 60 years.⁴²

Few men in the period enjoyed such a spectacular career as did Thomas Osborne, who emerged from comparative obscurity to be made lord treasurer and latterly lord president.¹⁷ With high office came promotion to the Lords first as a viscount, thence to an earldom and onwards to a marquessate and ultimately a dukedom. He was no less successful in acquiring property (Wallingford House from George Villiers*, 2nd duke of Buckingham, and Wimbledon from the countess of Bristol as well as a suite of rooms at St James’s Palace and extensive estates in Yorkshire, Surrey and Wales) and in securing prestigious matches for his numerous progeny. Quite as important in this latter regard was the role of his wife, Lady Bridget Bertie, and his close relations with members of her extensive family, enabling him to extend his interest far beyond the confines of his native Yorkshire. From a position of subservience he rose to become head of the Anglican grouping under Charles II; he was then a commanding figure in the Revolution and briefly William III’s chief minister. Given all this, it is unsurprising that he was thought of as rapacious, unscrupulous and overweening, or that such successes were followed by significant downturns in his fortunes.¹⁸ These included a period of five years in the Tower and attempted impeachment on two occasions. His success was all the more striking when considered in the context of his abysmal health that kept him confined for weeks at a time.

While he may have been more than ordinarily acquisitive in terms of the policies he pursued, Osborne was strikingly consistent throughout his career. From the time that he assumed the lord treasurership until his death, the central tenets of his creed were the security of the Church of England, achieving financial stability for the country, and hostility to the power of France. Given that he had started out as a follower of Buckingham, his religious stance was by no means obvious at the outset, but once fixed in this direction, Osborne rarely faltered.

Osborne seems initially to have made his way forward by exploiting his connections with Sir George Savile*, later marquess of Halifax, and Buckingham. Osborne and Savile would later become implacable rivals, nicknamed variously the white and black marquesses (Osborne being the former as marquess of Carmarthen) but in the early 1660s they were reckoned to be friends.¹⁹ Having been returned for York on Buckingham’s interest in 1665, Osborne proved his worth as a reliable lieutenant by fighting a duel with Buckingham’s rival and Osborne’s own distant kinsman, Thomas Belasyse*, Viscount (later earl of ) Fauconberg, the following year. On Buckingham’s removal from office in 1667, Osborne noted how he was able to save his patron from imprisonment ‘by proving his hand to have been counterfeit in a letter’ given to the king.²⁰ More significantly, Osborne also made his first foray into financial politics by proposing a farm of the exchequer, though this was rejected. As early as the autumn of 1667 it was predicted that Osborne would be ‘a great man of business’, and he was appointed in October 1668 joint treasurer of the navy together with a client of Henry Bennet*, earl of Arlington’s, Sir Thomas Littleton^‡. By 1669 his relationship with Buckingham had become strained, but it was not until the latter part of 1671 that he finally began to emerge from under his patron’s shadow, when he became sole treasurer of the navy, rather than holding the post jointly.²¹ In 1673 he became a senior minister in his own right when he succeeded Thomas Clifford*, Baron Clifford, as lord treasurer. Reports of Osborne’s expected appointment to the treasury circulated from the middle of May. His appointment signalled the temporary eclipse of Arlington, who had opposed Osborne’s nomination, as well as disproving the predictions of those who had expected to see the treasury put back into commission.²² Soon after being appointed to the treasurership Osborne (already ennobled in the Scottish peerage as Viscount Oseburne of Dunblane) was advanced to an English peerage marking the beginning of his steady rise through the ranks of the peerage that culminated two decades later with his creation as duke of Leeds.

Viscount Latimer, 1673-4

Latimer’s prime consideration at the time of his succession to the treasury was the vexed question of the nation’s finances, a problem that convinced him of the need to persuade the king to accept Parliament’s demands for legislation safeguarding the Church. Although at least one commentator had heralded the new lord treasurer’s appointment as ‘an excellent choice’, his tenure of office did not have an auspicious beginning.²³ At his swearing-in he was subjected to a typically caustic address by Anthony Ashley Cooper*, earl of Shaftesbury, and within days of his appointment (and before his promotion to his English viscountcy) it was speculated that he might be replaced. This was thought either to be owing to a renewed effort by Arlington and James Stuart*, duke of York, to displace him or to his almost immediate collapse with severe colic. Osborne survived the malady and in August he was promoted Viscount Latimer while still on his sickbed.²⁴ There had previously been considerable speculation as to the style he would choose.²⁵ Some thought he was to be made Viscount Leeds, others that he would be promoted at once to an earldom as earl of Leigh or earl of Danby. The selection of Latimer as his title was an overt allusion to the new viscount’s descent (via his mother) from the Neville lords Latimer.

Latimer took his seat in the House on 20 Oct. 1673 (the final day of the session) introduced between William Howard*, Viscount Stafford, and his erstwhile duelling opponent, Fauconberg. Shaftesbury used the opportunity to have Latimer introduced as a way of delaying the prorogation so that the Commons were given more time to draft an address complaining about the marriage of the duke of York, to the Catholic princess, Mary of Modena. Parliament was then prorogued by commission, with Latimer serving as one of the commissioners.²⁶ It was then recalled seven days later only to be prorogued once more having sat for just four days (Latimer being present for all four sitting days).

Latimer’s aims as lord treasurer were summarized in a document he drafted at some point in October 1673, which asserted his intention to see the Protestant interest protected and the nation’s finances reformed.²⁷ He was assisted in this task by the removal of certain significant opponents, most notably Shaftesbury who was put out of office in November and replaced by Heneage Finch*, later earl of Nottingham, on the recommendation of Latimer and the other Buckingham client with whom Latimer was becoming increasingly closely associated, Edward Seymour^‡.²⁸ Shaftesbury’s removal encouraged speculation that more changes would be made, prompting John Frescheville*, Baron Frescheville, to approach Latimer for one of the expected vacancies.²⁹ In spite of Latimer’s apparent ascendancy at this time his interest in Yorkshire came under severe pressure during by-elections for Aldborough, Boroughbridge and York, with his son, Edward Osborne^‡ being forced to withdraw his candidacy at the last of these. The reversal at York may have been in part owing to the corporation’s confusion as to what their local patrons, Buckingham and Latimer, intended them to do.³⁰ Nevertheless by the close of the year it was reported confidently that Buckingham and Latimer had settled matters between them and had ‘a perfect understanding of the present disposition of the cabals in Parliament.’³¹

In advance of the new session of Parliament beginning in January 1674, Latimer was entrusted with the proxy of William Ley*, 4th earl of Marlborough, an impoverished peer. He took his seat on the opening day of the session (7 Jan. 1674) after which he was present on 92 per cent of all sitting days. The opening few days were dominated by the presentation of addresses from the Commons calling for the removal of two members of the Cabal from the king’s counsels: John Maitland*, duke of Lauderdale [S] (sitting in the House as earl of Guilford), and Buckingham.³² The assault helped Latimer consolidate his hold on power, although he was reported to have remained close to Buckingham for the remainder of the year. Buckingham’s removal also enabled Latimer to develop his own local interest and the following month he was appointed to the lieutenancy of the West Riding in succession to his former patron. A major preoccupation of the session, and of Latimer, was the peace proposals emanating from Holland. It was said to be on Latimer’s advice that the letter from the States General setting out their proposals was laid before Parliament on 24 Jan. by the king.³³ On each of the following three sitting days, 26, 27 and 28 Jan., Latimer reported from the committee of the whole House considering the proposals. Although peace was shortly afterwards concluded, the session was prorogued on 24 Feb. without supply having been voted. Danby was forced to initiate a series of financial reforms the following month. On 7 Mar. Latimer laid the problems relating to the navy before the admiralty commissioners pressing for a reduction in naval expenditure of £200,000 a year. The same month saw him seeking an increase in revenue yields through renegotiation of the excise farm and other measures, as well as vigorously slashing expenditure in other areas of government.

Progress in such initiatives was threatened by ill health. By the close of March 1674 Latimer was described as being ‘sickish’ and as a consequence it was complained of that business was no longer being done. It was not until the close of April that he finally began to recover.³⁴ His improvement in health coincided with the beginnings of negotiations with Prince William of Orange to arrive at a settlement of the respective financial claims of the prince against the English crown (dating back to the Interregnum) and the English crown against the Dutch government arising from the recent peace treaty, in the course of which the question was raised of a match between the prince and York’s eldest daughter, Princess Mary.³⁵ In late April Latimer was also involved as one of the commissioners treating with a Scots delegation for the improvement of trade between the two kingdoms.³⁶

In May rumours circulated of a match in train for one of Latimer’s sons but in the event nothing came of it.³⁷ He and his wife removed to Bath at the end the month in search of a cure for his various maladies.³⁸ Reflecting his success in improving the revenue and cutting expenditure, at the end of June he received a further mark of the king’s confidence by his advancement to the earldom of Danby.³⁹ The remainder of the summer was divided between attendance on the king and a lengthy sojourn at Bath.⁴⁰ Danby was careful to protect his back, setting negotiations in train for bringing him and the duchess of Portsmouth into alliance through the mediation of Roger Boyle^‡, earl of Orrery [I].⁴¹ Efforts were also said to have been made to rescue a friendship with another of the king’s mistresses, the duchess of Cleveland.⁴²

Earl of Danby, 1674-85

Danby returned to town in September 1674 having, it was hoped, ‘found benefit by the Bath’.⁴³ The second week of the month saw Arlington’s resignation and his replacement as secretary of state by Sir Joseph Williamson^‡, a move that helped confirm Danby in his ascendancy. Towards the end of the month a decision was taken to postpone Parliament until the spring; William Harbord^‡ wrote to Arthur Capell*, earl of Essex to tell him that Danby had ‘greater credit with the king than any man ever had’, largely based on his success in increasing the revenue. Danby’s attention in the autumn of 1674 focused closely on the need to prepare for the coming parliamentary session and particularly to drive forward his plans for setting the security of the Church of England at the heart of his policies. In October he visited George Morley*, bishop of Winchester, at Farnham to impress upon him the need for a pre-sessional meeting of the bishops and Privy Council so that they could consult about ‘some things that might unite and best pacify the minds of people against the next session.’⁴⁴ Towards the end of the month the bishops were summoned to meet to consider the best ways to ensure the suppression of Catholicism. On 10 Nov. 1674 Danby was introduced in the House in his new dignity between John Carey*, 2nd earl of Dover, and William Craven*, earl of Craven, when Parliament met to be prorogued to April. Fees payable on the occasion to the various staff of the House amounted to £19 10s.⁴⁵ Any satisfaction he felt at his promotion was no doubt tempered by his reported annoyance at discovering the king’s plan to send Arlington on a mission to the prince of Orange without informing the council, though he was able to rescue the situation by insisting that Arlington was accompanied by his son, Edward Osborne (now styled Viscount Latimer).⁴⁶

The close of the year saw Danby’s position further underpinned amid rumours that his second son, Peregrine Osborne*, later 2nd duke of Leeds, was to be raised to the peerage and various reports of lucrative marriages for his children. Among them was a match between one of his daughters and ‘the great’ Robert Coke^‡ of Norfolk, which prompted Edmund Verney to comment how ‘my lord treasurer is very fortunate in making his family great by rich matches.’⁴⁷ Danby chose to renounce his own Scots peerage at this time, which was then regranted as the viscountcy of Osborne of Dunblane [S], for Peregrine Osborne.⁴⁸ In all, by the close of the year Danby was said to have been successful in raising ‘his family to a high pitch and yet no damage to his master, wherein he is very much to be commended.’⁴⁹ Such successes were tempered by the news that one heiress (Bridget Hyde, stepdaughter of Sir Robert Viner) he had hoped to acquire for his younger son had married her cousin (John Emerton). Eager not to allow Hyde’s action to disturb his plans, Danby set about investigating the details of the marriage in the hopes that it could be overturned: the case would indeed become a legal battle that lasted several years.⁵⁰ Some took pleasure in pointing out that while Hyde’s husband lived, Dunblane would remain disappointed ‘notwithstanding all his great and potent friends.’⁵¹

Danby’s efforts to mobilize the bishops to ensure the suppression of popery resulted in their reporting early in the new year that existing legislation was sufficient to safeguard the Church of England provided it was enforced. The opening of 1675 witnessed increasing tension between Danby and Lauderdale, as the latter attempted to take credit for the development of the pro-Anglican policy.⁵² In spite of this the result was the effective creation of a new ‘cabal’ comprising Danby, Lauderdale, Lord Keeper Finch and both secretaries of state. The details of the alliance with the bishops was worked out at a meeting of bishops and members of the council on 21 Jan. 1675, with commitments to enforce the laws against Catholics and prevent Catholics from coming to court, while also suppressing conventicles. By the end of the month Danby reported confidently to Essex, that the king was now ‘taking the most effectual courses to cure the suspicions which many had received here of the encouragement or at least connivance which was given to popery’.⁵³ The one obvious loser from the new state of affairs was Arlington. Towards the close of January Danby informed the king that he was unable to work with the former secretary.⁵⁴ By early February Danby’s victory appeared all but complete after he was able to convince the king to announce the new policy in favour of supporting the Church of England in council.⁵⁵

Danby’s setting out of a clear policy probably encouraged increasing hostility to him personally. His reputation for acquisitiveness was bolstered by his actions in February 1675. It was reported that while the king had provided him with £10,000 to purchase Buckingham’s London residence of Wallingford House, he had proceeded to settle with the duke’s trustees for just £6,000, pocketing the remainder. Towards the end of the month it was also put about that the lord privy seal, Arthur Annesley*, earl of Anglesey (who had preceded him and Littleton in the treasurership of the navy), intended to accuse Danby of disposing of £200,000 without a proper warrant.⁵⁶ This sort of behaviour no doubt encouraged comments concerning Bridget Hyde’s marriage to Emerton, a man of relatively humble origins, in which it was pointed out that ‘my lord treasurer having raised his family himself has little reason to repine at another man’s doing the same, and probably by an honester way.’ Edmund Verney also observed that,‘I believe my lord treasurer intends to have the monopoly of all the good fortunes in England, and engross them all for his family.’⁵⁷

Preparations for the new session of Parliament began to dominate Danby’s thinking, though he was said to have been one of those in favour of a further prorogation.⁵⁸ On 2 Mar. Essex wrote from Ireland that he had resolved to register his proxy with Danby, ‘being full assured that I cannot entrust it with any who doth more faithfully intend both his majesty’s and the kingdom’s good.’⁵⁹ The proxy was registered with Danby. The proximity of the new session of Parliament brought out the usual tensions. In the middle of the month Fauconberg was said to have reported that Seth Ward*, bishop of Salisbury had told him that the planned non-resisting test owed nothing to the bishops and that the whole measure was of Danby’s making. On this being related to Danby the lord treasurer was said to have been left ‘extremely nettled’ with the result that the whole disagreement was brought before the king.⁶⁰ Towards the end of the month further divisions came to the surface. The French envoy de Ruvigny considered Arlington, Lauderdale and Danby ‘most divided’. At the same time it was reported that Danby and Lord Keeper Finch were being ‘very industrious to reconcile’ the lord mayor, aldermen and common council of the City of London.⁶¹

Efforts to ensure the attendance of people thought likely to support the administration continued through the spring. On 1 Apr. 1675 Danby wrote to Henry Cavendish*, styled earl of Ogle (later 2nd duke of Newcastle), at the king’s command to advise his presence ‘the first day of the session.’ He also pressed Ogle to ensure that the proxy of his father, William Cavendish*, duke of Newcastle, was placed ‘in some good hand.’⁶² Danby was successful in securing the return of his son-in-law, Coke, at a by-election for King’s Lynn, at a cost of £8,000. He was also entrusted with the proxy of Edward Montagu*, 2nd Baron Montagu of Boughton, on 10 Apr. to add to that of Essex and on 13 Apr. he resumed his place in the new session, after which he was present on 95 per cent of all sitting days. Two days into the session, the non-resisting test bill was introduced into the Lords by Danby’s brother-in-law, Robert Bertie*, 3rd earl of Lindsey, inspiring a lengthy contest in both Houses that continued until early June.⁶³ Danby was noted as being one of ‘the great speakers for it’ with Shaftesbury, Halifax and Buckingham ranged against him.⁶⁴ Having come under pressure from the Lords early in the session, Danby was targeted by the Commons towards the end of the month over criticism of his conduct at the treasury highlighted by William Russell^‡, styled Lord Russell.⁶⁵ Russell’s assault was followed by the introduction of articles of impeachment against him by Sir Samuel Barnardiston^‡, supported by Sir Thomas Meres^‡, Sir Thomas Littleton and Henry Powle^‡, but Danby’s prevailing strength at the time was demonstrated by the swiftness with which the impeachment was dismissed.⁶⁶ By 28 Apr. both the first and second charges against him had been rejected as matter not sufficient for impeachment and on 30 Apr. further consideration of the charges was rather driven by Danby’s party in the Commons as part of an effort to exonerate him rather than by his opponents who now seemed all too eager to let the matter drop.⁶⁷ On 3 May the final articles were debated and dismissed, probably without a division being taken. Essex congratulated Danby on his escape noting ‘how busy faction and the animosities of men always are against those who possess great places.’⁶⁸ A series of disputes between the two Houses were also manipulated as a way of disrupting proceedings on the test bill. At the end of May Danby was one of five peers nominated to prepare information to be communicated to the Commons complaining at the lower House’s failure to send representatives to a previous conference in the case of Stoughton v. Onslow. He was then nominated one of the managers of a subsequent conference on the same matter on 2 June. Disagreement over this business was soon overtaken by the far more divisive dispute over Sherley v. Fagg. At the beginning of June Danby advised Essex that the dispute was likely to mean a longer session than originally anticipated while efforts were made to reconcile the two chambers, ‘it being so necessary they should come to some composure before they part.’⁶⁹ In attempting to settle the dispute Danby supported the claims of the Commons in support of their member, Sir John Fagg^‡, over Shaftesbury, who was eager to stir up dissension between the Houses in an effort to derail Danby’s test bill.⁷⁰ Parliament’s prorogation on 9 June was a recognition that little more would be achieved as a result of the dispute. Danby’s strategy of generating support through identification with the supporters of the Church had clearly failed, and he himself was said to have been damaged as a result; Shaftesbury, in particular, was seen as having a chance of ousting him. In an interview with the king on 19 June Danby, though, seems to have persuaded the king not to turn back to the man who had become his principal opponent.⁷¹ In August 1675 Danby felt able to retreat once more to Bath to recover from his exertions.⁷² In his absence from court the king struck up a new agreement with the French via their emissary, Ruvigny, ignoring Danby’s preferred policy of mediation between France and the United Provinces.⁷³ The king’s actions and the resurgence of some courtiers inimical to Danby such as Baptist May^‡ clearly disturbed Danby’s allies and on 25 Aug. his brother-in-law, Lindsey, wrote to insist that he had ‘always thought the court of no good complexion towards your lordship’⁷⁴ Danby had returned to London by the beginning of the second week of September 1675 to respond to the growing threat to his position.⁷⁵

Preparations for the new session predominated from the beginning of October, including a further expansion of the number of pensions being paid to Members of the House of Commons and a more systematic summons to court supporters to attend the session, practices which, it has been argued, helped both to create a more formal ‘court’ party and also an opposition party of those who had not been selected.⁷⁶ On 10 Oct. Danby was once more entrusted with Montagu of Boughton’s proxy. He added the proxy of Charles Howard*, earl of Nottingham, the following day. On 13 Oct. he took his place at the opening of the new session, after which he was present on 90 per cent of all sitting days. Danby’s influence was clearly to be seen in the king’s speech in which the need for further security for the Church of England was emphasized. The government also set out its requirements for supply, but on 19 Oct. the ministry’s supply bill was defeated in the Commons by 172 votes to 165; Danby’s policy of distributing rewards among Members of the Commons came in for severe attack there, and the vocal opposition to the service of English soldiers in the French army came in for open criticism, as it had in the spring. Once more suffering from poor health and overwork, by the close of October 1675 Danby was said to inaccessible.⁷⁷ Struggling to maintain control over the Commons, he also found himself pitched with increasing bitterness against an opposition faction in the Lords. In mid-November he and James Scott*, duke of Monmouth, had to be reconciled by the king following a report that Danby had cast aspersions on Monmouth’s parentage.⁷⁸ Although in early November, the Commons did vote to provide money for the navy it proved difficult to draw this to a conclusion; in the Lords anger over the previous session’s dispute with the Commons was rekindled, and on 19 Nov. Danby was one of 10 peers nominated to act as managers of a conference with the Commons, ‘for the preservation of good understanding between the two Houses’. The following day, having been one of the principal speakers against it, wielding Nottingham and Montagu’s proxies, Danby voted against the opposition-inspired proposal for an address to request the king to dissolve Parliament.⁷⁹ In the event the motion was only rejected by the late arrival of Robert Bruce*, earl of Ailesbury (also in receipt of a proxy), who ensured that the ministry carried the day narrowly by 50 votes to 48 (including proxies).⁸⁰ Two days later Parliament was prorogued once more and with the king no longer confident of the efficacy of summoning another one soon, the new session was set for 15 months hence.

With the failure to secure a parliamentary grant, in the immediate aftermath of the prorogation, Danby set about ordering swingeing retrenchments at court.⁸¹ His experience in the sessions of 1675 also appears to have inspired him to do yet more to construct a more reliable court following in the Commons. On 18 Dec. he was provided by Sir Richard Wiseman^‡ with a list of potential ministry supporters divided into groups according to their reliability. Over the ensuing months Danby honed this group, eventually emerging with a core of approximately 130 Members of the Commons on whom he was reasonably confident he could depend.⁸² Danby also made moves to attack the bases of opposition support. Towards the end of December he inspired a proclamation for the eradication of coffee houses. In response to complaints that the ministry would lose revenue (one estimate suggested the loss would be as much as £15,000 per annum) through the fall in sales of coffee he retorted that the shortfall would be made up in increase in revenue from beer.⁸³

The new year opened with Danby determined to continue with the retrenchment of finances while struggling to maintain his influence at court, which was threatened by the king’s continuing efforts to secure a French alliance. Danby’s own preference for closer relations with the Dutch, which seems to have been expressed at a secret meeting held at the close of the previous year involving the king, York and Lauderdale, met with a distinctly cool reception.⁸⁴ He was also disappointed in his plans for retrenchments and was quickly forced to amend his initial plan to limit expenses to £1,000,000 and allow for £1,175,315 instead. Plans for suppressing coffee houses also had to be scaled back when several proprietors petitioned the council in January protesting at their loss of revenue. The petition resulted in a ministry climb-down and the establishments’ licenses being extended to mid-summer in return for an undertaking on the part of the owners that they would prevent their premises being used for the circulation of scandalous papers. Danby took steps to consolidate his own control of the government. He ensured that Halifax and Denzil Holles*, Baron Holles (who had espoused the cause of the coffee houses), were struck off the council.⁸⁵ His ally, Henry Compton*, bishop of Oxford (shortly after advanced bishop of London), was one of those called up to replace them at the board. Danby was responsible in large measure for Compton’s appointment to both bishoprics and was also the inspiration for the religious census presided over by the bishop in 1676, which was intended to demonstrate the strength of the Church of England and relative paucity of nonconformists of all shades.⁸⁶

Although by the beginning of February 1676 Danby was accounted by some to have been ‘a greater favourite than ever was the late duke of Buckingham’, his influence over the king was never secure.⁸⁷ Later that month the king finally resolved to proceed with the projected French alliance, over Danby’s obstruction and objections.⁸⁸ Danby was further humiliated when an attempt to have Shaftesbury sent to the Tower misfired as Secretary Williamson refused to sign the warrant for Shaftesbury’s arrest and the king then proved unwilling to back Danby over the issue. By the close of March 1676 it was speculated that the ‘heaving and shoving’ at court would result in Danby being put out as lord treasurer and that the office would be put back into commission.⁸⁹ Although the French envoy continued to believe that Danby retained the chief place in the king’s confidence, according to another report by the beginning of April Danby ‘sits very loose.’⁹⁰ For the moment the former assessment appeared to be the more perceptive. That month Danby was able to secure the appointment of his creature, Sir John Ernle^‡, as chancellor of the exchequer. Ernle’s success inspired a belief that all office holders bar those known to be among the lord treasurer’s supporters were now vulnerable. The duke of York remained an obstacle, however. On 12 Apr. it was reported that Danby had been involved in a furious row with York over religion while the court was at Newmarket. Danby was said to have been compelled to summon the duchess of Portsmouth to his aid, ‘else it is thought he had been removed’.⁹¹ At the end of May 1676 York was said to have entered into an alliance with Arlington in the hopes of displacing the lord treasurer. Although the king attempted to broker a reconciliation between Arlington and Danby, it was thought that ‘the hatred between these two ministers seems so great that it will be difficult to reconcile them sincerely’. In the event, Arlington was left isolated as Danby opted instead for a temporary rapprochement with his other rivals.⁹²

By the beginning of the summer of 1676, Danby’s efforts to press forward with his religious policies seemed to be on the verge of succeeding. Early in June Bishop Morley reported to him the results of enquiries within his diocese concerning the declaration for suppressing conventicles, for which he concluded ‘there will appear neither danger in attempting nor great difficulty in effecting this great work.’⁹³ Danby was also able to report to the king confidently that his efforts to recruit a reliable grouping in the Commons had resulted in the addition of a further 20 members to his core group of 130. In all, he hoped to be able to call upon approximately 250 members to support the ministry’s business.⁹⁴ Meanwhile, his efforts to secure his position at court had resulted in him striking up a partnership with the duchesse de Mazarin, one of the king’s mistresses.⁹⁵

Danby was one of a minority of seven peers to find Charles Cornwallis*, 3rd Baron Cornwallis, guilty of manslaughter at the close of June.⁹⁶ Preparations for the trial had found him attempting to show favour for his kinsman, Lindsey (the lord great chamberlain) in a dispute relating to the preparations for peers’ trials.⁹⁷ During the autumn Danby was concerned with a series of looming by-elections and anticipating the death of Gilbert Sheldon*, archbishop of Canterbury, the search for his successor. He also continued to seek lucrative matches for members of his family and in July Robert Robartes^‡ (later styled Viscount Bodmin) heir of John Robartes*, Baron Robartes (later earl of Radnor), approached Danby to offer his son as a potential husband for Lady Martha Osborne following a breakdown in negotiations between John Granville*, earl of Bath, and Danby.⁹⁸

In September, Danby decamped to Rycote to stay with another of his Bertie relations, James Bertie*, Baron Norreys (later earl of Abingdon). While there he saw much of Anglesey, (someone with whom he had previously been on decidedly poor terms).⁹⁹ Having been troubled once again by a lingering sickness throughout July Danby was now eager to make known his return to health, insisting to his countess that he was as ‘errant a Nimrod as ever you knew me’.¹⁰⁰ Danby had returned to London by the beginning of October. That month a satire was pasted to the gates of Westminster Hall, Whitehall and Wallingford House jibing at Danby’s perceived corruption. It advertised the sale of two or three judges’ places as well as ‘a small country called Ireland’ with enquiries to be directed to the lord treasurer.¹⁰¹

The opening of 1677 found Danby’s fortunes once again unsettled. The death of his grandson, Thomas, hours after birth, was set off against news of an impending marriage between Charles Granville*, styled Lord Lansdown (later 2nd earl of Bath), and one of Danby’s daughters.¹⁰² The great focus of his efforts, though, was the forthcoming meeting of Parliament following the 15-month prorogation. He was entrusted with Marlborough’s proxy on 8 Jan. (vacated on 11 Apr. the following year); Montagu of Boughton’s proxy was also registered to him on 6 February.¹⁰³ From Paris, Danby received reports from Paris that it was expected that ‘the Parliament will do no good’, that half of its time would be spent in further consideration of the dispute with the Lords over Sherley v. Fagg and that ‘quarrelling with the ministers will take up all the rest.’¹⁰⁴

Danby took his seat on 15 Feb. 1677 after which he was in attendance on over 90 per cent of all sitting days. The opening was dominated by the attempts by Buckingham, Shaftesbury and two others to question the legitimacy of the proceedings given the length of the prorogation. Danby’s ally Frescheville recommended that the opposition lords should be punished for their actions, and Danby later that evening backed him up.¹⁰⁵ On the following day, in response to the four peers’ attempts to justify their behaviour, Danby insisted that there had been collusion between them and successfully pressed for their separate confinement in the Tower. One report of the proceedings referred to the ‘high and bitter clashings’ between Danby and Buckingham.¹⁰⁶ On 17 Feb. the question of the long prorogation was debated in the Commons and carried in the government’s favour by 193 to 142: significantly short of the 250 voices he had assured the king he would be able to command.¹⁰⁷

Danby was forced to accept less than he hoped for elsewhere too. A measure sponsored by him for limiting the powers of a future Catholic monarch regarding ecclesiastical appointments was rejected in the Commons.¹⁰⁸ More pressing was the question of supply and on 21 Feb. the Commons entered into a grand committee to consider the issue. The ministry had submitted a request for a grant of £800,000 but although the chairmanship of the committee went to Danby’s ally, Sir Richard Temple^‡, it was a compromise sum of £600,000 that was ultimately settled on after six weeks of haggling. While the Commons debated the supply bill, there was talk of renewed efforts to displace the lord treasurer and on 22 Feb. it was reported that William Cavendish*, styled Lord Cavendish (later duke of Devonshire), was in possession of a number of articles with which he intended to accuse the lord treasurer the following day, though nothing came of this.¹⁰⁹ Between 13 and 15 Mar. 1677 Danby was one of the managers of a series of conferences held to discuss an address to the king requesting a declaration against France in the light of recent French advances into Flanders. On 20 Mar. he was behind a motion for a second address promising supply to assist in the campaign against the French, which was said to have been greeted with cheers in the House. At the end of the month Danby’s appointment to the order of the garter and reports that he would shortly be advanced in the peerage to a dukedom demonstrated Danby’s continued favour with the king.¹¹⁰

On 10 Apr. the supply bill was finally sent up to the Lords, the king insisting on taking Danby’s white staff out of his hand to use as a ruler against the document that stretched the length of the chamber.¹¹¹ But despite a series of addresses initiated in the Commons urging immediate intervention in the European war and promising further supply for it, work on supply was undercut by the lack of any sign of commitment on the king’s part to fighting. Moreover, the supply bill itself was put at risk by a dispute between the two Houses about whether the exchequer should supply accounts of the tax to just the Commons or to both Houses. On 16 Apr. Danby was forced to give up hope of securing an additional supply for the present and accept an adjournment over Easter. On 17 Apr. Charles Hatton noted how ‘the lord treasurer who on Saturday last argued incomparably well very acutely and home was now silent’ during a conference with the Commons over the dispute between the two Houses.¹¹² Danby was assessed, unsurprisingly, as triply vile by the imprisoned Shaftesbury at the beginning of May and by the end of the month the list of Danby’s enemies was again noted to be increasing. Despite the king’s efforts to reconcile them, it was now headed by James Butler*, duke of Ormond [I], who sat by virtue of his earldom of Brecknock, along with Seymour and York, the last having once again decided to throw his weight behind those determined to upset the lord treasurer.¹¹³ When the Commons reassembled after the Easter break and drew up another address demanding that the king enter immediately into an alliance with the Dutch, the king adjourned the session to the middle of July.

In spite of the disappointing conclusion to the first part of the new session, Danby appears to have emerged with his authority relatively intact. In June Willem Bentinck*, later earl of Portland, arrived in England on a mission from William of Orange and at once sought out Danby for his advice. As a result of Danby’s intervention the king gave way to the prince’s request to travel to England later in the year. Later that summer Ormond returned to Ireland as lord lieutenant, a move that probably met with Danby’s tacit approval. In spite of his previously poor relations with the duke, Danby and Ormond appear to have been reconciled by this time and reports that Danby had ‘opposed his election all he could’ and supported the candidacy of Monmouth instead more likely reflected the desires of Danby’s lieutenant, Richard Jones^‡, earl of Ranelagh [I]. It seems unlikely that Danby was overly concerned that Monmouth was denied the post.¹¹⁴

Danby continued to struggle over the summer of 1677 with the king’s continued interest in an alliance with France and the procurement of a French subsidy which would enable him to avoid a meeting of Parliament. Ralph Montagu*, currently ambassador in France, and later duke of Montagu, suggested that he would be able to broker an attractive offer.¹¹⁵ Having failed to secure Danby’s backing in the spring, Montagu had approached the king directly in the early summer. At the beginning of July the king presented Danby with Montagu’s letter setting out his scheme and about a week later Danby replied to Montagu directly approving his suggestions. Danby’s decision to involve himself explicitly in the business was to prove a crucial error for which he would pay dearly over the next few years.¹¹⁶ With a new negotiation afoot with France, Parliament was once again adjourned in mid-July, until early December.

By the beginning of August Danby’s negotiations with Bath over the marriage between Martha Osborne and Lord Lansdown were proving troublesome and his efforts to have his ally, Sir William Temple^‡, installed as secretary of state also proved unavailing.¹¹⁷ By the close of July Danby was said to be planning to ‘solace himself a little in the country’ at Norreys’ estate in Oxfordshire and at his son Latimer’s in Buckinghamshire.¹¹⁸ He was permitted little respite before he had once more to rally himself to head off Buckingham, who had succeeded in persuading the king to release him from the Tower.¹¹⁹ Nell Gwynn also appears to have been determined to revenge herself on the lord treasurer for blocking her ambition of being created a countess. Under pressure from a number of quarters, Danby found himself with little choice but to concede to the king’s policy of pursuing the French subsidy. Even here, he was disappointed and rather than £200,000, which he had initially sought, he was forced to allow the king to settle for the lesser figure of 2 million livres.¹²⁰

In spite of such reversals, rumours continued to circulate of honours that it was expected were to be lavished on Danby including talk towards the end of August 1677 that he was to be advanced in the peerage to the dukedom of Pomfret (Pontefract).¹²¹ The summer also saw the beginnings of a lengthy correspondence between Danby and William of Orange. The two had corresponded sporadically since the spring of 1674 but from this point on there was a steady stream of letters.¹²² The initial impetus for this was Danby’s forceful support for the marriage between the prince and Princess Mary. Prince William’s arrival in England in October brought matters to a head and in spite of York refusing his consent and rumours that the French intended to tempt the prince away from an English match by proposing one of their own, the combined representations of Danby and Sir William Temple convinced the king to overrule his brother.¹²³ The alliance formed part of a broader negotiation then in train with the Dutch for which Danby lamented the absence of Lauderdale from discussions taking place at Newmarket in the middle of October.¹²⁴ By the end of the month details of the marriage articles were close to being finalized and on 4 Nov. the marriage was solemnized with Bishop Compton conducting the service and Danby one of only three English nobles present at the ceremony.¹²⁵

Danby’s triumph in securing the Orange match proved to be the pinnacle of his achievement in the latter months of 1677. The death of Gilbert Sheldon*, archbishop of Canterbury, in November prompted him to renew his efforts to secure the vacant primateship for Compton but he was unsuccessful.¹²⁶ Danby attended the House for the single sitting day of 3 Dec. after which Parliament was adjourned to 15 Jan. 1678. Writing to Ormond, he explained the reason for the further delay as the expectation that the French would make unacceptable demands upon Flanders; the king therefore did not wish to ‘have it out of his power to call the Parliament to assist him in doing what shall be best for us.’¹²⁷ On 21 Dec. he was present at a meeting held in the treasury attended by the king, York, Essex and other officials precipitated by rumblings from some of the government’s backers in the City that they intended to withdraw their support.¹²⁸ The early months of 1678 were thus once more dominated by Danby’s need to secure a financial settlement, as well as the parallel negotiations with France, managed by Montagu, for a subsidy that would enable parliamentary pressure to be avoided. Present again on the single sitting day of 15 Jan, when Parliament was adjourned once more for a further fortnight, Danby then resumed his place on 28 Jan. for the remaining months of the session, which was prorogued finally on 13 May.

During the two-week interval between the adjournment in mid-January and Parliament’s resumption, Danby was engaged in close correspondence with Ralph Montagu at Paris concerning the French subsidy offers and the prospects for peace on the continent.¹²⁹ The resumption of Parliament found Danby once again swamped with business, to the extent that his own son, Latimer, complained that he now struggled to secure a quarter of an hour with his father.¹³⁰ On 4 Feb. the court finally scored a success by having a resolution carried in the Commons for the House to resolve itself into a committee for the supply bill and on 18 Feb. the Commons voted supply of £1,000,000 having rejected an opposition-inspired effort to reduce the figure to £800,000.

With the possibility of a financial settlement at last in prospect Danby seems to have considered himself at liberty to take a robust attitude to Buckingham. A half-hearted effort on the part of the king to reconcile the two men was shrugged off, while Buckingham also seemed unwilling to agree to any kind of accommodation with a man he considered to be ‘ungrateful and ignorant.’¹³¹ Danby successfully argued against the release of Shaftesbury from the Tower on 4 Feb., but failed to prevent it on Shaftesbury’s second attempt, on 25 Feb., although Danby clearly continued to work to neutralize the threat he posed: new charges against Shaftesbury were, it was said, being ‘supported with all sort of vigour by the lord treasurer.’¹³² Efforts continued to ensure that Danby and Ormond put aside their past differences, and Ormond’s son, Thomas Butler*, earl of Ossory [I], insisted that his father was ‘extremely disposed’ to work with Danby.¹³³ For all this, relations with the Commons remained strained and in the middle of March Danby summoned several members to a meeting at which he berated them for failing to prevent opposition motions being posted, ‘which were only offered to perplex and disturb the public peace.’¹³⁴

Towards the end of March 1678, Danby was nominated one of the commissioners for treating with the emperor, the Spanish and the Dutch.¹³⁵ At the same time he instructed Montagu to ‘find the pulse’ of the French king.¹³⁶ On 23 Mar. he reported to the House the king’s responses to the forthcoming trial of Philip Herbert*, 7th earl of Pembroke, and to the House’s address for a general fast.¹³⁷ By the close of the month talk circulated of a new cabal being forged by Buckingham and Nell Gwynn and of their aim to bring in Laurence Hyde*, later earl of Rochester, and to exclude Danby’s followers. Intelligence of these manoeuvrings was conveyed to Danby by Montagu via Danby’s Bertie kinsmen, though Montagu was insistent that knowledge of the plan be kept secret so that it did not prevent Montagu from discovering more.¹³⁸

Danby received the proxy of John Poulett*, 3rd Baron Poulett, on 9 Apr. (which was vacated on 3 May). On 10 Apr. it was reported that he had informed the Dutch ambassador that the prohibition on French goods was a measure intended to woo his people and to assure him that war would soon be declared against France.¹³⁹ At the same time he was active in attempting to secure additional funds for the ministry and it was said that (in spite of former difficulties) he had been successful in persuading the merchants of the city of London to pledge an additional £100,000 on the poll tax.¹⁴⁰ In other regards, Danby continued to struggle to maintain his control. Although Sir John Reresby^‡ had been assured of the support of both the king and the lord treasurer in his disputed return to the Commons, he was unsuccessful when the case came before the elections committee. His failure to be selected was laid squarely at the door of several court members who had neglected to appear, despite Danby’s efforts: he had made a point of driving Reresby to Parliament in his own coach and had stationed his supporters at the lobby door.¹⁴¹ Danby was negotiating to marry another daughter to Sir John Banks^‡, who was believed to be intent on contesting a seat in Kent following an 18-year absence from Parliament, even though he was said to be highly despised in the county.¹⁴²

Buckingham’s re-emergence as a political figure pointed to difficulties ahead. One correspondent commented in a letter to Danby of late April how Buckingham’s return to favour had become a problem, ‘for you only intended his enlargement and not to have him a courtier.’¹⁴³ By the beginning of May Danby’s friends were noting with alarm the proliferation of enemies, many of them coalescing around Buckingham.¹⁴⁴ Towards the end of April 1678, Aubrey de Vere*, 20th earl of Oxford, made a point of observing to Danby that now the treasury was on an even footing perhaps he might be paid his arrears of pension.¹⁴⁵ The government still needed considerable loans, however, and in the middle of May Danby was rebuffed by the City of London when he attempted to persuade the City fathers to lend a further £50,000 in addition to the £100,000 already promised.¹⁴⁶

Danby resumed his seat in the House following the brief prorogation on 23 May 1678, after which he was present on over 90 per cent of all sitting days. On 20 May he was again entrusted with Montagu of Boughton’s proxy. On 20 June he was one of seven peers to subscribe the protest at the resolution to petition the king for a bill disabling Robert Villiers from claiming the viscountcy of Purbeck. On 25 June he was nominated one of the managers of a conference with the Commons concerning the supply bill and on 11 July a manager of the conference for the bill for burying in woollen. Towards the close of the session, Danby was said to have been successful in securing a match between his last remaining unmarried daughter and the king’s natural son, Charles Fitzcharles*, earl of Plymouth.¹⁴⁷ On 16 July it was reported that Plymouth was to be promoted to a dukedom to mark the alliance while Dunblane was to be appointed master of the horse to the queen.¹⁴⁸ At the end of the month it was once more put about that Temple was expected to be made secretary of state rather than Laurence Hyde, because he (Temple) ‘is very great with my lord treasurer.’¹⁴⁹ The beginning of the following month witnessed further rumours that Danby either would be or already had been promoted to a dukedom as well.¹⁵⁰

Danby’s undoubted successes in the first half of 1678 were thrown into question by the revelations about the Popish Plot. On 28 Sept. the king informed the council for the first time about Israel Tonge’s evidence, which had previously been confined to a small circle including Danby.¹⁵¹ By the time Parliament resumed on 21 Oct. the conspiracy had taken on a life of its own and pressure began to mount on the lord treasurer over allegations that he had suppressed information or had failed to act on evidence made available to him and the king earlier in the summer. According to one correspondent, ‘had this plot been sought into when first it was brought to a great man’s court there would have been clearer evidence than can now be had.’¹⁵² Present on 85 per cent of all sitting days in the session, Danby was clearly aware that his pronounced scepticism about the information presented by Tonge and Oates could prove damaging given the willingness of so many to believe in the veracity of their claims. In response, he made a concerted effort to ensure that his following in the Lords held firm. In advance of the session he was entrusted with the proxy of James Brydges*, 8th Baron Chandos, while that of Norreys was registered with Bath. On 2 Nov. Danby also secured the proxy of the absent Edward Conway*, Viscount (later earl of) Conway. A central figure in the early investigation into the conspiracy, on 29 Oct. Danby was one of five lords appointed by the House to examine Coleman at Newgate while on 4 Nov. the Lords recommended that Danby ensure that Oates was awarded a ‘comfortable allowance’.¹⁵³ Meanwhile he was also involved as one of the managers of two conferences held on 1 and 2 Nov. concerning the preservation of the king’s person and on 11 Nov. of a further conference considering the commissions being issued to justices of the peace for administering the oaths to Catholics.

Such activities failed to shield Danby from the rising chorus of criticism. As early as the beginning of November 1678, it was suggested that as soon as the question of forcing York to withdraw was settled Halifax and Shaftesbury intended to turn their attention on the lord treasurer.¹⁵⁴ On 5 Nov., Shaftesbury moved for York to be removed from the king’s presence but was opposed by both Danby and Lauderdale.¹⁵⁵ Danby’s stance on the issue no doubt added to mutterings about his handling of the crisis. Although it was suggested that he had been successful on one occasion in the House when he had been able to ‘divert the storm’ let loose by Shaftesbury and Buckingham in favour of Bedloe’s testimony, it was also reported how (despite the views of his countess who insisted that ‘none but her husband stands up for the Protestant religion’) ‘many suspect his opinion.’¹⁵⁶ On 15 Nov. Danby voted against disabling Catholics from sitting in Parliament in a division held in committee of the whole but his position was rendered increasingly difficult by the absence of significant allies.¹⁵⁷ Among these was William Lloyd*, bishop of Llandaff, who excused his failure to attend on the grounds of ‘a dangerous fit of sickness’.¹⁵⁸ By the middle of the following month, Danby was foursquare in the line of fire amid reports that he was to be charged with misprision of treason for his failure to act more swiftly on the information presented to him during the summer.¹⁵⁹ Ralph Montagu had been conspiring with the French and key opposition figures to bring forward, as material for an impeachment, the evidence of Danby’s authorization of discussions with France the previous year for a subsidy. Opinions varied as to whether charges were being framed deliberately in such a way that Danby could easily answer them or whether his enemies were seriously intent on seeing the lord treasurer destroyed. The plans were brought to a head by the government’s attempt to seize Montagu’s papers on 19 December. That evening, after Montagu explained the papers to the Commons, the Commons began the process of drawing up articles of impeachment.¹⁶⁰ Two days later, the Commons committee assigned to compose the articles reported their findings, which amounted to three main charges. Danby, it was alleged on the basis of Montagu’s information, had ‘encroached to himself regal power’ in the conduct of foreign relations; he had attempted to bring in arbitrary government, and he had negotiated for a French subsidy.¹⁶¹ On 23 Dec. the articles were presented to the Lords.¹⁶² His speech in response was typically robust. Opening with the disarming recognition that it was ‘not the time for me to enter regularly upon my defence’ and that there would be time enough for him to vindicate himself ‘to the full satisfaction of your lordships, and all the world’, he proceeded with a detailed critique of the charges, none of which he argued could be deemed treasonable. Turning his guns on Montagu he complained that, ‘I do not wonder this gentleman will do me no right, when he does not think fit to do it to his majesty’ and then lambasted him for being the true instigator of the policy of seeking French subsidies.¹⁶³ Danby concluded by insisting were ‘the dearest child I have… guilty of [treason], I would willingly be his executioner.’¹⁶⁴ Having thus answered his accusers, Danby then enquired whether he should leave the chamber. His friends persuaded him to keep his seat and, as Anglesey noted, ‘a new thing was done in the lord treasurer’s not being ordered to withdraw but sitting in his own case’.¹⁶⁵ Allies of Shaftesbury noted it with unease.¹⁶⁶ It was widely discoursed that the king might intervene once more and either prorogue or dissolve Parliament to halt the impeachment proceedings.¹⁶⁷ On 27 Dec. a motion to commit Danby was defeated on a division.¹⁶⁸

The king’s decision to prorogue Parliament on 30 Dec. 1678 put a halt to the proceedings against Danby, though one newsletter reported how ‘my lord treasurer laments more than any man the prorogation, which he everywhere declares, that he did with his utmost oppose.’¹⁶⁹ Though he was also willing to see the calling of an Irish Parliament, it was opposed by Ormond who insisted that this should be delayed until the king was on better terms with his English one.¹⁷⁰ To show that he was not complacent about the threat to the king, Danby was reported to have pressed for the execution of three of the condemned Jesuits in mid January and on 15 Jan. 1679 the French envoy, Barillon, noted that Danby was attempting to forge a new alliance with some of the principal ‘Presbyterians’ in advance of a new session of Parliament.¹⁷¹ At the same time it was reported that great efforts were being made by Shaftesbury and his followers to detach York from Danby’s interest.¹⁷²

The dissolution presented Danby with a new set of problems as he turned his attention to managing his interest in the forthcoming elections. On 24 Jan. he communicated to Newcastle the king’s desire that he ‘promote as much as you can the choice of good Members’ in those areas where Newcastle held sway as well as recommending to the duke his own son, Dunblane, for one of the seats at Retford.¹⁷³ At Buckingham it was thought that he would press for the re-election of Sir William Smith^‡ (though Smith declined to stand again) and on 4 Feb. he wrote to the sheriff of Yorkshire, urging him to be kind to Sir John Reresby (who was returned accordingly for Aldborough).¹⁷⁴ By the middle of the month he was also engaged in negotiations with Christopher Monck*, 2nd duke of Albemarle, over the return of Members for Essex.¹⁷⁵ At the same time Norreys was reported to be active in his efforts to secure the return of Members in Danby’s interest in Oxfordshire, though in the city of Oxford itself Norreys met with a hostile reception and was ‘hooted’ out of town to the cry of ‘no treasurer, no papist’.¹⁷⁶

In the days leading up to the meeting of the new Parliament speculation was rife that Danby would resign his office prior to the opening in the hopes that such a gesture might satisfy those eager to see him humbled.¹⁷⁷ Conway entered into direct negotiations with Shaftesbury and Monmouth on Danby’s account but although he found Shaftesbury willing enough to stop short of demanding Danby’s execution he was unable to convince either man to allow Danby a pardon.¹⁷⁸ With matters thus balanced, Danby took his seat in the House for the abortive session of early March 1679, attending on four days between 6 and 12 March. Prior to this he had been one of those to witness the king’s declaration that he had not been married to anyone other than Queen Catharine in an attempt to head off the growing clamour for Monmouth to be declared legitimate.¹⁷⁹ The following day (13 Mar.), he recorded being summoned by the king and requested to lay down his staff, in return for which the king believed Parliament would forbear his prosecution. He was also offered a pension of £5,000 as compensation for his loss of office.¹⁸⁰ Two days later it was reported that a yacht had been made ready to carry someone (the presumption was Danby) overseas.¹⁸¹

Unwilling to take up the offer of voluntary exile, Danby took his place in the new session on 15 Mar. but he was thereafter absent for the remainder of the session. The following day a warrant promoting him to the marquessate of Danby was drawn up and signed by Robert Spencer*, 2nd earl of Sunderland, an indication that Danby was expected to accept the reward as compensation for his loss of position.¹⁸² In the event the warrant did not pass the great seal and Danby was forced to wait for a decade before he was able to secure the coveted promotion. Danby’s absence from the House gave rise to rumours early on that he had resigned or fled the country, though Sir Ralph Verney^‡ noted that at nine o’clock at night on 17 Mar. he still had his staff in his hand.¹⁸³ Soon after this it was reiterated that he would shortly resign the treasurership and be compensated with a step in the peerage.¹⁸⁴ As evidence of the wisdom of agreeing to such terms it was noted that the Lords had ‘been very brisk upon him already’ and it was also said that Buckingham and Latimer had quarrelled over the matter.¹⁸⁵ The Commons, however, made clear their unwillingness to permit their impeachment to rest and on 21 Mar. Cavendish was sent up to the Lords to remind them to continue their consideration of the articles against Danby.¹⁸⁶ Danby was advised by the king on 23 Mar. to absent himself for a while, following which Danby sought sanctuary at his brother’s house. Although he had previously been given until 27 Mar. to put in his answer, on 24 Mar. the Lords resolved on his committal, following which the king once more advised him to quit the country. This time Danby appeared willing to acquiesce but he was then hindered by the king’s refusal to furnish him with a yacht in which to make his escape.¹⁸⁷

By the close of March 1679 evidence of the fissure between the Lords and Commons over the impeachment was increasingly apparent. One correspondent remarked that the Lords would probably be content with having Danby removed from the king’s councils and made incapable of holding office but that the Commons would not settle for such terms.¹⁸⁸ According to Bath the king now favoured an act for banishing his former lord treasurer. On 27 Mar. the Lords sent a bill to the Commons for Danby’s banishment but this was rejected and the Commons continued with their own plans for an act of attainder.¹⁸⁹ Danby meanwhile ‘kept private’ from 24 Mar. to 13 Apr. during which time his staff of office was delivered into the king’s hands by his son, Latimer.¹⁹⁰ On 28 Mar. he addressed a letter to his former colleague, the lord chancellor, appealing to a sense of noble camaraderie and asking that he would ‘come up and give me your assistance’ against the bill of attainder.¹⁹¹ Between 1 and 2 Apr. 1679 the Lords amended the bill omitting the term ‘attainder’, effectively wrecking it.¹⁹² Danby wrote to Lauderdale on 2 Apr. to thank him for his ‘kindness’ during the debates the previous day and acknowledged the duke’s ‘willingness to have brought the bill to a question.’ The delay in doing so was attributed to the king’s intervention, which Danby professed himself unable to understand as ‘I can in no way imagine how it can be hoped to be better for me this day.’ Even so, he retained his faith in the king’s intention not only to do him justice ‘but all kindness imaginable.’¹⁹³ The Lords pressed ahead with further amendments on 3 April.¹⁹⁴ The following day, the Lords sought a conference but on 8 Apr. the Commons, their patience wearing thin, voted an address to the king to issue a proclamation for Danby’s arrest.¹⁹⁵ At the same time he was informed by Sunderland that his hiding place at George Montagu’s house was by now an open secret.

Left with little choice but to respond to the proceedings against him, on 12 Apr. Danby finally petitioned the House to be granted more time to put in his answer. Perhaps mindful of the example of the former lord chancellor, Edward Hyde*, earl of Clarendon, the same day he informed his son, Latimer, that he ‘would much rather my friends should adhere to the bill of attainder… than agree to this bill of confiscation and banishment.’¹⁹⁶ Two days later he was granted leave to appear before the House following the Lords’ agreement to pass the bill of attainder against him, in spite of the efforts of a minority of the House to retain their original bill for his banishment.¹⁹⁷ On 15 Apr. he gave himself up to black rod and on 16 Apr. appeared before the House.¹⁹⁸ Professing himself to be ‘more sorry and troubled to be pressed to abscond than for anything that can happen to me afterwards being before so wise prudent and just a court of judges,’ he then asked for copies of the charges against him before being committed to the Tower.¹⁹⁹

In the Tower, 1679-84

Over the ensuing days Danby struggled to rally support. A former ally, Benjamin Mildmay*, 17th Baron Fitzwalter, promised to attend should his health permit but insisted that he would not commit himself without hearing the evidence.²⁰⁰ Fitzwalter’s excuse of poor health was real enough (he died later that year) but such tepid undertakings reflected the fact that ‘the humour continues very violent against his lordship.’²⁰¹ Unsurprisingly omitted from the Privy Council towards the end of April, on 25 Apr. he was again brought to the bar of the House where he delivered his plea and his answer to the articles against him.²⁰² On 30 Apr. he was before the Lords again when he was informed that the Commons had taken exception to his plea of the king’s pardon and he was given until the following Saturday to reconsider his pleading.²⁰³ While Danby attempted to comfort himself with the opinion of his counsel that his pardon was good in law, Conway remarked in a letter to one of his correspondents, ‘what will become of [Danby] I know not… this I shall only assure you, that [the king] is no more concerned for him than for a puppy dog’.²⁰⁴ On 3 May Danby wrote to the king appealing to him for his assistance and pointing out that several of those most ardent to see him punished seemed to be demanding his head as some sort of solution to the nation’s ills.²⁰⁵

The first half of May 1679 was dominated by disagreements between Lords and Commons over which of the Lords currently in the Tower ought first to be proceeded against.²⁰⁶ Charles Bertie^‡ reported the widespread expectation that the king would intervene by pressing forward the bill for banishing Danby as a way out of the impasse.²⁰⁷ Danby’s own family was divided over his fate: his son-in-law, Plymouth, was believed to be among those in opposition having declared his unwillingness to go against his conscience.²⁰⁸ Others stood firm. Bath informed Danby of the progress he had made in securing votes on Danby’s side. Conway, he believed, was his friend and the lord chancellor (Nottingham) ‘very zealous’.²⁰⁹ Towards the end of the month it was still believed that Danby retained significant interest at court and it was noted that both Bath and Sir Charles Wheler^‡ were often with the king pressing Danby’s case.²¹⁰ In spite of considerable pressure from the Commons and from Danby’s enemies in the Lords, the House eventually concluded in favour of proceeding with the five Catholic peers first. The decision precipitated complaints from the Commons that Danby would thereby escape, while Charles Bertie informed his kinsman how ‘all the town is full of the expedient which his majesty is said to offer in your lordship’s case viz. a bill of banishment.’ Danby himself remained confident that he would ‘meet with all the justice which any honest man ought to expect, if it be not [prosecuted] by the torrent of the multitude.’²¹¹ Despite such optimism the conditions under which Danby was confined became more severe and by the end of May he was kept a close prisoner, though he was able to forestall an attempt to insist on him being locked in his chamber at night.²¹²

The close of the session on 27 May 1679 and subsequent dissolution on 12 July put paid to any prospect of a speedy resolution to Danby’s predicament, though observers were divided on whether the cause of the prorogation had been on account of the bishops, Danby or ‘to save the five lords.’ Meanwhile the marriage of Danby’s daughter, Sophia, to Donatus O’Brien, styled Lord O’Brien [I], proceeded in his absence with the bride given away by Sir Joseph Williamson. Incarceration in no way tempered Danby’s demeanour. Both he and his gaolers petitioned the king in protest at the other’s behaviour, with the lieutenant of the Tower, Cheeke, complaining that Danby insisted on keeping ‘such ill hours that he could not secure him safe.’²¹³ More importantly, the preparations for new elections galvanized both sides to ensure the return of members in their interest, while Danby continued to cultivate members of the House who he hoped would support his cause. From his confinement Danby recommended to the king the promotion of his kinsman, Norreys, to an earldom, noting that ‘his estate is very great and his family on all sides eminent, both for birth and their services to the crown.’²¹⁴ At the end of August he sought Sunderland’s interest on his behalf, insisting that he had ‘neither been unsuccessful in my services to you, nor ever more industrious in my life than to do your lordship those services’.²¹⁵

For the next three-and-a-half years Danby proceeded to maintain a steady correspondence with family members, allies and potential supporters in the hopes of securing sufficient backing to secure his release. It was in this vein that he wrote to Charles Dormer*, earl of Carnarvon, on 29 Aug. 1679, though he was at pains to emphasize that the king’s recent illness had ‘more perplexed me than all the considerations about myself.’²¹⁶ The following month, with the king out of danger, he petitioned once more for his release and by the middle of the month hopes were once again raised that he might ‘not be long now a prisoner.’²¹⁷ Such aspirations appeared to be borne out at the close of the September when the king issued a warrant to Cheeke for Danby’s release.²¹⁸ The king meanwhile advised Danby to accept exile and assured him that nothing would be done to revoke his pardon during his absence.²¹⁹

Once again Danby failed to take the offer of exile. His incarceration had had a dramatic effect on his already poor health and throughout the autumn reports circulated that he was sick and even at the point of death.²²⁰ It was suggested that his harsh treatment had won him friends and that it was thought increasingly that he was ‘unjustly retained’ in the Tower. Less positively for Danby’s cause, the close of November also witnessed the trial of one of his servants (Knox) along with one Lane who were accused of spreading reports of Oates’s homosexual tendencies in an effort to discredit his evidence. Both men were found guilty, which reflected badly on Danby.²²¹ In December Danby’s petition to be allowed to travel to Wimbledon and stay there under house arrest to recover his health was refused on the advice of the judges.²²²

By the beginning of 1680 Danby and his supporters were becoming increasingly frustrated. The king was said to blame Buckingham for Danby’s ‘hard usage’ and in February Latimer informed his father that the king had also declared Ralph Montagu to be ‘as great a knave as you an honest man’ but still nothing was done to further Danby’s release.²²³ From his cell, Danby continued his efforts to rally support but he sympathized with Carnarvon’s decision not to trouble to return to London ‘because unless you will be pleased with the new plots, I hear of little other divertissement to be had in town.’²²⁴ By April, Danby was sick again and reduced to subsisting on a milk diet.²²⁵

Besides battling poor health, during the course of the year Danby (and his kinsmen) made concerted efforts to woo new allies. Laurence Hyde was now thought to be amenable to allowing Danby justice (but not favour) and by the summer Latimer believed that York too might have come around to a less negative attitude to the former lord treasurer.²²⁶ Talk of Parliament reassembling soon also gave rise to renewed expectations that the king might intervene in Danby’s favour and on 24 Aug. Conway again voiced the increasingly prevalent view that some of Danby’s former opponents would now support moves for his release.²²⁷ Such views gave Danby renewed hope and at the end of the month he wrote to Robert Shirley*, Baron (later Earl) Ferrers, expressing his hope that his:

enemies will not be so fierce as they have been, or at least all peers (for their own sakes) cannot but dread the consequence, if my case shall remain a precedent for others hereafter, where the common justice and benefit of the laws is denied to a lord, which every porter and footman may claim.²²⁸

The days leading up to the assembling of Parliament on 21 Oct. 1680 found Danby active in mustering his forces. Lindsey assured him that ‘there is to me no other motive of appearance once more upon the stage but your lordship’s concern’.²²⁹ Ferrers undertook to do Danby ‘all the justice that is in my power.’²³⁰ By the beginning of October Danby’s cause appeared to have acquired fresh impetus and Conway was able to assure him that he had secured from the previously uncommitted Fulke Greville*, 5th Baron Brooke, a profession of his ‘steadiness to serve your lordship’.²³¹ On the first day of the session Danby submitted a petition to the House pointing out that he had by then been in prison for 18 months, that he was in poor health, a Protestant and seeking his release as the charges levelled against him fell short of treason.²³² His petition was overshadowed by the consideration of the exclusion bill and by the middle of November Conway was complaining to Danby that he felt he had been misled by Shaftesbury and Monmouth.²³³ It had been thought that Shaftesbury might be ready to support moves for Danby to be offered greater liberty but this proved not to be the case. The support of a number of Danby’s allies for York against the exclusion bill was also thought to have dealt his case a severe blow.²³⁴

Danby’s ill fortune during the session did not prevent him from continuing to press for preferment for his family. Between January and February 1681 he wrote to the king concerning his purchase of the reversion to the mastership of the rolls.²³⁵ News of the replacement of Sunderland by Conway as secretary of state gave Danby improved hopes for release conceiving that it would be good to have ‘a friend at so near a station to his majesty.’²³⁶ Conway accepted the post even though he insisted that ‘a less station under your lordship’s protection would have pleased me better’.²³⁷ The prospect of a new Parliament offered Danby another opportunity to work for his enlargement: towards the end of February he wrote to the king for his support in securing the return of members sympathetic to his cause. Danby was concerned that the decision to hold Parliament in Oxford might deter some of his allies and was thus particularly eager to ensure that the newly created Richard Lumley*, Baron Lumley (later earl of Scarbrough), would be sent his writ of summons to enable him to take his seat.²³⁸

In advance of the meeting of Parliament at Oxford, Danby compiled a series of forecasts detailing how he believed the various members would behave in any divisions taken.²³⁹ He also drew up intricate instructions for his son, Latimer, to follow to ensure that his petition to be bailed was received at the most opportune moment as well as pointing out which other members of the House Latimer would be able best to rely on.²⁴⁰ Danby was at pains to impress upon Latimer the importance of striking at just the right moment, emphasizing that:

The first care must be to be certain what lords are come to Oxford before my business be moved and in order to that you are to count the lords in the House daily by the list aforesaid, and particularly to see the clerk’s book every day at the rising of the House to see what lords have been sworn that day and especially the first and second days and from time to time to give an account thereof to my friends.²⁴¹

In the event of the Lords summoning him to appear at the bar, he assembled a series of heads on which he might speak should the opportunity arise.²⁴² On 18 Mar. 1681 he wrote to John Egerton*, 2nd earl of Bridgwater, conceding that he was unsure how he stood with him but hoping that he would do him justice and support his application to be bailed.²⁴³ The same day he appealed to Norreys to stand as ‘one of my principal pillars’ and to Lindsey to be the one to present his petition to the House.²⁴⁴ On that day he dispatched his sons Latimer and Dunblane to Oxford bearing his petition.²⁴⁵ Over the ensuing days Danby received detailed reports on the progress of his sons’ efforts to woo supporters to his cause and arrange for the submission of his petition.²⁴⁶ On 24 Mar. the petition was presented by Norreys with at least half a dozen peers speaking in its favour. Further consideration of the matter, however, was reserved to the following week.²⁴⁷ Latimer complained that those claiming to be in Danby’s interest would not do what they were asked or what they had promised to undertake.²⁴⁸ Newcastle, though, reassured Danby how ‘many friends’ he had and how well Clarendon, for one, had spoken on his behalf.²⁴⁹ Bath also sought to explain that ‘the delay till Monday next without putting the question could not be avoided without apparent prejudice and division of your friends.’²⁵⁰ Despite this, Danby expressed his extreme annoyance that consideration of his petition had (once again) been postponed and he blamed Halifax for the decision to delay consideration on the grounds that the business was ‘ill timed’.²⁵¹ With the Lords unwilling to rush consideration of Danby’s petition, the Commons took the opportunity to present their own, requesting that the Lords would condemn Danby to death, but consideration of this too was put off till the following the week.²⁵² On 28 Mar. 1681 Parliament was dissolved.

In the days immediately following it was reported that the king now intended to have Danby released on his own authority. Danby was justifiably suspicious of such rumours but in the middle of April 1681 he petitioned the king directly again for his release from the Tower.²⁵³ Once more, the king was advised by his council that he was unable in law to authorize his release. At the end of April Danby moved for a writ of habeas corpus in king’s bench but, having been heard in court on 2 May, he was again remanded to the Tower while the judges deliberated on the matter.²⁵⁴ At the same time, Ailesbury moved the Privy Council to permit Danby to accompany him to Spa for his health but he was also unsuccessful.²⁵⁵ On 7 May Danby composed one of his frequent memoranda noting the need to write to the attorney general to discover when proceedings were likely to commence against Fitzharris and also ‘to ask his opinion privately as to the time of my appearance.’²⁵⁶ The following week, on 14 May, Danby was again brought before the court but although he was said to have spoken ‘very well’ for half an hour, he was once more informed that as his case was being considered by a higher jurisdiction than theirs they were unable to grant his application for bail.²⁵⁷ Two days later Danby noted in his diary a further complication arising out of the testimony of Fitzharris, who claimed that Danby had been privy to the murder of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey.²⁵⁸

With matters continuing to go against him, on 18 May 1681 Danby conveyed yet another letter to the king via his son Latimer requesting a speedy trial and a final determination of his predicament.²⁵⁹ It was reported that the king rejected the petition on the grounds that he wished to prioritize Fitzharris’s trial.²⁶⁰ Some thought the king was concerned that a trial would be prejudicial to his own interests. Unable to secure permission to leave the Tower on licence to improve his health, Danby resorted instead to changing his accommodation in the bastion.²⁶¹ By the autumn he also appears to have entered into negotiations with Conway to have his lodgings in the Cockpit let or sold, in spite of Lady Danby’s resistance to the notion.²⁶² News of a projected marriage between Latimer and one of the daughters of Sir Thomas Chamberlaine met with a spirited objection from Norreys who pointed out the inadvisability of arranging a match with someone who was a close kinsman of Shaftesbury. By November, when Sir John Reresby visited Danby in the Tower, Reresby commented that he was ‘not in charity with the then ministers’, who he perceived were ‘inclining too favourably’ to Shaftesbury.²⁶³

1682 began much as the previous year had done with Danby continuing in his efforts to secure his release.²⁶⁴ Towards the end of February he wrote to the king acknowledging messages he had received via Bath in which he had been assured of the king’s ‘resolutions of giving me my liberty.’²⁶⁵ In spite of such good wishes, in March when he sought permission to be allowed out on licence to visit his countess who had been injured in a coach crash his request was denied: ‘a strange severity’.²⁶⁶ Not for the first time the blame was levelled at Halifax for blocking Danby’s petition.²⁶⁷ In the midst of this, Danby continued to manoeuvre to secure the reversion of the mastership of the rolls for his nominee but at the beginning of April he was disconcerted to find one of his erstwhile allies, Thomas Colepeper*, 2nd Baron Colepeper, ranged against him.²⁶⁸ The disappointment at the apparent loss of one ally was then compounded by news of the deaths of another, Frescheville, and of Danby’s son-in-law, O’Brien, in the wreck of the Gloucester.²⁶⁹

Danby was again brought before king’s bench on another writ of habeas corpus at the end of May 1682 but following a two-hour exposition of his case he was once more remanded to the Tower.²⁷⁰ The following month he again moved to be released by writ of habeas corpus but although the judges were now said to be divided on the issue, bail was denied him.²⁷¹ Newcastle professed himself ‘exceedingly troubled to see how ill used your lordship is by the judges, for sure never man spoke so well’ as Danby had in his defence.²⁷² In July, from his confinement, his attention was distracted from his own difficulties by the revelations surrounding Dunblane’s marriage to Bridget Emerton (née Hyde).²⁷³ No doubt concerned at the implications for his own continued imprisonment if the affair resulted in further loss of face, Danby wrote to Viscount Hyde (as Laurence Hyde had since become) to protest that Dunblane had acted without his knowledge or consent and to insist that he could ‘with great truth declare… that my other misfortunes have not given us more trouble than this act of my son’s has done.’²⁷⁴ To make the point of his annoyance with Dunblane clear to all, at the beginning of August he ordered his son out of town and from that month until the beginning of the autumn he was hard at work attempting to salvage the situation by rallying members of the court of delegates and other officials to use their interest on Dunblane’s behalf.²⁷⁵ By the close of October it was reported that the court was divided on the issue with Halifax unsurprisingly among those favouring declaring Bridget Hyde’s previous marriage to Emerton to have been valid.²⁷⁶ In November Danby sought to mobilize his supporters, commanding his son, Latimer, to find out the reason for William Lloyd*, bishop of St Asaph, being ‘hindered coming up’ and to seek the king’s intervention to ‘remove any obstruction.’²⁷⁷ The following month he attempted a direct appeal to the Hyde family, writing to Clarendon to insist that Dunblane had acted unilaterally and indeed that he had done so ‘against my express command.’²⁷⁸

Alongside of his efforts to secure a satisfactory resolution to the problems created by his son, Danby also persisted in attempting to find a tenant or buyer for his apartments in the Cockpit as well as with his campaign to secure his release.²⁷⁹ In spite of an expectation that the new lord chief justice would at last agree to bail Danby ‘it being his opinion the last should have done it’, Danby’s efforts followed a familiar pattern in the early months of 1683 with the judges once again concluding their lack of competence to meddle in a case in consideration by the Lords.²⁸⁰ Signs in May that the judges might finally be softening in their attitude offered Danby no immediate prospect of release, though Sir Ralph Verney speculated that ‘if Lord Danby may be bailed, it is a good precedent for the discharge of the Popish lords too.’²⁸¹ By the end of May Danby’s health had once again taken a turn for the worse and in June it was speculated that he was either seriously sick or dead.²⁸² A petition made by his countess for Danby to be permitted to take the air under guard was refused.²⁸³ Danby seems to have rallied shortly after and by July he was again active in attempting to employ his interest, this time over the appointment to the archbishopric of York. Supporting the candidacy of Thomas Cartwright*, later bishop of Chester, Danby stressed Cartwright’s acceptability ‘to the loyal party in that county, and that he would be highly serviceable to the king’s interest there.’²⁸⁴

Hopes for Danby’s release were raised once again at the opening of 1684 on the grounds that even if the lord chief justice failed to look sympathetically upon him, a new Parliament would settle the matter finally.²⁸⁵ Danby himself appears to have been willing to trust to nothing so uncertain. On 11 Jan. he wrote to Abingdon (as Norreys had since become) asking for his help in cultivating Judge Holloway, having found by experience ‘that the judges are much more informed by personal friendships and interests than by the law.’²⁸⁶ More promising were reports that Halifax was by now eager to effect a reconciliation with Danby and that he had recommended to the king the release of all the imprisoned lords in the Tower prompting a belief that they would all ‘be out in very few days.’²⁸⁷ Danby was brought before king’s bench again on 28 Jan. but he was once more remanded for a further week before judgment could be delivered on his case.²⁸⁸ At the beginning of February a new petition craving his release after 3½ years in prison was presented, subscribed by 19 peers, and on 4 Feb. he appeared once more before king’s bench only to find the judges still divided in their opinions. The two older judges were reported to have inclined to Danby but the two younger ones (including Holloway) again desired more time to deliberate.²⁸⁹ Danby was able to score a small success by securing an order for his reappearance at the close of term rather than at the opening of the next as the judges had initially desired and on 12 Feb. his petition to be bailed was at last granted with sureties of £5,000 a piece being provided by Charles Seymour*, 6th duke of Somerset, Albemarle, Aubrey de Vere*, 20th earl of Oxford, and Philip Stanhope*, earl of Chesterfield.²⁹⁰ The reason for the decision undoubtedly lay in the king’s intervention on Danby’s behalf and in the assistance given by the duchess of Portsmouth.²⁹¹ On the same evening that he was released Danby waited on the king, where he was granted a 15 minute audience.²⁹²

Danby’s incarceration had left him weak and suffering from severe ailments, which it was believed were sufficiently serious to threaten his life or leave him a permanent invalid.²⁹³ His experiences and ill health in no way dampened his desire to see his services recognized and towards the end of February it was reported that he was attempting to revive the process for his promotion to the marquessate of Carmarthen.²⁹⁴ In this he was disappointed but his release and much talked-about reconciliation with Halifax prompted speculation about the impact their alliance would have on politics in Yorkshire. John Dolben*, archbishop of York, cautioned William Sancroft*, archibishop of Canterbury, to use his interest with Danby to keep him from ‘falling into any design to the prejudice of the Church.’²⁹⁵ The association may well have inspired Danby to consider assembling a third political grouping to stand between the Whigs and Tories, but if there was any such design, it appears rapidly to have unravelled.²⁹⁶

Danby’s experience over the past three years had unsurprisingly left him cynical about the king and York’s willingness to support him. Towards the end of the summer Danby retreated north to Kiveton, where he was ‘visited by all the country to a very great distance’, among them Sidney Wortley Montagu^‡, who expressed his sorrow for the carryings-on of his relations towards Danby and ‘hoped I would not have the worse opinion of him for their ill behaviour.’²⁹⁷ Soon after his arrival in Yorkshire, Danby fell ill of ‘a quartan ague’ as well as being plagued by his perennial malady of a ‘stoppage in his throat.’ By the close of the year Danby had recovered sufficiently to return to Wimbledon where news of the expected demise of the master of the rolls prompted him to remind Latimer that the reversion of the office was due to him.

Reign of James II, 1685-1689

The succession of James II found Danby’s prospects uncertain. He was relieved to find the new lord chancellor, George Jeffreys*, Baron Jeffreys, outwardly civil to him when they dined together, and he detected no indication that he was likely to be carted off to his ‘old quarters’ in the Tower, but Danby’s relations with the new king when duke of York had never been easy and he soon found himself entirely at odds with the drift of James’s policies.²⁹⁸ By the middle of the reign Danby was active among the opposition. 

Although there were early indications that he and his family could expect little in the way of favour under the new regime (Danby’s heir, Latimer, was not continued in post as a gentleman of the bedchamber) in March 1685 at the time of the elections for the new Parliament it was believed that Danby’s fortunes were once more on the turn and that he was again great at court. The mayor of Buckingham was reported to be in favour of returning Latimer rather than Verney in order to court Danby’s good will, although there was also an attempt by Jeffreys to press his own rival interest to those of Danby and Rochester (as Laurence Hyde had since become). In the end Temple and Verney were returned leaving Latimer trailing in third place.²⁹⁹

Danby was absent from the opening day of the new Parliament but a petition was read on his behalf by Chesterfield pleading that he either be granted a trial or have his bail renewed. Calls were also made by his friends for him to have reparation for his sufferings over the past six years.³⁰⁰ On 22 May the impeachments presented in the previous reign were overturned (a decision that prompted a protest signed by four peers).³⁰¹ The following day Danby at last resumed his place in the House, after which he was present on 95 per cent of all sitting days in the session. He continued to sit during the progress of Monmouth’s rebellion, details of the campaign being relayed to him by Dunblane, who was present at Sedgemoor.³⁰²

Danby resumed his seat after the adjournment on 9 Nov. 1685. Plans for the House to take into consideration the king’s speech on 23 Nov. were averted by the king ordering Parliament to be prorogued to the following February, but it seems plain that Danby intended to join a number of peers speaking critically about the king’s declaration relating to the expansion of the army and the employment of Catholics within it. In a draft dated 23 Nov. he insisted that ‘no man living can speak with more reluctancy than myself to anything which may but seem to be contradictory to his majesty’s pleasure’ before continuing to lambast elements of the king’s speech in which he detected ‘stalking horses to ill designs’. He then planned to conclude his address by seeking the judges’ opinion of the extent of the king’s dispensing powers.³⁰³

With Parliament prorogued and no official platform from which he could question the direction of royal policy, Danby appears to have retreated for the time being. His broken health seems to have been his principal concern and in February 1686 he was said to be considering travelling to Spa in search of a cure for his throat condition.³⁰⁴ As the king’s efforts to secure greater freedoms for Catholics intensified, Danby was among those noted consistently to be in opposition to the proposed policies. At some point in either 1687 or 1688 Danby compiled his own list noting those he considered likely to oppose the king, perhaps drawn up in response to the meetings held that summer between William of Orange’s agent, Dijkvelt, and various members of the English opposition, including Danby. When Dijkvelt returned to Holland he bore with him a list of his own, apparently drawn up by Danby’s kinsman, Robert Bertie*, styled Baron Willoughby d’Eresby (later duke of Ancaster), very likely on Danby’s instructions. Danby’s list (slightly less extensive than the one carried overseas by Dijkvelt) was dominated by members of both Houses, 55 being members of the Lords, including Danby himself and six bishops, and 86 comprising members of the Commons with a few additions. Forty of the names were annotated with ticks or crosses, Danby’s own name being marked with a tick which was crossed through. In January 1688 he was again noted among those thought likely to oppose repeal of the Test act. He was one of those in receipt of threatening letters at the close of the month.³⁰⁵ Danby again attracted attention when a case between him and a Catholic named Cox over the non-payment of secret service money was brought before the council.³⁰⁶ In spite of his prominent opposition to the king’s policies, in May 1688 it was put about that Danby had been with the king privately and that he might be appointed ambassador to the United Provinces, though Roger Morrice was quick to cast doubt upon such rumours.³⁰⁷ The following month Danby was proposed as one of the sureties for Archbishop Sancroft at the time of the Seven Bishops’ trial.³⁰⁸ He was also one of a vast ‘concourse of people of all ranks’ to attend the trial in June.³⁰⁹

Ever since his role in the negotiations for the match between William of Orange and Princess Mary, Danby had remained a correspondent of the prince. The extent to which James’s government was suspicious of the correspondence was highlighted in two separate episodes. In September 1687 (at the time of the conferences with Dijkvelt) Danby wrote to the prince to explain that he had been unable to secure permission to travel to Holland ‘with the same indifferency that it is permitted to others’ and had therefore resolved not to risk the journey.³¹⁰ Unable to attend the prince in person, towards the end of March 1688 he sought a place for his daughter, the countess of Plymouth, in Princess Mary’s household. Once again, stealth was required. His letter to Prince William seeking the position was conveyed by Dunblane, though Danby was careful to ensure that it was delivered into the prince’s hands by the prince’s chaplain, Dr Stanley, being certain that his son’s movements were also being observed by James’s secret service.³¹¹ The birth of the prince of Wales in the summer of 1688 gave Danby an added incentive to cultivate Prince William as it was rumoured that he was thereby set to lose an annuity of £700 which was to revert to the new prince.³¹²

Danby was early on at the centre of the conspiracy to bring the prince over to England to restrain James II. On the night that the bishops were acquitted he joined six other malcontents in signing a letter inviting William of Orange to invade England in defence of their liberties.³¹³ According to Gilbert Burnet*, later bishop of Salisbury, Danby had originally been recruited by Henry Sydney*, later earl of Romney, and he in turn persuaded Bishop Compton to join the plot.³¹⁴ When Daniel Finch*, 2nd earl of Nottingham, refused to participate, some of the plotters appear to have advocated silencing the reluctant peer but Danby intervened, arguing that ‘he thought there was more danger in meddling with him than letting of him alone.’³¹⁵ By the autumn of 1688 Danby had retreated from London to his Yorkshire estates to prepare for the invasion, though rumours circulated that he had in fact left England for Holland.³¹⁶ A renewed bout of ill health provided him with a convenient excuse to remain away from the centre as he sought a cure at the spa at Knaresborough. Throughout this time he remained in close contact with the prince and appears to have argued strongly for a landing in the north because the west had been so cowed by the suppression of the Monmouth rebellion that no one there ‘would be forward to join the prince.’³¹⁷ On 24 Nov. Morrice recorded that Danby, Lumley ‘and a dozen more noblemen’ had held a series of meetings in Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire but were not yet in arms.³¹⁸ By the close of the month any such pretence had been cast aside and Danby along with Dunblane and Lumley had succeeded in seizing York and imprisoning the lieutenant governor, Reresby.³¹⁹ Reports of 28 Nov. that Danby was marching towards London proved inaccurate but the news of the prince’s landing at Torbay elicited a jubilant letter from Danby on 1 Dec. congratulating him on his ‘happy arrival in England’.³²⁰ The following few days found Danby under increasing pressure to justify his failure to march out from York either to join the prince en route to London or Princess Anne at Nottingham. Danby had hoped that the princess would continue her march north to join him at York, which would undoubtedly have handed to him an improved position from which to bargain with both Prince William and King James, but he made the most of the presence of his ally, Bishop Compton, with the princess and deferred to Compton’s advice that it was not practical for her to continue north to York.³²¹

The confused situation created by the invasion complicated communication between Danby and the prince. Danby was forced to write several times insisting that he had attempted to convey despatches to Prince William that had evidently failed to get through. Shortly after this, he needed to refute rumours that he had been killed and to provide reports of his activities in fortifying York. Even though the political situation remained uncertain, Danby set about arranging for the election of his son, Dunblane, at York and he pleaded that the business relating to this and the county elections would necessitate him delaying his march south by a further three or four days.³²² Danby’s evident reluctance to abandon his northern stronghold provoked an irritated response from the prince and shortly afterwards Danby was urged by one of his kinsmen to make his way to London where the prince was awaiting him ‘with all impatience.’³²³ Having delayed as long as he could, Danby eventually quit York and by the evening of 26 Dec. he was in London at the head of a substantial retinue comprising six coaches with around 80 gentlemen in attendance.³²⁴ The following day he received visits from the future non-jurors, Francis Turner*, bishop of Ely, and William Lloyd, formerly of Llandaff, now bishop of Norwich, who later reported that Danby had been ‘very reserved’ with them. Abingdon also complained of his kinsman’s reserve towards him, though he was confident that he would ‘quickly find him out.’³²⁵

Danby’s absence from London throughout November and most of December meant that he failed to play any part in the activities of the provisional government. His apparent unwillingness to join the prince in the west had diminished his standing in William’s eyes and he remained a figure of considerable suspicion for both loyalists and revolutionaries alike. Back in London, he attempted to make up for this by striving to act as a counterbalance to the two rival groups, pushing to the fore his solution to the constitutional crisis created by the king’s flight. He was disappointed, though, on the first day of the Convention (of which he attended almost 58 per cent of all sitting days) to lose out to his old rival Halifax, who was appointed speaker of the Lords. Despite this, Danby proceeded to play a central role in the Lords’ deliberations as chairman of a number of committees. On 25 Jan. he was missing from the attendance list but not among those marked absent at a call of the House. The Commons’ resolution to declare the throne vacant and to push for the accession of Prince William as king presented Danby with an opportunity to manoeuvre himself into the middle ground between those in favour of James’s removal and those wishing to arrive at some sort of accommodation short of replacing the sovereign, by advocating the accession of Mary as queen. When the Commons’ resolution regarding the vacancy of the throne was reported to the Lords on 29 Jan. Danby was appointed chairman of the committee of the whole House discussing it and even critics such as Roger Morrice conceded that he presided ‘very fairly and equally’ over the proceedings.³²⁶ A proposal to establish a regency initially attracted wide support but was ultimately defeated by 51 votes to 48 following a strenuous intervention by Danby and Halifax. The following day, Danby shifted his support over to the loyalists by voting in favour of substituting the word ‘deserted’ for ‘abdicated’. By 31 Jan. he seems once more to have changed his position, thus while he voted in favour of declaring the prince and princess king and queen in a division held in committee of the whole, he then voted against declaring the throne vacant.

Danby’s reasoning appears to have been driven by a genuine concern for the constitutional propriety of what was being attempted as much as by raw politics. His initial reluctance to award the throne to William damaged his standing at court but he still remained unwilling to declare the throne vacant. On 4 Feb. he was one of the lords appointed to draw up reasons why they disagreed with the Commons on the question of King James’s abdication and the same day he appears to have attempted once more to employ his interest so that the possibility of Mary’s succession alone might again be explored. Speaking in the Commons, Danby’s creature, Sir Joseph Tredenham^‡, allowed that the throne was vacant in as much as James had abandoned it, but he insisted that in an hereditary monarchy it was impossible for such a state of affairs to exist. He then continued to drive forward the notion of awarding the throne to James’s clear heir, Princess Mary. In spite of these efforts, the Commons persisted in their rejection of the Lords’ amendments to their resolutions by 282 votes to 151: almost all of Danby’s followers in the Commons being among those voting in the minority.

Having failed to sway the Commons and with his grouping in the Lords perhaps restricted to just three or four regular supporters, by 6 Feb. 1689 Danby seems to have conceded that continuing to push for the succession of Mary alone was impractical. Three days prior to this, William had summoned several senior politicians, including Danby, to a private meeting, at which he had impressed upon them his unwillingness to accept anything less than the crown.³²⁷ It was no doubt as a result of this ultimatum that Danby altered his stance. Certainly by 6 Feb. he had resolved to fall in with those willing to confer the throne on William and Mary jointly. He opened the latest debates that day with ‘an excellent speech’ and when the Lords at last voted in favour of agreeing with the Commons’ resolutions Danby and Halifax were said to have been ‘very instrumental’ in securing ‘this great settlement.’³²⁸ Danby’s slipperiness on the issue lost him some of his old friends. According to at least one report he had assured Abingdon only an hour before the vote that he would divide with those against declaring that the king had abdicated.³²⁹ His ambiguous position was then further highlighted by his readiness to second Nottingham’s motion that the wording of the oaths should be altered: a decision that once more set him at variance with Halifax who rejected the notion as threatening to make a mockery of the new monarchs’ title.³³⁰

On 9 Feb. Danby was named to the committee for drawing up reasons for the Lords’ amendments to the declaration of William and Mary as king and queen. With the question of the throne finally settled, Danby retired from attendance of the council and the Lords for about ten days from the 13th, the result of his own ill health and his son’s illness and death. It might also have indicated his disappointment with the way in which things had been resolved. According to Halifax, by this point Danby had begun to ‘lag in his zeal for the prince his interest’, partly because he could not hope to be appointed lord treasurer, ‘the prince having declared he would manage it by commissioners’.³³¹ Burnet considered that Danby ‘could not bear the equality, or rather the preference that seemed to be given to Lord Halifax.’³³² This was reflected in Danby’s own writings, in which he complained at Halifax’s favoured condition at court, ‘notwithstanding what I had done.’³³³ In spite of this, a newsletter predicted in the middle of February that Danby would be restored as lord treasurer.³³⁴ In the event he was appointed to the more marginal post of lord president.³³⁵ Roger Morrice’s assessment of Danby’s appointment was that he was ‘the worst man to be found, a French pensioner, the corrupter of that cursed Parliament.’³³⁶

Marquess of Carmarthen, 1689-94

Danby’s appointment as lord president reflected the careful balance the new regime attempted to achieve by employing men of varying interests and loyalties but it also ushered in a period of uncertainty during which the rival ministers vied with each other in their efforts to cultivate the king. In 1690 Danby emerged as the principal beneficiary of such squabbling but his period at the apex of the administration proved to be relatively brief. By 1694 his interest was once more on the wane.

Danby’s return to office was marred by the death of his heir, Latimer, during the night of 15/16 February.³³⁷ Private grief did not, however, prevent him from attempting to assert his position at court, and on 18 Feb. he wrote to the king to remonstrate with him about the distribution of offices, which he thought had been weighted unfairly against his own followers. In an effort to redress the balance he recommended that Sir Henry Goodricke^‡, and his brother, Charles Osborne^‡, be rewarded with places in the new regime.³³⁸ By the close of the month Danby appears to have been thoroughly disenchanted with the new state of affairs and on 28 Feb. he regaled Sir John Reresby with a catalogue of mistakes he believed the government to be committing, especially as regarded the settlement of Ireland and the king’s apparent willingness to allow the Whigs to monopolize office. So discontented did he seem that he apparently expressed the opinion that if James would only give up his Catholic followers he might be able to stage a return.³³⁹

For all Danby’s complaints, over the ensuing weeks several of his kinsmen secured posts and on 12 Mar. Danby himself was restored to the lieutenancy of the West Riding of Yorkshire. In April he was also successful in securing his appointment to the governorship of Hull. Having resumed his regular attendance of the House towards the end of March, Danby managed a series of conferences in April, May and July concerning the bills for removing Catholics from the cities of London and Westminster, for abrogating oaths, the additional poll bill and the succession bill. He continued to argue in favour of protection of the Church of England and on 21 Mar. he pressed for all office holders to be required to take an oath of fidelity to the king and to receive Anglican communion, as he believed that ‘any less security to be given than this cannot preserve the present constitution.’³⁴⁰

Danby’s ambiguous stance on the legitimacy of the new regime may have driven him to join a small deputation waiting on the king at the opening of April 1689 to protest at the decision to award Frederick Herman Schomberg*, duke of Schomberg, the former king’s garter. They were overruled. His concerns did not, however, prevent him from petitioning the king for his own promotion to a dukedom. His request presupposed that he was already de jure marquess of Carmarthen by virtue of the 1679 warrant.³⁴¹ Once again Danby was disappointed in his ambitions and according to his own recollection it was only ‘with difficulty’ that he was then able to prevail upon the king to promote him marquess of Carmarthen. It was one of almost a dozen new peerages created in April.³⁴² On 24 Apr. he was introduced into the House in his new dignity, with Henry Somerset*, duke of Beaufort, and William Richard George Stanley*, 9th earl of Derby, as his supporters. Prior to this, on 18 Apr., he had been entrusted with the proxy of John Manners*, 9th earl of Rutland, the same day that the House had fixed for debating the overturning of Titus Oates’s perjury conviction. In the event, consideration of the case was postponed to 26 Apr. when Oates’s lawyers were finally heard. Carmarthen seems to have suffered a further relapse in his health at this time but he continued to attend the House at regular intervals through the spring and early summer and when not in London retired to Wimbledon so that he could maintain contact with affairs at court. Towards the end of May the Lords ordered Oates to be committed to king’s bench for breach of privilege for publishing a paper in which he had made reflections on Carmarthen.³⁴³ Carmarthen took the opportunity to suggest flippantly during the debates on the reversal of Oates’s conviction that rather being whipped from Newgate to Tyburn he should instead be whipped from Tyburn to Newgate. It was presumably this speech that induced the king to ask Halifax whether Carmarthen had been out of his mind when he delivered it.³⁴⁴ On 31 May, Carmarthen voted, unsurprisingly, against reversing the judgment on Oates. The following day he once again became the focus of complaint when John Howe^‡ moved in the Commons for all impeached persons to be removed from office.³⁴⁵ It was reported at about this time that many motions had been tabled for removing ‘a great minister of state’, but Howe’s motion was allowed to drop following a patched-up alliance between Carmarthen and the Whigs so that they could stand together against Halifax.³⁴⁶ Carmarthen’s need to cultivate new allies was rendered the more necessary both by the criticism of him emanating from the Commons and by the king’s disinclination to trouble himself unduly on his minister’s account. Halifax recorded that the king had undertaken to defend Carmathen, though he ‘said it faintly enough.’³⁴⁷

Writing to excuse his failure to wait on Archbishop Sancroft in the early summer of 1689, Carmarthen blamed ‘multiplicity of business’ for the omission, which ‘does scarce give me leisure to get my meals, or rest as I ought to do.’³⁴⁸ On 6 June he was entrusted with the proxy of George Fitzroy*, duke of Northumberland, and the same day he moved that the Lords should petition the king for the remainder of Oates’s sentence to be remitted. Despite this, at the end of July he voted in favour of adhering to the Lords’ amendments relating to the reversal of the perjury judgment.

Carmarthen was unable to sway his followers to join him in supporting the move to settle the crown on the Electress Sophia and her heirs, which was mooted at the beginning of June 1689.³⁴⁹ He found himself at odds with the Commons again later in the summer over the actions of his heir, Danby (formerly Dunblane) who had been arrested on his father’s recommendation for attempting to fit out a privateer illegally. Since Danby was still a member of the Commons, between 22 and 24 June the Commons took the matter into consideration and towards the close of the month the Commons found against Carmarthen and Nottingham for acting in a manner injurious to their privileges. In mid-July the Commons moved once more for an address to be made to the king requesting that both Carmarthen and Halifax should be removed from his councils.³⁵⁰ At the beginning of August the assault was renewed but on this occasion only Halifax was aimed at directly. Carmarthen’s kinsmen were among those backing the motion for Halifax to be removed but although Carmarthen insisted that this was because of Danby’s personal resentment against the lord privy seal, it seems clear that Carmarthen was sympathetic to the action. In the event the adjournment towards the close of the month brought the attempt to a halt thereby saving both Halifax and Carmarthen.

In spite of the concerted pressure being applied by the Commons that the king should rid himself of Carmarthen and Halifax, it was reported in mid-August 1689 that both men were to form part of a select ‘cabinet council’.³⁵¹ Following the close of the session on 20 Aug. Carmarthen secured leave to retire to the country to recover his health. The death of his daughter, Lady Lansdown, soon after added to Carmarthen’s personal grief but perhaps more significantly served also to weaken further the alliance of the Osbornes and Berties with the Granville clan.³⁵² Carmarthen had returned to Wimbledon by mid-September in order to wait on the king at Hampton Court, but he was immediately struck down again by a relapse preventing him from doing so.³⁵³ He had rallied by the middle of October and was able to attend the final two days of the session on 19 and 21 October. He then resumed his seat in the session that followed hard on its heels on 23 October, and was present on approximately 64 per cent of all sitting days. In early December it was once again rumoured that Carmarthen was to be restored to his former office of lord treasurer, though this failed to transpire. His improved standing with the new king and queen contrasted with his poor relations with Princess Anne, a division that was thrown into stark relief by Abingdon’s ‘great favour’ with the princess, ‘where I and my whole family find as little.’³⁵⁴ Carmarthen classed himself as among the supporters of the court on a list drawn up between October 1689 and February 1690.

Carmarthen acted as one of the tellers for a division held in the case Fountaine v. Coke on 11 Jan. 1690. The same month he divided against the resolution that the surrenders of the City charters had been illegal. On 25 Jan. he sided with the Lords seeking to dissuade the king from travelling to Ireland in person, arguing that ‘they had no notice from the king of his resolution.’³⁵⁵ By the close of January tensions within all parties had reached such a pitch that on Carmarthen’s advice, the king agreed to dissolve the Convention and summon a new Parliament. With the end of the Convention came Halifax’s resignation from the government. Carmarthen appears to have offered his old rival’s post to at least two candidates as early as the previous December but on Halifax’s departure the privy seal was put into commission.³⁵⁶ The removal of Halifax signalled a brief period of almost unchallenged dominance for Carmarthen and by the beginning April he was accounted ‘the most active man’ both in Parliament and in the council.³⁵⁷ It may have been around this time that a verse satire, The Nine Worthies, was composed, in which Carmarthen was characterized as:

A thin ill-natured ghost that haunts the king
Till him and us he does to ruin bring;
Impeached, and pardoned impudently rides
The council, and the Parliament bestrides.³⁵⁸

Eager to fill as many posts as he could with his kinsmen and supporters, as early as mid-February 1690 Carmarthen alerted Abingdon to the likelihood of a substantial overhaul at the treasury.³⁵⁹ When a redistribution of offices was effected, a number of new posts were allotted to Carmarthen’s followers including Sir John Lowther*, later Viscount Lonsdale, at the head of the treasury commission. Carmarthen himself was appointed one of the councillors for advising the queen during the king’s absence from the country.³⁶⁰ Carmarthen’s success encouraged rumours that Bishop Compton would shortly succeed Sancroft as archbishop. For all this, the elections for the new Parliament were not without their disappointments and Carmarthen expressed his concern that a number of good men were reluctant to stand ‘when it is so apparent a crisis for the Church’. Even so, his grouping fared well in a number of areas with the return of his brother, Charles, at Hull, the securing of several Yorkshire seats and a strong showing by the Berties in Lincolnshire, Oxfordshire and Wiltshire. In advance of the new Parliament, Carmarthen was able to reflect on the strength of supporters and sympathisers in the Lords, which he reckoned to consist of 45 peers and five bishops in opposition to Halifax’s phalanx of 34 peers and three bishops. In the Commons too, he believed he was able to call on the services of a bloc of around 50 members.³⁶¹

Carmarthen took his seat at the opening of the new Parliament on 20 Mar. 1690 and was thereafter present for approximately 94 per cent of all sitting days. Evidence of his continued dominance of affairs was reflected in a rumour that he was to be advanced to a dukedom and Nottingham to a marquessate, while in the Commons his ally, Sir John Trevor^‡, was elected Speaker in spite of his decidedly chequered reputation.³⁶² Carmarthen’s grouping in the Lords was reinforced by the summoning of Danby by a writ of acceleration as Baron Osborne as well as of Lindsey’s heir, Willoughby d’Eresby. The king’s speech delivered on 21 Mar. highlighted the question of the revenue, with one of the first pieces of business laid before the Commons being the Carmarthen-backed proposal for the king and queen to be voted supply for life. In the event the Commons preferred a compromise arrangement, whereby certain grants were awarded for the life of the monarchs but they resolved to limit the granting of customs revenues to a period of four years.

The presentation on 26 Mar. by Charles Powlett*, duke of Bolton, of the recognition bill, though, threatened to re-open the fissures in the Tory ranks by forcing them to agree explicitly to the king and queen’s right to the throne. Carmarthen appears to have opposed the measure at first in the hopes of securing significant amendments to the bill rather than out of a desire to see the measure rejected entirely. On 3 Apr. he put forward his amendments, suggesting the substitution of the word ‘confirmed’ but the following day this was rejected by 34 votes to 25. On 5 Apr. he was among the majority voting to reject in turn an amendment proposed by the Whigs but on 8 Apr. a compromise was arrived at, in part through Carmarthen’s negotiating skills, which resulted in the recognition bill being passed by the Lords. The following day, in spite of further opposition from the Tories, the Commons also voted to accept the amended bill.³⁶³

By mid-April 1690, Carmarthen’s manoeuvrings had served to distance him from some of the other Tory members of the Lords. Rochester complained to his brother Clarendon how ‘the white marquess’ had ‘struck up with the Dissenters’ thereby obviating ‘all the fine promises concerning the Church.’³⁶⁴ Difficulties also continued to present themselves from the other extreme, though an attempt by Philip Wharton*, 4th Baron Wharton, to table a divisive measure towards the end of April, requiring all members of the Commons to abjure King James was given short shrift. When Carmarthen attempted to present a compromise measure shortly afterwards, it too was rejected. On 12 May Carmarthen was one of a number of peers (and two bishops) named managers of a conference to be held with the Commons the following day on the bill for appointing the queen regent during the king’s absence. In spite of his failure to secure the adoption of his amended abjuration bill, by the middle of May it was reported that Carmarthen and Nottingham were so firmly in control of affairs that remaining Whig members of the administration, such as Charles Talbot*, 12th earl of Shrewsbury, had resolved to quit their posts. A renewed effort to have Carmarthen removed from the king’s councils at the same time failed once more to achieve its aim.³⁶⁵

Shrewsbury’s resignation at the beginning of June 1690 left Carmarthen in almost unrivalled control of the administration as ‘chief minister’, though as Chesterfield pointed out ‘he has need of all his skill to keep this changeable and mutinous people to their duty.’³⁶⁶ The queen also noted in one of her reports to the king how Carmarthen ‘pretends to govern all’ but she remained sceptical about precisely how amicable his alliance with Nottingham truly was.³⁶⁷ The threat of invasion from France or from the north added to the pressures facing the administration. In the middle of the month Carmarthen reported to the king information relayed to him by Charles Mordaunt*, earl of Monmouth (later 3rd earl of Peterborough), concerning a feared invasion from Scotland, though he dismissed Monmouth’s warning on the grounds that he thought he had been misled and although ‘I do in my conscience believe [he] means well to your interest’ that he was essentially untrustworthy.³⁶⁸ Carmarthen nevertheless thought that a landing in England was imminent.³⁶⁹ Towards the end of July 1690 he joined a number of other ministers waiting on the City fathers to seek a loan of £100,000 to assist with preparations for beating back a potential descent on the country.³⁷⁰ Such fears were underscored by the setback suffered by the fleet off Beachy Head later in the summer. After it he was eager to join other members of the council travelling to Dover to enquire into the causes of the defeat, but was prevented from doing so by the queen’s insistence on his remaining in London. By the middle of August the crisis had abated with the retreat of the French forces.³⁷¹ In the aftermath of the naval reversal, Carmarthen was said to have been hostile to the petition of John Churchill*, earl of Marlborough for his brother, Charles Churchill^‡, to be made an admiral, arguing that he would be known as ‘the flag of favour’ much as Marlborough was referred to disparagingly as ‘the general of favour.’³⁷² Carmarthen regarded the new session due to commence that autumn of critical importance, though unlike Devonshire, who recommended a dissolution and the summoning of a new Parliament, Carmarthen favoured persevering with the current one.³⁷³ On 1 Oct. he wrote to William Paget*, 7th Baron Paget, underlining its importance and how ‘upon their proceedings will depend the certain fate of England and Ireland, and in a great measure that of the confederates abroad.’³⁷⁴ Carmarthen took his seat at the opening of the session on 2 Oct. on which day Anthony Grey*, 11th earl of Kent, entrusted him with his proxy. On 7 Oct. he also received Willoughby d’Eresby’s proxy and on 27 Oct. that of Hugh Cholmondeley*, Baron (later earl of) Cholmondeley, although the rules restricted him to only two proxies. On 6 Oct. he voted for the discharge of James Cecil*, 4th earl of Salisbury, and Henry Mordaunt*, 2nd earl of Peterborough, from their imprisonment in the Tower. Carmarthen was present on 64 per cent of all sitting days. He was attacked from all sides. Even so, he appeared relatively satisfied with the willingness of the Commons to vote adequate funds, though he fretted at the pace with which such revenue was likely to be raised.³⁷⁵

Pressure on Carmarthen was reflected in his loss of interest in the treasury commission that autumn. Although his ally Lowther remained a member of the board, Sidney Godolphin*, Baron (later earl of) Godolphin, replaced him as first commissioner. Towards the end of the year, a series of rumours about plots preoccupied the government. On 28 Nov. Carmarthen received a letter warning of a second gunpowder plot and although this proved to be a fabrication, a fortnight later further information began to emerge about covert activities between England and France. As a result of information provided by Nicholas Prat, at the close of December Carmarthen secured the capture of three Jacobite conspirators while en route to France, among them Richard Grahme^‡, Viscount Preston [S]. The coup helped to restore Carmarthen’s reputation and at the opening of 1691 it was reported explicitly that a series of attacks intended against Carmarthen had been derailed because of his success in foiling the Jacobite conspiracy. The departure of King William for The Hague in early January was glossed by the reassuring information that Carmarthen was to remain behind as chief minister. With the exception of a brief stint in April, the king remained overseas until the autumn. In his absence, Carmarthen held sway: the extent of his domination of the administration was reflected in a new soubriquet (an echo of that applied previously to Charles I’s minister, Thomas Wentworth^†, earl of Strafford): ‘Tom the Tyrant’. This was in spite of a renewal of ill health that plagued him for much of January and into the following month.³⁷⁶

Ironically, given his role in Preston’s capture and his consequent popularity, Carmarthen was one of a number of peers listed by Preston as being sympathetic to the former king.³⁷⁷ Although Preston later retracted this, claiming that he had the names ‘only from hearsay’, the allegation was supported by information provided to Halifax that Carmarthen had ‘treated’ with King James and also by the account of Thomas Bruce*, 2nd earl of Ailesbury’s account of various discussions with Carmarthen in the aftermath of the Revolution.³⁷⁸ According to Ailesbury, Carmarthen admitted that ‘next to having offended so much the good God, nothing ever lay so much at my heart as what I have done against that good king, James II.’³⁷⁹ Carmarthen may indeed have regretted certain features of the Revolution, but there is little reason to suppose he had any desire to see the former king back.

Aside from making the most of his success in securing Preston, Carmarthen continued to battle over control of the treasury where by the middle of February 1691 he was complaining that he now had few friends. The problem of Ireland also loomed large in his thinking. On 6 Feb. he confessed to Nottingham his ‘anxiety for the business of Ireland, upon which (whatever may be thought to the contrary) all other things as to England will depend.’³⁸⁰ At the end of the month, fretting that the ‘affairs of Ireland do seem to me to be in so ill a posture’ he recommended to the king the appointment of a lord lieutenant to take charge of the province, naming a number of possible candidates including himself on the grounds that he ‘would rather perish in endeavouring to save this government than live to perish with it’.³⁸¹ Early in March 1691 it was rumoured that he was to depart for Ireland and as late as the middle of June it was said that he had offered to lead a squadron to Galway ‘upon any penalty if he did not succeed.’³⁸² By the middle of March it was also speculated that he would be appointed lord lieutenant of the whole of Yorkshire and be granted his coveted dukedom of Pontefract.³⁸³ Assiduous in courting the queen’s good opinion, on 16 Mar. 1691 Carmarthen entertained her to dinner in his rooms in St James’s, treating her to ‘the rarity or first of the season, viz. one dish of green peas and cauliflowers.’³⁸⁴ The same month he joined with Carnarvon and John Egerton*, 3rd earl of Bridgwater in supporting the candidature of his son-in-law, James Herbert^‡, at the by-election at Ailesbury, though in the event Herbert was defeated by Simon Mayne^‡.³⁸⁵

The unsettled nature of affairs at court was highlighted by conflicting rumours of new appointments and dismissals throughout the spring and early summer. At the end of April it was said that Carmarthen was to be lord treasurer again but this was contrasted by other reports suggesting that his position was far more precarious.³⁸⁶ By the early summer rumours were spread of a campaign to force him out from his office of lord president.³⁸⁷ Such reports were accompanied by talk of infighting at court in which the Commons speaker, Sir John Trevor, was said to have sided with Sydney and Montagu against Carmarthen; their undignified demeanour was likened to the scuffles between ‘the creatures of old in the amphitheatre.’³⁸⁸ As a further indication of the charged political atmosphere, in mid-May Carmarthen dismissed a number of deputy lieutenants in Yorkshire.³⁸⁹ Talk of altering alliances and of jostling for places continued well into the summer.³⁹⁰ Early in June it was speculated that Carmarthen’s old ally, Bishop Compton, was to consolidate his alliance with Carmarthen’s family by marrying the widowed countess of Plymouth; at about the same time it was even suggested that Rochester had resolved to throw in his lot with Carmarthen.³⁹¹

Poor health and no doubt exasperation at the atmosphere at court may have tempted Carmarthen to step back from his duties. In July he complained that he was suffering from such violent colic that he could not attend council.³⁹² The following month it was thought that having secured an annual pension of £3,500 the previous month, he would take the opportunity to retire ‘if his project succeeds to Ireland’. In the event the news of the fall of Limerick at the beginning of October seems to have helped him steel himself to hold firm.³⁹³ It was thus with renewed hopes for a successful outcome for his Irish policies following a poisonous summer that Carmarthen resumed his seat at the opening of the new session on 22 Oct. 1691. At the beginning of November there were renewed reports that he was one of three peers to be advanced to dukedoms.³⁹⁴ Present on almost 54 per cent of all sitting days in the session, Carmarthen’s early optimism proved misplaced as the Commons quickly turned their attention to debating the state of the nation with John Howe prominent again among those speaking out against Carmarthen and his lieutenant, Goodricke. Expecting that criticism of the fleet would form a key part of the Commons’ assault, Carmarthen moved swiftly to forge a temporary alliance with Admiral Edward Russell*, later earl of Orford, and in mid-November, Carmarthen’s supporters attempted to draw attention away from their leader by moving for Preston’s examination to be considered. The affair once again drew attention to the factionalism at court, with Carmarthen intent on destroying Preston, while Sydney was said to be eager to achieve his release.³⁹⁵

Poor health once again interrupted Carmarthen’s activity towards the close of November, although fears that it would prove mortal again proved unfounded.³⁹⁶ Carmarthen returned to the House determined to try to rescue his fortunes by attempting to make use of the new information provided by William Fuller in the same way that he had been able to exploit that seized from Preston. In this case the plan failed to have the desired effect and Fuller was ultimately dismissed by the Commons the following year as a ‘notorious imposter, a cheat, and a false accuser’. Carmarthen may also have been implicated in an attempt to ‘blacken Lord Nottingham’ in a further attempt to deflect attention from himself.³⁹⁷ In this too, though, he was unsuccessful and the Commons’ decision to turn their attention to East India Company’s accounts put more pressure on the lord president.³⁹⁸ On 7 Dec. he dragged himself from his sickbed to declare himself against Monmouth in solidarity with his kinsmen, Lindsey and Abingdon, but despite this it was reckoned that Monmouth would be cleared.³⁹⁹ The following day, reports circulated that Carmarthen was the real focus of complaint and that ‘the king’s habitual constancy cannot save him… If he does fall, he may go for an honest man; but while he does stand, he passes for a very artificial and ingenious man.’⁴⁰⁰ The remainder of the month saw the Commons turn to consideration of Preston’s papers and at the end of December debates about the settlement of Scotland found Carmarthen urging the dissolution of their assembly, which he considered to be unlawful.⁴⁰¹

The fevered atmosphere in Parliament in the first weeks of the session gave rise to a confused picture in the early months of 1692. Some clearly expected Carmarthen to be in danger of being displaced, though this was soon proved unfounded.⁴⁰² According to other reports he was on the verge of being restored to the lord treasurership.⁴⁰³ On 12 Jan. 1692 he registered his dissent at the resolution to receive the bill allowing Henry Howard*, 7th duke of Norfolk, to divorce. His opposition to the measure resulted in a faintly comic episode on 21 Feb., when he was subjected to a verbal assault from the intemperate Edward Clinton*, 5th earl of Lincoln, who had been called to the bar of the House for making disparaging remarks about Rochester during the debates over the divorce bill. At the bar, Lincoln turned his attention on Carmarthen, whom Lincoln mocked for being opposed to the divorce of adulteresses, suggesting that were it to be allowed, all of Carmarthen’s daughters would be returned to him.⁴⁰⁴ Carmarthen served as one of the managers of three conferences concerning the public accounts bill between 5 and 10 February. By the time of the adjournment on 24 Feb. he was once again thoroughly under pressure as a state of impasse was reached between the administration and its critics. The admission of Rochester and Sir Edward Seymour to the Privy Council in March signalled a further erosion of Carmarthen’s control.

Carmarthen’s efforts to maintain his hold on office seems to have persuaded him to attempt to mediate between the queen and her estranged sister, Princess Anne, during the early summer of 1692. According to one report it was the princess who asked Carmarthen to wait on her at Sion, which he delayed doing before securing permission from the queen. In August he joined several members of the cabinet council at Portsmouth to inspect the fleet.⁴⁰⁵ Later that month he responded negatively to Rochester’s proposals concerning the management of the forthcoming session, conceiving that it was in part Rochester’s obstruction that had frustrated the navy’s efforts to make the most of the La Hogue campaign.

Carmarthen was granted a fortnight’s leave of absence in mid-September.⁴⁰⁶ By the following month he had turned his mind once again to the new session of Parliament and on 22 Oct. he wrote to Abingdon noting that, ‘this approaching meeting of the Parliament will be so critical an one that it will concern every man of quality and interest in his country to be present at it.’ He hoped not only that Abingdon would be sure to appear himself but also that he would encourage his friends to do so, emphasizing that ‘the absents will be very particularly remarked by his majesty.’⁴⁰⁷ The same day, Carmarthen was noted as one of those who turned out to greet the king on his return to London.⁴⁰⁸

Carmarthen took his seat in the new session on 4 Nov. 1692 after which he was present on just over three quarters of all sitting days. The day before the opening he wrote to Rutland in similar vein to his earlier letter to Abingdon, emphasizing that it would be politic for Rutland to appear as soon as possible.⁴⁰⁹ In the course of the session he was again entrusted with three proxies: that of Scarbrough on 15 Feb. 1693, of Danby the following day and of Willoughby d’Eresby four days later on 20 February. The timing suggests that they may have been connected with the debates in the House concerning the triennial bill. Prior to that Carmarthen drew attention to himself at the beginning of December 1692 by refusing to concur with the wording of the Commons’ address commending Admiral Russell for behaving with courage, fidelity and conduct. He conceded the first two terms but, comparing the case with that of Arthur Herbert*, earl of Torrington, demurred on the last. Having pointed out that he and Torrington had never been friends, he affirmed nevertheless that while Torrington had ‘saved our fleet in 1690 by anchoring after the battle, so I do affirm that the honourable admiral in question [Russell], by anchoring deprived us of an entire victory.’⁴¹⁰ Naval affairs continued to dominate this part of the session with Carmarthen named one of the managers of two conferences on 20 and 21 Dec. considering the papers relating to naval matters brought to the House by Nottingham.

If he was prepared to acknowledge the past successes of a former foe in the person of Torrington, Carmarthen was no less willing to stand against his usual allies and at the close of the year he put himself at variance with his Bertie kinsmen by voting along with Nottingham, Rochester and Portland against committing the place bill.⁴¹¹ He was then absent from the House for the subsequent vote on the measure on 3 Jan. 1693. He resumed his seat four days later and on 17 Jan. he registered two dissents relating to the resolutions rejecting the claims of Charles Knollys (titular 4th earl of Banbury) to be recognized as a peer. Towards the end of the month he was appointed speaker and lord high steward for the trial of Charles Mohun*, 4th Baron Mohun, who was accused of murder.⁴¹² With the office came a fee of £1,000 and a £500-a-day allowance, which Carmarthen put to ostentatious use by ordering a huge coach to convey him to court each day and equipping his servants in new liveries.⁴¹³ Mohun’s less than dignified behaviour during the proceedings put Carmarthen’s patience to the test and at one point he was forced to refuse Mohun’s request to enquire of one of the witnesses whether or not she was a virgin in preparation for casting doubt on her testimony. Carmarthen insisted that he might only ask whether or not she was married.⁴¹⁴ Following the conclusion of the trial, the focus of the session returned to the question of the triennial bill. Although it passed the Lords, Carmarthen encouraged his followers in the Commons to help defeat the measure in the lower House.

Carmarthen was appointed a manager of two further conferences prior to the close of the session in mid-March. Following the prorogation, rumours circulated once more of alterations in the ministry and of promotions in the peerage with Carmarthen one of four peers reported to be promoted to dukedoms.⁴¹⁵ Although the office of lord keeper went to the Junto Whig Sir John Somers*, later Baron Somers, Carmarthen retained his own place and the queen’s particular confidence.⁴¹⁶ In July it was said that she had revoked an order allowing Carmarthen, Devonshire and Rochester to take some leave as she could not bear to be without their advice.⁴¹⁷ News of the king’s defeat at the battle of Landen later that month spurred Carmarthen to return to London from Bath to assist at the council. Early in August he retreated to Bath once more from which he returned ‘much mended’ a few days later.⁴¹⁸

Carmarthen’s apparent indispensability to the queen did not prevent talk of Sunderland’s growing prominence or of the prospect of Shrewsbury and John Sheffield*, 3rd earl of Mulgrave (later marquess of Normanby and duke of Buckingham), succeeding Carmarthen and Nottingham.⁴¹⁹ Carmarthen nevertheless continued to exert his influence to the utmost and on the death of John Lovelace*, 3rd Baron Lovelace, he recommended that Abingdon should succeed him as chief justice in eyre Trent south. While begging the king to excuse his presumption, he also proposed his son, Danby, for the place of captain of the gentlemen pensioners, though in the event the post went to Charles Beauclerk*, duke of St Albans, one of Charles II’s illegitimate sons.⁴²⁰

Nottingham’s dismissal at the beginning of November offered Carmarthen an opportunity to consolidate his position, which was assisted further by Shrewsbury’s refusal to return to office. Carmarthen returned to the House at the opening of the new session on 7 Nov. 1693, after which he was present on almost 65 per cent of all sitting days. Excused at a call on 14 Nov, he resumed his seat three days later and at the beginning of December he joined Nottingham in objecting to the use of the word ‘declare’ within the triennial bill; it was agreed by 59 votes to 34, however, to allow the word to stand.⁴²¹ In spite of his previous efforts to mediate between the queen and Princess Anne, by the beginning of December Carmarthen conceded in a letter to his wife that he had failed to win over the princess. The following month found him engaged with a similarly doomed attempt to mediate between the House and the king over the Lords’ request to be permitted sight of more information relating to the naval disasters.⁴²²

Carmarthen was entrusted with Danby’s proxy again on 23 Feb. 1694 and three days later with that of his son-in-law, William Fermor*, Baron Leominster. Carmarthen joined Halifax and Mulgrave in opposition to the treasons bill that month and on 6 Mar. he was named one of the managers of the conference for the mutiny bill.⁴²³ Towards the end of the month, on 29 Mar, he reported the findings of the committee established to draw up the Lords’ reasons for insisting on their amendments to the measure and the same day he was again nominated a manager of a further conference with the Commons. That month, following much prevarication, Shrewsbury at last gave way to the king’s entreaties and returned to the administration as secretary of state, trouncing any expectation of Carmarthen and Sunderland forging a new alliance. By the close of the session Carmarthen was on the back foot and he was forced to give way to the passage of the tonnage bill even though he disliked the proposals within it for raising a loan of £1,200,000 by subscription.⁴²⁴

Duke of Leeds 1694-9

Shortly after the prorogation it was rumoured once again that Carmarthen was to be promoted to a dukedom.⁴²⁵ The following month the promotion was finally confirmed with Carmarthen taking the title of Leeds rather than Pomfret (or Pontefract).⁴²⁶ Four other peers were advanced to dukedoms at the same time.⁴²⁷ In part, Leeds’ promotion at this time was considered a sop to his declining political influence in the face of a reinvigorated Whig party headed by the Junto. Eager to make the most of his new distinction, early in the summer, Leeds set out on a tour of the north in an effort to consolidate his local interest. He returned to London towards the end of July and at the beginning of August he was a prominent participant in debates in the council concerning the return of the fleet. The following month he attempted to exert his remaining interest with the king on behalf of his son-in-law, James Herbert, whom he wished to see appointed a teller of the exchequer, and in November Leeds’ influence was still reckoned to be sufficiently potent to enable him to secure the return to favour of Sir Ralph Delaval^‡, whose career as a naval commander had been brought to an early close by the loss of the Smyrna fleet.⁴²⁸ In the event, though, Delaval remained in the cold.

Leeds took his seat at the opening of the new session on 12 Nov. 1694, when James Butler*, 2nd duke of Ormond, and Meinhard Schomberg*, 3rd duke of Schomberg, introduced him in his new dignity. Present on just over 60 per cent of all sitting days, the following month he backed the proposal for an alternative to the treason bill put forward by Normanby (as Mulgrave had since become), which provided for wilful perjury to be made a capital offence. He then subscribed the protest when the measure was rejected.

The death of Queen Mary at the end of the year threatened to diminish Leeds’ role in the administration. In the short term, though, he enjoyed a resurgence of influence: it was left to him to wait on the king and urge him not to give way to grief. Early in 1695, though, Leeds faced yet another threat to his position as consideration of a petition from the inhabitants of Royston by the Commons quickly developed into a broader examination of corruption. Sir John Trevor was one of the early targets of the investigation and Leeds’ opponents sought to bring the same kind of charges to bear against him as well. Leeds meanwhile continued to take a prominent part in the Lords’ examination of the treason bill and towards the end of January he spoke forcefully in favour of the measure being adopted as early as March in opposition to those who favoured postponing it for three years.⁴²⁹ He was then named one of the managers of a conference concerning the measure on 11 April.

By the middle of February 1695 Leeds appears to have been optimistic about the progress of affairs, reporting with confidence the likelihood of sufficient supply being voted. At the close of March he was one of those appointed to try Captain Bridges who stood charged with plundering and sinking a French man-of-war rather than towing it into port as a prize.⁴³⁰ Leeds was entrusted with Willoughby d’Eresby’s proxy on 3 Apr. and a week later he also received that of Carmarthen (as his heir was now styled). On 19 Apr. he invoked privilege on behalf of one of his servants, who had been arrested. The House ordered the man to be released and the offending bailiff to be attached and brought to the bar of the House. A rather more pressing concern emerged the same month when Carmarthen spoke out in opposition to the Commons bill for imposing penalties on Sir Thomas Cooke^‡ should he refuse to reveal the whereabouts of £90,000 of missing East India Company money. The assault on Cooke, part of a wider investigation by the Commons into corruption, continued in spite of Leeds’ efforts and by the end of April the lower House’s attention was turned on Leeds himself. In spite of his declaration before the Lords that he was ‘not at all concerned in this matter’, Leeds found himself once again on the verge of being impeached. On 26 Apr. John Verney^‡, the future Viscount Fermanagh [I] reported how ‘great art has been used to baffle their enquiry’ but the same day Leeds sought and was granted permission to speak in his defence before the Commons. No doubt eager to avoid a repetition of his experience of the 1680s he used the opportunity to urge them to hasten his trial. The following day the articles of impeachment were brought up to the Lords by Thomas Wharton*, later marquess of Wharton, in which Leeds was accused of taking a 5,000 guinea bribe to advance the interests of the East India Company. Commenting on this latest development, Somerset concluded ‘so there will be an end of that statesman.’⁴³¹ Leeds pleaded not guilty to the charges brought against him but it was rumoured that an act of grace was to be introduced into the House to shield him from the threat of conviction.⁴³² Perhaps unsurprisingly, given his previous experience of monarchs and their clemency, Leeds seems to have resolved not to trust to the good will of the king on this occasion. Instead, at the beginning of May he was said to have ‘kept open house at Hell with roast beef and pot ale’ to debauch Thomas Parker*, 15th Baron Morley, Robert Carey*, 7th Baron Hunsdon, John Colepeper*, 3rd Baron Colepeper ‘and the rest of the Mumpers.’ Leeds was also said to have been working to bring the bishops in on his side in the hopes that he would be able to ‘break his fall upon their backs.’⁴³³ In the event, he was saved by the prorogation of 3 May that brought a halt to proceedings, the Commons having failed to move them on by bringing forward a key witness in time.⁴³⁴ Leeds still aimed to respond to his critics with a campaign in the press, approaching his daughter, Lady Leominster, for the use of a room in her London residence where he could set up a press and set his authors to work. Should her husband object, Leeds counselled her to keep the business from him.⁴³⁵

Following the close of the session Leeds continued to attend the council in spite of heavy hints that he should remain away. He also enquired of the king whether reports that Princess Anne was to be given his lodgings at St James’s were accurate and, if they were, whether he would be compensated with alternative accommodation at Whitehall or the Cockpit.⁴³⁶ Apparently oblivious to the offence he was causing, he continued with his preparations for a counter-offensive in print.⁴³⁷ The prorogation failed to silence Leeds’ critics. In June it was suggested that ‘a strong party’ had formed in opposition to the duke, though the cause was ascribed to ’his reconciliation with the earl of Bath’ rather than to the corruption charges against him.⁴³⁸ Not that the latter had been forgotten and in August a proclamation was made offering a reward of £200 for the arrest of Monsieur Robart, one of the principal witnesses against Leeds.⁴³⁹ Leeds joined several other peers in predicting that a new Parliament would shortly be summoned and it may have been in preparation for another lengthy sojourn in London (and in expectation that he was to lose his former lodgings) that he took the house in St James’s formerly occupied by Jeffreys towards the end of August 1695.⁴⁴⁰

Leeds was ill again in September but he continued to confer with his allies about the anticipated election (though Parliament was not actually dissolved until October), insisting with no apparent trace of irony that, ‘the schemes which I hear are drawn by some of our grandees makes it highly necessary to get some able as well as some honest men into the next Parliament.’ His efforts to persuade Sir William Twisden^‡ to stand again were frustrated by Twisden’s terror at the expense involved but he hoped that Sir Edward Seymour might help him to a safe seat. He also recommended Sir Francis Child^‡ to Abingdon, who he hoped would help him to a seat at Devizes.⁴⁴¹ The ensuing elections proved largely successful for those standing in Leeds’ interest and shortly before the opening of Parliament he was one of a number of prominent Tories to be honoured with degrees by Oxford University.⁴⁴² More significant was the rumoured ‘conjunction’ of ‘great planets’: the coming together of Leeds and Sunderland, which was said to have taken place at this time.⁴⁴³

With his position apparently shored up once again, Leeds took his seat in the new Parliament on 22 November. He was thereafter present on almost 69 per cent of all sitting days in the 1695-6 session. No doubt aware of his vulnerability to assault from the Commons, during the session he strove to support the administration and it may have been at his instigation that the question of the coinage was taken into consideration early on. During the debates on the state of the nation held in committee of the whole on 3 Dec. he moved for the state of trade to be taken into consideration as well as urging consideration of the coinage, though he was at pains to point out that this was a subject that ought first to be dealt with by the Commons. In a subsequent committee of the whole held the following day he was again insistent on the Commons’ involvement when he spoke in favour of the lower House’s motion for an address to the king to be drawn up.⁴⁴⁴ On 5 Dec. he was named one of the managers of a conference concerning the state of the coinage and he was subsequently appointed a manager of two further conferences on 7 and 11 Jan. 1696. As two rival proposals emerged for dealing with the problem, Leeds gave his backing to the scheme championed by Somers, but it was that proposed from the Commons by Charles Montagu*, the future Baron Halifax, that attracted the greater support. On 30 Dec. 1695 Leeds proposed an amendment to the resulting coinage bill, largely mimicking Somers’ scheme. The following day the committee reported back in favour of his amendment which was in turn passed by the Lords. Leeds’ support for the Junto-led measure may have inspired Charles Bertie’s comment to Rutland that the question of Leeds’ impeachment would ‘sleep this sessions’.⁴⁴⁵

Leeds was not immune from attack, however. Having witnessed the amended coinage bill pass the Lords on 3 Jan. 1696, he turned his attention to the defence of his heir (Carmarthen) over complaints relating to reverses at sea. In this he was joined by Torrington, the two men arguing that the matter ought rather to be considered by a select committee rather than by the whole House. Several reports noted that the true target of the investigation into Carmarthen’s conduct had been Leeds himself and that ‘it was through the son that the father was struck at.’⁴⁴⁶ For once, sickness seems to have benefited rather than hindered Leeds as it was rumoured that ill health had left the court denuded of ministers, enabling him to make ground there. At the same time, his progress in attracting supporters in the Commons was suggested by the fact that his son-in-law Herbert’s election petition attracted a sizeable turnout of 370 Members, but once that was dealt with the attendance dwindled back to around 150.⁴⁴⁷

Leeds was among those summoned to give advice at council to consider the early revelations about the Assassination Plot. On 24 Feb. 1696 he was named a manager of the conference taking into consideration the king’s speech about the plot. The proposal of an Association was designed to force Tories to either reject it and be branded as disloyal, or by accepting it to expose deep divisions among them. Leeds responded in the debate in the Lords on 26 Feb. by arguing that it was needless given that all were united in upholding the status quo. When this failed to convince the House, he attempted instead to devise a formula that would be acceptable to the Tories and that rather than declaring the king ‘rightful and lawful’ they might instead swear that he had ‘a right to the crown of this realm, and that no other person whatsoever has any right to the same.’ Although this attracted the support of Devonshire and Portland (perhaps indicating the king’s sympathy for this form of words), Leeds’ proposal was then amended by Richard Savage*, 4th Earl Rivers, who moved the text should be further altered so that ‘the late King James’ and ‘the pretended prince of Wales’ were mentioned explicitly within the formula.⁴⁴⁸ Rivers’ intervention left Leeds’ own following divided and although most of his Osborne kinsmen and the Lincolnshire Berties conceded the point, the Wiltshire and Oxfordshire Berties (led by Abingdon) refused to do so.⁴⁴⁹

Leeds continued to hope that moderation would prevail. At the beginning of March 1696 he advised one absent peer not to trouble himself about a summons to attend the House if his health did not permit ‘unless they shall proceed with more violence than I hope they will do’ and he undertook to have him excused at the next call of the House and to inform him of the mood of the chamber. He then pointed to the Lords’ resolution to proceed against one printer for publishing scandalous material relating to peers unwilling to sign the Association as an indication that all might yet be well.⁴⁵⁰ Leeds was entrusted with Leominster’s proxy on 30 March. A fortnight later, however, he was absent from the chamber when the Association bill passed the House. He had also failed to attend the debates of the previous day (13 April).

Leeds was omitted from the list of the lords justices at the close of April 1696 and at the beginning of the following month it was rumoured that he intended to retire from office, leaving Shrewsbury to succeed him as lord president.⁴⁵¹ On 2 May, a similar report noted that both Leeds and Carmarthen were ‘out of all’.⁴⁵² As details of the plots against the king began to circulate, Leeds was one of those spoken of as being in some way implicated. On 22 May he complained to the king of information being put about by a Mr Porter suggesting that he had failed to investigate the activities of Hugh Smithson, who was believed to be a Jacobite agent in Yorkshire. Porter also resurrected tales of Leeds’s involvement in suppressing evidence relating to the murder of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey. Leeds professed himself unsure whether such slander emanated from Porter himself or whether Charles Gerard*, 2nd earl of Macclesfield, had instigated its circulation.⁴⁵³

With his position at court seriously compromised, Leeds retreated to Bath in July. He survived being ‘wetted’ on his way there by ‘two scurvy waters’ and from thence travelled to his estates in Yorkshire.⁴⁵⁴ A report that the king had sent to him to join him in Flanders was treated with suspicion and seems not to have had any foundation.⁴⁵⁵ On his return to London towards the end of October 1696 Leeds was ‘much huzza’d in Duke Street’.⁴⁵⁶ He took his place in the House on 26 Oct, on which day he was entrusted with Kent’s proxy. He also seems to have joined with Devonshire in seeking to have Rutland excused for failing to attend.⁴⁵⁷ Leeds was named one of the managers of the conference concerning the waiving and resuming of privilege on 30 November. The main focus of his attention in the session, though, was his attempt to forestall the bill of attainder brought against Sir John Fenwick^‡. In one letter to his wife noting the progress of the hearings, Fenwick described Leeds and Normanby as ‘your managers’ and in another he urged Lady Fenwick to ‘take care of yourself advise well what you do the d[uke] of L[eeds] can tell you best.’⁴⁵⁸ Leeds was certainly active in attempting to persuade the House to charge Fenwick with something less than treason. Following the presentation by Admiral Russell of the case against Fenwick in early November, Leeds did his best to stifle the bill while also continuing to do his utmost to distract attention from those absent peers reluctant to resume their places in the House. On 25 Nov. he received Carmarthen’s proxy and on 15 Dec. he registered his dissent at the resolution to read Goodman’s information. Three days later, he spoke out in the House against the Fenwick attainder and proposed instead that another bill be drawn up for keeping Fenwick a close prisoner for life. He was unsuccessful in his efforts and was left with little alternative but to register his dissent at the resolution to give the bill a second reading.⁴⁵⁹ During the debate on the attainder held on 23 Dec. Leeds argued forcefully for proceeding against Fenwick for high crimes and misdemeanours rather than for treason, insisting that Fenwick was not ‘considerable in the party’. While he conceded that his ‘obstinacy deserves due punishment’ he stressed that the punishment should not be ‘such as will punish all Englishmen, unless there were more necessity for it’ and that it were ‘better he should go unpunished than all the laws of the land be broke.’ Leeds was among the minority voting against passing the attainder bill on 23 Dec. and he was then one of 53 lords to subscribe the resulting protest.⁴⁶⁰

Leeds intervened again in January 1697 during the proceedings against Monmouth. Insisting that the Lords were only delivering an opinion and judgment on papers rather than apportioning blame he argued that there was no need for Monmouth to absent himself after he had delivered his defence, although he emphasized that he was of the opinion that the papers were ‘of a horrid nature’ and ‘injurious to the king’ and he was among those who considered that Monmouth should be judged appropriately as a contriver of the papers.⁴⁶¹ Leeds was named one of the managers of the bill for prohibiting silks on 5 Mar. 1697 and on 13 Mar. he was once again entrusted with the proxy of Charles Mildmay*, 18th Baron Fitzwalter. The same month and into the following one rumours again circulated that he was to be displaced as lord president. On 10 Apr. Leeds was appointed one of the managers of the conference for the bill for prevention of buying and selling of offices.

Leeds retained his position for a further four years though the office increasingly came to be seen as an honorific one with real power held by other members of the ministry. With less business, Leeds had sufficient leisure to indulge himself and in mid-September 1697 he seems to have been planning a post-peace trip to France with Leominster, hoping to ‘get to see Versailles before I die if I can’.⁴⁶² The visit appears not to have happened and he returned to the House at the opening of the new session on 3 Dec. after which he was present on just under 62 per cent of all sitting days. Towards the close of 1697 his name was one of those mentioned in connection with succeeding Sunderland as lord chamberlain after the latter’s sudden resignation, though when one correspondent commented on the notion he rejected it, saying, ‘No person yet appears likely to take his [Sunderland’s] share of the ministry, I mean no new person such as the duke of Leeds’.⁴⁶³ Even so, at the opening of 1698 it was rumoured that now that Sunderland was out of the way Leeds intended to resume his attendance of council.⁴⁶⁴

Confined to his chamber for eight or nine days by severe colic at the end of 1697, he had clearly recovered towards the end of the first week of January when he was credited with saving much of the area surrounding Whitehall from being engulfed in the blaze that destroyed the palace. According to one correspondent ‘had it not been for the duke of Leeds, I really believe all Westminster had been burnt.’⁴⁶⁵ In spite of such heroic efforts, by the following month talk of Leeds resuming active participation at council had faded into the background and it was said that he was ‘more out of affairs then ever and very chagrined.’⁴⁶⁶ In March 1698 he rallied to join those members of the Lords voicing their opposition to the Commons’ bill of pains and penalties against Charles Duncombe^‡. On 3 Mar. he spoke against giving the bill a second reading and on 4 Mar. put his name to the resulting dissent. On 7 and again on 11 Mar. he was named a manager of conferences relating to the Duncombe case and on 15 Mar. he was among the slim majority voting to reject the measure.⁴⁶⁷ Two days later he spoke in vindication of the lord chancellor (Somers) following the aspersions cast upon him in the printed paper distributed by Robert Bertie^‡ in support of Bertie’s brother (James Bertie^‡) concerning an appeal from chancery to the Lords.⁴⁶⁸ In spite of this, both Bertie brothers were later assessed as being members of Leeds’ interest in the Commons.⁴⁶⁹

Leeds’ attention was distracted during the spring by the visit of Czar Peter, who became a regular visitor to Wimbledon, largely through his connection with Carmarthen and their mutual interest in naval affairs.⁴⁷⁰ In May he was subjected to an intemperate assault in the Commons by James Sloane^‡ following a further reading of Sir Thomas Cooke’s papers. Sloane, it was said, ‘would have fallen upon the duke of Leeds that since the witness was conveyed away there was as much reason for a bill of attainder as in any former case’, but the House chose to ignore him.⁴⁷¹ Leeds was entrusted with Abingdon’s proxy again on 11 May and on 16 June he was also given that of Kent. The day before (15 June) he was named a manager of the conference concerning the trial of John Goudet. Towards the end of June 1698, in spite of his previous notoriety in relation to the company, Leeds was approached by Robert Blackburne, who had been asked to lay the East India Company’s case before him for his perusal in anticipation of the attempt to deprive the company of its charter.⁴⁷² The following month he spoke out, accordingly, against the new East India Company bill but he was prevailed upon not to persist with his opposition and he seems thereafter not to have made any great impression in the ensuing debates about the measure. Increasing marginalization and lessening interest appears to have preyed upon Leeds’ mind at this time and towards the end of July he wrote to the king protesting at his treatment and how people believed he had forfeited his monarch’s good opinion. Continuing in more than usually histrionic vein he offered to leave the country if the king was truly offended with him.⁴⁷³

The general elections of that summer resulted in an improved situation for the Tories and Leeds appears early on to have been eager to exploit the situation in the new Parliament. Having taken his seat on 29 Nov. he was probably behind an investigation opened in the Commons into abuses in the farming of taxes as part of a wider attempt to discredit Charles and Christopher Montagu^‡, against whom Leeds had a particular axe to grind over their rival claims to the office of auditor of the exchequer.⁴⁷⁴ Charles Osborne’s decision to vote against the disbanding bill in mid-January 1699 also appears to have been evidence of Leeds using his interest in the lower House. Leeds’ actions seem to have resulted in the king summoning him and Rochester to an audience in advance of the Lords’ consideration of the bill. The measure passed without incident but on 8 Feb. Leeds joined those voting against the committee recommendation to assist the king in retaining his Dutch guards.⁴⁷⁵ He then registered his dissent against the resolution to retain the troops. On 1 Mar. he was nominated one of the managers of conference with the Commons for the bill to prevent the distilling of corn.

Leeds was afflicted by poor health again during the spring but by the beginning of April 1699 he had recovered sufficiently to take an interest in affairs once more. On 8 Apr. he wrote to the king at length warning him of ‘some things so prejudicial to your service that without some reformation in them I fear it will be very difficult to keep men either in Parliament or out of it.’ His particular concerns appear to have centred on the admiralty and management of Parliament. Underscoring the importance of uniting ‘the minds of your people and to take from amongst them the distinction of party’ he proposed (again) the formation of a mixed administration for which he offered his services as mediator between the factions.⁴⁷⁶ The offer was not taken up and he was soon after prostrated once again by illness. On 25 Apr. he wrote to one of his daughters noting how he had been confined to his house for 15 days (presumably alluding to the period 4-17 Apr. during which he was absent from the House) and how having resumed his place he had contracted another cold.⁴⁷⁷ His statement that he had been present in the House the day before writing the letter (24 Apr.) is not reflected in the attendance record, suggesting that he perhaps arrived late in the day. He certainly appears to have resumed his activities in the House soon after his return as he was nominated a manager of a series of conferences on 20, 21 and 27 Apr. and of a final one before the close of the session on 3 May. Over-exertion seems once more to have compromised his health and within a fortnight of the prorogation on 4 May he was again said to have been seriously unwell having been afflicted with the ‘stop’ for five days.⁴⁷⁸

Out of office, 1699-1712

Soon after the end of the session in May 1699, Leeds was required to resign his office of lord president. He was succeeded by Pembroke, whose office of lord privy seal went to Lonsdale. Although it was reported by some that the alteration had been arranged with Leeds’ knowledge, others thought otherwise.⁴⁷⁹ According to one commentator, Leeds had not been ‘aimed at’ by those eager to see a change in the administration and had, if anything, been ‘becoming a favourite of the House.’⁴⁸⁰ Leeds was clearly disturbed by his loss of place and unsure about which offices he was to lose. He wrote to Lonsdale to ascertain whether he was also to be stripped of his governorship of Hull and his Yorkshire lieutenancy and sought satisfaction of his arrears of pay for the first of these, ‘which are due for a great while’. Eager to rescue something from the situation, he also asked that his brother, Charles, might be retained as lieutenant-governor of Hull ‘unless his majesty’s displeasure reach to every branch of my family.’⁴⁸¹ While increasing political marginalization was one factor in explaining his removal, it seems that Leeds’ ill health was also significant. During the summer it was rumoured that he was either dead or dying as a result of which he was removed from the last of his offices.⁴⁸² By the beginning of August, though, he was said to have ‘entirely recovered’, a development that threatened to upset the court’s tidy explanation that he had been removed because of his poor health.⁴⁸³ Subsequent efforts to explain that he had requested to be released from his duties during his indisposition failed to convince and by the early autumn he was complaining that he had still not received formal notice of his displacement.⁴⁸⁴

Leeds failed to recover his posts and a new episode of illness appears to have prevented him resuming his seat in the House until a month into the new session. He finally took his seat on 19 Dec. 1699 and was thereafter present on 58 per cent of all sitting days for the 1699-1700 session. On 1 Feb. 1700 he voted in favour of continuing the East India Company as a corporation and on 8 Feb. he registered his dissent at the resolution to put the question whether the Scots’ colony at Darien was a threat to England’s plantation trade. On 23 Feb. he supported adjourning into a committee of the whole for closer consideration of the East India Company bill. In April he appears to have adopted an inconsistent attitude to the Irish grants resumption bill (of which he was named a manager in three conferences held between 9 and 10 April). Although he spoke in favour of the measure, he voted against its passage, although he was not among those subscribing the accompanying protest.

By the close of the session reports circulated that Leeds was to be recalled to office as part of a wider move in favour of the Tories.⁴⁸⁵ Such rumours were repeated towards the end of the year with Leeds said (again) to be on the point of being reappointed to the lord presidency.⁴⁸⁶ Leeds took his seat three weeks into the new Parliament on 28 Feb. 1701, and was present on 31 per cent of all sitting days for the brief February 1701 Parliament. Midway through March he explained his continued attendance as being only ‘in compliance with the desire of some lords who have pressed me to take some share with them in endeavouring to have discovered the projectors of that pernicious partition treaty’ and he complained that he was thoroughly exhausted by the effort.⁴⁸⁷ Reluctant or not he was active in the House both speaking in debates and setting his hand to a series of protests. On 8 Mar. he subscribed the protest at the resolution to address the king to ask for the suspension of Captain John Norris^‡ suspension to be lifted and on 14 Mar. he spoke out against the Partition Treaty. He then subscribed two protests against the measure on 15 Mar. and on 20 Mar. protested again at the resolution not to send the address relating to the treaty to the Commons for their concurrence. Although out of office, Leeds retained considerable interest. In May he was said to have been responsible for barring the selection of John Methuen^‡ as lord keeper in succession to Somers and to have recommended the appointment of Sir Nathan Wright instead. Leeds’ former impeachment proceedings were cited in the Commons during debates concerning the forthcoming trials of the Whig lords.⁴⁸⁸ Their acquittal the following month proved accidentally beneficial to Leeds as it resulted in all impeachments pending (including his own) being discharged.⁴⁸⁹

Following the close of the session Leeds prepared for his usual journey to his Yorkshire estates. He was delayed by weight of personal business and, shortly before setting out, drew to the attention of his daughter-in-law, Lady Carmarthen, a threat to her property posed by the resolution of some of her husband’s creditors to recover their losses. Advising her to use caution about who was admitted to her home and to deposit her valuables with her brother-in-law, Coke, Leeds left Lady Carmarthen to her fate and set out for the north.⁴⁹⁰ He had returned by the late summer and in September 1701 he was summoned to a private audience with the king, which was said to have lasted for an hour. Later that year he presented the address from the town of Leeds (to the surprise of Charles Boyle*, 2nd earl of Burlington, who had expected to do so himself).⁴⁹¹ Early the following year, ‘the novelists of the town’ put it about (again) that Leeds was to be restored to office, but nothing came of it and in spite of such signs of growing interest Leeds’ attendance of the ensuing session was cursory.⁴⁹² Having taken his seat in the new short-lived 1701-2 Parliament on 30 Dec. he was present on just seven occasions (seven per cent of the whole) prior to the dissolution.

The accession of Queen Anne made little immediate impact on Leeds’ prospects of returning to office. He was restored to the Privy Council but otherwise not granted a post in the administration.⁴⁹³ In March he joined two other members of the council in taking their places at the board, but rumours of his imminent appointment as lord chamberlain that circulated towards the end of June proved to be illusory.⁴⁹⁴ Before the new Parliament met, Leeds wrote to Robert Harley*, later earl of Oxford, recommending the son of the mayor of St Albans to him as his chaplain, ‘in case you be elected Speaker… (as I hope you will be).’⁴⁹⁵ Two days after taking his seat on 21 Oct. 1702 (after which he attended a little over a third of all sitting days) he wrote to one of his daughters noting in approving tones Sir Edward Seymour’s ‘very good and bold speech for the Church of England’ and taking great relish in remarking the dejected condition of the Whigs.⁴⁹⁶ No doubt one reason for his renewed optimism was the prospect of a reinvigorated Tory party working to his advantage in his efforts to secure the reversion of the office of auditor of the exchequer for his son, Carmarthen, over the claims of Charles Montagu*, (now become Baron Halifax). Their rivalry resulted in words being exchanged during the course of the occasional conformity bill debates, following which Carmarthen demanded satisfaction from Halifax on his father’s behalf.⁴⁹⁷ The dispute persisted into the following year but without a satisfactory resolution for either party.

Given his support for the Church it is unsurprising that Leeds was estimated by Nottingham as likely to vote in favour of the occasional conformity bill at the beginning of 1703 and on 16 Feb. he voted against adhering to the Lords’ amendment to the penalty clause. On 7 Jan. he presented the House with Robert Squire’s^‡ petition in answer to one submitted by Wharton for a writ of error over a dispute relating to lead mines in Swaledale.⁴⁹⁸ He then subscribed the protest of 22 Jan. against the resolution to dismiss Squire’s petition. Besides such matters, the year also saw Leeds increasingly preoccupied by family difficulties. In May he expressed himself pleased to learn that Rutland seemed confident of his good intentions as he was concerned that there had been a cooling off between them.⁴⁹⁹ More important were the growing tensions between Leeds and his heir. He wrote in fierce terms to Carmarthen, who had plunged the family into crisis by his decision to live openly with his mistress, Mary Morton, expostulating ‘I fear the devil has taken such strong possession of you that there is scarce any room left for hopes of that reformation.’ Carmarthen’s indebtedness was an additional worry and Leeds complained that he had been compelled to alter his settlement for a third time as a result of Carmarthen’s behaviour. He continued to chide his wayward heir, ‘all these matters are inconsiderable in comparison with the concern of your soul which must perish eternally for your being guilty of so much perfidiousness and falseness to God as well as to your wife and parents.’⁵⁰⁰ Leeds continued his efforts to bring Carmarthen back into line over the summer, though he confided to one correspondent that he despaired ‘of his reformation unless some course can be taken against the woman’, whom Carmarthen had taken to describing as his marchioness even though his wife was still living.⁵⁰¹ Such dramas appear to have taken their toll and in August he fell sick once again. Early in the autumn his duchess was also said to be on the point of death, though she lingered until into the following year.⁵⁰²

In advance of the new session, Leeds was forecast by Charles Spencer*, 3rd earl of Sunderland, in two assessments drawn up in November as being likely once again to support the occasional conformity bill. Leeds then proved Sunderland right by taking his seat on 14 Dec. and voting in favour of the bill: the only day on which he attended during the entirety of the session. He also registered two dissents, first at the resolution not to give the bill a second reading and second at the resolution to throw the measure out. The death of his duchess at the beginning of January 1704 no doubt deterred Leeds from any further involvement in Parliament for the remainder of the session. In mid February he was said to have begun the composition of his memoirs, inspired by the recent publication of those by Edward Hyde*, earl of Clarendon, the former lord chancellor. At the same time he removed to the house of his son-in-law, Thomas Herbert*, 8th earl of Pembroke, in Holborn and it was not until the beginning of March that he resumed public appearances.⁵⁰³ Further family disappointments arose in the course of the year. In the summer his daughter, Lady Plymouth, married her chaplain Philip Bisse*, later bishop of St Davids and Hereford, ‘to the no small grief of her ancient father.’⁵⁰⁴ He was on a list of lords (and Members of the Commons) drawn up by Nottingham in 1704, which perhaps indicates support over the ‘Scotch Plot’.

Leeds again attended just one day of the new session (24 Oct. 1704) but in his absence he was noted among those thought likely to support the Tack. On 23 Nov. he was excused at a call of the House. On 30 Jan. 1705, in spite of their fraught relations, he registered his proxy with Carmarthen, which was vacated by the close.⁵⁰⁵ An assessment of peers’ expected allegiance relating to the succession recorded Leeds as ‘uncertain’, though it seems unlikely that he would have been sympathetic to a Stuart restoration without a clear undertaking from the Pretender that he would uphold the Church of England. At the end of June Leeds retreated to his Yorkshire estates, where he stayed till the beginning of the autumn.⁵⁰⁶ The general election that summer saw his interest continuing to hold firm even in those areas far removed from his immediate field of operations at Kiveton. He was said to have been ‘a friend’ to Browne Willis^‡ at Buckingham, who was returned following the decision of Sir Richard Temple^‡ to sit for the county.⁵⁰⁷ In neighbouring Bedfordshire, a list of clergy voters in the county compiled for the Whig candidate Lord Edward Russell^‡ included one of Leeds’ chaplains, Mr ‘Hotckis’ [Hodges?], incumbent of Caddington, among those ‘votes which appear desperate’.⁵⁰⁸ The assessment proved prescient and at the poll, Lord Edward was driven into third place in the face of a strong Tory advance backed by the local clergy.

Leeds took his seat in the new Parliament on 25 Oct. 1705 but attended just nine days in the session (just over nine per cent of the whole), combining his occasional appearances in the House with attendance at the court of the mine adventurers company.⁵⁰⁹ He was marked excused at a call of the House on 12 Nov. and failed to resume his place until 4 December. Two days later during the church in danger debates, he insisted that not only did he consider the church in danger and that it would remain so without the act against occasional conformity, but ‘that the queen had in discourse with him, declared herself of that opinion.’⁵¹⁰ He then divided predictably enough with those convinced the church was in danger and was one of the peers to subscribe the protest at the failure to carry the resolution.⁵¹¹

At the beginning of 1706 Leeds resolved to abandon work on his memoir and in its place he set about composition of a reply to White Kennett^†, the future bishop of Peterborough’s Compleat History of England, which was in turn later put aside in favour of publication of his correspondence as a means of justifying his actions in office. Leeds’ response to Kennett’s work included a series of refutations of some of Kennett’s assertions, including ‘his false and impossible story about my vote’ concerning Duncombe.⁵¹² In March he sought to improve his financial situation by converting his stock of £4,000 in the mine adventurers company into an annuity of £240. Leeds quit London for his estate at Kiveton towards the end of May 1706. He remained there until early October when he returned to London to see about making further alterations to his will. Leeds spent the majority of the remainder of the year at Wimbledon and attended the House on just one day at the close of the year when he was also one of those present at a service of thanksgiving at St Paul’s.⁵¹³ The early part of 1707 was dominated by Leeds’ continuing effort to settle his will and with other family issues, including an effort to secure permission for his grandson, Lieutenant James Herbert^‡, to serve on active duty even though he was still underage.⁵¹⁴

Leeds failed to attend the third session of April 1707 at all and was consequently uninvolved in the parliamentary debates surrounding the passage of the Union treaty. The summer found him once again on his estates in Yorkshire.⁵¹⁵ He finally resumed his place in the House on 23 Oct. 1707 after which he attended on just under 18 per cent of all sitting days. The following summer he was noted as a Tory in a list of peers’ party affiliations. In spite of his failure to play an active role in the debates surrounding Union, Leeds took a close interest in the elections for the Scottish representative members, not least because his son, Carmarthen, possessed a vote by virtue of his Scots viscountcy of Dunblane. Leeds received reports from Daniel Defoe towards the end of June on the condition of Scotland and the same month he put pressure on Carmarthen to cast his vote in favour of John Ker*, duke of Roxburgh [S], against Carmarthen’s own inclination.⁵¹⁶ The summer of 1708 was marked by further family developments as Leeds successfully brought to a conclusion a match between his granddaughter, Elizabeth Herbert, and Sir John Cotton^‡, that had been in train since the spring.⁵¹⁷ He then made his by now regular retreat to Yorkshire for the duration of the summer months.⁵¹⁸ From there he joined with one Mr Bates in providing a mortgage for Leominster for £5,000 secured on lands in Sheppey, though as Leeds confessed in his journal the arrangement was ‘but a fiction it being in trust for me.’⁵¹⁹

Leeds returned to London in time to take his seat in the House on 27 Nov. 1708. His attendance was again sporadic, with him present on just five days in the whole session in spite of being in London for the majority of the period from the beginning of January to the middle of April 1709.⁵²⁰ During this time he appears to have been engaged with business relating to the mine adventurers and on 21 Feb. 1709 he subscribed £6,000 to the Bank of England in the name of William Hammond of Wimbledon (the sum made up of £5,000 of his own money and £1,000 of Cotton’s).⁵²¹ Three months later, two thirds of this sum was lent to Sir Nathaniel Herne.⁵²² Towards the end of May 1709 rumours circulated that Philip Bisse was either to be advanced to the bishopric of Chichester or to be made a peer, his expected promotion in part owing to a recent reconciliation between Leeds and his daughter.⁵²³ In the event neither proved to be correct and it was not until 1712 that Bisse was finally advanced as bishop of Hereford. Leeds spent much of the summer of 1709 in a continual progress between the court and the seats of various kinsmen. By September he appears to have resolved to re-establish himself with a central London base and so took a lease on Lindsey House from his kinsman, James Bertie^‡.⁵²⁴ In November he moved his household from its quarters in Wimbledon to the new London residence and that winter various rumours circulated that Leeds was either already or on the point of being married to ‘a gouty lady’, but these were all denied.⁵²⁵

The Sacheverell trial finally roused Leeds from a period of almost a year away from the Lords. On 10 Jan. 1710 he resumed his place in the House and attended on almost 40 per cent of all sitting days. Leeds was said to have wept openly during Sacheverell’s speech before Parliament on 7 and 14 Mar. he registered his dissent at the resolution not to adjourn the proceedings. Despite his clear support for Sacheverell, Leeds joined several peers in quitting the chamber prior to the vote being taken on whether or nor the words judged criminal needed to be included within the articles of impeachment, perhaps conscious of the potential distraction his presence could have caused given his own experiences.⁵²⁶ If this was so, his concern did not prevent him from subscribing the accompanying protest. On 16 Mar. he delivered a long speech of his own justifying his role in the Revolution while arguing in favour of Sacheverell’s interpretation of resistance theory.⁵²⁷ Had the rising against James II not succeeded, he averred, it would merely have been a rebellion.⁵²⁸ He then protested twice more against the resolutions that the Commons had made good the first article of impeachment. As expected, Leeds then voted in favour of acquitting Sacheverell, although his conclusion that he would ‘vote the doctor a fool or a madman, but wondered where the high crimes or misdemeanours were’ appeared less than wholeheartedly supportive.⁵²⁹ He then registered his dissent at the guilty verdict.

Attendance at the Sacheverell trial appears to have taken its toll on Leeds’ health.⁵³⁰ He had presumably recovered by the beginning of May when he presented addresses to the queen from the West Riding and from Lichfield; on 20 May he presented Sir George Cooke^‡ to the queen with an address from Doncaster and on 29 May he introduced Robert Sacheverell^‡, who presented the queen with the address from Nottingham.⁵³¹ The same month there was talk of a reconciliation being facilitated between Leeds and Rochester by Ormond, no doubt part of the broader resurgence in the Tory party at the time.⁵³² Such developments may have encouraged Sunderland to investigate the presence of a large cache of correspondence from the Pretender at Leeds’ London residence in the hopes of tarnishing Leeds’ reputation. Although it seems unlikely that Leeds was directly in touch with the exiled court, the implication was that members of his household may have been and the information about the presence of the letters appears to have come from Carmarthen.⁵³³

Such slights do not appear to have prevented serious consideration of Leeds returning to office in the summer of 1710 as part of the general reshaping of the administration under Robert Harley and Shrewsbury. At the beginning of June, the queen was said to have responded to a request made by James Hamilton*, 4th duke of Hamilton [S] for the post of lord privy seal in the new government that it was earmarked for Leeds.⁵³⁴ Later the same month the duchess of Marlborough was said to have protested at the prospect of her son-in-law Sunderland being displaced by someone recommended by Leeds. The idea prompted her to remind the queen of Leeds’ previously odious deportment towards her and she continued to complain at the removal of the Whigs and their replacement by the likes of Leeds and his allies.⁵³⁵ In spite of rumours later in the summer that Leeds was actively seeking appointment as lord privy seal and his own journal noting ‘a conference of consequence with her majesty’ held in June, neither the queen nor Robert Harley appear to have been overly eager to see the duke returned to office.⁵³⁶ Leeds was thus forced to be satisfied with lesser returns. In July he was promised the continuance of his pension from the post office for life. Peter Wentworth noted a discussion with a Mr Scarbrough about reports that Leeds had waited on the queen to advise her to continue the present Parliament. According to Scarbrough ‘that was a damned lie’ and Leeds remained adamant that a new Parliament was absolutely necessary.⁵³⁷ Whichever was truly the case, in September Leeds was present at council when the writs for the new Parliament were ordered.⁵³⁸ Later the same month he was offered a further sop by being restored to the lieutenancy of the East Riding.⁵³⁹

Leeds returned to London early in October when he was assessed by Harley as a likely supporter of the new ministry. As such Leeds was active in seeking information on how the change of administration had been greeted in Hanover from one of his contacts there and he later made a point of writing directly to the elector and dowager electress, stressing his adherence to their interests and his long-standing support for the Hanoverian succession.⁵⁴⁰ During that month he divided his time between London and attendance on the queen at Hampton Court, whom he petitioned for a recorder to be appointed for the town of Leeds.⁵⁴¹ He was also present at a dinner attended by Harley and other dignitaries though he caused some amusement to the person placed next to him, as Leeds was by then notorious for not eating owing to his throat disorder.⁵⁴² Having resumed his seat in the new Parliament on 25 Nov. 1710, Leeds attended on approximately 36 per cent of all sitting days in the 1710-11 session, his presence in the House once again interrupted by bouts of ill health.⁵⁴³ On 11 Jan. 1711 during the proceedings over the petition from Henri de Massue de Ruvigny, the earl of Galway [I], and some of the other army commanders concerning the conduct of the war in Spain, Leeds protested that the petition was irregular and that no notice should be taken of it.⁵⁴⁴ The following day, he intervened again during the debate over the employment of the term ‘ministers’ or ‘cabinet council’ to insist that as the queen had given members of the cabinet leave to communicate what they knew of the matter, ‘no offence could be taken if any person cleared himself.’⁵⁴⁵ Leeds attempted to take advantage of his improved position to recommend Henry Bertie^‡ for one of the expected vacancies in the customs commission or on the council of trade in early March 1711.⁵⁴⁶ As a further indication of his continuing close relations with the Berties, Leeds was entrusted with the proxy of Henry Bertie’s brother, Montagu Venables Bertie*, 2nd earl of Abingdon, a few days later on 12 March. The month saw a contraction in Leeds’ old circle of acquaintance with the deaths in quick succession of Charles Bertie and his steward at Lindsey House. Leeds also appears to have continued to attempt to protect the interests of his family from the more reckless behaviour of his heir by taking out ‘an exemplification of the sentence pronounced in the spiritual court’ confirming Carmarthen’s marriage to his marchioness.⁵⁴⁷

By April 1711 Leeds appears to have grown frustrated with Harley’s regime.⁵⁴⁸ A desire to keep Leeds in line may have given rise to rumours both that he was to be restored to his old post of lord president and that the queen had resolved to hold meetings of the council at Hampton Court to make things easier for the almost octogenarian duke, though age did not prevent him from being one of the peers to bear the pall at Rochester’s funeral in May.⁵⁴⁹ In the event, the appointment failed to be made but Leeds continued to profess his support for Harley’s administration and in June, having failed to be present when Oxford (as Harley had since become) was sworn in as lord treasurer at the exchequer, he assured him that as he intended ‘to pay you my real services I hope you will excuse me if I fail sometimes in ceremonious ones.’⁵⁵⁰

The summer of 1711 found Leeds as eager as ever to secure preferment for his friends and followers, but he was unable to secure a garter for Henry Somerset*, 2nd duke of Beaufort, his prospective grandson-in-law.⁵⁵¹ He was no less interested in acquiring places for himself and in mid-July he waited on the queen in the hopes of persuading her to appoint him to the lieutenancy of all Yorkshire as well as to the wardenship of Sherwood Forest.⁵⁵² His interest in re-establishing himself in his native county persisted into the late summer when he wrote to Oxford to warn him of Wharton’s efforts to buy up burgages in the county. The threat to the Tories in Yorkshire offered Leeds a further bargaining tool for persuading Oxford and the queen to restore him to his former lieutenancies, which, he explained, ‘King William took unjustly from me’.⁵⁵³

The remaining weeks of September saw Leeds continuing to attempt to exact what he desired from the administration. On discovering the queen’s desire that garrisons should be entrusted to those with foreign service experience he resigned his claims to being restored to the governorship of Hull, only to press instead for appointment to the lieutenancies of the West Riding and to Nottinghamshire seeing that his seat was ‘not a mile distant from that county.’⁵⁵⁴ In October he was finally offered the chief justiceship in eyre for Trent north, which appears to have satisfied him for the time being.⁵⁵⁵ His appointment was achieved in the teeth of bitter opposition from the duchess of Newcastle, who had pleaded with Oxford to take the place himself to protect her from ‘such a man’ as Leeds, ‘who has a particular malice to me.’⁵⁵⁶

Having exhausted himself with his constant calls for preferment, Leeds once more gave way to ill health leaving him unable to take his seat in the new session.⁵⁵⁷ At the beginning of December he was noted among those peers who should be canvassed in advance of the No Peace without Spain motion but on 7 Dec. he entrusted his proxy to Beaufort, which was not vacated until Leeds’ return to the House the following June. In his absence, he was reckoned a likely supporter of permitting Hamilton to take his seat as duke of Brandon. His absence from the House did not prevent him from continuing to plague Oxford with a series of requests for places for his kin (particularly Beaufort) and in the middle of January 1712 he also sought the queen’s assistance in his efforts to recover some of the possessions of Charles Mallett, a bastard son of Viscount Latimer, who had recently been murdered out in the Levant.⁵⁵⁸ The beginning of the year found Leeds once more concerned with family settlements, with a view to excluding his heir, Carmarthen, from a controlling interest following his death.⁵⁵⁹

Leeds’ 80th birthday merited a glowing tribute in the Tory newspaper, the Post Boy, which noted that, ‘as there are few of quality that have arrived to those years, so there are none who have been more serviceable to the Church and state.’ The paean continued with espousing the wish that Leeds might live to see ‘the utter extirpation of whiggism and its defenders.’⁵⁶⁰ Although absent from the attendance list that day, on 28 May 1712, Leeds was noted among those who supported the ministry by voting against the motion to overturn the duke of Ormond’s ‘restraining orders.’ Leeds’ first recorded sitting in the session occurred just over a week later on 6 June, almost a year to the day since his previous appearance, and he thereafter proceeded to attend on a further seven days before quitting the chamber for the last time (just over 6 per cent of the whole). On 12 June he had a conference with the queen at Kensington about ‘some removes of officers in her guards’ and following the close, he continued to play an active role at court, presenting a number of addresses to the queen and petitioning for further rewards for his family.⁵⁶¹ On 2 July he introduced an address from the corporation of Leeds to the queen, which was followed by a lengthy and bibulous session at a local tavern.⁵⁶² Shortly after, Leeds set out for his estates in Yorkshire.⁵⁶³ He was taken ill en route while staying with his son-in-law, Leominster, at Easton Neston in Northamptonshire, where he died on 26 July, ‘to the great grief of all good men’ having been seized with violent wretching and vomiting.⁵⁶⁴ He was succeeded in the title by his Carmarthen, as 2nd duke of Leeds.

Leeds was buried, at his direction, in the family crypt at Harthill in Yorkshire. In his will he made provision for portions for two of his granddaughters amounting to £11,500 as well as a series of bequests amounting to over £500 to kinsmen and retainers. He expressly enjoined his executors (Danby and Bishop Bisse) to ‘avoid all insignificant pomp and ceremony and particularly not to permit my body to be (as it is commonly called) laid in state.’

Leeds appears to have been more admired than liked. Both Charles II and William III found his services at times of immense value but both were more than ready to be rid of him when the time came. Queen Mary seems to have felt the same recording how he was one ‘to whom I must ever own great obligations, yet of a temper I can never like.’⁵⁶⁵ His constant manoeuvring and cajoling clearly irritated some and bemused others but the essential direction of his policies was simple enough: financial stability and the establishment of a happy medium between the factions and parties. Given the former it is ironic that his financial schemes tended to be byzantine in complexity and to have offered ample scope for more or less dubious practices; for all the good intentions of the latter, it was still as the framer of a court party that he most clearly recognized, not as a figure of honest mediation. His efforts to build an Anglican loyalist party under Charles II always appeared compromised by the king’s refusal to commit clearly to such a scheme. At the heart of Leeds’ achievements was the construction of his vast network of kinsmen and retainers made possible by his keen eye for a good marriage. In spite of this and in spite of his longevity what is most striking is the degree to which his real impact was telescoped within two relatively brief phases of his lengthy career: from 1674 to 1679 and from 1688 to 1694, and that in neither period did he manage to achieve his objectives. Imprisonment robbed him of greater significance in the latter years of Charles II and the rise of the Junto prevented him retaining his position at the court of William III. By the succession of Anne he was a creature from a different age, impossible to ignore but no longer a serious contender for real power in spite of rumours of office that continued to circulate up to his death.

Described by Abel Boyer as a man of ‘bright parts and spirits’, Paget was the sole surviving son of one of William III’s longest-serving diplomats. He owed his ultimate succession to the Paget barony to the untimely death of his older brother, William, in 1684, while his marriage two years later to the heiress of the Catesbys of Whiston brought him additional interest in Northamptonshire.⁴ His father’s almost continuous absence on foreign embassies during the 1690s meant that it was left to Paget to manage the family interest, concentrated in Staffordshire and Middlesex. Over the course of his life he built up further extensive landholdings in Staffordshire, Buckinghamshire and (in the last years of his life) in Wales. Despite being related to a number of significant political brokers in Staffordshire (including Philip Foley^‡, Richard Hampden^‡ and Sir Henry Ashurst^‡), Paget was not well known in the area (being resident for the majority of the time at the family seat of West Drayton), and initially he proved to be reluctant to stand for Parliament himself. He withdrew from the 1693 by-election but eventually stood successfully for the county in the 1695 election and was thereafter returned for the seat at each subsequent election until his elevation to the Lords.⁵

Paget soon distinguished himself in the Commons, speaking ‘beyond all others’ in one debate in May 1701 in defence of the Dutch and the safeguarding of Protestantism in Europe.⁶ Having been appointed to the council of Prince George*, of Denmark, duke of Cumberland, in April 1704, Paget was offered a foreign posting of his own in May 1705 when he was approached about the vacant office of envoy at Vienna.⁷ Like his father and three others, he refused the employment, which was eventually only accepted by the sixth choice candidate (Charles Spencer*, 3rd earl of Sunderland).⁸ Paget’s father’s reason for refusing to accept the mission was said to have been owing to the ministry’s refusal to offer him an earldom in return.⁹

In other areas Henry Paget and his father do not appear to have agreed so readily. While the 7th Baron was a close associate of the Whig party, Henry Paget meandered from the Whigs to the Tories, and in 1710 he accepted office in the ministry of Robert Harley*, later earl of Oxford, as one of the commissioners of the treasury. Some speculated that his appointment was truly intended as ‘recompense’ for his father, ‘who has been so long ambassador at Constantinople [and], who seems to desire none’, but he was also perceived to be a valuable bridge between the moderate Whigs and the Tories.¹⁰ Both Harley and the queen hoped that his inclusion would be ‘agreeable’ to the lord privy seal, John Pelham Holles*, by then duke of Newcastle, with whom Paget enjoyed a cordial friendship, though his acceptance of the place provoked William Cavendish*, 2nd duke of Devonshire, to withdraw his support for Paget at the forthcoming election.¹¹ The same year Paget was forced to appeal to John Churchill*, duke of Marlborough, to use his interest to secure the release of his son, Thomas Catesby Paget^‡, who had been seized by French troops while travelling through Germany and incarcerated at Luxembourg. Paget speculated whether it would be worth commissioning the young man so that he could be exchanged as an officer but his suggestion was rejected.¹² The dissolution of the treasury commission in 1711 left Oxford (as Harley had since become) desperate to find places for the former commissioners and while at one stage it was rumoured that Paget was to be appointed secretary of state, in the event he was forced to be content with the seemingly innocuous post of captain of the yeomen of the guard (captain of the beefeaters as Ralph Bridges reported it dismissively) and a place on the Privy Council.¹³

Newcastle’s death in 1711 involved Paget, one of his co-executors, in a protracted dispute with the duke’s widow and his daughter, Lady Henrietta Holles (later countess of Oxford) over the validity of the duke’s will.¹⁴ The case persisted until 1719, when the remaining litigants finally accepted a compromise proposed by the principal beneficiary, Thomas Pelham Holles^†, duke of Newcastle. The crisis that faced the ministry in the winter of 1711-12 proved to be the catalyst for Paget’s early elevation to the Lords as one of the dozen new creations engineered by Oxford. His reputation as a man with both Tory and Whig associates perhaps also contributed to his selection.¹⁵ It might also have been significant that his kinsman and Staffordshire neighbour, Thomas Foley*, was also ennobled at this time as Baron Foley.

On 1 Jan. 1712 Paget was created Baron Burton. He took his seat in the House the following day introduced between his contemporary, John West*, 6th Baron De la Warr, and Charles Boyle*, Baron Boyle (earl of Orrery [I]). Thereafter he attended on a further 73 days in the session until the prorogation in July (approximately 66 per cent of the whole). On 28 May he rallied to the ministry in voting against the address seeking the reversal of orders preventing James Butler*, 2nd duke of Ormond, from engaging the French.

The death of Burton’s father in February 1713 enabled him to assume his place as 8th Baron Paget at the upper end of the barons’ bench on 10 Mar. (a prorogation day). The 7th Baron had made clear his disagreements with his heir in his will by conveying the majority of his unentailed possessions to his nephew, Thomas Paget^‡, and his house in Bloomsbury Square to his housekeeper. Although the contents of his seats at Drayton and Beaudesert were bequeathed to his son, the 7th Baron stipulated that this bequest was conditional on his successor not making ‘any disturbance’ about the will. The former lord’s treatment of his son and grandson (who was left a niggardly £20) provoked scandal in society, but even so it was noted that the new lord paid scant attention to his father’s wishes and ‘seized on everything’.¹⁶

Noted in a list compiled by Jonathan Swift as being likely to support Oxford’s ministry in March 1713, Paget took his seat at the opening of the new session on 9 Apr. 1713 after which he was present on approximately 73 per cent of all sitting days. On 17 Apr. the House heard the petition of George Ball, who was seeking the reversal of a chancery decree made in favour of Paget, Sir James Lane, 2nd Viscount Lanesborough [I], Henry Petty^‡, Baron (later earl of) Shelburne [I] and several others, relating to the control of a brass works at Esher, of which Ball was a former employee. Ball’s petition was dismissed a month later on 13 May. In the interim, on 29 Apr., Paget put in his answer to the allegations made by the dowager duchess of Newcastle in the continuing dispute over the duke’s will in the court of delegates, contradicting her assertions that the document was spurious.¹⁷ Despite early expectation that he would remain loyal to the ministry, and Oxford’s own estimate that Paget would vote in favour of confirming the eighth and ninth articles of the French treaty of commerce, Paget appears to have opposed the measure; though (if he did) unlike his colleague on the Privy Council, Hugh Cholmondeley*, earl of Cholmondeley, he was not removed from office for his disobedience.¹⁸ On 29 June Paget was successful in moving for a clause to be added to the opening of the address to the queen proposed by Thomas Wharton*, earl of Wharton, requesting that she employ her interest to have the Pretender removed from the duke of Lorrain’s lands. Paget’s addition thanked her pointedly ‘for the care already taken.’¹⁹

Paget wasted no time in making plain the price of his continued support for Oxford. As early as mid April he had written requesting promotion in the peerage to an earldom (something for which his family had been angling since at least 1705). Following the dissolution in August 1713, Paget repeated the request. He did so again six days later and at regular intervals over the summer. Although no progress was made in his promotion at this point, Oxford wrote to his brother, Edward Harley^‡, describing Paget as one ‘whose friendship you know is to be depended on’ and towards the close of the month Paget seems to have been satisfied with Oxford’s efforts on his behalf. In September Paget took the opportunity of again reminding Oxford of his promise and at the same time sought his interest in procuring a living for his son’s tutor, which was shortly to be vacated by the appointment of George Verney*, 12th Baron Willoughby de Broke, to the deanery of Windsor.²⁰ Oxford proved non-committal on both points, and on the latter he merely remarked, ‘if Lord Willoughby be willing to part with it I hope you will find no difficulty though I seldom see the clergy easy to resign.’²¹ The elections for Staffordshire of that month were uncontested, the two former Members standing aside in favour of two newcomers, Henry Vernon^‡ and Ralph Sneyd^‡.²² Paget, who appears to have been at Drayton for most of the summer, presumably acquiesced in their election, though he would later recommend in advance of the 1715 election that Vernon be put out from the commission of the peace for abusing his office by canvassing in favour of Tory candidates.²³

Paget took his seat at the opening of the new Parliament on 16 Feb. 1714. He introduced his former colleague at the treasury, Robert Benson*, as Baron Bingley and was thereafter present for a little under half of all sitting days. Three days after taking his seat, he sent Oxford a petulant missive enquiring once again about his promised earldom:

Your lordship having told me eight or nine months ago, that her Majesty had been pleased to consent to grant me the favour I had (by your kind promise) desired for myself, and your lordship having after that promised me your good offices for the dispatch of it, and very particularly in your letter from Wimple about six months ago, sent me word you would fix that matter at your return to Windsor from that place. I hope you’ll allow me to be surprised that I should at the distance of time have any occasion to solicit for what I thought would some time ago have been finished. But your lordship saying very little upon that subject to me when I saw you last at Windsor, and saying nothing about it since my coming to town, I cannot but think myself treated with great unkindness.²⁴

Oxford’s continuing prevarication elicited yet another bad-tempered missive from Paget on 22 February. By now he was convinced that Oxford was playing him false: ‘since the queen … consented to grant what I desired so long ago, nothing but your forgetfulness of, and unkindness to me can prevent confirming the favour.’²⁵

Despite their steadily worsening relations over Oxford’s inability or refusal to procure Paget his earldom, between April and May Oxford and Paget were involved in extended negotiations over Paget’s appointment to an embassy to Hanover aimed at preventing the electoral prince (George Augustus*, later King George II) from taking his seat in the House as duke of Cambridge.²⁶ Although Oxford wrote to his cousin, Thomas Harley^‡ on 13 Apr. announcing Paget’s nomination and despite his optimistic appraisal that ‘this quality and character must please’, a number of issues gave Paget pause in accepting the undertaking. The modest allowance he was to receive was one, though he insisted that he would ‘scorn to refuse going’ for that reason. Another was his demand that his mission should be of short duration, ‘otherwise my affairs won’t permit me to go’, but by far the most contentious sticking point was his continuing quest for promotion in the peerage, which he insisted should be conferred before his departure.²⁷ Suspecting that members of the ministry opposed to his undertaking the mission were deliberately placing obstacles in his path, Paget once more gave vent to his exasperation in a letter to Oxford, in which he complained:

If I understand your lordship’s letter of last night, ill offices are doing me with her majesty to prevent my going in her service to Hanover, if that be the case though you call the persons doing it my familiar acquaintance they must since they must be ministers be more your lordship’s acquaintance than mine. I hope who ever they are that act that part, they will not be mean enough to represent me otherwise to the queen than as I am; one always proud to show the utmost duty to her commands; and pleased to be employed in her service.²⁸

Paget was correct in detecting a fissure within the ministry. While Oxford was eager that he should undertake the mission, Henry St John*, Viscount Bolingbroke, was determined to scupper the plan and it was openly reported that in this matter Bolingbroke had got the better of Oxford.²⁹ The continuing impasse elicited another impatient letter from Paget at the beginning of May 1714 in which he complained, ‘none of your letters mentions anything about the title’, and on 8 May he let fly a further exasperated letter questioning why he had still not received the peerage, which he believed the queen had consented to months before. Another letter of the same day announced that his wife had fallen sick with smallpox, which would further impede his ability to set out on the embassy.³⁰ Concern for his wife was clearly secondary and the following day he again laid out his grievances at large:

I am a good deal surprised that there is still difficulty made in granting me the title. ’Tis what I had never asked and what I as little thought there would have been need of great solicitation to have procured, for several reasons; but since ‘tis not done, and so much pains have been taken to make it talked of about the town as a thing done, I must be of opinion it is at this time refused purely to convince me ‘tis the desire of those who advise the queen that I neither have the favour of her majesty or the kindness of my friends about her, and in plain English telling me they refuse me these assurances that I may be obliged to desire not to go that service.³¹

Despite this, on 11 May it was confidently predicted that Paget would still undertake the mission.³² Following further recriminatory letters over the course of the month, Paget at last decided against taking up the post, infuriated by Oxford’s eventual excuse that the promotion was not in ‘his province’ and that he ought instead to address his enquiries to the secretary of state, William Bromley^‡.³³ Oxford claimed to be taken aback by the vehemence of Paget’s criticism, lamenting his ‘misfortune that when I study most to express friendship and service not to succeed’.³⁴ Paget’s decision prompted the queen to write to Prince George explaining the delay in the arrival of the envoy as being owing to ‘an accident’ in Paget’s family but also offered her an opportunity of making plain her displeasure at his proposed journey, which she described as ‘dangerous to the tranquillity of my dominions’.³⁵ Paget’s withdrawal then cleared the way for Bolingbroke to secure the appointment of his candidate, Edward Hyde*, 3rd earl of Clarendon, to the Hanoverian embassy instead.³⁶

Paget’s irritation with Oxford did not unreservedly throw him into the hands of the opposition, and on 27 May 1714 he was noted by Daniel Finch*, 2nd earl of Nottingham, as doubtful on the question of the schism bill (perhaps a reflection of his Presbyterian roots and education at the hands of an ejected clergyman). The following month, on 22 June, Paget presented a petition to the House protesting against a new bill for making more effective a former act to make the river Trent navigable, perceiving it to be contrary to his and his tenants’ interests. Paget was well versed in the act having steered the original measure through the Commons in 1699 and overseen subsequent amendments. Theophilus Hastings*, 9th earl of Huntingdon, whose family’s concerns Paget had been at pains to accommodate in the original bill, presented a similar petition.³⁷ On 28 June the House resolved itself into a committee to consider the bill but as no chairman could be found, it rose without conducting any business and, following a series of adjournments, the bill was lost at the prorogation.³⁸

Paget attended on nine days of the brief fifteen-day session that met in the wake of the queen’s death in August. His decision not to take on the Hanoverian embassy earlier in the year proved beneficial for his relations with the new regime, and on 19 Oct. he was at last rewarded with the earldom of Uxbridge: one of 14 coronation peerages. Despite this clear demonstration of royal favour, Paget rapidly distanced himself from the new administration. He resigned the captaincy of the yeomen of the guard in September 1715 and the lieutenancy of Stafford in October (to which he had been appointed only in May). He also resumed friendly relations with Oxford.³⁹ For the remainder of his life he proved a consistent member of the opposition. Details of the second part of his career will be covered in the second phase of this work.

Uxbridge married for a second time in 1739, five years after the death of his first wife. The death of his only son and heir, Thomas Catesby Paget, (from 1713 styled Lord Paget) in 1742 meant that on Uxbridge’s own death the following year, it was his grandson, also named Henry Paget^†, who succeeded as 2nd earl of Uxbridge. In his will, composed in 1739, Uxbridge requested that he be buried at Hillingdon in a vault specially prepared for the purpose. Generous bequests of £12,000 apiece to All Souls and Worcester College, Oxford and of £10,000 to Captain Thomas Coram’s newly established Foundling Hospital and £2,000 to the hospital at Hyde Park Corner were all annulled in codicils that were appended between 1741 and 1743. The Oxford bequests were withdrawn entirely, while those to the Foundling Hospital and Hyde Park hospital were reduced to £2,000 and £1,000 respectively. Substantial sums of money and annuities were bequeathed to members of his family including grants of more than £6,000 to his wife in addition to the terms of her dower. Francis North^†, Baron North (later earl of Guilford), Sir Edmund Probyn and Sir Walter Bagot^‡ were appointed trustees, and Lady Uxbridge, Probyn and Uxbridge’s cousin, Sir William Irby^‡ (one of the principal beneficiaries of the will) were named executors.

The Pagets owed their rise under the Tudors to the loyal service of Sir William Paget^† (later Baron Paget), who was rewarded with extensive former monastic lands in Staffordshire, Buckinghamshire and Middlesex.⁵ Sir William displayed impressive political flexibility, acting for four of the five Tudor monarchs, including Queen Mary, who recognized his qualities despite his Protestantism. The rebellion and subsequent attainder of the Catholic Thomas Paget^†, 4th Baron Paget (sometimes referred to as the 3rd baron because his predecessor, the 2nd baron’s immediate heir, held the title as a baroness in her own right, but died as an infant), caused a brief hiatus in their fortunes. Even when the family estates were returned to William Paget, 5th Baron Paget, between 1597 and 1604, a punitive fee farm rent of £750 tore into his comparatively modest annual receipts of approximately £2,000. Financial uncertainty continued to plague the family well into the seventeenth century and goes some way towards explaining the 6th baron’s determination to secure a lucrative court office and his disgruntlement at his inability to do so.⁶

Through his marriage, Paget became attached to the extended families of Rich and Devereux. Paget’s sisters also made influential matches to prominent puritan grandees but the wayward Holland’s inability to maintain his interest at court reflected on his son-in-law.⁷ By the beginning of the Civil War, besides the lieutenancy of Buckinghamshire, Paget had only succeeded in acquiring the relatively minor office of keeper of New Lodge Walk in Windsor Forest (Holland being constable of the castle).⁸ His failure to secure more prominent office does not appear to have been a result of being ‘half-witted’ as William Cecil*, 2nd earl of Salisbury, was said to have taunted him.⁹

As with his father-in-law, Paget’s sympathies fluctuated during the progress of the Civil War, though it would be a mistake to assume that he always followed Holland’s lead.¹⁰ Having been confirmed as lord lieutenant of Buckinghamshire by Parliament, he ‘began to boggle, and was unfixed in his resolutions’.¹¹ Experiencing a dramatic change of heart, Paget rallied to the king at York, where he was understandably treated with considerable suspicion.¹² Although usually associated with the presbyterians it is possible that Paget’s conversion to the royalist cause at this time owed something to the influence of his chaplain, the uncompromising Laurence Womock*, later bishop of St Davids.

Paget raised a regiment of foot for service in the opening campaign of the war but his behaviour did little to alleviate the doubts of the royalists. In November 1644 he determined to desert Charles I for Parliament once more. Having handed himself over to his cousin Robert Devereux^†, 2nd earl of Essex, he was imprisoned briefly and fined for his misconduct but was shortly after permitted to return to London. In April 1645 he took the covenant.¹³ By 1648 his loyalties were once again in doubt. He was implicated in Holland’s rising during the second Civil War and he strenuously opposed the execution of the king.¹⁴ Despite this, and having survived his father-in-law’s fall, by the early 1650s Paget appears to have settled his conscience and determined to be ‘a good commonwealthsman’.¹⁵ In 1652 he was discharged from his sequestration by the provisions of the Act of Pardon and was allowed to reside at his house at West Drayton.¹⁶

By the Restoration, Paget’s stance had altered once again and he was now understood to be in favour of the king’s return. Despite his fluctuating loyalties, he was noted by Philip Wharton*, 4th Baron Wharton, as being one of those peers who had been ‘with the king’.¹⁷ Paget undoubtedly hoped to achieve some restitution from the new regime, his woeful financial situation being such that, despite supposedly enjoying an income of £3,000 p.a. (£1,000 of which was from lands in Staffordshire), after payment of debts and annuities he had a mere £23 to live on each year.¹⁸

Paget delayed taking his seat in the House until he was directly summoned to do so. He returned to the Lords on 16 May in company with John Lovelace*, 2nd Baron Lovelace, and Montagu Bertie*, 2nd earl of Lindsey, when he was named to the sessional committees for privileges and petitions. He sat for a little over half of the remainder of the Convention, during which he was named to a number of select committees. On 18 June he reported from the committee for privileges considering the case of Philip Stanhope*, 2nd earl of Chesterfield. In August he assumed the family responsibility for nominating one person to be excepted from the Act of Indemnity as propitiation for Holland’s execution. He took the curious step of naming John Blackwell^‡, who was already dead, ‘and would name no other’.¹⁹

Paget failed to sit during the second session of the Convention, perhaps being preoccupied with financial problems. Determined to get to grips with his finances, he began a lengthy legal tussle that year with Richard Sackville*, 5th earl of Dorset, and Sir Job Harby over the leasing of the customs on sea-coal.²⁰ Paget’s share had been inherited from his father-in-law, Holland.²¹ In October, Paget petitioned the king on the state of his finances, raising the particular problem of the fee-farm rent, but he appears to have been unsuccessful in obtaining any redress.²² In January 1661 he was included in a list of peers who had failed to pay their poll bills.²³

Paget’s electoral interest had declined in the years since the civil wars. His authority in Great Marlow, which had never been certain, was now barely apparent, but at the general election he employed his interest at Tamworth successfully on behalf of his steward, John Swinfen^‡.²⁴ He was also granted a minor ceremonial role at the coronation, officiating as assistant cupbearer.²⁵ On 8 May 1661 Paget took his seat in the first session of the Cavalier Parliament. He proved to be a relatively active member, attending approximately 65 per cent of sitting days, during which he was named to some 29 committees. On 14 May he was named to the committee considering the bill for the reversal of the attainder of Thomas Wentworth^†, earl of Strafford, a measure which he had been eager to see enacted 20 years before. In July he was believed to be opposed to Aubrey de Vere*, 20th earl of Oxford, in his efforts to secure the great chamberlaincy, perhaps indicating a preference for the presbyterian Lindsey.²⁶ In December Paget submitted a petition to the lord chancellor, Edward Hyde*, earl of Clarendon, over his ongoing attempt to secure the lease on the customs on coal.²⁷ On 6 Feb. 1662 he entered his protest at the resolution to restore Charles Stanley*, 8th earl of Derby, to his estates.²⁸ Paget was presumably well acquainted with the case, having been nominated to the committee considering Derby’s bill over the course of two sessions.²⁹ He also appears to have been an active member of the committee for drawing up an act repealing the acts of the Long Parliament.³⁰

Paget took his seat at the opening of the second session on 18 Feb. 1663. He was thereafter present for approximately 62 per cent of the session, during which he was named to 20 select committees. In common with many presbyterians, he was predicted as being a likely supporter of the attempt by George Digby*, 2nd earl of Bristol, to impeach Clarendon.³¹ On 19 Mar. he was again named to the committee considering the bill for repealing acts of the Long Parliament and on 4 Apr. he was nominated as one of those to attend the king to give thanks for his answer to the Lords’ petition concerning popish priests.

Paget took his seat in the new session on 16 Mar. 1664. He then proceeded to attend 94 per cent of all sitting days of the two-month session. Nominated to ten committees, in May he was entrusted with the proxy of his brother-in-law, Robert Rich*, 2nd earl of Holland, which was vacated by the close of the session. Paget’s increasing authority within the House may have been indicated by his chairing at least one of the sessions of the committee deliberating on the conventicles bill; as such he used his influence to attempt to ameliorate the bill’s likely effects on Protestant nonconformists.³² On 21 Apr. he was named to the committee examining the bill against gaming and on 10 May to that concerning the bill to continue the act for regulating the press.

Paget was absent without explanation at a call of the House on 7 Dec. 1664 but he resumed his seat ten days later and was named to a dozen committees over the course of the session. Absent for much of the following year and a half, in April 1666 he was one of those peers appointed to try Thomas Parker*, 15th Baron Morley and Monteagle, for murder, and concluded with the majority that Morley was guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter.³³ He took his seat once more on 26 Sept. 1666 but attended just three days during the whole 91-day session. At the instance of John Granville*, earl of Bath, Paget submitted a testimony in April 1667 to help settle a dispute raging between Bath in his office of groom of the stole and the various grooms of the bedchamber, all vying for the perquisite of supplying the king’s linen. Paget was in no doubt that the honour lay with the groom of the stole, an office formerly held by his father-in-law, Holland.³⁴

Paget returned to the House for two days in July 1667, before taking his seat at the opening of the new session on 10 October. The following day he was named to the usual sessional committees. Present for approximately two-thirds of all sitting days in the session, he was excused at a call of the House on 29 Oct. before resuming his seat on 6 November. The following day he was named to the committee considering the trial of peers bill, and on 10 Dec. he was nominated one of the reporters of a conference with the Commons concerning freedom of speech in Parliament. On 15 Apr. 1668 he was added to the committee considering the case between Thomas Skinner and the East India Company.

Paget was absent from the House from 2 May 1668 until October of the following year. On 26 Oct. 1669 he was again missing at a call. He sent word that he was travelling to London and resumed his seat three days later. He was then present for approximately 63 per cent of sitting days. On 10 Nov. he moved for the bill for taking away the Lords’ right to try original causes, which had been sent up from the Commons the week before, to be read once but then rejected. The measure was thrown out by an overwhelming majority.³⁵ Paget was also involved during the term as one of the 2nd earl of Holland’s trustees in a case triggered by the latter’s dismissal of his steward, Joseph Garrett.³⁶ Paget took his seat at the opening of the new session on 14 Feb. 1670, during which he was named to some 16 committees, including that considering the charitable uses bill of John Dolben*, bishop of Rochester, which Paget chaired on 3 March. Despite this he attended less than a fifth of the session as a whole and was afterwards absent from the House for the ensuing two years.

Financial concerns once more came to the fore during the summer of 1670. In May Paget rejected a suggestion, probably by Swinfen, that he marry off one or more of his unmarried daughters, declaring that:

Sir though you are pleased to say I am no sufferer by any money raised lately for my son Thomas, and my two daughters’ portions, yet give me leave to say I am a great sufferer, and find daily such inconveniences by the late raising of moneys, as I may live perhaps to repent it.³⁷

The following month, word that the king was signing commissions for the sale of fee-farm rents encouraged Paget to appeal to Sir Joseph Williamson^‡ to assist him in obtaining papers originally submitted to Henry Bennet*, earl of Arlington (whom Paget praised for having assisted him ‘nobly’) in a further effort to solve his financial crisis.³⁸ Again, no progress appears to have been made. Excused at a call in February 1671, Paget’s avoidance of the House seems to have been on the grounds of expense, as he wrote of enjoying ‘the free air at Drayton’, though Swinfen commended him for keeping ‘out of the heat of bustles and factions’ in Parliament.³⁹

In a letter of 11 Apr. Paget, referring to the continuing case between Holland and Joseph Garrett, explained the delay in securing satisfaction in the measure on account of the fact that:

Parliament does not rise so soon as you probably may imagine. New imposts are daily invented such as were never heard of before, which keeps the wheels still going in spite of their teeth, who would fain live quietly at their own houses; and till there be an adjournment, or a prorogation, no possible hopes of good success in my petition, I shall carefully attend it, when I am informed ’tis a fit time for it, but truly, not to abuse and flatter myself, I expect very little good by my address to his Majesty, ’tis true I have much right by my side, but ’tis profit and private interest in these righteous times that we live in which governs all, more is to be done by a lusty bribe than by any friend whatsoever …⁴⁰

In October 1671, this and other concerns led Paget to profess himself to be at his ‘wits end what to do, or how to come off with my credit and reputation’. By this time, his debts amounted to between £500 and £600, ‘for payment of which I am much solicited and molested’. Appealing to Swinfen to rescue him from his predicament, Paget exclaimed:

For God’s sake try what may be done in reconciling these different interests, they distract me much, I am in so great disorder of mind, and in such a peck of troubles all these unlucky cross accidents as I know not well what to say or think, if I write nonsense you must excuse me.⁴¹

Paget was also troubled by a separate ongoing dispute between him and Sir Walter Aston, 2nd Baron Aston [S], over rights in the forests of Staffordshire. The cause was one that had been fomenting steadily between the families since the early years of the century and was now in danger of rumbling on without resolution because of Paget’s disorganization. He was chided by Swinfen for failing to respond to Aston’s latest approach in July 1672, and the long-suffering agent could only suggest that ‘it’s so long since that your lordship may choose whether you will answer it or no. Only if you do, then I humbly conceive the excuse for the delay must be your forgetfulness.’⁴²

Perhaps frustrated with the court’s unwillingness to assist him, Paget became increasingly identified with the opposition of Anthony Ashley Cooper*, earl of Shaftesbury. Meanwhile his attendance of the House continued to fluctuate with his own uncertain health. He returned after his lengthy absence on 4 Feb. 1673, after which he was present for approximately 73 per cent of the session. Sick during the summer, he was cautioned by Swinfen against returning to Parliament precipitately in October 1673, and advised to delay until his ‘present distempers’ were alleviated: ‘There is nothing worse for you both in regards of the piles and looseness than motion, and exposing yourself to take cold, which may soon cause a relapse into a more dangerous condition.’⁴³ Paget heeded this advice and failed to attend the brief session that month. Presumably in better health, he took his seat once more at the opening of the ensuing session on 7 Jan. 1674 and attended all bar one of the 38 sitting days. He was similarly assiduous the following year, attending 40 of the 42 sitting days of the session of April 1675. On 13 Apr. he registered his dissent at the resolution to present an address of thanks for the king’s speech. He then subscribed the protest against the resolution of 21 Apr. that the Test bill did not encroach upon the privileges of the lords. On 4 May he appears to have subscribed a subsequent protest against the clause in the bill imposing an oath on members of both Houses but his signature was later excised (presumably at his own request).⁴⁴

In the summer of 1676 Paget was again one of the triers of a fellow peer, finding Charles Cornwallis*, 3rd Baron Cornwallis, not guilty of murder.⁴⁵ In the following session he took his seat on 26 Feb. 1677, and was present on 70 per cent of all sitting days, being named to 24 committees. In May he was assessed ‘thrice worthy’ by Shaftesbury. He returned to the House one day into the new session on 24 May 1678 and, in spite of failing health, proceeded to attend a little over half of the session. On the day that he returned he was named to the committee considering the act to provide relief for Protestant strangers and three days later to that examining the act for reviving a former act avoiding unnecessary suits and delays for the better settling of intestates’ estates.

Paget sat for the final time on 2 July 1678, a few days before the close of the session. He died later that year on 19 Oct. and was buried in the family vault at West Drayton. He was described by one local commentator in 1663 as having been of ‘no parts that I know of except a good stomach’.⁴⁶ The assessment seems to be curmudgeonly. Ironically, in view of his involvement in reviving the act to accelerate the settlement of intestates’ estates, Paget died without making a will; he left a personal estate valued at £5,536 15s. 1d.⁴⁷ He was succeeded by his eldest son, William Paget, as 7th Baron Paget.

Little is known of Paget before 1656, when he was given a pass to travel abroad.² He does not appear to have been active at the time of the Restoration, or to have made any effort to involve himself in Parliament prior to his accession to the peerage. His marriage in July 1661 to Frances, granddaughter of Robert Pierrepont^†, earl of Kingston, presumably reflected his own adherence to his father’s presbyterian convictions.

Despite previously exercising no obvious political interest, Paget was quick to take his place in the Lords following his father’s death in October 1678, just as allegations of a Popish Plot were gaining credence. He entered the House on 25 Nov., two days after receiving his writ of summons, after which he was present on 29 per cent of all sitting days. The day after his first appearance he was named to the committee considering the bill for raising the militia. On 29 Nov. he supported the motion agreeing with the Commons that the Catholic queen should be removed from Whitehall and he was one of three peers to register their dissents when the motion was rejected. He returned to the House on 8 Mar. and attended four days of the abortive session before taking his seat again at the opening of the new Parliament on 15 March. He was thereafter present on almost 93 per cent of all sitting days.

In advance of the session he was estimated to be an opponent of Thomas Osborne*, earl of Danby (later duke of Leeds), and in April Paget voted accordingly in favour of Danby’s attainder. On 8 May he supported the motion to appoint a joint committee with the Commons to consider the method of proceeding against the impeached lords and he entered his dissent again when the House resolved not to do so. On 23 May he registered two dissents: the first at the resolution to instruct the Lords’ committee meeting with the Commons that the Lords would give no other answer concerning the bishops’ voting, and the second in opposition to the resolution to proceed with the trial of the five impeached lords before proceeding with that of Danby. Four days later, Paget dissented once more at the resolution to insist upon the vote confirming the bishops’ right to remain in court during capital cases until sentence of death was pronounced.

Following the dissolution of the first Exclusion Parliament, Paget exercised his interest at Tamworth on behalf of his father’s old retainer, John Swinfen^‡.³ He was also active in the Buckinghamshire election in company with George Villiers*, 2nd duke of Buckingham, in support of John Hampden^‡ and Thomas Wharton*, later marquess of Wharton.⁴ Paget took his seat in the second Exclusion Parliament on 21 Oct. 1680, after which he was present on 65 per cent of all sitting days. He spoke in the House during the debates on the exclusion bill and on 15 Nov. he voted against rejecting the bill at first reading. He then subscribed the resulting protest when the measure was thrown out. On 23 Nov. he supported moves to appoint a joint committee with the Commons to consider the state of the nation and again protested when the motion was not adopted. On 7 Dec. he found William Stafford*, Viscount Stafford, guilty of treason. A month later, on 7 Jan. 1681, Paget entered his dissent at the failure to put resolutions to commit Sir William Scroggs or to suspend him from office.

Paget was one of 16 peers to subscribe the petition of January 1681 opposing the decision to summon the new Parliament to Oxford.⁵ Having failed to secure his point Paget attended four days out of the seven-day session of March 1681, during which he remained opposed to Danby’s continuing attempts to secure bail. On 26 Mar. he subscribed the protest against the resolution to proceed against Edward Fitzharris by common law rather than by impeachment, and in May he was in court for Fitzharris’ trial.⁶ Later that year, in November, he offered sanctuary in his London home to Anthony Ashley Cooper*, earl of Shaftesbury, following the latter’s release from the Tower.⁷ The death of his wife the same month seems not to have affected Paget unduly as he appears to have remarried almost immediately. His second marriage, to his first cousin Isabella Irby, probably happened within a month of his first wife’s death.⁸

Paget’s attendance at the horse races at Chester in August 1682 may have pointed to involvement with James Scott*, duke of Monmouth, who was at that point touring the midlands.⁹ The following summer, along with his kinsmen Thomas Foley^‡ and Philip Foley^‡, he was implicated in the Rye House Plot.¹⁰ Between September 1682 and February of the following year Paget acted to suppress Samuel Starkey, one of the government witnesses who had searched his home, imprisoning him for trespass and then stalling efforts to bring Starkey to trial to ensure that he remained incarcerated.¹¹

Paget was called as a witness for the defence at the trial of Algernon Sydney^‡ in November 1683 and again at John Hampden’s trial in February 1684.¹² He stood bail for the latter.¹³ Although wholly out of sympathy with the new regime, Paget attended more than 90 per cent of all sitting days in the Parliament summoned following James II’s accession. On 20 June 1685 he reported from two committees, for Isaac Savory’s change of name and for Edward Mellor’s estate bill. During that year he suffered a series of personal blows with the death of his heir, William, in August and of his second wife in December 1685, a loss that undoubtedly affected him profoundly. He also appears to have narrowly avoided being proceeded against for complicity in the Monmouth rebellion.¹⁴

Paget was granted leave to travel abroad in May 1686, ostensibly to drink the water at Spa but he may have been anxious to quit the country for political reasons.¹⁵ It is unclear when he returned home but his name appears on the various parliamentary lists of 1687–8 as an opponent of the king’s policies. His name was included among those expected to be prepared to stand bail for one of the Seven Bishops in June but he was unable to attend the trial, being called away to attend to his pregnant daughter-in-law.¹⁶ In November he was one of those to subscribe the petition calling for a free Parliament. Present at the meetings of the provisional government held between 21 and 25 Dec., Paget undoubtedly supported William of Orange’s invasion, though he may at first have favoured the accession of Princess Mary alone.¹⁷ According to some sources, in the debates of 24 Dec. he proposed that the princess should be proclaimed queen, arguing that once that was done a Parliament could be summoned, but George Savile*, marquess of Halifax, recorded the contribution differently: according to him, Paget recommended that the prince should summon a Parliament.¹⁸

Paget took his seat at the opening of the Convention on 22 Jan. 1689, following which he was present on 83 per cent of all sitting days. By the end of the month he had altered his initial position and he voted in favour of inserting the words declaring William and Mary jointly king and queen. On 4 Feb. he voted in favour of agreeing with the Commons’ use of the word ‘abdicated’ and entered his dissent when it was resolved not to do so. On 6 Feb. he voted to concur with the Commons again, supporting the declaration that the throne was ‘vacant’. Two days later Paget was nominated one of the managers of the conference for declaring the prince and princess of Orange king and queen. Later that month, on 18 Feb., he reported from the committee of the whole on the bill for preventing disputes about the sitting of this Parliament. On 5 Mar. he was again nominated to a conference for assisting the king. On the same day he reported from the committee concerning papists and on 6 Mar. reported on the bill for removing papists from London. On 23 Mar. Paget entered his protest at the resolution to reject a proviso to the bill for abrogating the oaths of supremacy and allegiance, extending the time for taking the sacramental test and for permitting the sacrament to be taken in any Protestant church. On 28 Mar. he was named one of the managers of a conference concerning the bill for removing papists.

In March 1689 Paget was rewarded for his loyalty to the new regime with his appointment as lord lieutenant of Staffordshire in place of the Catholic Walter Aston, 3rd Baron Aston [S]. The following month, he was appointed ambassador to Vienna, being granted £500 for his equipage and a pension of £5 a day for his ordinary expenses.¹⁹ Some delay followed before he embarked on his mission and in the meantime he remained active in the House. In a vote suggestive of his continuing belief in the reality of the Popish Plot, in May he voted in favour of reversing the two judgments of perjury against Titus Oates. The same month he was nominated one of the reporters at each of the three conferences held to consider the additional poll bill, and on 27 May he reported on the bill to suspend the habeas corpus act. On 20 June he was again named a manager of the conference considering the bill for enabling the commissioners of the great seal. He reported on the bill for the college of physicians on 4 July. On 25 July he was named one of the reporters of the conference for the tea and coffee duty bill and two days later he was named to the second conference on the same measure. On 30 July he voted against adhering to the Lords’ amendments to the bill for reversing Oates’s perjury judgments. He then entered his protest at the resolution to do so. On 2 Aug. he reported from the committee on the bill to repeal the act against multiplying gold and silver.

Paget finally left England in September 1689, embarking on a diplomatic career that would keep him abroad almost without interruption for the ensuing 14 years.²⁰ ‘Normally reserved and quiet, but with an irascible temper’, he proved to be a capable diplomat.²¹ During his lengthy absence from England the vast proportion of the family interest and estates fell under the control of his son, Henry Paget*, (later earl of Uxbridge).²²

By November 1689, Paget had reached Augsburg, where he complained of his poor treatment at court.²³ He found the strong influence of the Roman Catholic Church within the Empire stifling and complained that:

I am now in a place where ecclesiastical power is so extremely great, that no person (that is not of their opinions) can be looked upon with any common civility … and therefore you may suppose negotiations go on slowly and heavily, while their priests are continually buzzing in their ears passive obedience to Mother Church which forbids all converse and sincerity of dealings with hereticks …²⁴

In August 1690 he sought leave to return to England for a while, believing that there was little likelihood of business over the summer but his request was clearly ignored.²⁵ In December 1691 it was rumoured that he was to be recalled, but the successive deaths of two ambassadors to the Ottoman Porte led to his appointment to Constantinople in August 1692. Following a brief sojourn in London during the summer, Paget once more set out for his embassy in September.²⁶ In November he was allowed £500 for his equipage and a salary of £10 a day until his arrival at Constantinople, after which his expenses were to be paid by the Levant Company. His allowance was set at £2,500 p.a.²⁷

Paget finally reached Belgrade in January 1693 and then proceeded to Adrianople (modern-day Edirne), where his behaviour ‘was greatly admired by the Turks’.²⁸ During his long years at the Ottoman court, he developed good relations with his hosts and concentrated on the building of an ambassadorial palace with a chapel based on St George’s Chapel, Windsor.²⁹ By contrast, his relationship with the Dutch emissaries already ensconced at the court proved to be far less harmonious and rapidly broke down.

Reports that Paget had died at his post reached England in October 1694.³⁰ These were rapidly shown to be erroneous but by the beginning of 1695 the extent of his financial difficulties was becoming generally known. Matthew Prior^‡ noted that Paget’s secretary was more complimentary towards Robert Sutton*, 2nd Baron Lexington, than he was towards his own master, ‘a sign in whose house bread and beer is most plentiful’.³¹ The death of the grand seignior and succession of the new sultan, Mustapha, left the negotiations in a state of some uncertainty.³² Paget thought that the new sultan would not be inclinable to peace and concluded that the new regime was eager to try its hand on campaign and that he saw ‘little hopes of doing any good this year’.³³ There appear to have been underhand efforts to displace Paget early in 1695, though Leeds (as Danby had since become) assured him of his support and wrote to caution his erstwhile opponent that:

As I was always confident there could not be any just complaint made against your lordship’s conduct in your station, so neither have I heard of any but by whispers, which does the more justify the prudence of your acting since it shows a malice without a foundation to support it …³⁴

Whatever the source of the rumours attempting to destabilize Paget’s position in Turkey, in May 1695 it was widely expected that he would be replaced at the Porte by Sir Cyril Wych^‡.³⁵ In the midst of his efforts to secure a peace between the Turks and the Empire, Paget struggled to secure the expected funds from the Levant Company. In January 1696 he was assured by Charles Talbot*, duke of Shrewsbury, that the king had ordered his ‘bill of extraordinaries to be allowed’ and that he would not oblige him ‘to continue longer in Turkey than you are willing to stay there’.³⁶

Paget’s dissatisfaction with his post stemmed largely from the continual battle he was forced to wage with the Levant Company over payment of his expenses. By March 1696 he was experiencing severe financial difficulties. He complained that:

The company continue their unkindness, I hope it proceeds not from any occasion I may have given for it, or because I had the honour to be named for, and placed in, this employment by his majesty’s order, but only from a narrowness of spirit, that possesses some of that numerous assembly, which makes them unwilling to appear civil, lest they should thereby be engaged in a greater expense than they would be at.³⁷

Paget’s continuing poor relations with his employers led to renewed expectations in April 1697 that he would be replaced, this time by Sir James Rushout^‡, ‘an old, rich, unhealthy gentleman’.³⁸ Rushout was formally nominated his successor in January 1698 but died the following month before he could take up the post. Still eager to see Paget replaced, the Levant Company again applied to the king for a new ambassador to be nominated.³⁹ Charles Berkeley*, then styled Lord Dursley (later 2nd earl of Berkeley), whose father was a governor of the Levant Company, was named as Rushout’s successor but refused to accept the mission.⁴⁰ By September Paget was complaining that he was £5,500 out of pocket and towards the end of the year it was reported that the king had at last ‘taken notice of the difficulties’ he was experiencing.⁴¹

Besides his financial problems, the failure to appoint a new ambassador meant that it was left to Paget to steer through the peace treaty between the Ottomans and Empire at Karlowitz.⁴² His achievement gained him considerable plaudits from both the grand seignior and the grand vizier, who appealed to the king not to recall him.⁴³ In spite of their request, in December 1700 the king consented to Paget’s pleas to be allowed to return (and the Levant Company’s earnest desire that he be replaced) and nominated Robert Sutton, nephew of Paget’s colleague at Vienna, Lexington, to assume the position.⁴⁴

Having at last secured his recall, it still took Paget a further two and a half years to reach home. Arriving in Holland in September, he was promptly despatched back to Vienna and in December he was sent to the court of Bavaria to undertake a further diplomatic mission. It was thus not until April 1703 that he finally reached England, having narrowly avoided disaster when the fleet in which he was travelling from Rotterdam was attacked by privateers.⁴⁵ With him travelled a group of students whom he had recruited for Benjamin Woodroffe’s ‘Greek College’ at Oxford (based at Gloucester Hall). Woodroffe’s aim was closer relations between the Anglican Church and the Orthodox communion. Paget was ostensibly sympathetic to the scheme but was perhaps equally interested in the notion of training interpreters for the diplomatic legations in the Levant.⁴⁶ On 22 Apr. he took his seat in the House. His appointment as lord lieutenant of Staffordshire was confirmed and he resumed regular attendance of the Lords once more, being present for 56 per cent of all sitting days for the second session of the Parliament. In November Charles Spencer*, 3rd earl of Sunderland, noted him as being someone ‘to be depended upon this year that was absent’ on the question of occasional conformity and on 14 Dec. Paget duly voted against the bill. On 18 Jan. 1704 he reported from the committee considering the Awdley estate bill, which was resolved as being fit to pass.

Paget took his seat in the next session on 25 Oct. 1704, following which he was present on approximately 66 per cent of all sitting days. He refused a new diplomatic appointment to Vienna in January 1705, his rejection of the post reputedly because of the ministry’s refusal to offer him an earldom. On 27 Feb. he was named one of the managers of the conference considering the heads of a joint conference to be held with the Commons concerning the Aylesbury men. On 12 Mar. he was named one of the managers of the conference concerning the militia bill and the following day to that concerning amendments to the militia bill.

Making reference to Paget’s local rivalry with his Staffordshire neighbour, John Leveson Gower*, Baron Gower, Paget’s brother-in-law, Henry Ashurst^‡, suggested to him that Paget ‘put in … to be Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster if it were for nothing else but to set that lord down that refused to pay your lordship a common civility at Stafford’.⁴⁷ Paget brought his interest to bear on behalf of John Pershall^‡ at Stafford in March 1705 but the influence of the Foleys and Chetwynds kept any other contenders at bay.⁴⁸ In April Paget was listed as a supporter of the Hanoverian succession. He returned to the House for the 1705 Parliament on 25 Oct. but his level of attendance declined and he was only present on approximately 43 per cent of sitting days. His attendance then declined markedly in 1707, with him present on only 19 days during the second session, though he was named one of the reporters of the conference concerning the Fornhill and Stony Stratford highways bill on 27 March. This was an innovative bill that created one of the first turnpike trusts, and Paget’s involvement may have reflected his continuing wish to nurse his interest in Buckinghamshire. His attendance remained lacklustre and he was present for just 30 days of the first Parliament of Great Britain (approximately 27 per cent of the whole session).

Paget was categorized as a Whig in a list of peers and their party affiliations in May 1708, though the additional designation ‘+’ is of uncertain significance. Between November 1708 and April 1709 he attended the House on a mere six occasions. Despite this, Paget’s local interest in Staffordshire continued to be significant and in July 1709 some blamed him and the Foleys for the exclusion of Henry Vernon^‡ and Bryan Broughton^‡ from the commission of the peace, though Paget in turn blamed their removal on James Hamilton*, 4th duke of Hamilton [S].⁴⁹ His attendance in Parliament improved only slightly during the heated debates surrounding the Sacheverell trial. Present for approximately 28 per cent of all sitting days in the session, in March 1710 he found Dr Sacheverell guilty of high crimes and misdemeanours. In October that year he was noted as being an opponent of Robert Harley*, later earl of Oxford. In December 1711, Paget was forecast as likely to be in favour of presenting the address containing the no peace without Spain motion. The same month he was thought a probable opponent of permitting Hamilton to take his seat in the House by virtue of his British dukedom of Brandon. Paget sat for the final time on 7 Dec. 1711, the first day of the new session. The following day he registered his proxy in favour of Charles Montagu*, Baron (later earl of) Halifax, which was vacated by the close of the session.

Paget died on 26 Feb. 1713 at his house in Bloomsbury Square. In his will of April 1711 he attempted to steer as much of his property away from his heir as possible. The reason may have been political. Henry Paget*, 8th Baron Paget and later earl of Uxbridge, was allied to Robert Harley. He already possessed a peerage in his own right, having been created Baron Burton in January 1712 as one of Harley’s ‘dozen’. The 7th baron left his house in Bloomsbury to his housekeeper, Jane Peirce, and made substantial bequests to the children of his brother, Henry, as well as gifts of money to friends and retainers totalling in all nearly £2,000.⁵⁰

Renowned for his violence and debts, Thomas Parker possessed neither the character nor the income to support the dignity of his peerage, even though it was one of the most ancient baronies in England. His political inheritance was a complicated one. His father had suffered the financial consequences of being a recusant and a royalist during the civil wars and seems to have spent much of the final part of his life in the prison of the king’s (upper) bench. According to the Complete Peerage his father-in-law was Sir Henry Marten^‡, the admiralty judge, but a surviving deed concerning his wife’s jointure identifies her father as Sir Henry’s son and namesake, the regicide Henry Marten^‡. It was perhaps these ambivalent political connections that prevented Morley from reaping the rewards of loyalty after the Restoration.

Morley’s political and religious beliefs remain tantalizingly ambiguous. Although he does not seem to have been active in support of the king during the Interregnum he is known to have been in touch with the exiled court in the summer of 1659 in order to assure the king ‘of his affection and readiness to serve him’.² After the Restoration he was indeed to establish himself as a reliable government supporter, though the unevenness of his attendance and his continuing financial problems tend to make one wonder just how deep his political convictions were and the extent to which his was merely a vote for hire. As for his religion, his contemporaries believed him to be a Catholic, and the evidence of his land transactions, which involved representatives of prominent Catholic families (the Brudenell earls of Cardigan, Humphrey Weld^‡, and John Carryll), suggests that those suspicions were correct.³ Yet he took the oaths on 2 Dec. 1678 in accordance with the 1678 Test Act and the records of the Lancashire quarter sessions include a sacramental certificate of October 1685.⁴

Morley’s family papers do not survive but some information about his finances can be reconstructed from information generated by a series of disputes relating to a complex series of mortgages and remortgages involving loans on the Morley lands in Hornby, Lancashire, and Great Hallingbury, Essex.⁵ Although a final concord suggests that Hornby was sold to the Brudenells in 1682, the sale was probably no more than a legal device to secure the mortgages, for Morley was still living there in 1692.⁶ The estates in and around Great Hallingbury, which had formed his wife’s jointure, were sold to Sir Edward Turnor^‡ in 1666 in order to raise capital to pay off Morley’s debts.⁷ These must have been considerable: of the £15,000 purchase price, £12,000 was repaid to Robert Brudenell*, 2nd earl of Cardigan, who thought that the remaining £3,000 was barely enough for Morley to ‘pay his engagements’.⁸ Additional sales of land – this time in Farlton, Lancashire – were authorized by an act of Parliament in 1677.⁹

Between 1660 and 1664 Morley was regularly present on about a third of possible sitting days; he was occasionally given leave to be absent for very short periods but there is no indication of the reasons for this. He was named to the committee for privileges on 7 May 1660 and to the committee for petitions two days later. He was again named to the committee for petitions on 7 June 1660. In July 1661 he was one of those expected to absent themselves from the House during the vote on the claim of Aubrey de Vere*, 20th earl of Oxford, to the great chamberlaincy. Early in 1663 he was petitioning the crown to resolve a possible claim against Hornby in order to clear it for sale to George Monck*, duke of Albemarle.¹⁰ Much of his activity in the House that year related to claims of privilege. On 12 June he informed the House of the arrest of one ‘Beaver, tailor and menial servant’. The outcome of this case is not clear but within a week, on 18 June, he had informed the House of another breach of privilege, this time the arrest of Edward Crofts, whom he claimed as a menial servant, for debt. Crofts appeared at the bar of the House and was released on 27 June. On 25 July Morley claimed privilege to ward off a possible suit by a kinsman in the prerogative court of Canterbury. On the political front, the somewhat unreliable list compiled by Philip Wharton*, 4th Baron Wharton, suggests that he was expected to support the attempt of George Digby*, 2nd earl of Bristol, to impeach Edward Hyde*, earl of Clarendon. During the next (1664) session Morley’s only traceable activity is yet another complaint about breach of privilege, brought to the house on 27 Apr. 1664, this time concerning the arrest of William Cage, whom he claimed to be his household chaplain.

On 17 Dec. 1664, barely a month into the new (1664–5) session, Morley was given leave ‘to go into the country for some time’; again no reason was given. He was then absent until 17 Feb. 1665; he attended just one more day (18 Feb.) before absenting himself for the rest of the session, which did not end until 2 March. Events during the adjournment tested his claim to privilege still further. On 21 Apr. 1665 Morley, after an evening of hard drinking and gaming at a Covent Garden tavern, became involved in a quarrel over the reckoning with Henry Hastings, a young relative of Theophilus Hastings*, 7th earl of Huntingdon. Their first fight was broken up by onlookers but was resumed in Lincolns Inn Fields. According to the account sent to Huntingdon, Morley had attacked Hastings there without warning; Hastings died of a wound to the head inflicted by Morley’s sword. A coroner’s jury returned a verdict of wilful murder. There had been a long-standing quarrel between the two men, generating suspicion that Morley had deliberately provoked the fight in order to provide an excuse for killing his opponent. Morley fled, thus laying his estates open to confiscation, but was arrested and imprisoned in the Tower a month later ‘for fighting contrary to law’.¹¹ He had killed others and the king was apparently determined that he would ‘suffer for it’. The outbreak of plague in London meant that arrangements for his trial were delayed and he remained in the Tower until he was bailed, probably in October when he was granted permission to go to his house in the country under guard and with sufficient security (£2,000 plus two sureties of £1,000 each) to ensure his appearance when summoned to answer for his crime.¹² In the meantime he was deeply involved in negotiations for the sale of Great Hallingbury.

The court of the lord high steward was convened in Westminster Hall on 30 Apr. 1666, shortly after the end of the parliamentary session, with Clarendon presiding. Of the 28 lords triers summoned to hear the case, one – William Grey*, Baron Grey of Warke – did not appear.¹³ The 12 judges also attended to offer assistance and legal advice. The most widely available account of Morley’s trial, published in State Trials, is based on notes taken by Lord Chief Sir Justice Kelyng.^‡ Fuller details, including copies of depositions of witnesses, are preserved among the state papers, but are mentioned only briefly in the Calendar of State Papers, Domestic. A third account, concentrating on details of ceremony and procedure but also including copies of the introductory speeches made by Clarendon, is in the British Library. The British Library holds another copy of Clarendon’s speech and there is also an account in the Huntington Library.¹⁴ All indicate that for this, the first trial of a peer for nearly 40 years, great care was taken to ensure that due ceremony and solemnity be observed. They also show that both the judges and the peers were already familiar with aspects of Morley’s defence, particularly the question of whether depositions sworn at the coroner’s inquest by persons since deceased could be used as evidence against him. The judges, summoned by Clarendon to a pre-trial meeting, agreed that such evidence was admissible. Their decision was questioned by several peers who also went to consult with Clarendon and in the event the judges’ advice was ignored by the lords triers. Morley himself feared that his enemies would take advantage of the situation in order to secure his conviction. The precise details are unclear but it seems that Morley either owed money to his Essex neighbour, Sir John Barrington^‡, or had led Barrington to believe that he rather than Turnor might buy Great Hallingbury. The net result was that Barrington was ‘enraged’ and Morley feared that he intended to lobby the presbyterian peers against him.¹⁵

The trial became one of the sensations of the day. Extra seating was provided for those peers who wished to attend and four private rooms were allowed for the king and queen to attend incognito, for James Stuart*, the duke of York and his duchess, for the Spanish and Swedish ambassadors, and for ‘divers ladies and persons of honour’.¹⁶ Notwithstanding strong prosecution evidence confirming his malicious intent, Morley was acquitted of murder and, despite his fears, only two of the Presbyterian peers – Anthony Ashley Cooper*, Baron Ashley (later earl of Shaftesbury), and Wharton, voted to convict him. Morley’s accomplice, Francis Bromwich, fared less well. He was sentenced to 11 months’ imprisonment and to give sureties for good behaviour for life.¹⁷ In October Hastings’ two brothers, who were appalled by the verdict, were imprisoned by the House for assaulting Morley and giving him ‘very base and reviling language’. Corroborating evidence of the attack was given on 1 Oct. by a Thomas Osborne but as he was not described as a baronet it is unlikely that this was the future earl of Danby. The two men were forced to beg Morley’s pardon and to provide securities of £500 apiece before being released on 12 Jan. 1666.

Morley resumed his attendance in the House shortly after sittings began again in September 1666 and was present for over half the possible sitting days that year, but he hardly attended in 1667 or 1668 and did not attend at all between 1669 and 1672. His responses to calls of the House during this period are uninformative but in November 1670 he was excused on grounds of sickness. Perhaps his health was poor: he had been described as ‘lame’ during his trial in 1666 and was permitted to sit rather than stand at the bar. His involvement in a scuffle in Lancaster in August 1668 arouses suspicion that health may not have been the real issue, although in this case it is entirely possible that for once Morley was the victim rather than the aggressor.¹⁸ He was involved in a dispute over Hornby manor in February 1673.¹⁹ He attended Parliament briefly in March 1673 and in the spring of 1674; he was present for just nine days in November 1675, probably in connection with proposals for the 20 Nov. address to the crown requesting a dissolution of Parliament, which he supported.

As the political crisis deepened, Morley began to attend Parliament more frequently and was identified as a supporter of his northern neighbour Thomas Osborne*, earl of Danby (later marquess of Carmarthen and duke of Leeds). Between February and May 1677, when Shaftesbury marked him both as triply vile and as a papist, he was present on 61 per cent of sitting days, but he attended for only six days in January and February 1678, probably in order to facilitate the passage of the bill to enable him to sell Farleton manor, in which he was assisted by Sir Ralph Assheton^‡, the Member for Liverpool.²⁰ The bill was returned from the Commons without alteration on 19 February. Morley was not present that day; nor was he present when it received the royal assent on 20 March. He attended the House on 21 and 25 Feb. but was given leave to be absent on 27 Feb. and then absented himself for the rest of the session. He was thus not present for some of the most contentious debates over supply.

Morley returned to Parliament for the first session of 1678 and was present on 51 per cent of sitting days. He was absent for the first month of the second 1678 session, not arriving until 26 November. For the short remaining period of the session he attended on nearly 60 per cent of sitting days and, as noted above, despite his reputed Catholicism took the new oaths on 2 Dec. 1678. In 1679 he arrived in time to attend the opening of the abortive first session of the first Exclusion Parliament on 6 Mar. 1679. He was then present for the opening of the second session on 15 Mar. and attended on 69 per cent of sitting days. Consistently listed as a supporter of Danby, it seems certain that it was Danby’s plight that attracted him to the House and somewhat unlikely that he attended without some promise of reward. In May 1679 he voted against appointing a joint committee of both Houses to consider the method of proceeding against the impeached lords. On 27 May he probably voted for the right of the bishops to stay in the House during capital cases.

Morley’s attendance for the 1680–1 session dropped to just over 41 per cent. In November 1680 he voted against Exclusion and in December he found William Howard*, Viscount Stafford, not guilty of treason. His enthusiasm for Danby was now firmly on the wane. In a forecast for the division to be held on 17 Mar. 1681 he was listed as a supporter of Danby’s application for bail but on 23 Mar. Danby’s son, Viscount Latimer, noted that Morley had not yet arrived; he never did.²¹

One might have expected that Morley’s general allegiance to the court and his suspected Catholicism would have ensured a favourable reaction to the accession of James II and the introduction of more liberal religious policies. He attended the 1685 Parliament every day until 2 July but was then absent, apart from the prorogation day on 10 May 1686. Not surprisingly, in May 1687 he was noted simply as ‘RC’ on a list of peers’ attitudes to the king’s policies but by November it had become clear that things were not quite as straightforward as expected. When the new Catholic lord lieutenant of Lancashire, Caryll Molyneux, Viscount Molyneux [I], toured the county seeking answers to the three questions, ‘Lord Morley was asked privately, his answer is not known, but he seemed very much troubled and went to bed in the afternoon.’²² Another list of the same month describes him as undeclared.

The aftermath of the Revolution of 1688 turned Morley once again into a high attender at Parliament, although he did not arrive at the Convention until 4 Feb. 1689, just in time to participate in the debates over the use of the word ‘abdicated’ and to vote in favour of agreeing with the Commons. For the remainder of the session he was present on some 83 per cent of sitting days; even if his initial absence is taken into account his attendance was still high, at 76 per cent. On 5 Mar. he was named as one of the managers of the conference on assisting the king and the following day he signed the protest against the third reading of the bill for better regulating trials of peers. On 16 Apr. he secured the assistance of the House in preventing some of his Lancashire neighbours from spreading ‘scandalous’ rumours about his alleged papism.²³ Morley’s sudden devotion to his duties as a peer may have been related to the award of a pension of £400.²⁴ This in turn was probably related to his petition to the crown in June 1689, backed by his distant kinsman Charles Talbot*, 12th earl (later duke) of Shrewsbury, stressing the ‘great sufferings’ of himself and his father for their loyalty ‘whereby his estate was so impaired that there was not sufficient to support the dignity and honour of his coming up to the coronation’ and reminding the new king that he had been promised a royal pension.²⁵ On 30 July 1689 yet another of his enemies was attached by the House for offending him with ‘scandalous words’.

By the second, 1689–90 session, Morley’s enthusiasm for parliamentary attendance had somewhat waned. Classed among the supporters of the court by Carmarthen (as Danby had become) in a list prepared between October 1689 and February 1690, he did not arrive until 9 Dec. 1689, more than a month after the session began in October, and thereafter was present on just under 70 per cent of the remaining sitting days. During the first session of 1690 he attended on nearly 74 per cent of sitting days, perhaps because, as he pointed out in June 1690, payment of his £400 pension was in arrears.²⁶ The 1690–1 session saw something of a return to his old habits. He did not arrive until 17 Nov., a month after the opening of the session, but thereafter he missed only nine days. In January 1691 he received his reward: a £100 gift from the king as royal bounty.

Morley again missed the first part of the next (1691–2) session, this time not arriving until 11 December. On 15 Dec. 1691 he once more sought the assistance of the House to prevent an infringement of his privilege in the matter of the arrest of a man whom he claimed to be his servant. By this time the House had tightened its rules on the issue of protections. An investigation revealed that Morley had deliberately issued a letter of protection to a person who only pretended to be his gardener. He was committed to the Tower on 4 Jan. 1692, while his perjured witness was sent to the Gatehouse prison. The House was so incensed at Morley’s behaviour that when he was discharged on 22 Jan. it issued a recommendation that all the fees arising from the case be deducted directly from his pension by the treasury. He returned to the House on 28 Jan. but revelations that he had used his privilege of peerage to turn Hornby into what was effectively a debtor’s sanctuary led to a further order on 1 Feb. indemnifying the sheriff’s officers for discharging persons under Morley’s protection.²⁷

Morley was again absent at the beginning of the next session when it opened in November 1692; he did not arrive until 16 Jan. 1693, the day of the second reading of the triennial bill. He was then present for almost every day until 4 Feb. when he found Charles Mohun*, 4th Baron Mohun, not guilty of murder. Thereafter his attendance slackened and he was in the House for a little under 50 per cent of the remaining days of the session. On 1 and 3 March he was named as a manager of the conferences on the bill to prevent malicious prosecutions. Although nothing is known of his voting intentions his attendance was presumably a welcome addition of support for the beleaguered court, which rewarded him with a payment of £100 in April.²⁸ A further attempt by Morley to extract money from the exchequer in August failed, the monies in question being already appropriated.²⁹

Morley again arrived late for the 1693–4 session, on 11 December 1693. As had been the pattern in recent sessions his attendance then remained at some 74 per cent. On 17 Feb. 1694 he voted to reverse chancery’s dismission of the Albemarle inheritance case (Montagu v Bath). His habitual abuse of privilege continued: in his absence, on 13 Mar. 1694 he was one of eight peers ordered to appear before the House to explain protections that he had issued. The next day the House vacated several of the protections and ordered that ‘no lord shall enter any written protection in the book of protections, until after he shall have personally attended this House, in the same session of Parliament’.

During the 1694–5 session Morley failed to attend Parliament at all. On 2 Feb. 1695 he gave his proxy for the remainder of the session to the court Whig Ralph Montagu*, earl (later duke) of Montagu. Presumably his support was still thought to be worth canvassing because, towards the end of the session in May 1695, Thomas Osborne, now duke of Leeds and under a second threat of impeachment, was said to have ‘kept open house at Hell [a Westminster tavern] with roast beef and pot ale to debauch Lord Morley, Hunsdon [Robert Carey*, 7th Baron Hunsdon], Culpepper [John Colepeper*,3rd Baron Colepeper] and the rest of the mumpers’.³⁰ A ‘mumper’ was contemporary slang for a genteel beggar – which, it would seem, was precisely what Morley was.

The 1695–6 session opened on 22 Nov. 1695. Morley arrived on 14 Jan. 1696 and was then present for just under 50 per cent of sitting days. The 1696–7 session saw him arrive only a month late, on 19 Nov. 1696. As part of the preliminaries to the trial of Sir John Fenwick^‡, on 14 Nov. the House had ordered that Morley and other absent peers attend on pain of imprisonment. Once he had arrived he attended assiduously until the Fenwick attainder, which he supported, passed its third reading on 23 Dec., although he had been given leave to withdraw because of ill health on 15 December. His attendance remained high when sittings were resumed in January, probably because he was again in trouble with the House for issuing unjustified protections; on 27 Jan. 1697, as a result of its investigations, the House ordered that all written protections be vacated and none be granted thereafter. Morley’s attendance began to falter towards the end of January 1697, revived in February, and became increasingly erratic in March, when he was involved in litigation over the mortgages on Hornby and was accused of oppressive practices towards his tenantry.³¹ His peerages fell into abeyance at his death shortly afterwards. He was buried in July at Great Hallingbury.

Robert Paston was of the Norfolk family whose rise to prominence in the early fifteenth century can be traced through its carefully preserved correspondence, the celebrated ‘Paston Letters’. His father served as sheriff of the county in the 1630s and bought a baronetcy just before the outbreak of Civil War in 1641. During the Civil War Paston senior’s estate was sequestered and valued at £5,594 p.a. for the benefit of the Eastern Association, but he was able to compound for it by contributing £500 to the parliamentary cause and thereafter held local office throughout the Interregnum.³

The rise of Robert, the eldest son, to the peerage was inaugurated by his intervention in the Commons on 25 Nov. 1664 when he successfully moved to grant a supply to the crown of £2,500,000, just as Charles II was preparing for war with the Dutch.⁴ It could have been no coincidence that earlier that same day saw the first reading of the bill to extend the corporation boundaries of the port of Great Yarmouth to include part of Paston’s estate on the southern bank of the Yare, Little Yarmouth (or Southtown). This would allow him to partake of some of the customs duties flowing into the port. The bill was strenuously opposed by the Yarmouth corporation and its burgesses in the Commons but Paston was sure of its success. He was ‘sufficiently caressed by the chancellor [Edward Hyde*, earl of Clarendon]’ for his motion for supply and felt that ‘the service I have done the king ... is so great that I am looked on in a capacity of not being denied anything in his majesty’s power.’⁵ He informed his wife in early December 1664 that, coming into a royal audience ‘in a very great crowd’, the king instantly came over to him ‘and took me into a corner of the room and told me, Sir Robert Paston, your kindnesses to me and more especially at this time, I'll never forget and if any favour and respect may ever manifest itself to you, you are sure of a friend of me’.⁶ The king’s intervention was necessary for the passage of the Great Yarmouth bill, which had a difficult time getting through the Commons in early 1665.⁷ The final meeting of the Lords’ select committee on the bill, on 20 Feb. 1665, was unusually well attended, with 33 peers attending – ‘thirty lords and earls, three dukes’ as Paston reported. The king had already summoned the committee chairman Richard Sackville*, 5th earl of Dorset, to instruct him to tell those lords opposed to the bill that the king would not prorogue the session until it were passed. Paston included among his supporters in the committee his kinsmen, Edward Montagu*, 2nd earl of Manchester, and Montagu Bertie*, 2nd earl of Lindsey, who personally vouched before his peers for Paston’s trustworthiness. The king’s warning and these peers’ support were sufficiently persuasive and the bill passed without amendment on 22 February.⁸

Paston was confident ‘that the king intended to mend my honour and fortune’ and ‘that he will speedily make me a nobleman of England’, but Charles insisted on delaying this honour for the moment, else ‘it would look too near a contract’. Paston assured himself that, ‘the words and ways of a prince are not to be disputed’.⁹ Paston needed royal favour, as he was chronically short of money. He confided to his wife that he wanted something that ‘shall set me free in the world and put some money in my purse’. A title was not as important as funds, for ‘I know so much what the want of money is and what the straightness of a fortune is’.¹⁰ The king was not immediately as good as his word regarding the title but did help ease the way for Paston to improve his income. In April 1666 Paston was granted a 21-year lease, for a rent of £2,000 p.a., on the farm of the customs on wood, glassware and earthenware, to take effect formally from Michaelmas 1667.¹¹ By that time there were already calls for this patent to be rescinded as it was noted that Paston was making hefty profits from the import of building materials needed for the reconstruction of London after the Fire. In March 1668 he agreed that he would increase his rent for the farm to £3,800 p.a. for four years; it actually remained at that level until 1674.¹² In less pecuniary signs of royal favour, Paston was made a gentleman of the privy chamber in January 1667. In late September 1671, perhaps through the auspices of his patron, Henry Howard*, Baron Howard of Castle Rising (later 6th duke of Norfolk), he had the honour of hosting the king and queen at his house at Oxnead during their tour of East Anglia. He was, however, mortified in having to admit that his house was insufficient to lodge both the king and queen at the same time in the manner they would expect.¹³ Paston’s long-promised elevation to the peerage came in August 1673, when he was created Viscount Yarmouth. His elevation was probably prompted by the marriage in July 1672 of his eldest son and heir, William Paston*, later 2nd earl of Yarmouth, to Charlotte Howard, an illegitimate daughter of Charles II and the Viscountess Shannon [I].

Yarmouth first sat in the House under this title as quickly as he could. He was introduced on a day of prorogation, 20 Oct. 1673, alongside his patron and kinsman, Thomas Osborne*, who was introduced that day as Viscount Latimer (later earl of Danby and duke of Leeds). He then sat in all four of the sittings of the very brief session which began a week later and was named to one select committee. He came to 58 per cent of the meetings of the session of Jan.-Feb. 1674 and to 71 per cent in the following session of spring 1675, during which he appears to have supported the non-resisting test, as the earl of Danby (as Latimer had quickly become) himself predicted he would. Yarmouth narrowly escaped death in August 1675 when he was shot at by highwaymen while riding in his coach. He survived, one commentator cattily attributing this to his corpulence (‘he hath flesh enough to spare’), which had always been a point on which his enemies liked to harp.¹⁴

He was back in the House on 19 Oct. 1675 and proceeded to attend 76 per cent of the meeting of that session, and perhaps surprisingly, considering his connections with Danby and the court, on 20 Nov. 1675 he voted in favour of the motion to address the king for the dissolution of Parliament, even signing the protest at the motion’s rejection. When Parliament reconvened in February 1677 he attended 65 per cent of the meetings of the spring of 1677, and was in the House for the first two weeks of April when, fulfilling his recently conferred role as high steward of Great Yarmouth, he oversaw the rapid passage through Parliament of the bill to repair the pier at that port.¹⁵ Yarmouth, though, did not appear in the House again after a day of prorogation on 16 July 1677 until midway through the first Exclusion Parliament, on 12 Apr. 1679, thus missing all the controversial proceedings of the House in 1678. He registered his proxy with his cousin, Robert Bertie*, 3rd earl of Lindsey, twice in 1678: on 1 Feb. until the prorogation on 13 May and then again from 23 May until that session’s prorogation on 15 July. It may have been illness rather than lack of interest which kept Yarmouth away, for in October 1677 he was already complaining to a correspondent of being incapacitated by a ‘violent’ fit of the gout.¹⁶ When the peers were ordered to attend the House to hear the proceedings on the Popish Plot in the winter of 1678, Yarmouth sent two of his servants to testify on 23 Dec. 1678 ‘that the Lord Viscount Yarmouth is so ill of the stone, that he is not able to come to attend the House’.

In mid-1677 Anthony Ashley Cooper*, earl of Shaftesbury, considered Yarmouth ‘doubly vile’ in his political attitudes. Shaftesbury almost certainly formed this judgment not from Yarmouth’s few activities in Westminster but from those in Norfolk, where Yarmouth became an increasingly important leader of the court and Church faction during the course of the 1670s. On 23 Dec. 1674 he was elected high steward of the corporation of Great Yarmouth in the place of the recently deceased earl of Clarendon.¹⁷ Yarmouth’s controversial scheme to incorporate Little Yarmouth into the municipality had never taken effect, so some of the passions of 1665 had cooled by this time. Yet despite his grand and crowded entrance into Yarmouth in September 1675, not all members of the corporation were pleased with his appointment, and he remained preoccupied with the fractured politics of that port for the next several years.¹⁸ The year 1675 also saw the lord lieutenant of the county, Horatio Townshend*, Baron (later Viscount) Townshend, disastrously take sides in the partisan politics that sharply divided county society during a set of controversial by-elections. Townshend angered Danby by his strenuous opposition to the election of Danby’s son-in-law, Robert Coke^‡ of Holkham, for King’s Lynn in April 1675 and by his heavy-handed (not to say underhanded) support, in tandem with the ‘country’ Members, Sir John Hobart^‡ and Sir John Holland^‡, for Sir Robert Kemp^‡ in an election the following month.¹⁹ Yarmouth, Danby’s kinsman and dependent, was appointed lord lieutenant and vice-admiral of Norfolk in place of the out-of-favour Townshend in the spring of 1676. One of the new lord lieutenant’s correspondents told him that ‘the other party’ were quickly claiming that Townshend had been ousted because he had fought against the government’s plans to introduce popery.²⁰ Townshend’s followers would definitely have placed Yarmouth in the ‘popish’ camp, especially as he and his wife were patrons of the high Anglican churchmen in the county. Edward Reynolds*, bishop of Norwich, thought in 1670 that Paston, as he then was, had made the ‘little church’ at Oxnead ‘as beautiful as any in this or the next diocese’, and went on to remark approvingly that he was ‘very careful to get the place supplied by able divines’.²¹ Reynold’s successor from February 1677, Anthony Sparrow*, bishop of Norwich, was to work well with Yarmouth in the years following in putting forward the interests of the Church and always spoke highly of Yarmouth to William Sancroft*, archbishop of Canterbury.²² For his part, Yarmouth was pleased with Sparrow and felt that he ‘carries himself like a bishop’.²³ Yarmouth had earlier considered Townshend ‘the best friend I have in the world’ because of his support for the Great Yarmouth bill in 1665, but by the time he took up his lord lieutenancy, relations between the two had broken down and each had become the head of opposing parties in the county.²⁴

A series of by-elections under Yarmouth’s lieutenancy in 1678 revealed these factions. An election in February 1678 to replace the deceased burgess of Great Yarmouth, Sir William Doyley^‡, led to a contest between the former bailiff, Sir Thomas Medowe^‡, described by a government informer as ‘ever loyal to the king and true to the Church’ and one of the current bailiffs, Richard Huntington^‡, who ’has been in office under all the late usurped government, the only friend to the factious, by whose means they are grown so numerous and insolent that it is become dangers for us to speak our danger’. With the assistance of Yarmouth Medowe won at the poll.²⁵

The county town of Norwich presented more problems and, in general, was always troublesome as it was split between the large Church interest (represented by the cathedral and its many officials) and the strong Dissenting tradition in the city. Party strife there came to a head again in early 1678 after the death of the sitting member, Christopher Jay^‡, in August 1677.²⁶ Yarmouth and his close patron in Norwich affairs Henry Howard, who succeeded to the dukedom of Norfolk in December 1677 – ‘one that merits it as much as any of his ancestors’, Yarmouth thought – put forward Yarmouth’s own son, William, as a replacement.²⁷ Townshend and the knight of the shire, Sir John Hobart, encouraged opposition to Paston from the Norwich corporation and its mayor Richer, deemed by Yarmouth ’the impudentest fanatic in the world’.²⁸ In the event William Paston won the election handily, but Yarmouth struck back by enforcing a purge of his opponents from the corporation, which, as he told secretary of state, Sir Joseph Williamson^‡, ‘put an opportunity into my hands to make that city the loyalest in England’. The ensuing municipal elections reduced the predominance of the ‘fanatics’ in the corporation, especially by the overthrow of the troublesome mayor.²⁹ In addition, another by-election had to be held in May 1678 to replace the other recently deceased burgess, and the moderate alderman Augustine Briggs^‡ was returned with no opposition from Yarmouth.³⁰

Yarmouth’s purges in the county town had their effect, and Norwich returned Paston and Briggs, both opponents of Exclusion, for all three Exclusion Parliaments. Otherwise, Yarmouth’s actions only exacerbated tensions within the county. Between 1679 and 1681 uncontested elections were a rarity in the county and boroughs, with Yarmouth at the centre of the court’s efforts to defeat the strong Presbyterian and ‘country’ electoral interest represented by Townshend, Hobart and Holland. Throughout the spring of 1679 Yarmouth kept Williamson, himself the member for the Norfolk constituency of Thetford, abreast of developments in the elections.³¹ The favourable situation in Great Yarmouth was quickly reversed, as Yarmouth had alienated the corporation and populace by his proposal to build a new customs house on his estate in Southtown. The number of candidates willing to stand against Medowe was large, but in the end Huntington was returned with the other sitting member Sir William Coventry^‡, while Medowe descended to the bottom of the poll.³² For the county election Yarmouth ‘morally secured’ himself to Williamson that he would send down to Westminster the court candidates Sir Christopher Calthorpe^‡ and Sir Neville Catelyn^‡, ‘men that will not meddle with ministers of state’, against their likely opponents Hobart and Holland. Yarmouth was particularly incensed by the old Cromwellian Hobart. ‘I had rather lose my life’, he assured the secretary, ‘than have men triumphing in a House of Commons that sang a psalm about the Worcester Cross when the king was driven into that distress by his rebels, and that have never in one vote testified any repentance’.³³ Yarmouth gleefully reported to his wife the results of the poll that saw Calthorpe and Catelyn victorious, with Hobart a distant third by some 500 votes.³⁴ Nevertheless, Hobart petitioned the elections committee, alleging that the under-sheriff of the county had snatched away the poll-book before all of Hobart’s supporters had been counted. The matter swiftly became a partisan cause célèbre in the Commons. Townshend and his kinsmen marshalled the witnesses for Hobart, while Yarmouth’s letter to the Commons in support of Calthorpe and Catelyn was deemed to be threatening.³⁵ The election having been declared void, the ‘country’ party narrowly failed to vote Hobart as the victorious candidate and a by-election became necessary. Another poll was held on 5 May 1679, this time between four candidates, William Windham^‡ having joined with Hobart. The physician Sir Thomas Browne claimed, surprisingly considering the febrile atmosphere of the time, to have ‘never observed so great a number of people who came to give their voices, but all was civilly carried at the hill, and I do not hear of any rude or unhandsome carriage’. Less than 500 votes separated the top and bottom of the four candidates. In the end it was determined that Hobart and Catelyn topped the poll, but by this time they had less than three weeks to sit in the Parliament before it was prorogued and ultimately dissolved.³⁶ Yarmouth could only breathe a sigh of relief: ‘I am glad those elections are so well over; they are the most troublesome things in nature, and the most vexatious, though a man gets the better as I have done in all points’.³⁷

Danby counted on Yarmouth’s support during the impending impeachment hearings against him in Parliament but was frustrated by the Norfolk peer’s continued absence from the House throughout March and early April 1679. Yarmouth probably stayed away through a combination of illness and his attention to the protracted Norfolk election, and it was doubtless strong pressure from Danby, or possibly Yarmouth’s cousin Lindsey, that persuaded him to come to the House to assist his kinsman. He first sat in the House that session on 14 Apr. 1679, when he voted against the bill of attainder. Yet on 10 May he once again diverged from the court line by voting in favour of the motion to establish a committee of both Houses to consider the method of trying Danby and the impeached peers and by entering his protest against the rejection of that motion. On 27 May, however, he probably voted for the right of the bishops to stay in the House during capital cases. He was present on only 39 per cent of all sitting days in the session.

By July 1679 the viscount felt that he had merited an earldom and drafted a petition, perhaps never sent, reminding the king of his promises of favour ‘when I last waited on you at Whitehall’ and assuring him that any such honour would enable him to better serve the royal will ‘when the country sees me borne up as well as others by your majesty’s favour so long expected’.³⁸ He soon got his wish and was made earl of Yarmouth on 30 July 1679, just in time, as Yarmouth himself had noted, for him to make use of his influence and electioneering methods on behalf of the court at the elections of August. Yarmouth’s son and the moderate alderman, Briggs, won without too much trouble at the poll in Norwich.³⁹ He was less successful for the county, where the sitting member Hobart joined with a moderate Sir Peter Gleane^‡ to see off another challenge from Catelyn and Calthorpe, neither of whom by this time had much stomach for the fight. Yarmouth’s tactics were too heavy-handed even for the lord chancellor, Heneage Finch*, Baron Finch (later earl of Nottingham), who reprimanded Yarmouth for trying to delay the election for his own advantage by purposely withholding the writ from the sheriff.⁴⁰ In Great Yarmouth Huntington won again, and this time it was a new candidate George England^‡ who consigned the churchman Medowe to the bottom of the poll.

Yarmouth had a long time to wait before he could take his seat in the House with his new title. Even after the Parliament’s many prorogations, Yarmouth was largely absent for the first weeks of the Parliament in October 1680 and out of its 66 meetings, he only attended five. But these included four of the most important days of Charles II’s Parliaments – the days, from his first sitting as earl of Yarmouth on 11 Nov. 1680, which saw the House debate and ultimately reject the Exclusion bill. He himself took part in the debate on 15 Nov. and then voted to reject the bill on its first reading. Indeed, so concerned was he by Exclusion that he made or acquired a division list of the vote of 15 Nov., which is among his surviving papers.⁴¹ The bill having been rejected, he promptly left the House and did not return until 10 Jan. 1681. Consequently, he missed the vote on the guilt of William Howard*, Viscount Stafford, a kinsman of his patron, the duke of Norfolk. That single day in January was the last time Yarmouth ever sat in the House. He missed the short Parliament in Oxford in March 1681 completely, even though Danby was once again relying on him to help him with his application for bail.⁴² The elections for this Parliament which Yarmouth oversaw did not bring any significant changes in the court’s fortunes, the only sitting member not returned being Huntington who declined to stand for Great Yarmouth and was replaced by another supporter of Exclusion, Sir James Johnson^‡..

Yarmouth, not surprisingly, helped the ‘Tory reaction’ in its early stages in Norfolk, and forced through addresses of loyalty and thanks to the king for dissolving what was to be the last Parliament of his reign.⁴³ Bishop Sparrow was pleased that Yarmouth was ‘heartily true to the king’s and Church’s interest’ and encouraged by Yarmouth’s ‘great interest in this county’ which even enabled the earl in October 1682 to persuade the factious corporation of Norwich to surrender its charter to the king.⁴⁴ Yarmouth had long, at least from October 1677, been incapacitated by gout and other ailments.⁴⁵ By the early 1680s he was an immobile invalid, prompting his rival Townshend in 1682 to make a bid to replace him as lord lieutenant.⁴⁶ Yarmouth died on 8 Mar. 1683, but Townshend was still frustrated, for the earl was replaced in the Norfolk lieutenancy by Norfolk’s son, Henry Howard*, Baron Mowbray (later 7th duke of Norfolk), who had conveniently converted to Protestantism. Yarmouth’s very brief will, written only a few days before his death, left his estate to his wife to pay for his debts and made her and his heir William, long-time burgess for Norwich and now 2nd earl of Yarmouth, executors of his overextended estate.

William Paston was from an early age raised to take over the duties in county administration and political fighting of his father Robert Paston, Viscount (later earl of) Yarmouth. Yarmouth thought William was ‘a very solid young blade and understands matters with a quick intelligence’.⁶ In his role as lord lieutenant he made the young man a justice of the peace, a deputy lieutenant and a colonel of a militia regiment of horse, for which reason William was usually referred to as ‘Colonel Paston’ during this time.⁷ When Christopher Jay, a burgess for Norwich, died in August 1677 Yarmouth and his patron, Henry Howard*, earl of Norwich (later 6th duke of Norfolk), pushed forward the younger Paston as his replacement. Although Yarmouth’s ‘country’ rivals in the county, the former lord lieutenant Horatio Townshend*, Baron (later Viscount) Townshend, and Sir John Hobart^‡, set up various opponents against him, Paston won by a three-to-one majority when the by-election went to a poll in February 1678.⁸ Paston was subsequently returned for the following three Exclusion Parliaments of 1679-81, in which he was a reliable, if largely inactive, supporter of the court and opponent of Exclusion.⁹ His kinship connections with Thomas Osborne*, earl of Danby (later duke of Leeds), and with the king himself led to lucrative marks of favour. In October 1676 he acquired a lease on land in the former ‘bowling green’ of Whitehall Palace.¹⁰ In May 1678 he received a patent granting him the monopoly on printing public documents and forms for 31 years.¹¹ Later, in September of that same year, he received a pension of £1,000 to be taken from the income from the farm of the import of wood and earthenware held by his father. In July 1679 Viscount Yarmouth was further promoted in the peerage to be earl of Yarmouth, perhaps with the aid of his royal daughter-in-law, and the former Colonel Paston was then styled Lord Paston.

Paston helped his father enforce the ‘Tory reaction’ in Norfolk. Throughout 1682 he assisted his father to persuade the corporation of Norwich to surrender its charter voluntarily.¹² At the behest of a group of Tories on the court of aldermen he was named as recorder of the city in the new charter.¹³ Paston’s ready acceptance of the honour quickly encountered opposition from those who argued that the right of appointment of the recorder had long been exclusively in the gift of the common council.¹⁴

Paston succeeded to his father’s earldom on 8 Mar. 1683. His new title did not make his affairs with the Norwich corporation any easier – indeed, it may have only exacerbated the tensions between him and his opponents. In the first place, the king diminished Yarmouth’s local influence when he appointed Henry Howard*, Baron Mowbray (later 7th duke of Norfolk) lord lieutenant of the county in place of the late earl. Yarmouth’s appointment as recorder of Norwich and his wish, from April 1683, to appoint a deputy to exercise his place, encountered strong resistance from a section of the common council. They objected both to the king’s naming of Yarmouth as recorder in the charter as well as to the recorder’s absence from the town and his insistence that a deputy perform his duties. The dispute may reflect divisions within the Tory faction in the city government, between the ‘moderate’ and ‘extreme’ Tories among the aldermen, the latter of whom opposed Yarmouth because they may have found him too ‘moderate’.¹⁵ This is suggested by the conflict between Yarmouth and one of his fiercest foes in the recordership dispute, the alderman and former sheriff, Philip Stebbing. In the autumn of 1683 Yarmouth, who by any standard had acted like a Tory up to that point, charged Stebbing with scandalum magnatum for publicly stating that ‘the earl of Yarmouth doth converse with a trimming Whiggish cabal and is a fit man to head the faction’. Roger Morrice recorded the offending words as ‘his Lordship was a Whig and for the Exclusion of the [James Stuart*] duke of York and fit to head a faction’. Yarmouth won his case in March 1684, and Stebbing was fined £10,000 in damages.¹⁶ Yarmouth was also the court’s main agent in persuading the corporation of Great Yarmouth, where his father had been high steward, to surrender its charter in March 1684. He was duly named high steward of the corporation under the new charter.¹⁷

Yarmouth’s principal connection with the court and the royal family was cut in July 1684 with the unexpected death of his wife, Charlotte. His mother, the dowager countess of Yarmouth, was another leading contact of his at court but her influence was at best ambiguous. She had long ‘made a great bustle’ at Charles II’s court with her sometimes strident advocacy of her family’s interest.¹⁸ The financial affairs of the Pastons were always precarious, and the first earl reputedly suffered from a ‘broken heart’ in his last days caused by the king’s ‘ingratitude’ and unwillingness to assist the family further.¹⁹ This probably referred to the failure just before the earl’s death of a complicated and long-running scheme in which he and a number of others, led by the projector Perceval Brunskell, tried to obtain a lucrative patent to farm the green wax fines. A patent constituting Yarmouth one of the patentees in a grant for 31 years at an annual rent of £250, of one half of the profits arising to the exchequer from Greenwax fines, was sealed on 25 May 1678 but was quickly revoked in July 1679 upon a negative report of the attorney general, Sir William Jones^‡. The chief opponent to the scheme, Sir Francis North*, later Baron Guilford, considered the earl of Yarmouth to be a dupe to Brunskell’s persuasions and Lady Yarmouth to be the projector’s chief patroness.²⁰ In January 1682 a draft royal warrant for another patent for the Greenwax fines, with the same patentees and the addition of Lord Paston and some others, was sent to the attorney-general, Robert Sawyer^‡, for his examination. After a year of delay, the proposal was finally and definitively ‘quite baffled’ at the Privy Council in January 1683, shortly before the first earl’s death.²¹ Brunskell, with the backing and patronage of the dowager countess, prepared a printed rebuttal of the charges against the scheme shortly after the first earl’s death, as part of her last-ditch efforts to salvage some financial benefit for the family.²² The countess’s activities in this, and other petitions and interventions, gained her a reputation at the court for importunity.²³ In October 1684 an anonymous correspondent informed Yarmouth that he had been present when the dowager countess had made her representation at court at Windsor and ‘know nothing could be more contemptuous, she being held an indiscreet and mischievous woman. ... if you suffered to be governed by her, you would be held a weak person and ruin your interest at court’.²⁴

Both mother and son had a stake in the late earl’s farm of the customs on wood, which was considered void at the death of Charles II.²⁵ Yarmouth successfully petitioned, although with some trouble, to maintain the farm for the remaining three years of its lease, but the restrictions placed on it (he was only to be paid a fixed annuity out of the customs which were to be managed by customs officers) indicated that its renewal, due in 1688, would be difficult.²⁶ Perhaps in part to protect this interest, Yarmouth pushed himself forward at James II’s court. He probably had some role in having court candidates returned for the boroughs of Great Yarmouth and Norwich in 1685 (including his own younger brother Robert Paston).²⁷ Yarmouth himself sat in the House at the first opportunity he could, attending on the first day of James II’s Parliament. He attended in total 58 per cent of its meetings and was named to only three committees. Over the following months Yarmouth convinced the king of his unswerving loyalty and became a favourite at court. He raised an independent troop of horse for the king to help suppress the rebellion of James Scott*, duke of Monmouth. Contemporary political commentators consistently marked him throughout 1687 and 1688 as a supporter of the king’s policies and of the repeal of the Test Acts and penal statutes. This, with perhaps the continuing importunate solicitations of his mother – for whom James II and his queen appear to have had a high regard – led eventually to Yarmouth’s appointment on 9 Feb. 1687 as treasurer of the royal household.²⁸ At about the same time, in March 1687, he contracted an advantageous marriage with Elizabeth Wiseman. The marriage made him brother-in-law of the commissioner of the customs, Sir Dudley North^‡, but this connection did him little good when the lease on the wood farm expired, as North and the other commissioners refused to renew it.²⁹ Yarmouth was appointed, in March 1688, joint lord lieutenant (and from June sole custos rotulorum) of Wiltshire, a county with which he had no connection but whose incumbent lord lieutenant, the local magnate Thomas Herbert*, 8th earl of Pembroke, was increasingly mistrusted by James. Yarmouth’s commission for this post included a dispensation from the penal statutes against Catholics.³⁰ At the time of Yarmouth’s appointment in February 1687 he had been considered a Protestant, but there are suggestions that as early as June 1686 his mother had converted to Catholicism and in July 1688 it was reported in the newsletters that Yarmouth himself had become a Roman Catholic.³¹ By September 1688 a member of the Catholic Waldegrave clan at court placed the dowager countess ‘in the first rank’ of ‘those who are their majesties’ true and faithful servants’.³² With the farm on the greenwax and the wood custom gone, Yarmouth appears to have turned in 1687-8 to investing in the exploitation of lead mines, particularly near Wirksworth in Derbyshire.³³ At the time of the Revolution Yarmouth, not knowing his fate in the coming war, left his mother explicit instructions regarding his estate, instructing her to ensure that the work on the mines might be continued and that his patent for the monopoly of printing public documents be maintained.³⁴

Yarmouth survived the Revolution, though his actions in November 1688 are not known. He first attended the meeting of the provisional government established in the Guildhall on the afternoon of 13 Dec. just after reports of the king’s discovery at Faversham were reaching the capital. It was decided that Yarmouth, as treasurer of the king’s household, was to go with other prominent members of the king’s court to Faversham to bring the king back to the capital.³⁵ In the Convention Yarmouth voted on 29 Jan. 1689 in favour of the unsuccessful motion to establish a regency. Over the following days he consistently voted against proclaiming William and Mary king and queen or accepting the Commons’ phrasing in the declaration that James II had ‘abdicated’ and that the throne was thereby ‘vacant’, although he did not join in the protest of 6 Feb. 1689 when this wording was accepted by a majority of the House. Two days after this vote Yarmouth left the House for good, unwilling to acknowledge William and Mary as his new monarchs. Although he formally reconverted to Protestantism sometime in the spring of 1689, he refused to swear the necessary oaths to the new regime until he finally relented in November 1696.³⁶ He was frequently summoned to the House by official letters, but his excuses for his absence, usually involving his recurrent illness or the distances needed to travel from Norfolk, were always accepted by the House. His refusal to accept the new monarchs marked his own political downfall, as he lost all his court and most of his local, offices over the course of 1688-9, although he formally remained custos of Wiltshire until as late as February 1690 and retained the high stewardship of Great Yarmouth until his death.³⁷

In late June 1690 Yarmouth was committed to the Tower on suspicion of high treason and involvement in Jacobite conspiracy but even though the judge thought ‘there was more matter against him than against some that had been tried and condemned’, he was discharged on 15 August.³⁸ There was good reason to suspect Yarmouth of Jacobite conspiracy, as became clear over the following months. An informant told the government that a Jacobite agent had travelled to Norfolk in September 1691 to meet with ‘Ld. Y’ and other Tories; he had been told that Yarmouth and the others ‘would raise more money, men, horses and arms than could be expected’.³⁹ Yarmouth was also included in a list of Jacobite peers who had sent an agent to St Germain with professions of their loyalty and an optimistic account of England’s readiness to accept the return of the king.⁴⁰ Yarmouth was predictably high on the list when the government effected another clampdown on Jacobites in early May 1692. He was committed to the Tower again on 15 May, only to be released a month later on bail.⁴¹ These brushes with incarceration do not appear to have changed Yarmouth’s views, and by the winter of 1693-4 he was deeply involved in a plan for an immediate Jacobite invasion, taking upon himself in his letters to St Germain the responsibility of securing Norfolk for the deposed king and providing the Jacobite court with a detailed and optimistic list of the principal inhabitants of Norfolk who would declare for James II in the event of an invasion.⁴² Yet at the same time as Yarmouth was describing himself to St Germain as the leader of the Norfolk Jacobites, the Norfolk clergyman Humphrey Prideaux described him as living ‘very obscurely’ at Oxnead, in increasing debt, while his once imperious mother ‘boards in a thatched house, and ... with difficulty enough finds money to pay for her board’. ⁴³

The countess dowager died in February 1694. By that time the Paston interest at court was being managed by Yarmouth’s son and heir, Charles, styled Lord Paston, who in January 1694 had ‘kissed the king’s hand in order to his coming into favour’.⁴⁴ He quickly allied himself to Hans Willem Bentinck*, earl of Portland, who may have procured for him a commission as a major in a troop of the Life Guards and appears for several years to have been receptive to the idea of Paston’s marriage to his own daughter.⁴⁵ It may have been through Paston’s and Portland’s interest that Yarmouth, so long in self-imposed isolation, returned to favour. On 23 Nov. 1696 he kissed the king’s hands and took the requisite oaths to William III in the House, sitting there for the first time since ‘the coronation’, as Narcissus Luttrell^‡ commented (inaccurately, as Yarmouth had made two brief and unnoticeable appearances on 7 May and 12 Nov. 1689).⁴⁶ He came to over half of the meetings of this session, but on the most controversial issue of that time, the attainder of Sir John Fenwick^‡, he avoided taking a stand, leaving the House before the question was put on 23 Dec. 1696 whether the bill of attainder should pass, and he did not join in signing the protest against the bill.

Yarmouth’s political stance in the ensuing years was ambiguous. On one hand, he could clearly express his Jacobite sympathies, as when he stood £5,000 surety in June 1697 for the bail of William Herbert*, styled Viscount Montgomery (4th earl of Powis).⁴⁷ His steadily declining attendance after his return to the House in 1696-7 may suggest that he still found proceedings in the House distasteful to his political views. He attended only 37 per cent of the meetings in 1697-8 session, but was named to 27 committees and chaired and reported from one on a private bill for vesting a Norfolk estate in trustees to be sold. On 15 Mar. 1698 he was present to vote against the commitment of the Junto bill to punish the exchequer official, Charles Duncombe^‡. He only came to just over a quarter of the meetings in the first session of the 1698 Parliament and to none at all in the second. Similarly, he attended only ten of the gatherings of the Parliament of 1701, during which he managed to get himself excused through illness from passing judgment in the impeachment of the Junto peers. He did not attend any of the meetings of William III’s last Parliament.

On the other hand, he relied on his son’s growing connection with Portland and tried to use him as a patron and protector as well. In 1697 his claim that he only remained in contact with Jacobite agents in order to discover information which he could loyally pass on to Portland and the government was generally accepted. His daughters also testified that he blamed his wife for continuing to place him in such a damaging position by ‘bringing him among such people’. He told her (at least according to his daughters, who may have wished to shift blame on to their step-mother) that ‘she would never be quiet till she had brought him to a scaffold, asking with what face could he now look upon the king, when these things appeared against him, after the assurances he had given of carrying himself faithfully towards him’.⁴⁸ On 29 June 1698, just before Yarmouth left the 1697-8 session for its last few days, he even registered his proxy with Portland. Lord Paston had accompanied Portland on his embassy to France in early 1698 and in the elections of later that year stood as a Whig for Norfolk with Sir Henry Hobart^‡, son of the first earl of Yarmouth’s local enemy in the 1670s.⁴⁹ As had happened earlier when they had stood together at the county elections of 1690, Hobart and Paston came bottom of the poll, but Paston was shortly after chosen as a burgess for Thetford at a by-election in January 1699.⁵⁰ Hobart was killed in a duel shortly after his defeat, at which Yarmouth surprisingly set himself up as the head of the county’s Whig party, ‘which’, Humphrey Prideaux commented to John Sharp*, archbishop of York, in March 1699,

cannot but appear very strange to your Grace who will know how better his father presented those sort of people ... but for want of another to buoy them up they have taken him in and are now endeavouring to get him in to be lord lieutenant in the place of the duke of Norfolk whom they would fain dispossess of it.⁵¹

Yarmouth’s ambitions were founded on the projected marriage of Paston and one of Portland’s daughters, the rumour of which Luttrell had already recorded in August 1696 and repeated as late as August 1700, although it never did go through.⁵² To further burnish his Whig credentials, Yarmouth was trying to arrange a marriage between his daughter, Rebecca, and Sir John Holland^‡, grandson of the old Civil War parliamentarian, Sir John Holland^‡. The old man’s son, Thomas Holland, the prospective groom’s father died in December 1698, and his debts of £9,000 temporarily interrupted the marriage negotiations, much to the relief of the county gentry, who ‘apprehend that if the earl of Yarmouth and Sir John Holland join interest it would be the worse for the [county]’.⁵³ The marriage took place in May 1699.⁵⁴ Sir John Holland went on to be an active knight of the shire from January 1702 until the Tory landslide in 1710.

Yarmouth for his part had rehabilitated himself so well that in the early days of the reign of Anne there was an unfounded rumour circulating that he had been made a privy councillor.⁵⁵ Macky could describe him as ‘a man of sense and knowledge in the affairs of his country’ while noting that he had been ‘a non-juror all King William’s reign’.⁵⁶ Charles Spencer*, 3rd earl of Sunderland, in forecasting the vote on the occasional conformity bill in December 1703, tentatively placed Yarmouth in the ‘good’ category of those that would oppose the bill, but further indicated that Yarmouth was ‘uncertain’ and tellingly noted that he ‘probably won’t come up’, for Yarmouth continued to be a persistent absentee from the House throughout the early years of Anne’s reign. He first attended on 15 Feb. 1707 for a total of 20 sittings in that year. In the following Parliament he first took the oaths and sat on 23 Feb. 1709 but then attended again for just three more days in mid-March. During this long period of absence Yarmouth was considered by one political commentator to be a Jacobite, and in a list of the political leanings of the peerage at the time of the 1708 Parliament he was classed as a Tory. Another factor in his isolation may have been the crippling state of his finances and debts. In September 1708 Humprhey Prideaux commented to John Ellis^‡ that,

the earl of Yarmouth is as low as you can imagine. He hath vast debts, and suffers everything to run to extremity; so his goods have been all seized in execution and his lands extended, so that he hath scarce a servant to attend him or an horse to ride abroad upon, and yet cannot be persuaded to take any method of putting his affairs into a better position, which they are still capable of, if he would set about it.⁵⁷

By 1711 Prideaux himself was owed arrears of tithes due to him from the earl which, he noted in his diary, ‘with other parts of the earl’s estate [were], assigned to Sir John Holland [the earl’s son-in-law], and other trustees for the payment of some of the said earl’s debts’.⁵⁸

Despite, or perhaps because of, his debts, Yarmouth returned to active political life from the time of the second session of the Whig-dominated 1708 Parliament, when he perhaps saw that the Tories were on the ascendant. He first sat in the House on 9 Jan. 1710 and attended in total 32 per cent of the sittings. He joined the Tories in the defence of Dr Sacheverell and signed six protests between 14-20 Mar. 1710 against the trial and conviction of the minister, including the protest against the final verdict of guilty. He then attended three sparsely attended days of prorogation in the summer of 1710 as the old Whig ministry was being dismantled. As he was forming his new government, Robert Harley*, later earl of Oxford, included Yarmouth among those who were expected to support his ministry. Yarmouth attended over three-quarters of the meetings of the first session of 1710-11 and on 16 Apr. 1711 reported from a committee of the whole House discussing a bill on the assize of billet.⁵⁹ He also played a role in the sub-committee for the Journal.⁶⁰

Yarmouth looked to benefit from the politically sympathetic ministry now in place. Throughout 1711 Harley, now earl of Oxford and lord treasurer, received solicitations from Yarmouth or his advocates promoting his candidacy for offices which would supply him with an income.⁶¹ Robert Ferguson, who by that time was heavily involved with the Jacobites, put him forward as a candidate for first commissioner of the victualling commission because, as he argued, Yarmouth ‘hath a great esteem and a cordial affection for those in the present ministry, so he doth particularly avow himself a friend, as well as both an undaunted advocate for the reputation and professed partisan for the safety of the ... lord high treasurer’.⁶² In the meantime, those on the opposite side of the political spectrum saw Yarmouth’s continuing indebtedness as an opportunity for bringing him over to support the Hanoverian succession. In both 1712 and 1713 he was among the ‘poor lords’ whom Hanoverian agents recommended be pensioned with £500 or £600, as he was considered one of those lords ‘as vote with the court, but may be had for money’. Perhaps seeing Yarmouth’s financial vulnerability, Oxford did reward the earl with a bounty of £400 in 1713. In the summer of that same year, when Oxford found himself increasingly embattled over the opposition to the peace terms, Yarmouth put himself forward as his replacement as lord treasurer with (according to Yarmouth) Oxford’s own approval.⁶³

Yarmouth attended all but 14 of the sittings (87.5 per cent) of the 1711-12 session, where he supported the ministry by voting in December against the inclusion of the ‘No Peace without Spain’ clause in the address to the queen and against the motion to exclude James Hamilton*, 4th duke of Hamilton [S], from sitting in the House by right of the British peerage conferred on him after the Union. The status of hereditary Scottish peers given British titles after the Union was further discussed in a number of meetings of a committee of the whole in January 1712; and Yarmouth chaired the last of these, on 4 Feb., but did not report as no decision had been taken.⁶⁴ On 29 Jan. 1712 he did report from a committee of the whole that discussed the bill to build a causeway between Great Yarmouth and Caister, and on 5 May 1712 he reported from a select committee on a private estate bill involving an estate in Somerset, perhaps a remnant from his days as custos in the west country. Later in that month he voted against the address to the queen protesting against the ‘restraining orders’ sent to the captain-general James Butler*, 2nd duke of Ormond. He continued to attend the House regularly whilst it was continuously prorogued in 1712-13 when the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht were being hammered out and then came to three-quarters of the meetings of the session of the spring of 1713. Oxford forecast that Yarmouth would support the French commercial treaty, if it came before the House. Between 20 May and 19 June 1713 Yarmouth reported from four select committees on private bills, one of these, the bill to exempt the estate of his son-in-law, Sir John Holland, from various trusts and uses, being of personal concern to him.⁶⁵ On 9 July he also reported from a committee of the whole on the bill to raise £1,200,000 by a circulation of exchequer bills and for the queen to raise a further £500,000 on the credit of the civil list. At around this time he acted as the middleman in the negotiations for the marriage between Oxford’s daughter, Elizabeth, and the son and namesake of Yarmouth’s own second cousin, Peregrine Osborne*, 2nd duke of Leeds.⁶⁶ Leeds appears to have been very close and reliant on his cousin, for when in June 1713 there was a concern that there would not be sufficient Tory peers in the House to block a vote against Oxford, it was noted that if Yarmouth was intending to be absent, then ‘it is not to be doubted, but that in consequence thereof the duke of Leeds will be likewise’.⁶⁷

Yarmouth was at his most assiduous during the first session of the Parliament elected in late 1713, when he came to all but four (95 per cent) of the meetings; he only came to eight of the gatherings of the much shorter session of August 1714 following the queen’s death. He was named to 19 committees and between 7 May and 9 July 1714 he reported from two select committees on naturalization bills (on 16 June and 5 July) and from six committees of the whole dealing with a range of bills mostly to do with various revenue raising measures of the crown, particularly through the customs. On 17 Apr. he told for the majority contents in a very tight division in a committee of the whole on whether to include a clause in the bill to reduce the number of office holders in the House of Commons. He told in another committee of the whole on 9 June for the minority not contents in a division on whether to insert a word in the schism bill. Daniel Finch*, 2nd earl of Nottingham, considered him a supporter of this bill. At the end of June he told again, this time against reading the examination accounts bill a second time. On 16 Mar. 1714 the Tory, Thomas Lennard*, earl of Sussex, registered his proxy with Yarmouth, who held it until Sussex returned to the House on the penultimate day of the session, and from 22 June Yarmouth also held the proxy of another Tory, Edward Hyde*, 3rd earl of Clarendon, for the remainder of the session.

Yarmouth appears to have adapted successfully to the Hanoverian succession. It is true that in the winter of 1714-15 he acted as a representative commissioned by the dowager queen, Mary of Modena, to negotiate the payment of her jointure, but otherwise he appears to have put his Jacobite, and even his Tory, past behind him and to have supported the government of George I.⁶⁸ He did not stay away from the House, as he had done under previous whiggish administrations. Throughout the king’s first Parliament his attendance per session ranged between 64 per cent (during the first long session of 1715-17) to 85 per cent (during 1718-19). In total he was present at three-quarters of the meetings of the long Parliament that met from March 1715 to March 1722. In contrast, by the time of the 1722 Parliament age or poverty was taking its toll, and he came to only just over half of all the sittings between October 1722 and the king’s death in June 1727. His presence in the first few meetings of the Parliament of George II was negligible, coming to only to 37 meetings in total between February 1728 and February 1732.

His actions during George I’s Parliaments suggest that he had become a court Tory and supported the de facto government, perhaps through a wish to enlist its assistance in his increasingly difficult financial situation. He was briefly rewarded by the government for his loyalty when he was made vice-admiral of the Norfolk coast between the months of January and April 1719: this was his only royal appointment. Yarmouth surprised commentators in April 1716 when he joined a small band of Tories in voting with the court in favour of the repeal of the Triennial Act.⁶⁹ Even his old patron, the earl of Oxford, considered Yarmouth one of his potential opponents in the impeachment proceedings of the spring of 1717, although Yarmouth avoided taking a stand by absenting himself from proceedings before the vote that acquitted the former lord treasurer.⁷⁰ A more detailed account and analysis of Yarmouth’s political activities in the House after 1715 will be found in the next section of this work.

Yarmouth died at Epsom, Surrey, on Christmas Day 1732, the last male of his line. Lord Paston, who had been made a colonel of an infantry regiment in March 1704, promoted to brigadier-general in January 1710, and who had then sold his regiment, had died without a male heir in 1718.⁷¹ Yarmouth’s three brothers and their sons had all predeceased him. Not only was the peerage extinct (and was quickly recreated for George II’s mistress in 1740), but the Paston estate was in ruins. All Yarmouth’s lands and goods, including the valuable possessions at the family seat of Oxnead, were sold to pay his and his father’s outstanding debts. Yet even when the estate, which had been eyed for purchase by Sarah Churchill, duchess of Marlborough, for several years, was finally settled in 1764, Yarmouth’s creditors could only receive 11s. 3d. in the pound in recompense.⁷²

The premier marquess in England, Winchester was descended from a cadet branch of a Somersetshire gentry family that was ennobled under Henry VIII. The family’s estates were centred on the manor of Basing, which had been acquired in the fifteenth century, though by the mid-seventeenth century the Paulets appear to have favoured the smaller former lodge at Hackwood (‘a very indifferent house’) rather than the colossal Tudor edifice of Basing House itself.⁶ Having been returned for St Ives, probably on his father’s interest, St John (as he was then styled) was summoned to the Lords in his father’s barony in 1624 and took his seat in the House on 24 February. He succeeded to the marquessate five years later.⁷

As a Catholic and staunch royalist Winchester expended vast sums in the service of the king during the Civil War. The siege of Basing proved to be one of the most protracted focal points in the conflict. When the house at last fell to Oliver Cromwell^‡ in the autumn of 1645, more than 100 of the defenders were put to the sword and Winchester himself was conveyed to the Tower, where he faced prosecution for treason.⁸ Although he was permitted to take the waters at Epsom in 1647, Winchester was subject to sequestration and was even deprived of his children, who were taken away to be raised as Protestants.⁹ With Basing House in ruins and the profits of his estates granted to his local rivals Sir Thomas Jervoise^‡ and Robert Wallop^‡, Winchester removed to Englefield in Berkshire, which he had acquired prior to the War, after which he appears to have spent the remainder of the Interregnum in comparative obscurity.¹⁰

Noted by Philip Wharton*, 4th Baron Wharton, as a papist in his analysis of the peerage on the eve of the Restoration, Winchester at last returned to the House on 21 May 1660, along with several other Catholic peers. He was thereafter present on more than three-quarters of all sitting days, during which he was named to five committees.¹¹ His heir, Charles Powlett*, styled Lord St John (later duke of Bolton), was returned for the borough of Winchester in the Convention but it is most unlikely that Winchester himself played any role in promoting St John’s return. Over the following few months, he signed a number of certificates testifying to the worthiness of several people seeking offices or restitution to places lost in the service of the former king.¹² The majority of his efforts, however, were spent in attempting to seek the restoration of his own estates and in effecting a reconciliation with his estranged heir, with whom he appears to have fallen out as a result of the difficulties over recovering his estates. On 7 June Winchester’s petition seeking restoration of his lands was referred to the committee for petitions and the following day the committee was ordered to attempt a reconciliation between the marquess and St John, though this was put off over the ensuing few days. On 23 June Philip Herbert*, 5th earl of Pembroke, reported from the committee and sought an order for the lord chancellor (Edward Hyde*, Baron Hyde, later earl of Clarendon) to approach the king to intervene personally in the dispute. A parallel order was also made for Winchester to be put into possession of such parts of his estate as had not been sold and further orders were made for his neighbours Jervoise and Wallop to hand over the profits from lands they had acquired from him during the Interregnum. On 27 June Winchester was granted a further order empowering him to search for his goods (similar to an order previously granted to James Compton*, 3rd earl of Northampton).

Despite such early signs of progress, Winchester’s efforts to secure his property ran into almost immediate difficulties and on 11 July he submitted a complaint to the House that not only was one Edward Acton refusing to heed the Lords’ orders but he had also made disparaging remarks about Winchester. Although Acton was ordered to be attached, it is not clear whether any further progress was made with Winchester’s complaint in this instance. On 13 July Winchester joined George Villiers*, 2nd duke of Buckingham, in introducing George Monck* as duke of Albemarle. The following day the House read Winchester’s bill for seeking reparations of £19,000 from Jervoise and Wallop and on 18 July he was granted the same order as Buckingham for taking possession of lands sold without his consent. On 23 July Winchester’s bill was committed, but the following day the orders for Winchester and Charles Stanley*, 8th earl of Derby, to be put into possession of lands lost during the Interregnum were suspended. Despite this, Winchester still evidently commanded some sympathy in the House as Pembroke reported Winchester’s bill as fit to pass on 30 July and on 2 Aug. the bill was passed at third reading. It subsequently failed to pass the Commons.

Winchester was involved in attempting to compose tensions within the city of Winchester later that summer. As a result, on 23 Aug. 1660 he and John Robartes*, Baron Robartes (later earl of Radnor), recommended to the House that certain members of the corporation be omitted from the city charter when it was next renewed. Their efforts proved unsuccessful.¹³ On 8 Sept. Winchester had some success in his efforts to regain control of his former lands when the sheriff of Dorset was ordered to arrange for the handing over of a farm at Stepleton to Winchester’s agents.

Winchester took his seat in the House in the second session of the Convention on 6 Nov. 1660, after which he attended on just under 90 per cent of all sitting days and was named to nine committees.¹⁴ In January 1661 he was one of a number of peers appointed to consider ways to persuade those peers who had neglected to pay their poll bills to settle their accounts.¹⁵ Winchester’s own ongoing difficulty in securing the return of his property mirrored the experiences of other cavalier landowners such as Derby and also highlighted the tensions evident between Lords and Commons over the Restoration settlement. Following the return of the new Parliament in May 1661 the Commons promoted a bill seeking reparations of £10,000 from Robert Wallop for Winchester. It was brought up from the Commons on 2 July, but was rejected by the Lords on the 12th, following the advice of the lord chief justice that it contravened the act of oblivion and indemnity. Winchester was clearly unwilling to concede defeat and his frequent attendance during the first session (amounting to approximately 84 per cent of all sitting days) no doubt reflected his eagerness to press on with his claims. On 19 July he met with greater support from the Lords when the House agreed to uphold his privilege and prevent the further prosecution of two of his tenants by Essex Paulet (presumably a kinsman), who had been attempting to bring an act of ejectment against them.

The same month Winchester was one of several individuals to be named in provisos attached to the indemnity bill but these met spirited opposition in the House. By 27 July it was reported that William Craven*, Baron (later earl of) Craven, was willing to relinquish his claim to a proviso but that Winchester was holding firm and insisting that the proviso relating to him remained in spite of a personal intervention by Thomas Wriothesley*, 4th earl of Southampton (Wallop’s brother-in-law), recommending that the House petition on Winchester’s behalf instead.¹⁶ To complicate the matter, on 29 July the Commons refused to accept the Lords’ determination to reject the proviso and requested a conference to discuss the issue. The Commons were initially resolute on Winchester’s part, stressing that it was ‘a just thing’ to recognize his grievance and that they considered ‘the marquess of Winchester to have done much service for the king, and suffered much in his estate for him … and this proviso gives him nothing but his own’. Despite this, the ensuing conference resulted in the Commons’ acceptance of the Lords’ explanation, though they still insisted on petitioning for Winchester and St John to be awarded reparations.

Winchester petitioned the king for payment of £2,000 apiece to his two daughters out of the customs in September 1661, which he hoped would help to ‘reconcile an unhappy difference between himself and his son’.¹⁷ He introduced a further bill on 15 Feb. 1662 for confirming him in the possession of estates whose deeds had been destroyed during the sack of Basing, which was successful, and the following month another bill was introduced into the House for confirming the award made by the king to compose the differences between Winchester and his son. On 24 Apr. the dispute, which by then had grown to embrace several other members of Winchester’s family, was again referred to the arbitration of referees named by the king. In the midst of this Winchester was nominated to a dozen committees, the majority of which related to private legislation with which he was by now all too familiar.

Winchester returned to the House for the new session on 18 Feb. 1663, after which he was present on approximately 88 per cent of all sitting days and during which he was named to ten committees. His high record of attendance no doubt reflects the continuing efforts still being made to settle the family disagreement and may also explain his presence at a dinner hosted by Clarendon in May.¹⁸ On 27 May the Commons sent up a further bill for composing the feuding pair’s differences but on 15 June, when Anthony Ashley Cooper*, Baron Ashley (later earl of Shaftesbury), reported from the committee named to consider the bill, he informed the House that Winchester did not consent to the measure. The House ordered the bill to be recommitted but on 2 July, when the committee reconvened, chaired by the lord chamberlain (Edward Montagu*, 2nd earl of Manchester), Winchester once more disclaimed the bill while insisting that he wished to do what might be convenient for his family.¹⁹ Failure to secure what he considered his due as a sufferer in the late king’s cause may have been behind his estimated support for the attempt made by George Digby*, 2nd earl of Bristol, to impeach Clarendon that summer, though he may also have been demonstrating solidarity with a fellow Catholic.

Winchester took his seat in the following session on 2 Apr. 1664, after which he attended on 58 per cent of all sitting days, though he was named to just one committee. He took his seat in the ensuing session on 24 Nov., and he attended on almost three-quarters of all sitting days but he was missing at a call of the House on 7 December. He resumed his seat two days later but was named to just three committees during the remainder of the session. Absent for the entirety of the session of October 1665, on 16 Oct. he registered his proxy with Henry Bennet*, earl of Arlington. Although he rallied to attend the prorogation of 23 Apr. 1666, Winchester was again missing at a call on 1 October. He resumed his seat the following month on 13 Nov., after which he was present on just over half of all sitting days and was named to two committees. Absent again from the opening of the following session, Winchester was excused once more at a call on 29 Oct. 1667, before resuming his seat on 9 Nov., after which he was present for a quarter of all sitting days. Absent yet again on 17 Feb. 1668, he was once more excused at a call before returning to the House on 22 February.

Winchester sat for the last time on 9 May. Later that year rumours circulated that he had died.²⁰ Although these reports proved to be premature, it may be that poor health contributed to his failure to attend from then on. Even so, by April of the following year he confounded all such reports by marrying for the third time, to a bride some 25 years his junior. His new marriage was presumably the reason for a further downturn in relations with his heir, who introduced a bill in chancery relating to the previous settlement made between them, and in August 1669 Winchester’s agents travelled to France to take a deposition from the exiled Clarendon as part of Winchester’s defence.²¹ Whether he was distracted by the renewed dispute with St John or sickness, on 26 Oct. it was noted that Winchester was sending up his proxy and on 6 Nov. the proxy was duly registered with his new father-in-law, Stafford. On 14 Nov. he was again excused and on 10 Feb. 1671 he registered his proxy once more.

That summer, the case between Winchester and his heir was once again rehearsed before the court of chancery but a resolution appears to have eluded father and son.²² Winchester was mistakenly reported to have been among four new privy councillors appointed in April 1672, his name being confused with that of Henry Somerset*, marquess of Worcester (later duke of Beaufort).²³ Excused at a call on 13 Feb. 1673, on 3 Mar. Winchester again registered his proxy with Stafford. He was excused again on 12 Jan. 1674. A couple of weeks later (27 Jan.) the House was informed that Winchester was facing charges of recusancy, contrary to his privilege. In response the Lords ordered that he should be granted privilege and similar orders were issued for five other Catholic peers. On 12 Feb. Winchester once again registered his proxy with Stafford.

Winchester died on 5 Mar. 1675 and was buried in the church at Englefield, which he had made his home following the destruction of Basing House.²⁴ Following his death, a memorial inscription was composed by Dryden, which hailed him as:

He who in impious times undaunted stood,
And ’midst rebellion durst be just and good:
Whose arms asserted, and whose sufferings more
Confirmed the cause for which he fought before …

In his will Winchester requested to be buried with as little fuss as possible. To his heir, St John (who succeeded as 6th marquess of Winchester), he bequeathed his parliamentary robes, while the majority of the personal estate at Englefield was left to his younger son, Lord Francis Paulet. To the poor of Englefield Winchester bequeathed £20. The residue of his estate passed to his third wife, Isabella.

Thomas Pelham was first returned to the Commons to fill a vacated seat for East Grinstead shortly after the convening of the last session of the Cavalier Parliament in October 1678. He was returned for the same borough in the subsequent election, and from that point until he voluntarily stood down before the election of 1705 he sat in every Parliament. During those long years in the Commons, he allied himself with first the Exclusionists and later the Whigs but always maintained an independent ‘country’ stance. He was influenced, in part, by his first father-in-law, the former attorney-general and firm advocate of Exclusion, Sir William Jones^‡. His wife Elizabeth, Jones’s daughter, died within two years of the marriage, and in April 1686 Pelham made a marriage alliance with an even more prestigious and powerful Whig family when he married Grace, daughter of another Exclusionist, the melancholy Presbyterian peer, Gilbert Holles*, 3rd earl of Clare.

From this point Pelham’s career was closely linked with his new brother-in-law, John Holles*, who became 4th earl of Clare in 1689. By 1694, through his marriage to a daughter (and as of 1691 sole heiress) of Henry Cavendish*, 2nd duke of Newcastle, and a fortuitous inheritance from a distant cousin, Clare had become one of the greatest landowners in England; he was himself created duke of Newcastle in 1694. It was perhaps through the influence of Newcastle that Pelham rose to prominence during the reign of William III. His resignation from the treasury commission in late February 1692 was a gesture of support for his brother-in-law’s resignation of his court offices over William’s refusal to grant his demand for the dukedom of Newcastle. In the Commons Pelham maintained his Whig stance but did not follow the Junto consistently, often taking an independent line, as in his opposition to the attainder of Sir John Fenwick^‡. His connection with the Whigs, was further strengthened by the marriage in 1698 between his daughter, Elizabeth (with a portion of £30,000) and a prominent Whig politician, Charles Townshend*, 2nd Viscount Townshend.⁵

Pelham returned to the treasury commission in May 1697 but was removed from it again in June 1699. Reappointed in March 1701 he lost office again at Anne’s accession.⁶ In her first Parliament Pelham was returned for both the county (Sussex) and for Lewes and chose to sit for the county. Since the latter years of William III’s reign Newcastle had turned to the rising star, Robert Harley*, later earl of Oxford, as his closest political ally.⁷ In early April 1705 Harley was able to have Newcastle appointed lord privy seal, as a first move in the gradual replacement of Tory officers with Whigs, and that same month he tried to gratify Newcastle by promoting his brother-in-law, Pelham, to the vice-admiralty of the Sussex coast, a position formerly held by his father. Harley further encouraged Newcastle to persuade Pelham to stand for Sussex in the elections of spring 1705, but Pelham declined the offer.⁸

Perhaps Pelham withdrew from the Commons to further emphasize his desire for a peerage; the growing influence of his patron, Newcastle, in the government ensured that his wish for further favour would eventually be gratified. Under constant pressure from Harley and the ‘duumvirs’, throughout 1705-6 Anne provided offices and honours to an increasing number of Whigs, often against her own judgment. In December 1706 Harley and Sidney Godolphin*, earl of Godolphin, included Pelham among their list of ten Whigs who were to be either created peers or elevated from their existing titles.⁹ The patent creating him Baron Pelham of Laughton in Sussex was sealed on 16 Dec. 1706, and he first sat in the House two weeks later on 30 Dec. 1706, along with the nine other Whig creations or promotions. His elevation to the upper House did not reduce his interest in the Commons; members of the extended Pelham family continued to sit for Lewes for the next few Parliaments.

If Pelham was created a baron in order to increase Whig numbers and voting power, his subsequent record in the House would have been a disappointment to his brother-in-law and those who promoted him. His activity and attendance remained low over the next six years. After coming to 22 sittings of the House from the time of his introduction, he left the House for that session on 14 Mar. 1707, just when proceedings on the bill of Union were heating up, and did not come at all in the brief session of April 1707. He was present at 15 of the sittings in 1707-8, first sitting in this session on 10 Nov. 1707. Even when the Whigs dominated Parliament, as they did after the 1708 elections, Pelham seldom showed up in the House, and he came to only 16 meetings of the 1708-9 session. At this point his attitude to the two principal ministers, the ‘duumvirs’ Godolphin and John Churchill*, duke of Marlborough, was ambivalent. For while he obsequiously solicited Marlborough in March 1709 for a military commission for his kinsman, James Pelham^‡, in the House he joined with Newcastle and the Junto Whigs against the increasingly beleaguered Godolphin.¹⁰ On 21 Jan. 1709 he voted against the right of Godolphin’s close colleague James Douglas*, 2nd duke of Queensberry [S], to vote in the election of the Scottish representative peers because he had received the British title of duke of Dover. Pelham came to 38 per cent of the sittings in the session of 1709-10, his highest rate of attendance in the House during his entire career there. He was present in particular during the proceedings against Henry Sacheverell, for which he was nominated to a number of committees. On 20 Mar. 1710 he found Sacheverell guilty.

Even though Newcastle was the only Whig to remain in office throughout the change of ministry in the summer and autumn of 1710, Pelham barely bothered to come to the Tory-dominated Parliament. He came to only nine sittings in the 1710-11 session. He was perhaps summoned or encouraged to appear in the House for these few brief meetings in early 1711, for he put his name to the two protests of 3 Feb. 1711 objecting to the House’s condemnation of the previous ministry for its failure to supply the forces in Spain adequately to counter the Franco-Spanish army at Almanza. Two days after this protest he left the House and registered his proxy with Newcastle, who himself did not return to the House from a period of absence until 19 February.

For the following (1711-12) session Thomas Howard*, 6th Baron Howard of Effingham, registered his proxy with Pelham on 1 Dec. 1711. Pelham sat for 12 sittings from the session’s first day on 7 Dec. until 25 Jan. 1712 when he once again left the House, probably due to illness. He registered his proxy with Godolphin on 31 January.¹¹ During this brief period in the House Pelham voted in favour of presenting the address to the queen insisting that there could be ‘No peace without Spain’ and against the right of James Hamilton*, 4th duke of Hamilton [S], to sit in the House as duke of Brandon, as this British title had been conferred on him after the Union.¹²

Pelham died, apparently of apoplexy, on 23 Feb. 1712 at his house of Halland at Laughton and reportedly ‘left his son ... the richest heir in England’.¹³ This estimation proved to be correct but the wealth of the young Thomas Pelham*, later duke of Newcastle, did not come principally from his own father. His paternal inheritance was substantial (it was estimated to be worth £4,000 p.a.), but most of his wealth came from his maternal uncle, Newcastle, who had died in July 1711. Newcastle had no male heir and had spent much of 1711 arranging a marriage between his only daughter Henrietta ‘who will be the richest heiress in Europe’ and Harley’s son, Edward Harley^†, later 2nd earl of Oxford. Yet when his will, written on 29 Aug. 1707, was produced it shocked contemporaries, for Newcastle had left the bulk of his vast estate, including the Holles properties, both those he had inherited from his father, the earl of Clare, and those from his second cousin, Denzil Holles*, 3rd Baron Holles, to his nephew Thomas. His daughter Henrietta was to receive only a marriage portion of £20,000 and the Cavendish estates her mother had brought to the marriage. As Gilbert Burnet*, bishop of Salisbury described Newcastle at the time of his death as ‘the richest subject that had been in England for some ages’, with an estate estimated at above £40,000 p.a., this was a vast and unexpected fortune for the young man.¹⁴ Pelham was not slow to claim it on behalf of his son. Nor was the dowager duchess of Newcastle, assisted by her daughter’s prospective father-in-law, Harley (now earl of Oxford), hesitant in contesting the will. Throughout much of the time between Newcastle’s death and his own less than a year later, Pelham and his son were engaged in litigation with the dowager duchess and Oxford.¹⁵ After Pelham’s own death on 23 Feb. 1712, his son was able to make a settlement making him one of the wealthiest peers in England for much of the eighteenth century.¹⁶

Thomas Pelham-Holles, duke of Newcastle-on-Tyne, was one of the major political figures under the first three Georges; his long career in the House, and in successive ministries, will be recounted in much more detail in the relevant succeeding volumes of this work.⁵ Apart from his first two brief and uneventful appearances in the House in August 1714, following the death of Queen Anne, Pelham-Holles merits a place in the volumes for this period because of the controversy surrounding his vast inheritance, which provided the foundation for his power under the Hanoverians, particularly because the people involved included many of the most prominent political figures of Anne’s reign and the controversy was in part fought out in the House of Lords.

Thomas Pelham, as he was until 1711, was the eldest son and namesake of Thomas Pelham, created Baron Pelham of Laughton in 1706, a prominent landowner based in Laughton in Sussex who sat in the Commons for the boroughs of East Grinstead and then Lewes from October 1678 to 1702. He was returned for the county itself in the first Parliament of Anne. Throughout, Pelham acted in Parliament as a moderate Whig, and from an early age the future duke of Newcastle was linked to a number of Whig families and individuals. In 1698 his half-sister Lady Elizabeth Pelham married the rising Whig politician Charles Townshend*, 2nd Viscount Townshend, and for many years the younger Thomas Pelham saw himself as a follower of this brother-in-law.⁶ More significantly for his future fortunes, his mother (his father’s second wife) was Lady Grace Holles, daughter of Gilbert Holles*, 3rd earl of Clare, and sister of John Holles*, who, through a lucrative marriage and a fortuitous inheritance, became one of the greatest landowners in England and was created duke of Newcastle in 1694. It was almost certainly through the influence of Newcastle, lord privy seal from 1705, that his brother-in-law, Thomas Pelham, was elevated to the peerage on 16 Dec. 1706.

At Pelham of Laughton’s death on 23 Feb. 1712 his heir, Thomas, still only 18 years of age, became 2nd Baron Pelham of Laughton and reportedly ‘the richest heir in England’.⁷ The wealth of the new Baron Pelham did not come principally from his father’s inheritance (which was reputed to be only £4,000 p.a.) but from his maternal uncle Newcastle, who had died without a male heir on 15 July 1711. By his will of 29 Aug. 1707 Newcastle left to his only child, his daughter Henrietta, a marriage portion of £20,000 and only a part (worth about £5,000 p.a.) of the estates in Staffordshire, Northumberland and Yorkshire that her mother, a daughter and eventually the sole heiress of Henry Cavendish*, 2nd duke of Newcastle, had brought with her to the marriage. He left the remainder of the Cavendish estates and all of the Holles properties – both those he had inherited from his father, the earl of Clare, and those that had come from his second cousin Denzil Holles*, 3rd Baron Holles (estimated when combined to be worth about £37,000) – to his nephew Thomas Pelham, on condition that he adopt the surname Holles.

Henrietta was also encouraged by her father’s will to marry her cousin Thomas to keep the estate and title together, despite the ongoing negotiations, set in motion after the will had been written but before Newcastle’s death, for a match between Henrietta and Edward Harley^† (later 2nd earl of Oxford), the son of Robert Harley*, earl of Oxford.⁸ Newcastle had long been closely connected socially and politically with Oxford, and had even served as the only Whig in the lord treasurer’s Tory-based ministry after 1710. So close was the connection that there were rumours that Oxford himself would be made duke of Newcastle after his friend’s death without male heirs, and it appears that one motivation for promoting the marriage of his son to Newcastle’s daughter was so that that prestigious dukedom would be conferred on Lord Harley.⁹ Both the estate and the title were at stake in the ensuing battles.

Thomas Pelham quickly added the name and arms of Holles to those of Pelham to signify his acceptance of this inheritance, but the dowager duchess of Newcastle was equally quick to contest the validity of the will of her late husband, angry at what she saw as his unwarranted parcelling out of the Cavendish lands she had brought to the marriage. She was aided in this by her ally, confidant and prospective kinsman, the earl of Oxford.¹⁰ The matter came before chancery, which ordered the dowager duchess to produce a deed of settlement and other writings of her late husband regarding the Cavendish estate. As she consistently refused to do so, arguing that the validity of the will had still not been determined, on 9 Dec. 1712 chancery ordered her property to be sequestered until she complied. She presented an appeal against this decree to the House on 21 Apr. 1713. The matter aroused much interest, for, as the attorney-general, Sir Edward Northey^‡, acting for Pelham, stated before the House, ‘All the wills of England are concerned in this case’.¹¹ The case was heard at the bar of the House on 19 May. The House resolved unanimously to affirm the order against the dowager duchess, ‘which was a great disappointment to her grace, and is reckoned a great step towards Lord Pelham’s possessing what the late duke of Newcastle left him by his will, which is about £30,000 p.a.’. It was also noticed with interest by contemporaries that Oxford was not in the House for the hearing, ‘nor would he interest himself in this occasion, which is supposed might go a great way to the issue that happened’.¹²

Oxford’s absence and lack of support led to a breach between him and the dowager duchess, who now also turned against the marriage of her daughter to Lord Harley. Lady Henrietta, still underage, took matters into her own hands, broke with her mother and looked to Oxford to act as her guardian. In early August 1713 he declared ‘that there is a necessity of the lady’s marrying somebody [and] that this must be done with speed as to her own affairs’. The urgency was caused in part by the proposal Pelham made to the late duke of Newcastle’s close friend and executor Henry Paget*, 8th Baron Paget (later earl of Uxbridge), that, as the marriage between Henrietta and Harley was apparently off, he would willingly embark on negotiations for a match with her himself. Oxford hurriedly engineered the marriage of Lord Harley and Lady Henrietta, celebrated in private on 31 Aug. 1713, over the continuing opposition of the dowager duchess.¹³ There were predictions that ‘this fortunate great match betwixt Lord Harley and Lady Harriet [Henrietta] Holles is like, they say, to be followed with an accommodation of the lawsuit betwixt Lord Pelham and the duchess’.¹⁴

The dowager duchess rejected attempts at mediation, and, increasingly estranged even from her own daughter, continued to litigate. Almost all of the judicial decisions went against her whilst in the meantime the other parties set about trying to come to their own settlement.¹⁵ Pelham enlisted his uncle’s old friend Paget as a mediator to arrange a settlement between himself and the lord treasurer over the estate.¹⁶ In early 1714 Pelham, Oxford, Lord and Lady Harley and Paget all turned to the former (and future) lord chancellor William Cowper*, Baron (later Earl) Cowper, asking him to act as arbitrator. The award settled by Cowper between the parties was finished by 10 July 1714 and its signing was witnessed by Townshend, among others. By its terms Henrietta, Lady Harley, received almost all of the Cavendish properties, with the exception of Nottingham Castle, which the late duke of Newcastle had received from his father-in-law, and the properties that Newcastle had acquired after making his will in 1707. The Holles estate (as it was in 1707) was to go to Pelham and, as a recompense for the lost Cavendish property, Harley was to forego the £20,000 portion charged on the estate by the late duke’s will and Pelham was to have the ownership of Newcastle House, previously Powis House, in the north-west corner of Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

This marked ‘a happy agreement for Lord Harley, and a plentiful provision there is for himself and his lady’, but Pelham did equally well.¹⁷ Even though the estate he surrendered to Lord and Lady Harley, and left as jointure to the dowager duchess, was worth around £12,200 p.a., Pelham was still in possession of the Holles estate, which brought in about £28,000 p.a., and, with his paternal inheritance of the Pelham lands, he enjoyed an income of about £32,000 p.a., making him one of the richest landowners of the realm.¹⁸ The death of the dowager duchess in 1716 removed the principal obstruction to the agreement between Harley and Newcastle (as Pelham had become by that time) and this settlement was able to receive statutory form by an Act of Parliament in February 1719.

Pelham came of age on 21 July 1714, only a few days after this agreement was formally signed, and marked his new status with a lavish feast in Sussex costing £2,000.¹⁹ He attended the House as soon as he could, on 1 Aug. 1714, the first day of the session convened following the queen’s death. He came again four days later when the regents for the kingdom proclaimed George I king of Great Britain, and was placed on the committee of 24 members of the House assigned to draw up an address of congratulations and of loyalty to the new king.

Pelham loudly proclaimed his adherence to the Hanoverian Succession and as a rich, young and ardent Whig he was quickly rewarded by the new king. In October 1714 he was created earl of Clare, a previous title of his benevolent uncle which had been extinguished at his death, and over the following months he received several offices.²⁰ He further showed his adherence to the new regime in the elections of early 1715, as his double inheritance gave him strong influence in the selection of over a dozen members of the Commons from Sussex, Nottinghamshire and the Yorkshire burgage boroughs of Aldborough and Boroughbridge.²¹ He first sat in George I’s Parliament on 21 Mar. 1715 and on 11 Aug. was further raised in the peerage as duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. He helped to prepare Middlesex and Nottinghamshire against the threat of Jacobite rebellion and promoted the further repression of the Jacobite movement by supporting the government measures to prolong the Parliament (the Septennial Act) and for the forfeiture of the estates of those involved in the Jacobite insurrection (the Traitors’ Estates Act).²²

On 2 Apr. 1717, after months of protracted negotiations, Newcastle married Lady Henrietta Godolphin, the daughter of Francis Godolphin*, 2nd earl of Godolphin, and Henrietta, eldest daughter of John Churchill*, duke of Marlborough (later suo jure duchess of Marlborough). Whereas previously Newcastle had been a loyal follower of his brother-in-law Townshend, in the early months of the ‘Whig Schism’ of 1717 he, with great prescience, threw in his lot with his new uncle (the husband of his wife’s maternal aunt) Charles Spencer*, 3rd earl of Sunderland. It was almost certainly Sunderland who promoted his nephew at court, and on 13 Apr. 1717, only one day after Sunderland was himself made a secretary of state, Newcastle was appointed lord chamberlain of the household and three days later was sworn to the Privy Council. Thus began his public career in which he was involved at the heart of ‘old corps’ Whig politics and public life until his death in 1768.

Parliamentary leader

The Percy family enjoyed a long and celebrated history as defenders of the marches of England against the Scots. They had acquired estates in Yorkshire following the Conquest, and extended their influence by purchasing Alnwick Castle in Northumberland in 1309. The family at various times held other property in several parts of England, in particular the Petworth estate in Sussex from the twelfth century, and Syon in Middlesex from the late sixteenth, where they had major residences. Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries several members of the family had made disastrous political decisions to which their adherence to Catholicism contributed. On the sixth earl’s death in 1537 his heir was his nephew Thomas Percy^†, who was unable to inherit as he was the son of an attainted brother who had been executed for his part in the Pilgrimage of Grace. The earldom was restored to Thomas in 1557 as a new creation. After the family’s disastrous involvement in the northern revolt of 1569, the Percys were forced to reside in their southern estates and to stay away from the north, although they continued to maintain territorial influence there.

Although Algernon was the tenth Percy to hold the title of earl of Northumberland—and thus is most often referred to as the tenth earl—he was only the fourth earl of the 1557 creation and is so referred to here. Algernon’s father Henry Percy, 3rd earl of Northumberland, was suspected of involvement in the Gunpowder Plot because of his connection to his kinsman, Thomas Percy, and was kept in the Tower from 1605 to 1621, from where he corresponded on scientific topics and still managed to keep a tight rein and a disapproving eye on the education of his son and heir, for whom he did not hold high hopes. One important result of this education was that Algernon, unlike many of his predecessors, was a committed Protestant.

The young Algernon, styled Lord Percy, was quickly favoured by the new king, Charles I, who was barely two years his senior. From 1625 Lord Percy garnered a number of important local positions in the counties where his family had substantial landholdings—Sussex, Middlesex, Cumberland, Northumberland, Westmorland and Yorkshire. He was summoned to the House of Lords by a writ of acceleration on 28 Mar. 1626 in his father’s barony as Baron Percy, and in November was made joint lord lieutenant of Cumberland, Westmorland and Northumberland. He succeeded to the earldom itself in 1632 and quickly rose further in Charles I’s favour. He held a series of important military offices, culminating in being appointed in 1638-9 lord high admiral and commander-in-chief of the English forces against the Scots for the second Bishops’ War of 1640.

Northumberland alienated himself from the king by expressing very strong misgivings about the likely success of the campaign and by vigorously opposing the dissolution of the Short Parliament of April 1640 which had been summoned to provide funding for the war. By the time Parliament met in November 1640 Northumberland was an opponent of royal policy and he became the highest ranking member of Charles I’s government and the most eminent peer to side with Parliament in 1640-42.⁴ In early 1643 he was a leader of the group strongly advocating a negotiated settlement between Parliament and the king, but after the rebuff of these peace initiatives, he, according to Edward Hyde*, earl of Clarendon, ‘was willing to see the king’s power and authority so much restrained that he might not be able to do him any harm’.⁵ In late 1644 Northumberland resumed his attendance in the House and, closely associated with William Fiennes*, Viscount Saye and Sele and Philip Wharton*, 4th Baron Wharton, threw himself wholeheartedly into the prosecution of the Civil War and the formation of the New Model Army. On 19 Mar. 1645 he was entrusted by Parliament with the guardianship of the king’s younger children, Princess Elizabeth, Henry Stuart*, duke of Gloucester and, from July 1646, James Stuart*, duke of York. His respectful treatment of these royal wards helped in later years to mitigate royal animosity towards him. Northumberland opposed the hardening of the Army’s position against Charles I after the second civil war, and was one of the 15 parliamentary commissioners who dealt with the king over the Newport treaty in the autumn of 1648, staying with Charles longer than almost any other in an attempt to make a peace. He was one of the few peers to appear in the House to vote against the ordinance for the king’s trial, and retired from public life during the 1650s. ⁶ During that decade he attended to estate and family matters, overseeing the marriage of his daughter Elizabeth to Arthur Capell*, 2nd Baron Capell of Hadham (later earl of Essex), who resided with him for several years at Petworth.

Northumberland returned to politics with the crisis of early 1660. In early March 1660 he corresponded with his old Parliamentarian colleague Edward Montagu*, 2nd earl of Manchester, suggesting that, despite the recent readmission of the secluded members to the Commons, it was still premature to advocate the restoration of the House of Lords, ‘especially seeing no part of the nation but ourselves have as yet expressed any desire that we should return to the exercise of our duties in Parliament and all in power or authority have either openly or impliedly declared against it’.⁷ Yet in the weeks before the Convention he and Manchester formed around them a group of former presbyterians, which John Mordaunt*, Viscount Mordaunt, reported included 19 peers, including Wharton, as well as a number of commoners, such as Denzil Holles*, later Baron Holles. They sought to limit membership in the restored House of Lords to those who had sat in the House in 1648 and to impose on Charles II the conditions they had negotiated with his father at Newport. It may well have been for this group that Wharton drew up his list assessing the allegiances and actions of members of the peerage in the previous 20 years, and Northumberland heads Wharton’s list of those ‘lords who sat’ in the House after 1642 (and probably meaning those who were there in 1648), thus signifying his prominent place in their projected Convention House of Lords. This group met in Northumberland’s London residence, Suffolk House (thereafter known as Northumberland House), which he had acquired as part of the settlement of his marriage in October 1642 to Elizabeth Howard, daughter of Theophilus Howard, 2nd earl of Suffolk, and for this reason Mordaunt referred to this group as ‘the cabal of Suffolk House’.⁸ This second marriage had also provided Northumberland with a male heir, Josceline Percy*, styled Lord Percy, later 5th earl of Northumberland, and further family connections. Elizabeth Howard’s sister Margaret was married to Roger Boyle^‡, Baron Broghill [I] (later earl of Orrery [I]): Northumberland used his local interest to promote his brother-in-law’s election for the Convention—first unsuccessfully for the borough of Cockermouth in Cumberland, and then successfully for Arundel, near Petworth in Sussex.⁹

The Restoration

Northumberland made his own views on the restoration of the king clear in a letter of 13 Apr. 1660 to his good friend and brother-in-law Robert Sydney*, 2nd earl of Leicester, whose wife Dorothy Percy, Northumberland’s sister, had died just the previous year. In London he found ‘Some there are that would have [the king] restored to all, without any condition, … but the soberer people will I believe expect terms of more security for themselves and advantage for the nation’. Northumberland was one of the small group of nine peers to attend the House on its very first meeting in the morning of 25 Apr., and was made part of the delegation to visit George Monck*, later duke of Albemarle, to thank him for his services in restoring the House of Lords. He was also one of the four peers, along with Saye and Sele and Wharton, assigned to address summonses to other peers deemed suitable to sit in the House. Northumberland wrote personally to Leicester begging him to come up to Westminster, for ‘our House stands in great need of some wise men to guide it’.¹⁰ On 27 Apr. he was appointed to committees to draw up an ordinance to constitute a bicameral Committee of Safety and to draw up heads for the conference scheduled for 1 May ‘to consider ways and means to make up the breaches and distractions of the kingdom’. At this point he may have still envisaged a conditional restoration of the king with terms dictated by the Convention, and on 28 Apr. his agent in London could confidently write, ‘I have cause to believe that we shall soon have the court our neighbours and that upon honourable terms’.¹¹

Northumberland, though, would have been made anxious by the admission to the House of the ‘young lords’ on 27 Apr. and later of those lords created by Charles I at Oxford. Reputedly he encouraged the admission of his prospective kinsman Thomas Wriothesley*, 4th earl of Southampton, with whom he was negotiating a match for Lord Percy, in order to moderate the zeal of the ardent royalists now in the House.¹² Any plans for a conditional restoration rapidly evaporated after the Declaration of Breda was read to the House on 1 May, and Northumberland was even placed on the large committee of 25 peers assigned to draft the House’s response. That afternoon he fulfilled his role as a manager of the conference on settling the ‘distractions’ of the kingdom, at which the principal manager Manchester proclaimed on behalf of the Lords that ‘the Government is, and ought to be, by king, Lords and Commons’. From that point Northumberland was involved in committees to smooth the way for the restoration of Charles II. The following day, 2 May, he was placed on the committee of eight peers to meet with a similar committee from the Commons to prepare an answer to the Declaration and to expedite the points agreed upon in the conference of the previous afternoon. He was also placed on the committees to consider the ordinance to make Monck captain-general and to consider ways of settling the militia in the kingdom. On 7 May he was appointed one of only four peers who were to meet with a similarly-sized committee from the Commons to arrange the ‘manner, time and form’ of the proclamation declaring Charles II king. From 9 May he was also a member of the committees entrusted with preparing for the reception of the king and for enquiring into the whereabouts of the late king’s goods confiscated during the previous 20 years.¹³ In the midst of this busy activity, Northumberland absented himself from the House for about a week in mid-May, and when he returned on 18 May he declared to the House that he ‘conceived’ that he might have some statues and pictures that were formerly Charles I’s in his possession, which he would willingly keep safe for the new king and present to him upon his arrival. On 21 May he was one of 13 peers placed on the committee to consider the ordinance for a monthly assessment to raise revenue for the returning king and two days later he was added to the committee considering a response to the Commons’ complaint that the House had issued a declaration concerning the late king’s judges without its concurrence. He became especially prominent in the days surrounding the king’s actual arrival in England. On 24 May he was one of only three peers—with Southampton and John Robartes*, 2nd Baron Robartes (later earl of Radnor)—who quickly considered and amended a declaration of the Commons to quicken the payment of customs and excise for the returning king. On the same day he apparently chaired the small group of six peers assigned to write a letter congratulating the king on his safe arrival in England, for he reported the letter to the House the following day, after which it was quickly dispatched to Charles II travelling up from Kent. On 26 May he also chaired and reported from a drafting committee of ten peers for a proclamation to be issued in the king’s name against the rebels in Ireland. Later that day he was placed on the committee to ensure the safety of the king by placing proper servants around his person at Whitehall. On 28 May, with the king returned to his capital, he was placed on another committee to establish the king in his rule, that to consider the bill to confirm the earlier ordinance for a monthly assessment 

Northumberland was initially granted respect and honours from the crown in recognition of his ancient title and substantial local influence, and perhaps in a bid to placate the ‘presbyterian party’, of which he was still seen as a leader. On 30 May he reported to the House from a delegation of six peers he had led to the king to discuss the procedural problem of the proper seating in the House of the royal dukes, York and Gloucester, who had been Northumberland’s wards for a time during the civil wars. The following day he and Leicester were summoned to the king where, to their apparent surprise, they were both sworn privy councillors.¹⁴ In August he was appointed lord lieutenant of Sussex; in September, jointly with his son and heir Lord Percy, he was appointed lord lieutenant of Northumberland. He was made lord high constable specifically for the few short days of the coronation in April 1661, and in May 1662 was one of the commissioners appointed to execute the office of earl marshal ¹⁵ Yet as early as the opening of the Convention, when Northumberland was being entrusted with important duties for the Restoration, Mordaunt could inform Sir Edward Hyde that both Northumberland and Manchester ‘have now no great interest’ and the French ambassador wrote to his masters on 27 May 1660 that Northumberland was ‘much demeaned’.¹⁶ He would only have sunk lower in the government’s estimation when, in arguing that no persons should be excepted from the bill of indemnity (on a committee for which he was placed on 25 Aug.), he suggested that the example of the late king’s death ‘might be more useful to posterity and profitable to future kings, by deterring them from the like exorbitances’.¹⁷ Consequently from early June, when the House became flooded with the king’s followers returning from exile, Northumberland’s business in the House, as represented by committee appointments, dropped substantially. From 1 June to the summer adjournment he was named to only ten further committees. He appears to have chaired the committee on the bill for draining the Great Level of the fens, for he reported the bill to the House on 31 Aug., one day after the committee had been established. He was also one of the eight peers appointed on 13 Aug. to go to the City of London to discuss a loan of £100,000, but the following day he excused himself from the task. On 10 Aug. the House also considered his claim of a breach of privilege, when it heard that Northumberland had been distrained of his estate of Kildare (Kielder) in Tynedale in Northumberland by the sheriff there, of whose ‘feigned’ legal actions against him Northumberland had been given no notice. The House duly ordered the restoration of the estates to the earl and the attachment of the sheriff. Perhaps because of this pending privilege case, and a concern to maintain his interest at the Restoration, Northumberland’s attention was heavily focussed on the meetings of April-September 1660, and he was present at three-quarters of its sitting days.

By contrast Northumberland did not appear in the House when the Convention reconvened on 6 November. He had written to Leicester on 2 Nov. from Petworth about his plans shortly to be in the capital, ‘where I believe I shall not be very diligent in attending either the Parliament House, or the council table, finding myself grown too old for the gallantries of a young court’. After having been in London for a few days he described himself in another letter to Leicester as ‘so much a stranger at court’. Some of his frustration and disillusionment is shown in his comment that the only activity of those at Westminster was the pursuit of money and that ‘many sober men’ were wishing ‘that some years may pass before another Parliament is called’.¹⁸ He first sat in the House again on 3 Dec. 1660 and was an infrequent member of the House during that month, coming to only 14 sitting days (31 per cent) and being named to three committees. He remained concerned with the status and privilege of the peerage, and was still sufficiently regarded to be appointed on 22 Dec. 1660 one of the select group of three peers—along with Wharton and Robartes—who were to consider how the privilege and profits of the peerage were affected by the bill abolishing the Court of Wards.

The Cavalier Parliament, 1660-67

From this point he devoted most of his energies to governing Sussex, where he resided when not in London, and was an active lord lieutenant there, as revealed by his correspondence with secretary of state Sir Edward Nicholas^‡.¹⁹ In that county he was able to arrange for the election in early 1661 of his brother-in-law Roger Boyle, now earl of Orrery [I], and another Irish peer, Francis Aungier^‡, Baron Aungier [I], for the borough of Arundel. As lord of the manor of Cockermouth in Cumberland he equally ensured that his agent in the north, Hugh Potter^‡, was elected to the Commons for that borough, and was replaced, after Potter’s death in 1662, by Northumberland’s trusted agent, Robert Scawen^‡.²⁰ Northumberland himself came to 55 per cent of the sitting days during the first meeting of the Cavalier Parliament in May-July 1661 and was named to only two committees. On his third day in the House, 11 May, he helped to introduce Edward Hyde as earl of Clarendon, Arthur Capell (his son-in-law) as earl of Essex and Arthur Annesley*, now earl of Anglesey. A month later, on 11 June, the House ordered the suspension during time of Parliament of proceedings in the court of delegates in the cause brought by Frances, dowager duchess of Somerset, against Northumberland and Manchester, the two principal executors of the will of Robert Devereux^†, 3rd earl of Essex. When the dowager duchess renewed her petition on 19 June, and even produced Northumberland’s signed waiver of his privilege dating from 1647, she was still rebuffed.²¹

After the summer adjournment Northumberland was marked as ‘sick’ in a call of the House on 25 Nov. 1661, but three days later he wrote to Leicester from Westminster to assure him that he would convey Leicester’s apologies for his absence to the House and thanked him for entrusting him with his proxy, ‘though I think there will not be much use made of proxies in the House, for all things are likely to pass there unanimously’. There is no record of this proxy in the incomplete register of 1661-2, but Northumberland does appear to have watched over Leicester’s interests at court and council throughout early 1662. The letter also informed Leicester of the most recent episcopalian pretensions: ‘The bishops are not contented to be restored unto all they formerly enjoyed, but now they pretend to be peers likewise, and that point is at present under consideration before the committee for privileges’.²² Northumberland sat in the House again on 3 Dec., after which he sat in 42 per cent of the meetings until the prorogation of 19 May 1662. On 14 Dec. 1661 he was named one of the nine reporters for a conference on the House’s amendments to the bill confirming certain private acts. In total he was named to seven select committees during the winter of 1661-2, including on 24 Jan. 1662 the drafting committee for the proposed bill to repeal all the acts and ordinances of the Long Parliament, a matter with implied reflections on his previous political career.

On 25 Jan. 1662, Northumberland became the centre of an incident in the House which further brought his old political attitudes into the open. At a debate on the second reading of the bill for the re-establishment of the council of the North at York, Northumberland complained that the measure was only being promoted by certain judges in the county out of their own selfish interests. George Villiers*, 2nd duke of Buckingham, the lord lieutenant of the West Riding who was then the leading candidate for the presidency of the council, responded that he found all groups in Yorkshire in support of the measure, except those who had formerly been against the king. Northumberland sensed that this comment was an attack on himself and launched into a justification of his past conduct. The House ordered them both to let the matter drop, but shortly afterwards Buckingham rose to go over to Northumberland and continue the altercation. Both were ordered to withdraw from the chamber entirely and in their absence it was decided that Buckingham, but not Northumberland, was in need of reprehension for infringing the House’s original order. As the French ambassador commented:

In this debate everyone took sides, some for the duke and others for the earl, and as the latter is one of the leading presbyterians, he attracted all those of this party, and the other all the royalists, and in a moment it moved from being a private difference to a general matter which could have caused great disorder if the King of England had not that evening intervened and made the two of them embrace.²³

Northumberland’s fight against the bill for the council for the North continued. On 10 Feb. 1662 he acted as a spokesmen for a delegation of 16 members of Parliament with northern interests who visited the lord chancellor, the earl of Clarendon, to express their opposition to the bill.²⁴ Four days previously Northumberland had been one of the many peers who protested against the passage of the bill restoring to Charles Stanley*, 8th earl of Derby, the lands he had conveyed, through proper legal instruments, during the Interregnum. In March Northumberland caused a stir in the House with his insistence during the debates on the revisions to the prayer book that the House should instead accept the pre-1642 prayer book and oath of allegiance without any alterations. Clarendon accounted for this move by explaining that Northumberland was ‘known to be of the presbyterian party’ and recounted that the earl was given a stinging rebuke by the House, which resolved ‘that there might not be such an affront put upon the Convocation and upon the king himself’ by this frivolous suggestion.²⁵ Perhaps feeling rebuffed by these setbacks after 17 Apr. Northumberland stopped attending the House for the remainder of the session, though there appears to have been an expectation that he would return, for two days later Manchester also left the House for the session, but registered his proxy with Northumberland on 20 April. Northumberland kept himself cognizant of events in the House during his absence. In early May 1662 he kept his first wife’s father, William Cecil*, 2nd earl of Salisbury, informed of the discussions on the impending adjournment or prorogation of Parliament and on the failure of the bill to declare illegitimate a male child born to the wife of John Manners*, styled Lord Roos (later duke of Rutland), a measure which both Northumberland and Salisbury supported for kinship reasons.²⁶ He also pursued another case of breach of his privilege: on 15 May the House ordered the discharge of a Mr Middleton, at the request of the absent Northumberland. Middleton had been attached by order of the House, presumably at Northumberland’s behest.

For the session of 1663 Northumberland held the proxy of Basil Fielding*, 2nd earl of Denbigh, from 16 Mar. 1663, but he himself was hardly in the House to use it. He was present 11 times during that session, and was named to only two committees. He was present on 23 Mar. when he was named to a committee to prepare a petition to the king for the expulsion of Jesuits and Catholic priests from the kingdom, and between 26 and 30 Mar. he represented the House in three conferences in which the wording of this petition was thrashed out between the two Houses. On 9 Apr., however, the House formally ‘dispensed’ with his absence, three days after he had last sat in the House for that session.

Northumberland was present on 18 sitting days in spring 1664, exactly half of the meetings of that short session, and he was named to only one select committee. He was present on 28 Mar. 1664 when the House made an order restoring to Northumberland’s control rectory and glebe lands in Carmarthenshire which had been illegally seized by their ‘pretended vicar’ in breach of Northumberland’s privilege. Denbigh again registered his proxy with Northumberland on 6 May 1664, but Northumberland only held it for the eight days he was in the House before the session was prorogued on 17 May. In that brief period Northumberland was on 13 May added to the body of managers for a free conference on the disagreements over the House’s alterations to the conventicle bill. He attended only five sittings in late February 1665 during the session of 1664-5, missed the next two sessions of October 1665 and of 1666-7 entirely and did not return to the House until 29 July 1667, the first day of the abortive session of that summer.

Return to politics and death, 1667-8

The disasters and expense of the second Dutch War evidently spurred Northumberland to return to politics.²⁷ Northumberland himself feared that the war was being used as a means for the king to arrogate more power to himself independent of Parliament and to build up a standing army. Gilbert Burnet*, bishop of Salisbury, later wrote that when others said that the king’s mistress and the money lavished on her would be the ruin of the nation, Northumberland replied that on the contrary she would be its saviour, for ‘while we had a House of Commons that gave all the money that was asked, it was better to have the money squandered away in luxury and prodigality, than to have it saved for worse purposes’.²⁸ York placed Northumberland, with his associates Leicester and Holles, firmly in ‘the presbyterian and commonwealth gang, who never neglected any opportunity of being troublesome to the monarchy’, and who saw the impeachment of Clarendon as a means to foment a breach between the king and his brother. Just before the meeting of Parliament in the autumn of 1667, Northumberland told York, and later the king, that ‘the nation’ would not be satisfied merely with the impeachment of the lord chancellor, ‘for they also expected the disbanding of the Guards and the redress of several other grievances’.²⁹ Northumberland came to the first day of the session on 10 Oct. but by the first week of November left the House and on 14 Nov. registered his proxy with his son-in-law Essex. He returned on 26 Nov. to engage in the proceedings against Clarendon, and it was at about this time that the French ambassador reported that Anglesey and Anthony Ashley Cooper*, Baron Ashley (later earl of Shaftesbury) were trying to form a third party in Parliament (as against those supporting either Clarendon or Buckingham), ‘which will be called the party of the moderates, of which they would like to make the earl of Northumberland the leader, who is a great lord in this kingdom’.³⁰ Earlier the ambassador, anxious of Northumberland’s influence and anti-French attitudes, had described him as ‘the most respected person in England for his property and his conduct’.³¹ Despite these political projects reportedly swirling around him at this time, Northumberland’s left the House again on 29 Nov., after having almost certainly voted in favour of the commitment of Clarendon.

For his part Clarendon made clear his own views on Northumberland’s character, based largely on his actions in the 1640s:

Though his notions were not large or deep, yet his temper, and reservedness in discourse, and his unrashness in speaking, got him the reputation of an able and wise man; which he made evident in the excellent government of his family, where no man was more absolutely obeyed; and no man had ever fewer idle words to answer for; and in debates of importance he always expressed himself very pertinently. If he had thought the King as much above him as he thought himself above other considerable men, he would have been a good subject; but the extreme undervaluing those, and not enough valuing the king, made him liable to the impressions which they who approached him by those addresses of reverence and esteem which usually insinuate themselves into such natures made in him.

He also wrote more starkly that Northumberland was ‘the proudest man alive’, and later saw Northumberland’s insistence on his own son’s precedence over the heir of James Butler*, duke of Ormond [I], at the coronation (on the grounds that Ormond only was present at the coronation under his English title, earl of Brecknock) as a typical example of Northumberland’s ‘undervaluing and contemning his equals, without paying much regard to his superiors’ which caused an unfortunate ‘jealousy and ill understanding between the two families’.³²

On 17 Dec. 1667 it was reported that Northumberland was lying dangerously ill at Northumberland House. He never returned to the Lords, although it was almost a year later, on 3 Oct. 1668, that he finally succumbed to his illness at Petworth. The executors and beneficiaries in his will reveal his connections to both past Parliamentarians and the future country opposition. Apart from his son and heir Josceline, his executors—the earl of Manchester and ‘Wise’ William Pierrepont^‡¾were colleagues in the Parliamentarian cause in the 1640s. Northumberland made complicated arrangements to entail a part of his estate, first to his heir, but in the case of the failure of his line, to his daughter the countess of Essex, and then to his nephews by his late sister the countess of Leicester—Philip Sydney*, styled Viscount Lisle (later 3rd earl of Leicester), Algernon Sydney^‡ and Henry Sydney*, later earl of Romney. He appears to have had a particular esteem for Algernon and in his final codicil before his death bequeathed to him an annuity of £100.³³ He died one of the five wealthiest peers in England, with a revenue from rents exceeding £15,000 p.a. In the mid-1640s he had petitioned Parliament for over £35,000 in lost rents due to the ravages of the war, particularly in the north. In 1662 he assessed himself as worth £4,360 p.a. from his lands in Yorkshire, Dorset and Cumberland—and these were hardly his principal estates.³⁴ In 1670 it was calculated that his heir Josceline Percy was worth £41, 982 at the time of his death, a fortune the young man had only been able to enjoy for a brief period of time since becoming 5th earl of Northumberland.³⁵

As the only son of one of the leading, and oldest, noble families in England, a good deal of attention and expectation was directed towards the young Lord Percy.⁵ So much hope was invested in him at the time of the Restoration that he was made, at the age of 16, a colonel of the Westminster militia and, jointly with his father, lord lieutenant of Northumberland and captain of Tynemouth Castle. He was also offered a deputy lieutenancy in his father’s other county of Sussex.⁶ It was initially intended that he should marry Audrey, one of the daughters of Thomas Wriothesley*, 4th earl of Southampton, but after she died in late October 1660, negotiations turned to another of Southampton’s many daughters. At the end of 1662 Percy married the youngest one, Elizabeth.

Parliament was under a long adjournment when Lord Percy inherited the earldom of Northumberland in October 1668, and it did not meet again until October 1669. By that time the new earl of Northumberland was in France, travelling there with his family and ‘a very great train’.⁷ Back in England Northumberland, in absentia, soon faced a challenge to his position in the peerage by the claims made by Benjamin Fitzwalter*, 17th Baron Fitzwalter, that he had precedency over all other barons in the House by the antiquity of his title. On 7 Mar. 1670 Charles Howard*, 2nd earl of Berkshire, informed the committee for privileges considering the matter that, on behalf of Northumberland, as Baron Percy, and a number of other peers with ancient baronies, he wished to contest Fitzwalter’s claim before the House. The matter was still not settled by the time Parliament recessed in April, after which it would have hardly mattered to Northumberland.⁸ For, while his wife remained behind in Paris, the earl had travelled to Italy where at the end of May 1670 he died, aged 26, at Turin ‘of fever caused by travelling in the great heat’. His body, accompanied by his ‘disconsolate lady’, was slowly brought back to England where it was buried at Petworth on 14 July.⁹ He had been abroad during both the parliamentary sessions in which he could have sat in the House and had never formally taken his seat there.

An inventory of his personal goods in his principal residences – Northumberland House, Syon House and Petworth House – made at the time of his death estimated that his possessions were worth £41,987.¹⁰ Nor was he poor in landed income. At the time he wrote his will in August 1669, before setting off for his continental travels, he had a young son Henry, and he entrusted his father’s old friends and agents – Edward Montagu*, 2nd earl of Manchester, William Pierrepont^‡, Robert Scawen^‡, John Clarke^‡ and Orlando Gee^‡ – to act as trustees of his estates. He provided for annuities for his heir that would total £28,500 over 21 years, and for Henry’s two daughters, and any more daughters born to him in the future, £5,700 each over 17 years. Any younger sons that might still be born to him were to have at their majorities £10,000 each.

His heir Henry Percy, styled Lord Percy, died only a few months after these arrangements were made and within only a few short months after Northumberland’s own death his only surviving child was his daughter Elizabeth, then about three years old. The earldom of Northumberland became extinct at Northumberland’s death without a male heir, but Elizabeth remained suo jure Baroness Percy.

John, 5th Baron Petre, seems never to have lived at Thorndon Hall, usually considered the main Petre residence. He lived instead with his mother at Ingatestone. He was in poor health for many years, and the terms of a will made in 1677 make it clear that he believed his mother would outlive him.³ She died on 13 Jan. 1685, just days before her son.⁴ His health and Catholicism would probably have precluded him from taking his seat in the Lords, but in the event no Parliament was held during his short tenure of the barony. He died unmarried, and his bequests suggest that his closest relationships were within his immediate family. During the year that he held the title, he received over £6,000 from the Petre estates. He used this to meet the obligations of the estate, including payments towards ‘the growing interest’ on the debts contracted by his brother, William Petre, 4th Baron Petre. He was also able to pay £3,000 towards redeeming those debts.⁵

The fortunes of the Petre family, once impoverished and distressed had substantially recovered by the time Robert Petre succeeded to the title. At his death his income from his Essex estates was variously estimated as between £4,000 and £6,000 a year plus approximately £2,000 from the western estates. Even after payment of his mother’s jointure of £1,000 a year he was a relatively wealthy young man.¹

Little is known of his life except that his social circle consisted of members of families who were, like his own, prominent in the Catholic community. His charitable donations amounted to £1,000 a year and included donations to priests in England as well as to Catholic causes abroad.² He was said to have been the original ‘advent’rous baron’ in Pope’s Rape of the Lock, but though he may once have been a suitor of Arabella Fermor, he actually married Catherine Walmsley, one of the richest heiresses of the day. Catherine Walmsley had inherited her fortune from her brother Francis. In addition to her portion of £50,000, paid in cash, she also brought lands worth £5,000 a year to the marriage.³

Petre died in March 1713 of smallpox, which was said to have been contracted at a celebration of his first wedding anniversary. Despite his wealth he had little opportunity to exercise any electoral influence and, as a Catholic, he was barred from the House of Lords. His own political views are unknown, but his mother and his wife were both Jacobite sympathizers. His widow was said to have offered £1,000 to the Jacobite cause in 1715 and at one stage was suggested as an appropriate wife for the titular James III.⁴ She eventually married as her second husband, Charles Stourton*, 15th Baron Stourton. Her only child, Robert James Petre*, was born three months after his father’s death and succeeded immediately as 8th Baron Petre.

Born posthumously, Petre succeeded to his father’s honours at birth. As a minor he was unable to sit in Queen Anne’s last Parliament but would in any case have been disabled by his catholicism. His short life was dominated by his devotion to the cultivation of plants, especially trees, and to garden design; what political influence he had as an adult will be covered in the next part of this work.

When he succeeded to the title, Thomas Petre was a 52-year-old bachelor, but the need for an heir soon pushed him into marriage. Before the year was out he had arranged to marry Mary Clifton, daughter of the future Jacobite Sir Thomas Clifton, who brought with her a dowry of £5,000. Along with the title, he also inherited the Petre estates, together with the debt trust created by his brother, William Petre, 4th Baron Petre. The debt trust was still in existence in 1697 when the 5th baron composed a will, but by 1712 the estate was said to be free of encumbrances.² Certainly his ability to finance the marriage portion of his niece, Mary Petre (daughter of the 4th baron and his second wife, Bridget), suggests that the debts were coming under control. Three quarters of the portion (£7,500) was paid in cash. The remaining £2,500 was borrowed on mortgage, from his sister-in-law, Elizabeth Clifton, rather than from more distant acquaintances or moneylenders. He was also able to provide well (£5,000) for his own daughter (also named Mary).³ Petre appears to have treated Ingatestone Hall, which was extensively refurnished in 1685, as his main residence. It seems to have been more comfortably equipped than his other house, Thorndon Hall, and it was from Ingatestone that Petre wrote his few surviving letters.⁴

A committed Catholic who not only maintained his own chaplains but also provided a base for missionary Jesuit priests and held land on behalf of a Catholic monastery in France, Petre was disabled from sitting in the House of Lords by the provisions of the 1678 Test Act.⁵ However, the accession to the throne of the Catholic James Stuart*, duke of York, as James II just two weeks after Petre had inherited his own title promised to transform the situation. Not only did James signal his intention to repeal the Test Acts and to restore the Catholic peers to their seats in the Lords but Petre’s cousin, the Jesuit Edward Petre, was one of James’s most trusted advisors. Petre was summoned to the 1685 Parliament and was summoned again in September 1688 to the Parliament promised but never convened by James II.⁶ Whether these writs were issued as a matter of course or as part of a threat to ignore the Test Acts is unknown. Petre’s pleasure at James’s succession must have been shared by his household, for even the family provision book carries a faded inscription inside its front cover: ‘Ja[mes] Duke York Ja[mes] the second God preserve.’⁷

At the Essex election of 1685, Sir John Bramston^‡ described how Petre joined the cavalcade of court supporters near Chelmsford with about 300 ‘gentlemen, his kinsmen, his tenants, and other freeholders, his neighbours …’.⁸ Petre’s commitment to the court soon brought rewards. In March 1686 his name was among the list of Catholics exempted from the travel restrictions imposed at the height of the hysteria of the Popish Plot and who were specifically authorized ‘to remain in the presence of the king, queen consort, queen dowager or the court or household without taking the oaths of allegiance and supremacy … notwithstanding former statutes’.⁹ He was added to the commissions of the peace for Middlesex, Kent, and Essex, though it was undoubtedly in Essex where his real value to the court lay.¹⁰ In February 1688, Petre replaced Aubrey de Vere*, 20th earl of Oxford, as lord lieutenant there. This was a post from which he should have been barred by the requirements of the Test Act so his commission (dated 8 Feb. 1688) was carefully and specifically worded to ‘dispense, pardon, remit and exonerate’ him from the need to take the oaths of supremacy and allegiance.¹¹

James II expected Petre to play a key role in the forthcoming parliamentary elections and he did his best to live up to expectation: ‘The Lord Petre, as lord lieutenant, by the king’s command visited the country, as well as the corporations. He carried divers gentlemen, papists, with him in his circuit …’.¹² One of his objectives in conducting this ‘circuit’ was to explore the attitudes of the local gentry to the proposed abolition of the Test. Petre’s local influence was seemingly strengthened when he replaced Oxford as high steward of Colchester and when he was appointed recorder the following August under Colchester’s new charter.¹³ He also helped remodel the commission of the peace for Essex.

In September 1688, Robert Spencer*, 2nd earl of Sunderland sent him ‘a list of gentlemen intending to stand with his majesty’s approbation for Members of Parliament within your lieutenancy’ and directed him ‘to give them all the assistance and countenance you can’.¹⁴ The political situation was now deteriorating swiftly and the threat of invasion exposed the inherent weakness of Petre’s position within the county. On 7 Oct. he was ordered to raise the militia, but in Essex (as in other counties where Protestant lord lieutenants had been displaced by Catholics) the gentry had refused to take commissions because of doubts about the legality of Petre’s appointment, ‘for that he was not qualified’ and the militia was ‘very much out of order, the officers dead, or unwilling to act’.¹⁵ Within days, those who had been purged from the commission of the peace for their opposition to James were restored to office.¹⁶ Petre himself must have been becoming worried for on 2 Oct. 1688 he obtained a general pardon.¹⁷ On 18 Oct. Sunderland informed Petre that Oxford had resumed the lord lieutenancy, though he was at pains to explain that ‘[the king] is induced to it because his service at this time seems absolutely to require this change and not upon the least dissatisfaction with your proceedings. On the contrary he directs me to tell you that he continues to depend much upon you.’¹⁸

The Revolution of 1688 marked the end of Petre’s political career, though his devotion to James did not extend to following him into exile. There are some indications that in the aftermath of the accession of William and Mary he became a target for those who resented his earlier support for James II, although the reference in the Calendar of State Papers, Domestic to his imprisonment in the Tower in 1689 appears to be erroneous. It is probably a mistranscription for Henry Mordaunt*, 2nd earl of Peterborough.¹⁹ In 1691 Petre was convicted of recusancy and, perhaps more significantly, also found it necessary to obtain an exemplification of the general pardon that had been issued to him in 1688.²⁰ In the early 1690s he was also the target of a number of criminal offences.²¹ Suspicions about his loyalty and the perceived importance of horse transport for the mobilization of forces for an internal uprising underlie an informer’s report in 1690 that Lady Petre’s servants ‘buy up all the oats at Romford, Grays, Barking and all the markets around about and her servant John being asked what the Lady did with all those oats he said they had some hundreds of horses to provide for’.²² After 1689 Catholics were banned from owning horses worth more than £5 and periodic attempts to enforce the ban did lead to the seizure of Petre’s horses (fewer than 30 in 1696, half of which were working farm horses) on at least two occasions.²³ However, he was on good terms with the county elite and had no difficulty in enlisting the support of successive lords lieutenant in obtaining licences and securing the return of his horses.²⁴ ‘The Lord Petre’ wrote Francis North*, 2nd Baron Guilford, in 1705, ‘hath always been and is very peaceable and submissive to her majesty and government.’²⁵

At his death on 5 Jan. 1707 Petre was succeeded by his son, Robert Petre*, 7th Baron Petre. His second son, Thomas, had died an infant in 1691. He made provision for a portion of £5,000 for his daughter, Mary, but she died unmarried in April 1713, probably (like her brother) of smallpox.²⁶

The Petre family rose through service at the Tudor court but were not ennobled until 1603. Their surviving papers for the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries consist almost entirely of documents relating to the management of their estates and financial affairs; no personal or political archive is known to exist. The family’s major territorial base was in Essex, where they owned some 11,000 acres, mainly centred on Thorndon, Ingatestone and Writtle. They also held substantial tracts of property in Devon, with outlying properties in Dorset, Gloucestershire and East Anglia.

As Catholic peers, the Petres’ position in Essex society must have been somewhat difficult. The county was solidly protestant, with a substantial and vociferous Puritan minority. Petre had no electoral interest of his own, but his estates and position within the county made him a valuable ally for those who were seeking election, and he was on friendly terms with members of the county elite, including the Bramstons and Wisemans who had sent several family members to the Commons. However, his religion effectively barred him from the kind of office and influence that his extensive landholdings would otherwise have guaranteed. Petre’s principal country residence was at Thorndon Hall (assessed at 72 hearths in 1662); a smaller property at Ingatestone (assessed at 30 hearths in 1662) being occupied by his mother until her death in January 1685.⁵ Thorndon Hall had been remodelled in the late sixteenth century in traditional English style. In 1669, a visitor described it as:

an ancient structure, built after the same plan as all the others in England, with a tendency rather to the Gothic and Rustic than to any chaste style of architecture but, as far as convenience is concerned, sufficiently well contrived. It is in a good situation, surrounded by a wall which incloses a large and green meadow; and among other things which contribute to its pleasantness, the deer-park, which extends to a distance of five miles, or more, is a most important addition to it. Its noble owner lives there with a magnificence equal to that of other peers of the kingdom, and in a style commensurate with his fortune, which is estimated at ten thousand pounds per annum.⁶

That the 4th Baron Petre lived up to his rank is undeniable, but the extent to which his life style was genuinely ‘commensurate with his fortune’ is rather more questionable since it seems to have been based on extensive borrowing. Some of his misfortunes may have been of his own making, for he is known to have gambled for high stakes but the real threats were more difficult to control.⁷

At his father’s death in 1638, Petre was unquestionably extremely wealthy. He had inherited personal estate estimated at some £30,000, of which £20,000 was held in liquid capital, and real estate producing a gross landed income of approximately £8,000 p.a. Between 1638 and 1660, his financial stability was threatened many times over. He was a minor in 1638, with the result that the estate had to bear the costs implicit in the processes associated with wardship. The wardship was bought for £10,000 by his father’s executors, who included his uncle, William Petre of Stanford Rivers, and another kinsman, Edward Somerset*, then styled Lord Herbert, later 2nd marquess of Worcester.⁸ The executors, like his father, were committed Catholics, and although they assigned the wardship to Spencer Compton^†, the protestant 2nd earl of Northampton, Petre was actually brought up in Lord Herbert’s household.⁹ On 6 Aug. 1641 the Commons were anxious to have him removed to the custody of Robert Rich^†, 2nd earl of Warwick, but the order was not put into effect.

Petre’s father and grandfather had each successfully raised large families, with the result that the estate was burdened with a number of settlements and annuities to provide portions for their younger children. Then, just as the estate was beginning to emerge from these difficulties, the events of the Civil War and the Interregnum created fresh turmoil. At some point after 1642, it was reported that both Northampton and Herbert had been ‘in actual war against the Parliament’ but that Petre was now living in Oxford with Francis Cottington^†, Baron Cottington.¹⁰ Petre’s west country lands remained free of parliamentary control and provided him with a much needed stream of income; elsewhere, parliamentary demands posed a real threat. An attempt to sequestrate his lands in 1643 was met by his steward with the claim that he was a neither a papist nor a delinquent.¹¹ On 6 May 1645 the Commons began an investigation into the failure to transfer his wardship to Warwick and into obstructions to the sequestration of his estates. They also attacked Cottington’s lands, probably because his conversion to Catholicism was already known.

In 1649 Petre married Elizabeth Savage, who brought with her a portion of £5,000, paid in advance. They soon separated.¹² In 1652, Lady Petre’s suit for alimony led the chancery to order a reconciliation, which took place in January 1653. The attempt failed when Petre’s insistence on being ‘master in his own house’ provoked an armed confrontation between their respective servants during which Lady Petre accused her husband of intending to kill her.¹³ Later that year he suffered the indignity of being arrested for his wife’s debts. Unable to call on privilege of Parliament, he instead ‘desperately resisted and endeavoured violently to make an escape and uproar.’ When this failed, he commenced a vexatious suit in chancery during which he fulminated against ‘the encouragement that hath been given unto your orators said wife by such credit to continue in her disloyalty and disobedience contrary to the law of God and man and the very ill example to others in like kind disposed.’¹⁴ In 1654 the couple, who were childless, drew up a formal separation agreement; Lady Petre, who had demanded an allowance of £550 a year plus the payment of all her debts, had to be satisfied with £500 a year to cover both her maintenance and the liquidation of her debts.¹⁵ Her debts were still unpaid when in 1672 her creditors offered to compound for them.¹⁶

Elizabeth Savage’s dower was not enough to rescue Petre’s finances. In May 1652, desperate to preserve his estates and creditworthiness, he took the oath of abjuration, thus securing the return, without compounding, of his sequestered estates.¹⁷ His problems were far from over. In 1652 he entered into a debt trust, albeit temporarily, listing debts amounting to well over £15,000.¹⁸ In 1662-3 he valued the rental of his lands in Essex at £2,000 a year.¹⁹ The sale of lands, including his London house in Aldersgate (1663), the premature death of two of his younger brothers and the successful renegotiation of the annuities due to his remaining brothers and to his mother helped bring about a gradual improvement in his situation. His determined deferral of payments to his other creditors and his equally determined pursuit of those who owed money to him, including debts contracted at the card table, also helped.²⁰ Whether his tenantry were forced to contribute to the improvement through the payment of higher rents is not known, but prosecutions for offences against the game and for minor disturbances in Thorndon Park during the 1660s suggest a certain amount of local antipathy.²¹ In addition to his financial difficulties, Petre was twice arrested on suspicion of involvement in royalist plots.

It was perhaps only to be expected that a peer who had suffered so much at the hands of the parliamentarians should be determined to take his place in the newly restored House of Lords. To the consternation of those who had hoped to reserve the House for the peers of 1648, Petre, along with Thomas Savage*, 3rd Earl Rivers, Lionel Cranfield*, 3rd earl of Middlesex and Richard Sackville*, earl of Dorset, ‘got into the House’ on the afternoon of 26 Apr. 1660.²² Petre was doubly suspect: he was both a ‘young’ lord (i.e. had not sat in the House before its abolition in 1648) and had been imprisoned, albeit briefly, for his part in royalist plots in 1655 and 1658. Although listed by Philip Wharton*, 4th Baron Wharton, in 1660 as a papist, it seems likely that between taking the oath of abjuration in 1652 and the Restoration of 1660, Petre had passed as a protestant. He had declared himself to be a member of the Church of England in 1653 in the course of defending his first wife’s action for alimony.²³ In the late 1640s Petre had been caught out lying to the sequestrators in an attempt to secure favourable terms for the return of his lands; it is unlikely that he would risk his lands again by allowing himself to be openly identified with Catholicism.²⁴ The discussions in the House in early 1660 on the subject of admitting Catholics suggest that the peers did not realise that they already had one amongst them. It was not until 1673 that Petre was again accused of recusancy, but his Catholicism was probably well known long before that.²⁵

Petre attended the first (1660) session of the Convention for just over 56 per cent of sitting days. He was named to the committee for privileges and on 9 May was added to the committee for the reception of the king. He was present on 22 May and presumably therefore responsible for presenting a petition from his mother, the dowager Lady Petre, against the damage caused to her estate by sequestration and denying that she had ever been indicted or convicted as a popish recusant. The House held that as the widow of a peer she was entitled to privilege of Parliament and suspended proceedings against her ‘until the merits of her cause be fully heard and determined by the law.’ During a meeting of the committee for privileges held on 14 June and reported to the House on 16 June 1660, he testified that he had been present at the trial of Charles I and had heard Robert Danvers*, described in the records of the House as Viscount Purbeck, describe the regicide John Bradshaw^‡ as ‘a gallant man, the preserver of our liberties; and that he the said Lord Viscount Purbeck hoped that Bradshaw would do justice upon that tyrant (speaking of the late king).’²⁶ In July privilege of peerage allowed him to stave off a judgment in chancery that would have forced him to pay the £6,000 that he owed for his older sister’s marriage portion, even though the plaintiff was a fellow peer and Catholic, William Stourton*, 11th Baron Stourton.²⁷ On 1 Sept. he was named to the committee to consider Worcester’s patent to be duke of Somerset and on 3 Dec. to the committee to consider Sir Edward Powell’s fines. Then on 13 Dec. he signed the protest at the decision to vacate Powell’s fines. He was also named to three other committees.

The first (1661-2) session of the Cavalier Parliament saw his attendance drop to just under 24 per cent, partly explained by patchy attendance during November and December 1661 followed by a long absence after 20 Dec. 1661 before his return to the House on 19 Mar. 1662. Such a prolonged absence may have been caused by illness as he was excused attendance at a call of the House on 25 Nov. by reason of sickness. In January 1661 he received a general pardon, although quite why he should have needed one is unclear.²⁸ He was listed as present on 11 May when the committee for privileges was named but was not appointed to it; during the course of the session he was named to a further 12 committees. On 17 July 1661 he protested again at the passage of the bill to vacate the fines of Sir Edward Powell.

The 1663 session saw him present for two-thirds of sitting days. He was absent on the first day of the session and so was not named to the committee for privileges until he was belatedly added on 9 April. He was, however, present and named to the committee for petitions when it was appointed on 25 February. He was named to a further five committees including the bill to settle differences between John Paulet*, 5th marquess of Winchester, and his son Charles*, then styled Lord St John (later duke of Bolton) on 1 June and (somewhat ironically given his own leisure pursuits) the bill against gaming on 26 June. Despite his earlier support for Edward Hyde*, earl of Clarendon, in the matter of the Powell fines, in July Wharton predicted that would support the attempt of George Digby*, 2nd earl of Bristol, to impeach Clarendon. The session ended on 27 July, but during the recess members of the House continued to be involved as mediators in the Winchester dispute, and in September Petre was one of the committee members who tried to mediate the quarrel.²⁹

Petre’s attendance over the short 1664 session rose to just over 83 per cent. He was named to the committee for petitions but not to that for privileges as he was absent when that committee was nominated. He was not in the House on 31 Mar. when his estranged wife claimed privilege against arrest for debt. Her petition sparked a debate about rights to privilege. Warwick Mohun*, 2nd Baron Mohun, argued that her petition was defective since, as a married woman, she could not sue in her own name. Charles Howard*, later 2nd earl of Berkshire but then styled Lord Andover and who sat in his father’s barony as Howard of Charleton, carried the House when he insisted that ‘their lordships ought not to take notice of anything but the breach of privilege, which he thought was manifest, for if their privileges extended to the protection of their servants a fortiori to that of their wives.’³⁰ Petre himself was embarrassed by his wife’s action and accused her of disgracing him, probably because of her determination to blacken Petre’s reputation by implicating his own steward in the affair.³¹ He was named to four committees including the bill for gaming (21 Apr.) and the Cottington estate bill (11 May).

Petre’s attendance for the 1664-5 session dropped to 58 per cent. Again absent for the opening of the session he was not named to the committee for privileges. He was named to only three committees. Between sessions he was present on 21 June 1665 when Parliament was again prorogued. He was then absent for the whole of the brief autumn 1665 session. Petre returned to Parliament on 21 Sept. 1666, the second day of the 1666-7 session. His attendance over the session reached nearly 79 per cent. He was named to the committee for privileges and to four other committees, including that for the bill to render illegitimate Lady Roos’ children on 14 Nov. 1666. On 23 Jan. 1667 he protested against the decision not to add a right of appeal to the king and House of Lords to the bill creating a court to resolve disputes arising from the Fire of London.

He was present on both the prorogation days but missed the first two weeks of the 1667-9 session, nevertheless recording an attendance of just over 75 per cent. His name was added to that of the committee for petitions on 20 Nov. 1667, and he was named to a further ten committees. Despite his high level of attendance there is no information about his voting intentions in the major issue of the day, the attempt to impeach Clarendon.

The next, 1669, session saw his attendance fall to just under 53 per cent. He missed the first two weeks of the session and was excused at a call of the House on 26 Oct. as being ill. Having missed appointment to the committee for privileges he was added to it on 10 Nov. and was named to one further committee. On 22 Nov. he was one of five peers who protested at the passage of the bill to restrict privilege and limit trials of peers, arguing that ‘the judiciary and other privileges of Parliament and peerage [are] … so fundamental, as we ought not to part therewith’.

Petre’s attendance recovered to nearly 65 per cent in the 1670-1 session. Present from the opening of the session he was named to the committees for privileges and petitions. He was named to a further 18 committees during the session including that preventing the growth of popery which was effectively a committee of the whole House. In February he was one of nine peers who voted against the decision to agree to the king’s request that proceedings relating to Skinner v. the East India Company be razed from the Journal.³² He was absent for several weeks in October and November 1670, being excused by the House on 14 November. He held the proxy of his cousin and fellow Catholic, Francis Browne*, 3rd Viscount Montagu, from 4 Mar. to 4 Apr. 1670, almost certainly for use in the Roos divorce. Despite his own history of marital problems Petre opposed the divorce and entered a protest against it on 28 March. The following spring he held the proxy of Lionel Cranfield*, 3rd earl of Middlesex, from 13 Mar. to 17 Apr. 1671, perhaps for use in connection with proceedings on the bill to prevent the growth of popery. Middlesex would later become one of Petre’s debt trustees so despite his protestantism was presumably sympathetic to the plight of loyal Catholic peers.³³

Petre’s estranged wife had died in 1665; late in 1672 he remarried. His second wife, Bridget Pincheon, was some 25 years his junior, but it was not her age that caused a stir, rather that she was ‘of ordinary birth’ and either had no portion at all or an inconsiderable one.³⁴

Petre’s attendance reached just over 79 per cent during the brief session of 1673. Present from the opening of the session he was again named to the committees for privileges and petitions. On 5 Mar. he was named with almost everyone listed as present to the committee to provide a bill of advice to the king and in the course of the session to four other committees.

Early in January 1674 it was reported that, presumably as a result of the recent Test Act, Petre and other ‘popelings’ were planning to leave the country. The rumour proved to be unfounded. Petre took his seat at the opening of the 1674 session on 7 Jan. 1674 and was then present for nearly 53 per cent of sitting days. On 27 Jan. he was one of a number of Catholic peers who benefited from the ruling of the House that prosecutions for recusancy were covered by privilege of Parliament. Anti-Catholic agitation and the need to reassure his many creditors may well have been behind his decision in April 1674 to enter into another debt trust. Petre’s standard of living was maintained by continual borrowing. He owed over £11,000, slightly more than he had owed at the time of the debt trust of 1652.³⁵ Four years later (and a mere ten days after his arrest in connection with the Popish Plot) a second schedule of debts that had somehow been overlooked added more than £3,000 to the total.

Presumably in response to the deteriorating political situation Petre missed only four days of the first 1675 session. He was as usual named to the committees for privileges and petitions, as well as to a further three committees. Thomas Osborne*, earl of Danby (later duke of Leeds) believed that Petre would support the non-resisting test, but on 21 Apr. together with Anthony Ashley Cooper*, earl of Shaftesbury, and other opponents of the court he was one of the leading speakers against the proposition and entered a protest at the refusal of the House to throw it out.³⁶ On 29 Apr. it was noted that he was one of several peers (and bishops) who had not taken the Jacobean oath of allegiance; he took it the following day. Although the Jacobean oath was carefully written to enable Catholics to take it, it was reported that Petre’s decision and his insistence that it was not sinful to do so upset his Jesuit confessor so much that he refused absolution.³⁷ More personal matters were also a matter of concern. On 3 May he reported the arrest of one of his mother’s servants as a breach of privilege of Parliament, adding that the creditor concerned had ‘uttered very contemptuous words against the said Lady and Lord Petre’. The offender was arrested and spent ten days in custody before Petre showed false magnanimity on 1 June by permitting his release after he was forced to beg the pardon of the House and had paid the requisite fees.

The short autumn 1675 session saw Petre present on nearly 91 per cent of sitting days and named to the committees for privileges and petitions as well as three other committees. On 20 Nov. he again joined with Shaftesbury in seeking a dissolution in the aftermath of the dispute occasioned by the case of Sherley v. Fagg, entering a protest when the House resolved to reject the motion.

Continuing concern about Catholics and Catholicism kept Petre’s attendance high, nearly 89 per cent, throughout the 1677-8 session. Perhaps surprisingly, he remained on good terms with Shaftesbury, being listed by him as a doubly worthy papist. He was named to 25 other committees including, on 16 Feb., that for discovering the author and printer of the pamphlet Some Considerations upon the Question, whether the Parliament is dissolved by Prorogation for Fifteene Monthes. He held the proxy of Charles Howard, now 2nd earl of Berkshire, from 20 Feb. to 11 March. On 15 Mar. 1677 he entered a dissent to the passage of the act for further securing the protestant religion which also mandated the protestant education of the children of the royal family.

Petre was present at the opening of the first session of 1678 on 23 May. His attendance dropped back to 65 percent. He was named to the committees for privileges and petitions as well as that for the Journal and five other committees.

Petre’s catholicism and his association with known Jesuits made him particularly vulnerable when, during the recess over the summer of 1678, Titus Oates revealed a Jesuit plot to assassinate the king and to overthrow the English government. Oates testified on oath that he had seen Petre ‘receive a commission as lieutenant general of the popish army destined for the invasion of England…’³⁸ His allegations gained credence when they were apparently validated by the disappearance of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey on 12 Oct. and the discovery of his body five days later. Petre’s ability to rebut the allegations may have been undermined by memories of his willingness to trifle with the oath of abjuration during the Interregnum. Determined to carry on as normal, he attended the opening of the second session of 1678 on 21 Oct. and was again named to the committees for privileges, petitions and the Journal. On 23 Oct. he was even named (as were all those present) to the committee to examine papers about the plot and witnesses about Godfrey’s murder. On 25 Oct. the Privy Council issued a warrant for Petre’s arrest. He attended the House the next day, effectively surrendering himself into custody and taking the opportunity to protest his innocence.³⁹ Petre and the other popish lords were imprisoned first in the Gatehouse and then in the Tower of London. On 31 Oct. the House ordered that he be kept a close prisoner without access to pen, ink or paper but this order was relaxed on 8 November. A month later, on 5 Dec. he was impeached of high treason; he was also indicted for high treason by a Middlesex grand jury but this was removed to the House of Lords by certiorari and abandoned in favour of proceeding by impeachment. Articles of impeachment were formally exhibited on 7 Apr. 1679. Petre’s only child, his daughter Mary, was born shortly afterwards.

Inter House wrangling over the proper procedures for impeachments, whether the popish lords should be tried before or after Danby and the proper role of the bishops meant that Petre was never tried. In December 1683 although seriously ill he was refused permission to leave the Tower for a change of air.⁴⁰ He made his will on 20 Dec. and died, still a prisoner in the Tower, the following month. Shortly before his death he drew up a letter to the king lamenting that he was ‘by the disposition of God’s providence called into another world before I could by a public trial make my innocence appear.’⁴¹ The publication of what was in effect a carefully crafted dying statement provided a powerful piece of propaganda that transformed public perceptions of Petre, turning him from a duplicitous Jesuit fellow traveller into a symbol of wronged Catholic innocence. As a state prisoner Petre lived in considerable comfort, but his imprisonment was nevertheless widely believed to have shortened his life. His death evoked a wave of sympathy for his family and for the remaining papist lords, who were released by order of the judges of king’s bench a month later.

At his death the title passed to his younger brother John, but the estates were seriously depleted by the handsome provision (£10,000 secured against his unencumbered western estates and protected from his creditors) that Petre made for his only daughter, Mary, who later married George Heneage of Hampton, Lincolnshire.⁴²

Youth and marriage, 1685–90

Evelyn Pierrepont was the third and longest-lived of the sons of Robert Pierrepont, eldest son of ‘wise’ William Pierrepont^‡. Robert was heir to both his wealthy father and his uncle Henry Pierrepont*, 2nd earl of Kingston-upon-Hull and marquess of Dorchester, but he died early in 1669 and it was his three sons who inherited in turn the estates of their grandfather based at Thoresby in Nottinghamshire and their great-uncle’s title of earl of Kingston-upon-Hull and the estate of Holme Pierrepont. An elaborate survey of the 5th earl of Kingston’s Pierrepont inheritance in Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire and parts of Huntingdonshire from 1694 (but apparently representing the condition of the estate in 1690) suggests that the property consisted of about 31,000 acres and brought in £10,000 p.a.⁶ On the Pierrepont side Evelyn also inherited multiple connections to leading noble families of England, as his father’s four sisters had married extraordinarily well. He could number among his uncles George Savile*, marquess of Halifax, and Henry Cavendish*, 2nd duke of Newcastle, and his many aristocratic cousins included John Holles*, duke of Newcastle, Thomas Tufton*, 6th earl of Thanet, Ralph Montagu*, earl (later duke) of Montagu, and Charles Spencer*, 3rd earl of Sunderland, at least during the time of Sunderland’s brief marriage to Pierrepont’s cousin Lady Arabella Cavendish. Evelyn’s personal name derived from the family name of his mother, Elizabeth Evelyn, daughter and eventually sole heiress of Sir John Evelyn^‡ of West Dean, Wiltshire. He bequeathed to his youngest grandson in his will of 1676 the reversion of his Wiltshire lands after the death of his daughter Elizabeth. This too was an extensive estate, as Elizabeth Evelyn herself died a rich widow in 1699, able to bequeath to her daughter £2,000 and to her granddaughter a portion of £12,000, as well as leaving the remainder of the estate, calculated by some as worth £3,000 p.a., to her son.⁷

In June 1687 Evelyn Pierrepont married Mary, daughter of the late William Feilding, 3rd earl of Denbigh, a member of a prominent Warwickshire family. He was elected to represent the Nottinghamshire borough of East Retford in both the Convention and William III’s first Parliament, probably on the interest of his Williamite elder brother William Pierrepont*, 4th earl of Kingston, who was appointed lord lieutenant and custos rotulorum of Nottinghamshire in 1689. This young earl of Kingston died unexpectedly and childless on 17 Sept. 1690, when Evelyn inherited the title and perhaps, for a brief period, his local offices in Nottinghamshire. There is an unexplained vacancy in the lieutenancy of the county until 1692, when William Cavendish*, 4th earl (later duke) of Devonshire, was appointed, and in the custos until 1694, when Kingston’s cousin Newcastle, the rising man in the county, stepped in. It is possible, although it cannot be positively proved, that the new earl of Kingston informally exercised these offices in place of his deceased brother in the intervening months.

Earl of Kingston under William III, 1690–1702

Kingston first sat in the House on 6 Nov. 1690 and maintained a steady attendance rate of between three-fifths and two-thirds of the sitting days in both the 1690–1 and 1691–2 sessions. His attendance dropped to 34 per cent in the 1692–3 session, his lowest attendance of any session before 1715, but he played a controversial role in the murder trial of Charles Mohun*, 4th Baron Mohun. On 3 Feb. 1693 the House decided that each peer could ask a pertinent question of the judges sitting in Westminster Hall if the queries were agreed upon by the assembled House beforehand. Kingston nevertheless asked an impromptu question in the Hall, which compelled the peers to adjourn to their chamber to consider and approve it before returning to the Hall to continue proceedings. With this precedent, the peers resolved that peers could ask whatever question they wished of the judges without prior approval. Kingston was also one of the 14 peers who found Mohun guilty of murder on 4 Feb., against the 64 who acquitted him.⁸ He began to take a more active role in the procedures of the House in the sessions of 1693–4 (56 per cent attendance) and 1694–5 (69 per cent). He was a teller on 4 Dec. 1693 on a question in the committee of the whole House whether the word ‘holden’ should remain in the Triennial bill. He was again a teller on 22 Dec. 1694 on the question whether the House should adjourn into a committee of the whole to consider the treason trial’ bill. On 23 Jan. 1695 he further dissented from the resolution to add an amendment to that bill which would postpone its implementation for three years.

In William III’s second Parliament Kingston’s attendance steadily dropped over the three sessions: 62 per cent in 1695–6; 52 per cent in 1696–7; and 49 per cent in 1697–8. On 13 Dec. 1695 he was placed on a committee to inspect papers from the East India Company concerning their recent losses at sea and the effects of competition with the Scottish East India Company, and the following day he acted as a manager in a conference on the address against this rival company. On 9 Jan. 1696 he also protested against the abandonment of a clause in the bill to reform the coinage. He was a teller on 6 Mar. in a division in the committee of the whole House on whether to reject a clause in the wine duties bill. He fought strenuously against the bill for the attainder of Sir John Fenwick^‡, voting against it and subscribing to the dissents against the bill’s commitment, on 18 Dec. 1696, and its eventual passage, on 23 December. He assigned his proxy on 17 Feb. 1697 to his brother-in-law Basil Feilding*, 4th earl of Denbigh, but this was vacated a week later. He told in the division of 9 Mar. 1697 on the question whether to insist upon an amendment in the wrought silks bill. On 10 Apr. Kingston was a manager for a conference on the bill against the sale of offices. In the final session, he voted on 15 Mar. 1698 against the commitment of the Junto-inspired bill to punish the exchequer official Charles Duncombe^‡, while the following day he dissented from the decision to grant relief to James Bertie^‡ in the case of Bertie v. Viscount Falkland.

Before the elections of summer 1698, Kingston’s support was solicited by his cousin William Savile*, 2nd marquess of Halifax, on behalf of Gervase Eyre^‡ as a country candidate for Nottinghamshire. After Halifax’s intervention, Kingston ‘promised all the assistance he could give’ to Eyre and his fellow candidate, Sir Thomas Willoughby*, later Baron Middleton; with his help and that of Theophilus Hastings*, 7th earl of Huntingdon, the two country candidates were able to outpoll the incumbent court Whig Members.⁹ Kingston’s own attendance continued to decrease over the two session of William’s third Parliament – 45 per cent in 1698–9 and 39 per cent in 1699–1700. He was involved in two conferences on markets and trade on 20–21 Apr. 1699, acting as a manager for a conference on the bill for restoring Blackwell Hall Market, and on the next day being named to manage another conference on a bill concerning the fish market at Billingsgate. In February 1700 he was thought to be in favour of the bill to maintain the old East India Company as a corporation and on 23 Feb. he voted that the House should be adjourned into a committee of the whole to discuss two amendments to the bill. On 5 Apr. he was a teller in a division in the committee of the whole House on whether to postpone discussion of the first enacting clause in the Commons bill to resume William III’s grants of forfeited Irish lands.¹⁰

In the Parliaments of the 1690s Kingston obviously shared many of his votes, dissents and protests – such as on the Fenwick attainder bill, the Charles Duncombe bill and the East India Company bill – with country, if not Tory, members of the House. It may be significant that he spent September 1700, in the period between the prorogation of April and the surprise dissolution of Parliament in December, visiting France in the company of his contemporary Thomas Coke^‡, a country, and increasingly Tory, Member for neighbouring Derbyshire.¹¹ Kingston’s second cousin William Pierrepont^‡, who from 1691 was also the husband of his widowed sister-in-law, the dowager countess of Kingston, was another country Member of Parliament with whom Kingston was closely connected. Pierrepont’s election as a burgess for Nottingham at a by-election in December 1695 was probably achieved through the interest of his cousin. Pierrepont continued to be selected for the borough, with the help of his kinsman, in every successive Parliament until his death in August 1706.

A list from the summer of 1700 marked Kingston as a Whig who could potentially be persuaded to support the new ‘mixed’ ministry being formed after the fall of the Junto ministry. It appears that up to the turn of the century Kingston’s political allegiances were fluid and indeterminate and he was not at that point seen as an associate of the Junto. It may have been the vindictive backlash against these former ministers during the Parliament which convened on 6 Feb. 1701 which turned Kingston decisively against the Tories, and it is from about this point that he became a major figure among the Whig aristocracy, a position he solidified during the reign of Anne. He came to just over half of the sitting days of this Parliament and took part in the resurgence of Whig unity which it saw, voting for the acquittal of John Somers*, Baron Somers, and Edward Russell*, earl of Orford, in June 1701.

For the elections of the winter of 1701, following yet another dissolution (in November 1701) of an uncooperative Parliament, Kingston changed tack from his efforts in previous years and exerted his influence in Nottinghamshire in the Whig interest. He tried to exact from Sir Thomas Willoughby a promise that he would not join with Gervase Eyre, now gone over to the Tories, against the Whig candidates. He also probably assisted Thomas Wharton*, 5th Baron (later marquess of) Wharton, in assuring a rare Whig victory in the Wiltshire elections, where Kingston had acquired more of an interest by the inheritance of his mother’s estate at West Dean in 1699.¹² Perhaps reflecting his new dedication to the Whigs, Kingston himself came to 71 per cent of the Parliament of 1702 which saw William III’s death on 8 Mar.; he, along with the rest of the House present, was chosen as a manager for a conference to discuss the arrangements for Anne’s accession to the throne. In the days before the Parliament’s prorogation and eventual dissolution, Kingston acted as a teller, against the Tory Montagu Bertie*, 2nd earl of Abingdon, in the division of 16 May 1702 on the ultimately unsuccessful motion to burn publicly the sermon of William Binckes which compared Charles I favourably to Christ himself.

A Whig under Anne, 1702–6

In the early years of Anne’s reign, John Macky informed his Hanoverian masters that Kingston ‘hath a very good estate, is a very fine gentleman, of good sense, well bred, and a lover of the ladies; entirely in the interest of his country; makes a good figure, is of a black complexion, well made, not forty years old’.¹³ The death of his wife, Mary Feilding, in 1697 allowed Kingston in these first years of the queen’s reign to indulge himself as a relatively young, and very rich, widower around town. His celebrated daughter Lady Mary Wortley Montagu had good reason in later years to resent her father’s treatment of her and in an autobiographical ‘fragment’ written in 1715 described the death of her ‘noble mother’ as the ‘first misfortune’ in her life, as she ‘was now left to the care of a young father, who though naturally an honest man, was abandoned to his pleasures and (like most of those of his quality) did not think himself obliged to be very attentive to his children’s education’.¹⁴

While neglecting the upbringing of his four children, Kingston took part in the social high life of the Whigs in the capital. The diary of his contemporary Charles Bennet*, 2nd Baron Ossulston (later earl of Tankerville), makes it clear that from 1704 at the earliest Kingston was frequently found at the grand dinners hosted by his Whig associates in their Westminster townhouses, as well as at more informal gatherings in taverns such as the Queen’s Arms in Pall Mall. At these Westminster gatherings, Kingston was in frequent touch with the principal Junto peers, and especially with its most prominent parliamentary managers, Somers, Sunderland, Wharton and Charles Montagu*, Baron (later earl of) Halifax, as well as their close allies, including Charles Powlett*, 2nd duke of Bolton, Charles Howard*, 3rd earl of Carlisle, Charles Montagu*, 4th earl (later duke) of Manchester, Charles Cornwallis*, 4th Baron Cornwallis, and Charles Townshend*, 2nd Viscount Townshend.¹⁵ Kingston was also a member of the Kit Kat Club by 1711, although the story that he introduced, and toasted, his daughter Mary there when she was still a child suggests he probably joined much earlier, perhaps at the club’s foundation in the early years of the century. Lady Mary later emphasized her father’s predilection for the fashionable horse races at Newmarket, where so many other Whig grandees congregated. ‘He had a seat very near the town [i.e. in Acton]’, she continues in her autobiography, ‘and as he never consulted the pleasure of his daughters when his own were in question, the matches at Newmarket [gave] him an occasion of leaving the town’.¹⁶

Despite his commitment to a fashionable social life, Kingston maintained a steady rate of attendance in each of the three sessions of Anne’s first Parliament of 1702–5 of between 52 and 69 per cent. In the first session, a division on 11 Nov. 1702 on whether the peers should go in their robes to St Paul’s Cathedral for the celebrations for the victories at Cadiz and Vigo saw Kingston for the first time facing as his opposing teller Robert Leke*, 3rd earl of Scarsdale, heir of a family who had been local rivals to the Pierreponts in Nottinghamshire from the time of the Civil War.¹⁷ These two peers were at the centre of the controversial and very close votes of 16 Jan. 1703 which ultimately led to the defeat of the occasional conformity bill. Contemporaries were sure that Kingston would oppose the bill by supporting the Whig-inspired amendments to it. Kingston and Scarsdale acted as tellers for opposite sides in the first two divisions held that day, the first on whether to accept the principal ‘wrecking’ amendment which altered the terms, and levels of fines, in the penalty clause and the second on the amendment which extended the time in which an offence had to be presented to a justice of the peace. The first division, maintaining the amendment which ultimately sank the bill in the Commons, was passed by a majority of only two, after proxies had been called for.

Three days later, on 19 Jan., Kingston was second teller in the division in the committee of the whole House on whether there should be a clause in the bill to settle a revenue on George*, prince of Denmark (also duke of Cumberland), which would specifically empower the prince to sit in the House and Privy Council and hold other offices after the death of the queen, despite the provisions against foreigners’ employment in the Act of Settlement. Kingston and his opposite teller, Scarsdale once again, both counted the same number of votes (48); by the rules of the House the motion was resolved in the negative and the clause thrown out. However after the committee of the whole had adjourned and the regular House considered the report, it reversed the committee’s decision to exclude the clause and instead voted to accept it. Kingston had almost certainly been the teller for the not contents against the original motion, for he subscribed to the detailed protest against this latter decision by the House to reinstate the clause. Whigs such as Kingston objected to this clause because it seemed to put in doubt the right of other foreign peers – such as William III’s many Dutch friends who had been given English titles – to sit in the House and hold office without a similar formal dispensation.¹⁸

Kingston’s houses at Thoresby and Holme Pierrepont in Nottingham were on the itinerary of the Junto peers Orford and Halifax as they visited their political associates in the country – Wharton (Chippenham), Sunderland (Althorp) and Devonshire (Chatsworth) – during the summer of 1703.¹⁹ Politics were undoubtedly discussed at these summer gatherings and strategies may have been taken against the inevitable re-introduction of the Occasional Conformity bill. Kingston played a co-ordinating role in the Whig bid to defeat this bill, acting as teller, almost certainly for the not contents, on both occasions when the motion to give the bill a second reading was before the House over the next two sessions. He was a teller in the division of 14 Dec. 1703, Scarsdale again acting as his opposite, and was recorded as voting against the motion himself. He performed the same duty as teller, on the same question, almost exactly a year later, on 15 Dec. 1704, with this time the Tory John Annesley*, 4th earl of Anglesey, telling for the other side. On both occasions the not contents had the majority, ensuring the defeat of the bill.²⁰

On 13 Feb. 1704 Kingston was present at a gathering in the St James’s townhouse of Sunderland, along with Wharton, Somers, Halifax, Rivers, Newcastle, Richard Savage*, 4th Earl Rivers, Charles Bodville Robartes*, 2nd earl of Radnor, and Henry Herbert*, Baron Herbert of Chirbrury, among others. Ossulston noted that this meeting lasted from six in the evening and may still have been going on after ten at night when he left, and ‘there tea drunk and our discourse was only about the Scotch plot which the papers was before the House of Lords’.²¹ Kingston had been involved in the investigations and proceedings concerning the alleged ‘Scotch Plot’ from the moment it first came to the House’s attention. On 20 Dec. 1703 he reported from the committee assigned to draw up an address to the queen thanking her for her promise to keep the House informed of developments in the investigation of those suspected of involvement in the plot. He was then assigned, with Talbot Yelverton*, 2nd Viscount Longueville, to attend the queen to ascertain when she would be ready to receive the address, and he reported her answer at the end of the day’s proceedings.

Two days after the dinner at Sunderland’s house, on 15 Feb. 1704, Kingston again formed part of a delegation to present the queen with an address requesting her to make available to the House further papers bearing on the conspiracy and the involvement of the secretary of state Daniel Finch*, 2nd earl of Nottingham. On 3 Mar. Kingston was a teller, Charles Finch*, 4th earl of Winchilsea, telling for the opposite side, in the division on the motion that the select committee considering these papers should agree to the conditions laid down by the informant in possession of the key to the ciphered letters, that the information gleaned from them should only be divulged to the committee and the queen and not to the House at large.²² It is highly probable that further dinners with Whig peers (which were attended by Kingston on 18 and 31 Mar. and duly recorded by Ossulston) were also held to discuss strategy in prosecuting the allegations against Nottingham.²³ These were ultimately successful and the Tory secretary of state resigned his post on 22 Apr. 1704.

Kingston’s most frequent role in the sessions of 1703–4 and 1704–5 was as teller. Apart from the tellerships he exercised in divisions on the occasional conformity bill and the Scotch Plot, he was also teller in divisions on: the motion to reverse the original judgment against the petitioner Matthew Ashby in Ashby v. White (14 Jan. 1704); the motion to reverse the original decree against Anthony Rowe^‡ in Rowe v. Cockayne (25 Feb. 1704); the previous question on the motion to appoint a day for the first reading of the subsidy bill (4 Mar. 1704); the motion in the committee of the whole House to agree to an amendment replacing one of the Commons’ choices for commissioner in the public accounts bill (16 Mar. 1704); and the motion to give the estate bill of William Henry Granville*, 3rd earl of Bath, a first reading (17 Jan. 1705).²⁴ In all these divisions his opposite tellers were Tories, including some of his frequent counterparts: Scarsdale, Abingdon, Anglesey and Winchilsea, as well as Peregrine Osborne*, Baron Osborne (later 2nd duke of Leeds). On 12 Mar. 1705 Kingston registered his proxy with Townshend for the remaining two days of the session, and of Anne’s first Parliament, which was dissolved on 5 April.

A political analysis of the members of the peerage drawn up in preparation for the following Parliament categorized Kingston as a supporter of the Hanoverian Succession. Certainly he showed his Whig and Hanoverian proclivities in the elections of the summer of 1705, when he exerted his regional and political influence and showed a determination to unseat ‘tackers’ in a number of constituencies. For Nottingham he was content to see his second cousin William Pierrepont^‡ returned again, but he and other Whigs such as Newcastle and Scrope Howe^‡, Viscount Howe [I], unsuccessfully put forward two candidates (their names are unfortunately not known) to defeat the other sitting member, Robert Sacheverell^‡, who had been a tacker.²⁵ He also put his influence behind the attempt to defeat the two sitting members for Lincolnshire, ‘they being tackers’.²⁶ He was one of a group of Whig peers with interests in Wiltshire who urged Anthony Ashley Cooper*, 3rd earl of Shaftesbury, to persuade his younger brother Maurice Ashley^‡ to stand as a Whig candidate for the county.²⁷

Kingston maintained his frequent attendance in the House in the first session of the new Parliament, of 1705–6, when he came to 68 per cent of the sitting days. He first took his seat on 31 Oct. 1705, about a week into the proceedings, and on 27 Nov. reported to the House from the committee assigned to draw up an address to the queen encouraging her to maintain a good correspondence with the United Provinces and the other allies. The next month he helped to introduce the Scottish military leader John Campbell*, 2nd duke of Argyll [S], to the House under his English title as earl (later duke) of Greenwich, on 3 Dec. 1705.²⁸

Kingston was particularly busy in February and March 1706. In early February he became involved in the debates with the Commons over the ‘whimsical’ place clause they wished to add to the regency bill. On 7 Feb. he was appointed a manager for a conference on the House’s own amendments to the clause, about which the country Members of the Commons objected. Upon report of the conference, the House resolved to insist on its amendment and Kingston was placed on the committee assigned to draw up the reasons for insisting which were to be presented at a subsequent conference. These reasons were ready three days later when Kingston attended another conference as one of the House’s managers. He was a manager once again for the final conference of 19 Feb. when both Houses compromised over the clause in order to get the bill passed. Kingston was also a manager for a conference on 22 Feb. on the House’s amendments to a bill to allow two merchants to import French wines. He was only a teller twice in this session, and that only on one day. On 23 Feb. he told first in the division in the committee of the whole House on whether a clause should be made part of the bill to restore to William King, archbishop of Dublin, lands he had purchased from the trustees of the forfeited Irish lands. The committee having adjourned and the House resumed, he was a teller on the final question whether to appoint a day for the third reading of this bill. In both divisions his opposite teller was his former brother-in-law the 4th earl of Denbigh.

Kingston’s decrease in activity as a teller appears to have been compensated for by an increased role as chairman of select committees on legislation. Between 25 Feb. and 11 Mar. he reported five finished bills from committee, four of them private estate or naturalization bills, as well as the bill for more efficient collection of charity money. On 9 Mar. he was placed on the committee to draw up an address stating the House’s resolutions concerning ‘the oppressions the province of Carolina labours under’ through its assembly’s recent legislation to enforce conformity to the Church of England in the colony. On that same day he was one of the small number of managers who attended the first conference requested by the Commons to hear their vote condemning the open published letter from Sir Rowland Gwynne^‡ to Thomas Grey*, 2nd earl of Stamford. Two days later all the members present in the chamber, including Kingston, were appointed managers for two conferences in which a final address roundly condemning Gwynne’s Letter was hammered out between the Houses.

On a more personal matter, on 18 Feb. 1706 Kingston’s brother-in-law William Cheyne^‡, 2nd Viscount Newhaven [S], usually known as Lord Cheyne, brought up from the Commons (where Cheyne had probably been instrumental in its passage) a bill for vesting the inheritance of property that Kingston had recently purchased in Acton, Middlesex, in his heir, William Pierrepont, for whom Cheyne was later to act as guardian. The bill was committed the following day and reported without amendment only four days later, on 23 Feb., when it passed the House. It received the royal assent at the prorogation of 19 Mar. 1706.

Marquess of Dorchester and Junto associate, 1706–10

Kingston’s enhanced status, particularly as his colleagues among the Junto began increasingly to encroach into the ministry and political power, is reflected in a number of appointments made or projected in the summer recess between sessions and by his elevation in the peerage in December 1706. He was appointed a commissioner for the union with Scotland in early April 1706, where he joined many of his colleagues among the Whigs. At the same time it was rumoured that he was one of several Junto competitors, such as Wharton and Bolton, in the running to replace Ormond, as lord lieutenant of Ireland. In June 1706 he was appointed custos rotulorum of Wiltshire in the place of the Tory Thomas Thynne*, Viscount Weymouth.²⁹ His patent making him marquess of Dorchester, his great-uncle’s former title which had been extinguished in 1680, passed the great seal on 23 Dec. 1706 and contained a special remainder, failing heirs male to Kingston, in favour of his uncle Gervase Pierrepont*, Baron Pierrepont of Ardglass [I] (later Baron Pierrepont of Hanslope). It can be no coincidence that Dorchester’s patent was sealed on the same day as that raising his friend Wharton to be an earl.

Kingston was introduced under his new title on 30 Dec. 1706, between Bolton and Henry Grey*, marquess (later duke) of Kent, on a day when the ten peers recently created or elevated in the brief period 14–30 Dec. (including Kent himself) were all introduced in the House.³⁰ He had been sitting in the House during the 1706–7 session fairly regularly from its opening day (3 Dec.) and throughout maintained an attendance rate of 57 per cent. As a commissioner for the union and a Whig, Dorchester almost certainly worked to push the Act of Union through the House. It is clear from Ossulston’s diary that the marquess was a regular participant at dinners of Whig peers in late January and early February 1707, and particularly at the height of the debates in early March, when Ossulston records Dorchester, Wharton, Halifax, Carlisle, Bolton, Manchester and Cornwallis as his companions at two late dinners held in a tavern after two particularly gruelling days of debates in the House.³¹

In the period between the final passage of the Act of Union on 6 Mar. 1707 and the convening of the first session of the new Parliament of Great Britain on 23 Oct., Dorchester consolidated his interest in Nottingham with appointment as a freeman and then recorder of the borough following the death of Devonshire.³² He attended a little over two-thirds of the sittings of the 1707–8 session, and was involved in composing a number of addresses to the queen. On 18 Dec. 1707 he was placed on the drafting committee for an address of thanks to the queen for her speech regarding the war, while the following day he was assigned by the committee of the whole House to assist in drawing up an address to insist that there could be ‘no peace without Spain’. On 4 Mar. 1708 he was placed on the committee to draft an address to the queen thanking her for submitting to the House the papers regarding the threatened French invasion of Scotland and assuring her of their willingness to assist and protect her. Earlier, on 7 Feb. 1708, he alone dissented – that is, his name appears singly and separately from the further 25 who signed a protest with written reasons for their opposition – from the passage of the bill to abolish the Scottish Privy Council. In this he took a stance opposed to the Junto, suggesting that he retained his political independence, in the same way as his fellow opponent of the bill, Townshend, who objected to some of the Junto’s more belligerent anti-ministerial tactics in the 1707–8 session.³³ Dorchester chaired and reported from two committees of the whole House on one day, 19 Feb., when he led proceedings on the bill for the export of white woollen cloth and for that to encourage the native dyeing of white cloth. On the penultimate day of the session, 31 Mar., he was a manager for a conference on the House’s amendments to the bill to encourage trade to America.

Despite his brief aberration on the Scottish Privy Council bill, in the months following the dissolution of 15 Apr. 1708 Dorchester became even more integrated in the inner counsels of the Junto and benefitted from that group’s own progress in further infiltrating the queen’s ministry. On 26 June 1708, on the eve of the Whigs’ national victory in the 1708 general elections, Dorchester was sworn to the Privy Council, along with his Junto colleagues Bolton and Wharton.³⁴ Sometime later that summer Dorchester and Bolton participated in a conference convened by Sidney Godolphin*, earl of Godolphin, in order to discuss the terms by which the Whigs would support the lord treasurer in the forthcoming Parliament.³⁵

In December 1708 it was reported that Dorchester was being set up to be the ‘rival’ of Charles Seymour*, 6th duke of Somerset, who had seriously fallen out with the Junto. ³⁶ By that point Dorchester had been consistently present in the first session, of 1708–9, of the new Parliament since its first day, and overall he attended close to three-quarters of that session’s sittings, his highest attendance level of any session in the period before 1715. On 19 Nov. 1708 he reported from the committee assigned to draw up an address of condolence to the queen for the death of the prince consort and the House decided that Dorchester should present the address to the queen in her mourning by himself and unattended.³⁷ Later, on 23 Dec., he was assigned to help draft a happier address to the queen, congratulating her on the capture of Ghent. On 1 Mar. 1709 he was placed on another drafting committee for an address encouraging her to maintain a good ‘friendship’ with the Allies and to demand the removal of the Pretender from French territory.

Dorchester joined in the Junto–Squadrone attack on Godolphin and his Scottish ally James Douglas*, 2nd duke of Queensberry [S], by voting on 21 Feb. 1709 that Queensberry could not take part in the election of the Scottish representative peers because he had a post-Union British title as duke of Dover. He was involved in another Scottish matter on 25 Mar. when he was a teller on the motion to adjourn the Committee of the Whole House considering the treasons bill. His opposite teller was William Johnston*, marquess of Annandale [S], who would have been opposed to the bill and its claims to ‘improve’ the Union.³⁸ On the last day of the session, 21 Apr., Dorchester reported to the House from a conference on the amendment to the bill to make the act against counterfeiting coin perpetual. In late May Arthur Maynwaring^‡ reported to Sarah Churchill, duchess of Marlborough, his own presence at a ‘great feast’ which Halifax and some of those peers now most closely affiliated with the Junto, such as Dorchester, Bolton, Carlisle and William Cavendish*, 2nd duke of Devonshire, also attended.

Dorchester maintained an attendance rate of 69 per cent in the following session, of 1709–10. In February 1710 he chaired and reported from two committees – a select committee on a private bill which he reported on 15 Feb., and, 12 days later, a committee of the whole House on the recruitment bill. Not surprisingly he voted Dr Henry Sacheverell guilty on 20 Mar. 1710; it seems likely that discussion of the trial featured during a dinner he attended on the last day of that month, with Carlisle, Ossulston and William Henry Bentinck*, 2nd earl (later duke) of Portland, also in attendance.³⁹

In opposition, 1710–14

Dorchester worked closely with his cousin Newcastle in the summer of 1710 to effect Whig victories in the Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire elections of that autumn. For Nottinghamshire the two grandees supported the candidacy of Viscount Howe [I]. Dorchester was a more committed Whig than Newcastle, who was at that time currying favour with Robert Harley*, later earl of Oxford, and was later to retain his office (as lord privy seal) in Harley’s ministry. Dorchester wanted Howe to stand with the sitting Whig member John Thornhagh^‡, who had already angered Newcastle over a dispute about the depredations of the deer in Sherwood Forest. Newcastle was opposed to Thornhagh’s candidacy on both political and personal grounds and thought that his standing would only take votes away from Howe. Newcastle’s agents, John Plumptre^‡ and George Gregory^‡, were at pains to try to convince Dorchester to desist from his support for Thornhagh, but the resulting confusion led to Thornhagh coming at the bottom of the poll, handily beaten by the Tory candidate William Levinz^‡. Howe stood at the top of the poll.⁴⁰

The two peers seem to have worked more in concert, although no more successfully, in neighbouring Lincolnshire, where from July 1710 Dorchester was encouraging Newcastle to press his client, the sitting member George Whichcot^‡, to stand again. There was a breach between Whichcot and the other knight for the county, Peregrine Bertie*, styled Lord Willoughby of Eresby and later 2nd duke of Ancaster, who now went over to the Tories, and Whichcot found himself standing alone as a Whig. He was defeated, at great expense to himself, and in October requested that his patrons Newcastle and Dorchester help defray his costs (£160) with a suitable contribution.⁴¹ In Wiltshire Dorchester’s attempts to break the Tory hold on the county, which he had tried to do in his role of custos rotulorum by purging the commission of the peace in 1708 and 1709, was still unsuccessful and the sitting members were once more returned.⁴²

Harley, not surprisingly, considered Dorchester a certain opponent of his new ministry, and Dorchester did not disappoint these expectations in the first session (1710–11) of the new Tory-led Parliament. His attendance dipped slightly, to 62 per cent of its sitting days, but he was in the core of the Whig opposition, particularly in the debates in January 1711 on the conduct of the Spanish war. On 11 Jan. he submitted before the House the petition of the general Charles O’Hara, Baron Tyrawley [I], requesting more time to submit his answer to the charges against him for his role in the Spanish campaign. Dorchester also subscribed to the protests that day against the rejection of this petition, as well as that of Tyrawley’s fellow general Henri Massue de Ruvigny, earl of Galway [I], and against the motion that these commanders in Spain were responsible for the military debacle of Almanza. The following day he further joined in the protest against the resolution censuring the ministers in office in 1706–7 for approving an offensive war in Spain.⁴³

In the first two days of February 1711 Dorchester received the proxies of his colleagues Newcastle (vacated 19 Feb.) and Ossulston (vacated 5 Feb.), and he may have used these to vote against two resolutions made on 3 Feb. further condemning the previous ministry for its ‘neglect of service’ in not adequately providing supplies for the forces in Spain. Dorchester himself subscribed to the protests against them. On 9 Feb., still holding Newcastle’s proxy, he voted and signed the protests against the three resolutions that ordered the text of the protest of 3 Feb. to be expunged from the Journal. He reported a private bill from committee on 26 Feb. and later in the session, on 9 May, he was made a manager for a conference on the House’s amendments to the bill for repairing highways between Dunstable and Hockley. On 21 May he received the proxies of both Wharton and Herbert of Chirbury, but Dorchester himself stopped attending the House on 22 May, and he in turn registered his proxy with Wharton on 7 June for the remaining five days of the session until the prorogation of 12 June.

From 1710 family matters also bulked large in Dorchester’s personal and parliamentary life. Negotiations for the marriage of his only son, William, Lord Kingston, to Rachel Boynton, ‘a Wiltshire lady of a vast fortune’, had been going on for some time.⁴⁴ As early as November 1709 William Jessop^‡ reported to his master Newcastle that, by the terms of the settlement, the merchant John Hall, dubbed ‘godfather’ to Rachel Boynton but in fact her biological father, was to supply a portion of £20,000 to the bride and settle an estate worth £2,000 p.a. on the young couple at his death. Dorchester in turn was to settle £3,000 p.a. upon them for the moment, of which £1,000 was to revert to Dorchester if Hall, then 78 years old, died before him.⁴⁵ In 1710 Edward Wortley Montagu, the frustrated suitor to Dorchester’s eldest daughter Lady Mary, estimated that all told this marriage would add £60,000 to the family’s estate, by which he hoped Dorchester would be able to increase Lady Mary’s portion.⁴⁶ On 25 Jan. 1711 Dorchester petitioned to bring in a bill to confirm the marriage treaty of the underage couple and to settle his estate and that of John Hall in preparation of the marriage. The bill itself was given its first reading in the House on 20 Feb. 1711 and was committed two days later. ‘Lord Dorchester’s long bill’, as William Nicolson*, bishop of Carlisle, termed it, came back from committee with several amendments on 9 Mar. and was passed the following day. It received the royal assent on 16 May, four days after the wedding between Lord Kingston and Rachel Boynton had been formally celebrated.⁴⁷

In July 1711 Dorchester was in in his turn ousted from his position as custos rotulorum in Wiltshire and replaced by his local rival Weymouth, who proceeded to rid the bench of Whigs just as Dorchester had earlier done to the Tories.⁴⁸ In the days preceding the commencement of the session of 1711–12 Dorchester may have taken part in the negotiations with Nottingham to seal his support for the Whig motion that there should be ‘no peace without Spain’. In the first days of the session, 7–8 Dec. 1711, Dorchester duly voted, against the wishes of the ministry, to include the ‘No Peace without Spain’ clause in the Address to the queen. He further opposed the ministry by voting on 20 Dec. that James Hamilton*, 4th duke of Hamilton, as a Scottish peer, could not sit in the House of Lords under his British title of duke of Brandon. He was appointed on 22 Dec. to the drafting committee for an address requesting Anne not to make a separate peace with France at the ongoing peace conference at Utrecht.

As the proxy records from April 1707 to April 1710 are now missing it cannot be determined what role Dorchester played in those years in the extensive and well-organized network of proxy-sharing among Whigs, but it is highly probable that he exchanged proxies in these earlier years with two peers who by 1712 had become especially close friends – Wharton and Carlisle. In his will of April 1715 Wharton named his ‘dear friends’ Dorchester and Carlisle executors and trustees of his estate, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was to reminisce many years after her father’s death that ‘Lord Carlisle was the most intimate friend of my father’ and that it was only Carlisle’s preference for a retired life that prevented Dorchester from naming him a trustee for his underage grandson in his will.⁴⁹ Certainly in the 1711–12 session, when Dorchester was present at fewer than half of the sittings, these three formed a tight group of proxy-sharing to ensure that at no point were any of their votes unaccounted for in the House. Wharton, for example, held Dorchester’s proxy for the two days of 11–12 Mar. 1712, while Carlisle later had it for a longer period, from 2 Apr. to 8 May 1712. Dorchester in fact had last sat in the House before assigning his proxy on 28 Mar. and Carlisle held the fort in Westminster for this period while Dorchester, Wharton and several of their Whig companions were enjoying the races at Newmarket.

All of them were hurriedly summoned back to Parliament by an express dispatch from Townshend on 1 May warning that several important votes on the peace were forthcoming, though Dorchester was the last of the group to arrive back on 8 May.⁵⁰ Issues of the peace being negotiated at Utrecht continued to occupy his attention in the month after his return. On 28 May 1712 he voted and signed the protest against the ministry’s refusal to countenance an address condemning the ‘restraining orders’ preventing the commander-in-chief, the duke of Ormond, from conducting an offensive war against France. Only a few days later, on 7 June, Dorchester joined in a further protest against the House’s refusal to include in an address to the queen a clause advocating a ‘mutual guaranty’ with the United Provinces to ensure the Hanoverian Succession.⁵¹ Wharton again registered his proxy with Dorchester on 12 June, but Dorchester himself left the House for the session the following day and both peers were unrepresented in the House during the session’s final days until the prorogation on 21 June.

Dorchester only came to 27 of the 77 meetings of the brief session of the spring of 1713, when the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht were announced to the House. By this time, though, most of his attention would have been taken up with countering a petition submitted on 5 May by his brother-in-law Lord Cheyne, who was acting as Lord and Lady Kingston’s guardian. Cheyne claimed that Lady Kingston’s father, John Hall, had died before the passage of the act of 1711 confirming the marriage settlement, including Rachel’s portion of £20,000, and that Dorchester had recently received a decree ordering the payment of the portion, with interest, out of the estate, which, Cheyne argued, could not support such a large amount and continue to pay for the other provisions of Hall’s will such as the maintenance of Lord and Lady Kingston. On 18 May the House, after hearing counsel for both sides in the matter, rejected Cheyne’s petition and upheld the decree in Dorchester’s favour.⁵²

Dorchester then absented himself from the House until 13 June and thereby missed most of the contentious debates and divisions over the malt tax and the motion to dissolve the Union. He left the House again at the end of June, probably because of the sudden death from smallpox of the young Lord Kingston, in the first days of July 1713.⁵³ In memory of this early death, years later Lord Kingston’s own young son was to be one of the first subjects of the experiments in smallpox inoculation carried out by his aunt Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.⁵⁴ Dorchester was made administrator of the late Lord Kingston’s estate and guardian of his two infant children, while Lady Kingston, herself still a minor, renounced her claims to the estate and leased to Dorchester, as trustee, her jointure lands and mansion in West Dean.

Dorchester was present at 63 per cent of the sittings of the first session of the 1713 Parliament, in the spring of 1714. He attended consistently until the adjournment of 19 Mar., but was not present when the session reconvened on 31 Mar. to consider the queen’s speech. He registered his proxy with James Berkeley*, 3rd earl of Berkeley, on 1 Apr. to represent him as the House considered the papers regarding the contentious commercial treaty with Spain and the condition of the Catalans after the peace. He returned to the House on 8 Apr., when the political temperature was rising as the Whigs forced through a number of addresses in support of the Hanoverian Succession and against the Pretender. In the days following his return, Dorchester held his full complement of proxies from two fellow Whigs – from Cornwallis (from 9 Apr.) and from Wharton (from 13 Apr.). He himself would only have been able to use these proxies for a short time, as he absented himself from the House from 16 April. Upon Wharton’s return to the House on 24 Apr., the absent Dorchester in turn registered his proxy with him, which was vacated when Dorchester reappeared in the House on 5 May. Dorchester may have returned to oversee the passage through Parliament of Lady Kingston’s Estate Act, which confirmed by statute the arrangement made in 1713 whereby the underage Lady Kingston leased her jointure lands and mansion in West Dean to Dorchester as trustee for her and her two infant children. Lady Kingston petitioned on 11 May for the bill to be brought in, but its first reading was delayed to 1 June by the House’s two-week adjournment in mid-May. It went through both Houses quickly and received the royal assent on 9 July.⁵⁵

Nottingham considered Dorchester an opponent of the Schism bill and Dorchester began attending the House regularly from 27 May as that bill was fought over in the House. He was present on 15 June to sign the protest against its passage. The day following this protest he received the proxy of Manchester, who did not reappear in the House for the remainder of the session. Dorchester himself left the House after the sitting of 25 June and registered his proxy with Cornwallis three days later, but was back in the House the very next day, thus vacating this proxy. He continued to sit regularly until the prorogation of 9 July.

In these last years of the reign of Anne, Dorchester was, aside from political concerns, heavily preoccupied by the marriages of his three daughters. His eldest, Mary, caused him the most aggravation as Dorchester did not approve of her relationship with the Whig member for Huntingdon, Edward Wortley Montagu^‡; he rebuffed proposals for a marriage in 1710. Lady Mary was promised to another suitor but she permanently estranged herself from her father by continuing her secretive epistolary courtship with Wortley Montagu and by eventually eloping with and marrying him in August 1712. Dorchester’s second daughter, Evelyn, married in March 1712 (with his approval) John Leveson Gower*, 2nd Baron (later earl) Gower, who was later to distinguish himself, to Dorchester’s disappointment, as a Tory.⁵⁶ In 1714 Dorchester celebrated another marriage which was also ultimately to disappoint him, when his third daughter, Frances, married John Erskine*, 22nd earl of Mar [S].⁵⁷ Mar’s later conversion to Jacobitism must have shocked and appalled his Whig and Hanoverian father-in-law, and the rigours of a life in exile appear to have seriously damaged the mental stability of the countess of Mar. Dorchester himself married on 2 Aug. 1714, after 17 years as a widower and a ‘lover of the ladies’ (as John Macky had earlier described him), his new wife being Isabella, a sister of his Whig colleague the 2nd earl of Portland. The wedding unfortunately coincided with the queen’s death and the hurried meeting of Parliament to arrange for the succession. Both Dorchester and Portland appeared at the beginning of the session but immediately registered their proxies on 2 Aug. (Dorchester with his recent proxy donor Manchester), so that they could attend the wedding.⁵⁸

Hanoverian Succession, 1715–26

Dorchester could clearly expect favour from George I owing to his long-term support for the Hanoverian succession and in the months after August 1714 he was laden with offices and honours. In December he replaced Weymouth, once again, as custos rotulorum of Wiltshire and was appointed chief justice in eyre north of the river Trent (which he resigned in March 1717). He was promoted to a dukedom on 10 Aug. 1715 and on 19 Dec. 1716 he was made lord privy seal. He was briefly lord president of the council from February 1719 to June 1720 before returning to the privy seal. Kingston was made a knight of the garter on 23 June 1719 and served several times as a lord justice or regent of the realm during the king’s absences in Hanover. He continued to attend the House regularly and came to 70 per cent of the sitting days of George I’s first Parliament of 1715–22. There he acted as one of the principal Whigs, helping to introduce his old friend Wharton when he first sat in the House as marquess of Wharton on 21 Mar. 1715. A more detailed account of Kingston’s parliamentary activities under George I will be found in the next section of this work.

At his death on 16 Mar. 1726 Kingston owned mansion houses at Thoresby Hall and Holme Pierrepont in Nottinghamshire, West Dean in Wiltshire, Acton in Middlesex and in Arlington Street in St James, Westminster, as well as at Tonge Castle in Shropshire and Hanslope Park in Buckinghamshire; the last two he had inherited in May 1715 at the death without heirs of his uncle Gervase, Baron Pierrepont of Hanslope. He placed his vast landed estate into the hands of trustees who were to manage the fee simple parts of the estate for the benefit of Kingston’s five daughters and one granddaughter. The property in Lincolnshire was to be held in trust for the countess of Mar on the sole condition that she and her heirs conform to the Church of England and reside in England.⁵⁹ The entailed part of the estate, largely in Nottinghamshire, was to be managed by the trustees during the minority of Kingston’s grandson and heir, Evelyn Pierrepont^†, 2nd duke of Kingston. He took after, indeed exceeded, his grandfather in his enjoyment of life as a bon viveur and man of fashion, and was, briefly, the ‘second’ husband of Elizabeth Chudleigh, whose trial for bigamy scandalized society in 1776. The 2nd duke, however, did not follow in his grandfather’s political footsteps and played almost no role in the Parliaments of George II and George III.

Pierrepont finally received a British peerage as part of the coronation honours. He did not sit until after the dissolution of January 1715.

Pierrepont’s father achieved prominence during the reign of Charles I through his canny purchases of land in Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Lincolnshire.⁶ With the wealth he built up he was able to purchase first a barony (Pierrepont) and then a viscountcy (Newark) in 1627. His eldest son and heir Henry was elected for the borough of Nottingham, close to the family’s principal manor of Holme Pierrepont, in the election of 1628. After its first session he became known as Viscount Newark following his father’s promotion to the earldom. Newark was later summoned to the House of Lords by a writ of acceleration as Baron Pierrepont and quickly established himself as a supporter of the rights of both the king and the bishops in the Long Parliament. At the same time his younger brother William sat in the Commons for the borough of Much Wenlock and became one of the leaders of the Parliamentarian party, earning for himself the sobriquet ‘the Wise’. Newark joined the king at Oxford where he was a member of Charles I’s council of war from late January 1643 (with admittedly intermittent attendance) and sat in the upper House in the Parliament convened there.⁷ Following Kingston’s death on 30 July 1643, killed by fellow royalist troops while being transported as a prisoner of war, Newark succeeded to the earldom, but to only part of his father’s estates. He inherited the ancestral family properties of Holme Pierrepont in Nottinghamshire and Orton Longueville in Huntingdonshire; most of the land purchased by the first earl, such as Thoresby in Nottinghamshire, was settled on his second son William.

For his services on the council of war and at the Uxbridge treaty negotiations in February 1645, Kingston was placed on the king’s Privy Council in Oxford and was raised in the peerage as marquess of Dorchester.⁸ After the surrender of Oxford, where he remained until the bitter end, Dorchester was charged £7,647 to release his estates from sequestration, but his brother William rescued him and the estate by agreeing to accept Dorchester’s composition fine as recompense for his own financial losses during the war.⁹ In September 1652 Dorchester made himself even more suspect in the eyes of the government by marrying as his second wife (his first wife having died in childbirth in 1639) Katherine, a daughter of the royalist martyr the 7th earl of Derby.¹⁰ Dorchester and his wife were shielded from the unwanted attentions of the Protectorate government by the growing influence and prestige of William Pierrepont, a valued adviser to Oliver Cromwell^‡ as Lord Protector.

Dorchester had always been scholarly, a trait emphasized by a near-contemporary biographer, Charles Goodall, M.D., president of the Royal College of Physicians in the early eighteenth century:

From his youth he was always much addicted to books; and when he came from Cambridge, where he was some time of Emmanuel College, for many years he seldom studied less than ten or twelve hours every day; so that he had early passed through all manner of learning, both divine and human – as the fathers, councils, schoolmen, casuists, the civil law, canon law, and was remarkably well-versed in common law.¹¹

Dorchester entered Gray’s Inn in 1651 and was called to the bar the following year, all which led Sir Edward Nicholas^‡ to comment, ‘I see abundance of wealth doth not satisfy all men’s minds’.¹² On 22 July 1658 he was made a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. His copious notebooks of medical receipts and experiments still exist in Hans Sloane’s collection of manuscripts.¹³ Dorchester was also infamous for his propensity to anger: he ‘was for his temper the obligingest friend and severest enemy that ever met in one man… where he had an enmity, it stuck close upon him, and… he seldom relinquished it’.¹⁴ The marriage on 13 July 1658 of Dorchester’s elder daughter Anne to her second cousin John Manners*, styled Lord Roos, later duke of Rutland, with a dowry of £10,000, unfortunately supplied him with ample opportunity to indulge this trait. The marriage quickly broke down, and the years 1658-61 were filled with constant arguments between Lady Roos and her imperious mother-in-law the countess of Rutland; mutual recriminations between the young couple of drunkenness, sexual incompetence and adultery; and several separations and desertions.¹⁵ The worst of these, in Dorchester’s eyes, was in January 1660 when Roos deserted his wife ‘very naked and unhandsomely… with only her own chamber furniture, not a salt spoon, her £300 a year not paid’. The following month Dorchester published an invective-filled open letter to Roos challenging him to a duel for his mistreatment of his daughter.¹⁶ Roos’s printed response of 19 Mar., the composition of which has been attributed to Samuel Butler, suggests the anomalous figure the scholarly, and irascible, nobleman-turned-professional made in contemporary society, and how he thus opened himself up to ridicule:

you are terrible only in your medicines: if you had told us how many you killed that way, and how many you have cut in pieces, besides calves and dogs, a right valiant man that hath any wit would tremble to come near you: and if by your threatening to ram your sword down my throat, you do not mean your pills, which are a more dangerous weapon, the worst is past, and I am safe enough… Is it not enough that you are already as many things as any of your own receipts, that you are a doctor of the civil law, and a barrister at the common, a bencher of Gray’s Inn, a professor of physic and a fellow of the college, a mathematician, a Chaldean, a schoolman and a piece of grammarian (as your last work can show were it construed), a philosopher, poet, translator, antisocordist, solicitor, broker and usurer, besides a marquess, earl, viscount and baron, but you must profess quarrelling too, and publishing yourself an Hector? ¹⁷

At the same time as these insults were being thrown, the actions that resulted in the Restoration were being played out. Dorchester was in residence at Highgate at the beginning of 1660 but it was not until 29 Apr., after the Convention had started, that he wrote to the king in exile, reminding him of his service to Charles I. He insisted that he had since been faithful to the new king, though ‘like Nicodemus’ he had been ‘forced’ to act in secret in the intervening years ‘and durst not give the full scope to my ardent zeal’. The king’s encouraging answer was dated 13 May.¹⁸ Dorchester was one of those peers, created by Charles I at Oxford between 1642-6, who insisted on their rights to sit in the Convention House of Lords, despite the opposition of those who maintained that only those lords who had remained in Westminster in the 1640s should be admitted. Richard Boyle*, Baron Clifford of Lanesborough, the future earl of Burlington, recorded in his diary that on 4 May he, with Dorchester, John Belasyse*, Baron Belasyse, William Widdrington*, 2nd Baron Widdrington, and Edward Watson*, 2nd Baron Rockingham, all of them either Oxford peers or their heirs, ‘did attend and by the Lord Dorchester did demand leave of the General [George Monck*, later duke of Albemarle] to take our places in Parliament to the which he gave us a civil answer declaring that he would not interpose in the privileges of Parliament but let us to our own.’ However, by the following day Monck informed the Oxford lords, through Belasyse, to desist from their demands, ‘as our desire had raised much noise’.¹⁹

It was not only the ‘Presbyterian Knot’ who wished to deny Dorchester and some of the other Oxford peers entry into the House. In a letter of 7 May Alan Brodrick, secretary of the royalist group the Sealed Knot, wrote to Edward Hyde*, later earl of Clarendon, with the suggestion of annulling all grants of peerage made since 1642 as many were given to those of little merit, ‘such as the marquess of Dorchester, who is not fit to be groom to an honest man’.²⁰ A ‘Mr Probe’ later echoed this view when he said that Dorchester ‘is no more to be regarded than that dog that lay by him’, for which he was fined 1,000 marks in an action of scandalum magnatum Dorchester brought against him in early 1664.²¹ More seriously, in January 1662 Benjamin Denham, who appears to have been a former chaplain or servant of Dorchester and was then serving as chaplain to England’s ambassador to the Porte, Heneage Finch*, 3rd earl of Winchilsea, wrote a long letter to the secretary of state. In this he set out to expose Dorchester’s true religious loyalties and to reveal him as close to a papist:

When I heard my lord marquess of Dorchester was made a member of his majesty’s Privy Council [in August 1660], I not only thought it incredible but impossible considering he is a person so firm to the doctrine and discipline of the Church of Rome, that he is even in the highest degree Jesuited, so that the many and subtlest papists have not only by way of civility a free admittance to his table, but to him they come, as a wise and close favourite for advice in their cause… in civil affairs perchance he may be trusted, but in ecclesiastical transactions not the least secrecy is to be expected from him… his counsel, his abetting shall ever be assistant not only from the love of the opinion and government of the Church of Rome, but from a perfect malice and diametrical hatred to all Protestants, miscalling them by horrid and disgraceful names.

Denham even cast doubt on Dorchester’s seemingly unblemished royalist reputation during the Civil War. He suggested that his speeches in Parliament defending the right of the bishops to sit and vote ‘were only made in opposition to Presbyterians and other sectaries, not out of love to our episcopacy’; and that at the death of Charles I he had ‘triumphantly demanded, where was the head of the Church?’²² Denham concluded by warning the king that ‘whatsoever is treated in the Privy Council concerning the Roman Catholics’ would be quickly revealed by Dorchester to those arch-Catholics Thomas Brudenell*, earl of Cardigan, and Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore [I].²³

Although it is impossible to gauge the accuracy of these detailed allegations, Dorchester was always closely connected with the senior branch of the Catholic Howards, and especially with Henry Frederick Howard^†, from 1646 the 22nd (or 15th) earl of Arundel, a fellow royalist councillor at Oxford. For some years after the fall of Oxford Dorchester lived in Worksop Manor in Nottinghamshire, which had been lent to him by Arundel, ‘his great and most intimate friend and relation’.²⁴ Both Dorchester’s and Arundel’s mothers were members of the Catholic Talbot family, and Denham put the blame for Dorchester’s Romanist sympathies squarely on his mother’s influence. In any case, Denham’s accusations, whether believed or not, must have fallen on deaf ears when they reached London from Constantinople in April 1662, as no action against Dorchester was ever taken.

If these suspicions were current in the spring of 1660, Charles II and his leading ministers were either unaware of them, or placed more value on Dorchester’s evident loyalty to the late king and his legal knowledge. On 27 Aug. he was sworn of the Privy Council, where he proved himself a frequent, almost constant, member throughout the early 1660s.²⁵ He was sufficiently prominent in the council to be placed on its sub-committee of six members charged with handling Irish affairs.²⁶ During the summer recess of 1661 he was said to have played a controversial role as one of the councillors, along with Arthur Annesley*, earl of Anglesey, and Anthony Ashley Cooper*, Baron Ashley, later earl of Shaftesbury, involved in an abortive project to break off the intended match with Portugal.²⁷

Having taken his seat with the other ‘Oxford peers’ on 1 June, he sat in 57 per cent of the sittings of the Convention: slightly more diligent in his attendance in the first part before the recess than later. He was most active in the committee for petitions, and reported from there on four different occasions (the 7th, 13th, 19th and 23rd) in July. He chaired the meeting of the committee for privileges considering the case of Warwick Mohun*, 2nd Baron Mohun, and on 7 Aug. reported to the House the committee’s conclusion that Mohun had, during the Interregnum, been sued as a commoner by common process, which was contrary to the privilege of peerage.²⁸ On 14 Aug. he was appointed to replace the indisposed Algernon Percy*, 4th earl of Northumberland, as part of the delegation from Parliament to the city of London to request a loan of £100,000 to the king. The following day, it was Dorchester who reported the city fathers’ hesitation to lay out such a large amount without better security. During this first part of the Convention he was named to ten committees on legislation. He introduced Clifford of Lanesborough’s bill for reparation of property seized during the late wars, and on 28 Aug. reported from committee with an amended version of this bill.²⁹ On 23 Aug. alone he reported from three committees, including that considering the claims that Edward Somerset*, 2nd marquess of Worcester, had a patent from Charles I to be made duke of Somerset, and that for the bill to restore Wentworth Dillon, 4th earl of Roscommon [I], to all his titles and estates. The latter was recommitted upon his report and, four days later, Dorchester returned to communicate a bill more acceptable to the House. On 31 Aug. he was formally given leave of the House to be absent for a time. He returned after the summer recess on 6 Nov. for the second part of the Convention. He was nominated to only four committees, but on 20 Dec. he reported from the one considering the bill for confirmation of marriages entered into during the Interregnum. Another one of these appointments was personally significant, the committee for the bill to restore the dukedom of Norfolk to Thomas Howard*, 23rd (or 16th) earl of Arundel, eldest son of Dorchester’s friend and Talbot kinsman. On 13 Nov. Dorchester reported to the House that witnesses had attested to the committee that Arundel was ‘a perfect lunatic’ and that he was effectively confined to his residence, ‘the best house in Padua’. The bill was recommitted and on 19 Nov. Dorchester was able to report again with a revised bill which was accepted. This paved the way for Arundel to be made 5th duke of Norfolk, even though he was judged too mentally fragile to return to England to enjoy his new title.

For each of the first three sessions of the Cavalier Parliament, from May 1661 to May 1664, Dorchester maintained a steady attendance level of about 48 per cent. In the 1661-2 session he was named to 17 committees on legislation, but in the following two sessions his rate of nominations to committees dropped steeply. He remained, however, active in the committee for privileges. On 3 Dec. 1661 he reported to the House the conclusions of the committee meeting of the previous day concerning peers’ abuse of ‘protections, while on 1 Mar. 1662 the committee named him to a sub-committee charged with drawing up arguments supporting a declaration against the precedence claims of ‘foreign’ (i.e. Scottish and Irish) nobility. On 2 Apr. 1663 he chaired the committee in a busy meeting when it heard evidence about a forged ‘protection’. It also considered complaints about the disorderliness in the lobby and ‘little committee chamber’ and about people eavesdropping on debates at the door of the House’s chamber.³⁰

In his assessment of 13 July Philip Wharton*, 4th Baron Wharton, predicted that Dorchester would support the attempt of George Digby*, 2nd earl of Bristol, to impeach Clarendon. This is certainly plausible as Bristol had been the leader of the party against the Portuguese match, which Dorchester too had opposed. Bristol was also one of the leading Catholics in the House and that too may have appealed to Dorchester, if Denham’s letter concerning his religious views is accurate. Certainly in December Dorchester found himself in opposition to the lord chancellor, as he joined with Henry Jermyn*, earl of St Albans, Henry Bennet*, later earl of Arlington, and others in opposing in the Privy Council Irish business supported by Clarendon, Anglesey and James Butler*, duke of Ormond [I], earl of Brecknock in the English peerage.³¹

Dorchester attended 54 per cent of the sittings in the session of 1664-5. On 21 Dec. 1664, Robert Sutton*, Baron Lexinton, registered his proxy with Dorchester for the remainder of the session. Lexinton was a fellow Nottinghamshire royalist who had been married to Dorchester’s cousin, and also appears to have been acting as an intermediary between Dorchester and the countess of Rutland over their children’s troubled marriage.³² Dorchester had the king’s specific leave to be absent from the following session, held at Oxford in October 1665, and registered his proxy with Lexinton on 12 October. In April 1666 Dorchester was initially one of the peers chosen to sit in the court of the lord high steward to act as judge in the trial of Thomas Parker*, 15th Baron Morley, but after requesting the king’s leave to be absent, he excused himself from proceedings.³³

The session of 1666-7 saw Dorchester attending the House more frequently than usual, with an attendance level of 59 per cent. This increased attendance may have been owing to the family interest in the bill to make illegitimate all of Lady Roos’s children—his grandchildren, including his only surviving male descendant—which made its way through Parliament that session. Dorchester had been present on 19 Apr. 1662 for the first reading of an earlier bill brought in by the Manners family to declare illegitimate Lady Roos’s son born the previous September and baptized tellingly ‘Ignotus’ (i.e. unknown).³⁴ He had then been present again a few days later when his daughter’s petition, in which she detailed the sufferings she had undergone at the hands of Roos, was presented to the House.³⁵ The second reading of this bill was delayed pending her counsel being heard and it was ultimately lost, ‘in regard of the great and public affairs of the kingdom’ then being considered, at the prorogation of that session on 19 May. When Anne gave birth once more in April 1663, during a period when Lord Roos had been on the continent for several months, her adultery was so clear that even her father had to acknowledge it. With this irrefutable evidence Lord Roos was able to obtain a legal separation ‘from bed and board’ in the court of arches, after his return from his travels.³⁶ Armed with this decree, Roos had a bill to make both children born to Lady Roos since 1660 declared illegitimate introduced in the House on 22 Oct. 1666. For several days, witnesses were heard before the bar with scurrilous evidence of Lady Roos’s adulterous liaisons. Roos himself was impelled to swear before the assembled House that he had not had carnal knowledge of his wife since 4 Mar. 1660. Clifford of Lanesborough, by this time earl of Burlington, described it as a bill ‘to make a bastard of his son Ignoties [sic] and a whore of his wife’.³⁷ Dorchester was marked as present in the House on 12 Jan. 1667 when the House passed the bill nemine contradicente, suggesting that he did not put up any strenuous opposition to its passage, having already been forced to accept the humiliating facts of his daughter’s promiscuity. The bill received the royal assent on the day of prorogation, 8 Feb., depriving Dorchester of legitimate grandchildren and heirs.³⁸

Perhaps it was the frustration of seeing his daughter paraded as a ‘whore’ before all his peers, which led to the most famous outburst of Dorchester’s notorious temper. At a conference on the Canary Company held in the Painted Chamber on 19 Dec. 1666 Dorchester and George Villiers*, 2nd duke of Buckingham, found themselves seated next to each other. Clarendon commented that already ‘there was no good correspondence’ between these two peers and ‘their mutual undervaluing each other always disposed them to affect any opportunity to manifest it’. A jostling for elbow space on their neighbouring chairs soon led to an exchange of insults and then proceeded to an unseemly fistfight:

in which the marquess, who was the lower of the two in stature, and was less active in his limbs, lost his periwig, and received some rudeness, which nobody imputed to his want of courage, which was ever less questioned than that of the other… The marquess had much of the duke’s hair in his hands to recompense for his pulling of his periwig, which he could not reach high enough to do to the other.

The House, outraged at this ‘misdemeanour, greater than had ever happened, in that place and upon such an occasion’, which they considered a ‘great offence to the king himself, and an affront to the House, bringing a reproach upon their lordships in the face of the kingdom’, committed both peers to the Tower. On 22 Dec. the House ordered Dorchester’s nephew-by-marriage Gilbert Holles*, 3rd earl of Clare, to fetch Dorchester from the Tower so he could receive the House’s orders to keep the peace, to which Dorchester readily submitted. He did not resume his seat until a week later, 29 Dec., when he thanked the House for their favour in releasing him from his restraint and allowing him to sit again.³⁹

Dorchester’s name was included in a list sent by Anglesey to Ormond on 10 Nov. of councillors who were believed to support the Irish cattle bill, contrary to the wishes of the king and lord chancellor.⁴⁰ On that same day, Lexinton registered his proxy with Dorchester for the remainder of the session, perhaps with a view to proceedings on the Irish cattle bill. On 4 Feb. 1667 Dorchester was one of only three peers to signify their protest against the resolution to grant the Commons a conference about the procedures for the impeachment of John Mordaunt*, Viscount Mordaunt, arguing that doing so was a derogation of the House’s privileges in matters of judicature.

Dorchester was absent from the House from 29 July 1667 (he attended two sittings of the abortive session of that month) to 24 Oct. 1670. His absence was excused by the House as he consistently registered his proxy: with Lexinton on 28 Sept. 1667 for the session of 1667-8 and, after Lexinton’s death on 13 Oct. 1668, with his nephew Clare on 21 Oct. 1669 for the session of autumn 1669. He registered the proxy with Clare again on 15 Feb. 1670 for the first part of the following session of 1670-1. Dorchester did appear on one single day during this long period on 26 Feb. 1668, thereby presumably vacating his proxy. This lone appearance in the House may have been sparked by the submission four days previously of a petition from Lady Roos in which she begged for some sort of maintenance. She detailed the cruel treatment she had suffered from her husband and her present straitened circumstances, having fled to Ireland to escape her creditors. Dorchester entirely missed the proceedings and passage of the divorce bill which gave Lord Roos permission to remarry even though his wife was still living. This bill was introduced in the House on 5 Mar. 1670. In spite of the controversy surrounding the measure, it received the royal assent on 11 April.

Dorchester was ready to come to the House once the humiliation of the Roos divorce bill was past. He appeared again when the House reconvened on 24 Oct., vacating his proxy with Clare, and proceeded to sit on 84 per cent of the sitting days before the prorogation on 22 Apr. 1671. Winchilsea entrusted him with his proxy on 20 Mar. and Dorchester held it until the end of the session. This may have been about the time that he was negotiating with Winchilsea for the purchase of the latter’s house in Charterhouse Yard near the City of London. Certainly by the time Ogilby and Morgan drew up their map of rebuilt London in 1676 part of the Finch property on the east side of the square was labelled ‘Marquess of Dorchester’.⁴¹ Dorchester maintained a similar level of attendance for the following session of early 1673, at 80 per cent, but was absent from the House (except for one day, 17 Jan. 1674) from 29 Mar. 1673 until 13 Apr. 1675. Again he covered his absence by giving his proxies to fellow peers, leading representatives of the ‘court’ interest: to Arlington on 24 Oct. 1673 for the short four-day session that month, and to James Stuart*, duke of York, on 16 Feb. 1674 for the session in the first two months of that year.

Thomas Osborne*, earl of Danby, later duke of Leeds, predicted that the marquess would support the ‘non-resisting’ test bill introduced in the session of spring 1675, where Dorchester sat in 78 per cent of the sittings. Earlier, in mid-February, when Danby had presented to the Privy Council the new measures decided upon with the bishops at the Lambeth Palace conference, Dorchester, surprisingly, sided with opposition peers such as Denzil Holles*, Baron Holles, in asking for more time to examine the proposed laws so that they ‘might not be disadvantageously enforced’.⁴² Danby, though, was probably correct in his assessment of Dorchester’s views on his test bill. It matched Dorchester’s recent pattern of proxy donation and the fact that his name does not appear in any of the protests against the measure, or among the list of opponents to the bill in A Letter from a Person of Quality.

Dorchester was also a named party in a petition submitted to the House by Elizabeth, Edward and Bernard Howard, Norfolk’s younger siblings against the duke (still absent in Padua) and Henry Howard*, earl of Norwich, later 6th earl of Norfolk, the effective head of the family. Dorchester’s strong links with this branch of the Howards had continued well into the 1670s. Having been involved in the passage of the bill for securing the restoration of the dukedom in 1660, two years later he was made a commissioner to execute the office of earl marshal, a hereditary office long held by the dukes of Norfolk. In 1672, with Norfolk still incapable of exercising the place, Norwich was appointed earl marshal but his effective tenure of this office was short-lived, being barred under the terms of the 1673 Test Act. Thus, while he formally maintained the title of earl marshal, the duties were again exercised by deputies, principally his Protestant kinsman Carlisle and the family’s long-term ally Dorchester.⁴³ It was in this context that Dorchester faced the petition of the two peers’s younger siblings. In 1652, at the death of the 22nd (or 15th) earl of Arundel, Dorchester and Henry Mordaunt*, 2nd earl of Peterborough, had been appointed trustees of his northern lands, which they were to manage to make sufficient provision for his younger children. These children had previously sought to take the trustees to law for malfeasance in their duties, but when they had brought a bill against them the trustees had claimed privilege of Parliament. The younger Howards now sought the House’s permission to have their case against the trustees and their elder brother Norwich heard in chancery without being impeded by claims of privilege. On hearing Norwich’s arguments, the House dismissed the petition out of hand, without even recording it in the Journal for that day.⁴⁴ Over the next two years, Edward, Bernard and Elizabeth Howard continued to submit petitions against Norwich and the trustees.⁴⁵

Dorchester registered his proxy with Anglesey on 18 Oct. 1675 for the entirety of the autumn session. The proxy was employed on 20 Nov. in favour of an address to the king calling for the dissolution of Parliament, which was won by those against the address by a majority of two and only after proxies were counted.⁴⁶ In the long period before the next session Dorchester was, on 30 June 1676, one of the peers in the court of the Lord High Steward at the trial of Charles Cornwallis*, 3rd Baron Cornwallis, whom he, with the majority of the court, found not guilty of murder.⁴⁷ Dorchester came to only 29 per cent of the sittings in the session of 1677-8 when Parliament reconvened after a prorogation of 15 months. On the opening day, 15 Feb. 1677, he ‘argued long’ against the motion put forward by his old enemy Buckingham that Parliament was automatically dissolved by the long prorogation, but he may have been among those peers who took a more moderate stance, by arguing that those peers who insisted that it was dissolved had freedom to express their views and should not be committed to the Tower.⁴⁸ Dorchester was nevertheless by this time among the court’s supporters, as his recent proxies and his protest on 15 Mar. against the passage of the bill to compel the protestant education of the royal children, clearly suggested. Shaftesbury in the spring of 1677 considered him ‘triply vile’. On 21 July Dorchester registered his proxy with Heneage Finch*, Baron Finch, later earl of Nottingham, yet another leading figure of the court interest. During this session the dispute within the Howard family also came to a head. On 20 Mar. the younger Howards once again presented a petition asking to take Norwich, Dorchester and Peterborough to court for neglect of their trust. On 8 Feb. 1678 they tried again in changed circumstances, following the death of their eldest brother (the 5th duke) and succession to the dukedom by Norwich, the principal target of their complaints. Both petitions failed in the face of the new duke’s opposition. Throughout these proceedings Dorchester, who was in attendance at the first petition but not at the second, continued to rely on his privilege to avoid legal proceedings.⁴⁹

Dorchester’s only known intervention in the session of spring 1678 (of whose meetings he attended just under one third) was his signature to the protest on 5 July against the decision to determine the relief of the petitioner in the cause Darrell v. Whichcot, without dividing on the question of whether to hear the details of the case. He attended sittings of the House regularly throughout late October and November 1678, as the Test Act was being debated in Parliament. On 2 Dec. he was among the first group of peers to take the new oaths and declaration, but some other members of the House noted that he did not say all the words required of him and he was ordered to swear again the following day. He did so to the House’s satisfaction, but left the chamber for good after that sitting on 3 Dec., never to sit again.⁵⁰ This reluctance to take the oaths and, apparently, to sit in the House after they were demanded of its members adds further weight to the allegations that he had Catholic sympathies. A few weeks after leaving the House he registered his proxy on 26 Dec. with his brother-in-law William Wentworth*, 2nd earl of Strafford, husband of another of the 7th earl of Derby’s daughters. Dorchester’s own wife, Katherine, died of smallpox sometime in early January 1679, which may have been the cause for his departure from the House and no doubt abetted his retirement from public life.⁵¹

Dorchester was absent throughout the first Exclusion Parliament. On 18 Mar. and 21 Apr. 1679 his servants William Colgrave and Charles Pelham swore at the bar that the marquess was so ill that he could not attend the House without endangering his life. His absence may have helped in the decision to remove him from the Privy Council when it was reorganized in April to take in more members of the country opposition.⁵² He was still too ill (and perhaps too Catholic) to attend the second Exclusion Parliament, where another younger brother of the 6th duke of Norfolk, Charles Howard, emerged to annoy him. In his petition of 15 Nov. 1680 Howard wished the House to compel Dorchester to waive his privilege so that he could be taken to law for his collaboration with Norfolk concerning the disposition of the barony of Greystoke in Cumberland, part of the lands entrusted to the marquess by the 22nd (or 15th) earl of Arundel for the benefit of his younger children. Dorchester’s servants appeared once again before the House on 20 Nov. to swear to their master’s debilitating illness and inability to answer the petition in person, but his written answers were submitted.⁵³ The House was too busy with the exclusion bill and other controversial matters to pay much attention. The petition progressed no further before Dorchester’s death, but it did ultimately result in the landmark ruling on perpetuities.

Charles Goodall described fittingly in great medical detail the onset and progress of the gangrene of the leg which led to Dorchester’s death on 8 December. Goodall had good reason to lavish praise on Dorchester in his biographical sketch, for the marquess had long been a benefactor of Goodall’s cherished Royal College of Physicians and in his will bequeathed it ‘perhaps the best library for physics, mathematics, civil law, and philology in any private hand in this nation, for a choice collection of books, to the value of above £4,000’.⁵⁴ The marquess died with only two surviving daughters, one in disgrace with illegitimate children and the other unmarried. The latter, Grace, was bequeathed his personal estate in his will of 22 Mar. 1680, while Anne, Lady Roos, who survived until 1697, was not even mentioned. Dorchester left numerous individual bequests, totalling around £900, to his many servants and various nephews and nieces, the children of his brother William, who were the main beneficiaries of the marquess’s death. Without a legitimate male heir, Dorchester’s marquessate became extinct while the earldom of Kingston passed to his great-nephew Robert Pierrepont*, grandson of William Pierrepont, who had died on 17 July 1678. Pierrepont became 3rd earl of Kingston and re-united the large Pierrepont estate which had been split between Henry and William at their father’s death.