suc. bro. June 1682 (a minor) as 4th earl of KINGSTON-UPON-HULL
First sat 19 May 1685; last sat 23 May 1690
bap. 10 Sept. 1663, 2nd s. of Robert Pierrepont of West Dean, Wilts. and Elizabeth, da. and coh. of Sir John Evelyn‡ of West Dean, Wilts.; bro. of Robert Pierrepont, 3rd earl of Kingston-upon-Hull, and Evelyn Pierrepont, later 5th earl (and duke) of Kingston-upon-Hull. educ. Trinity, Oxf. matric. 16 July 1681 (tutor, Mr Porter).1 m. 23 Oct. 1682 (with £20,000),2 Anne (d.1702), da. and coh. of Robert Greville, 4th Bar. Brooke, s.p.; d. 17 Sept. 1690; will 31 Mar. 1687, pr. 25 Sept. 1690.3
Ld. lt., Yorks (E. Riding) 1689-d., Notts. 1689-d.; custos rot., Notts. 1689-d.; high steward, Kingston-upon-Hull, 1689-d.; c.j. in eyre, Trent north 1689-d.
Col. rgt. of ft. 1689-d.
Associated with: Thoresby Hall, Thoresby, Notts. and Holme Pierrepont, Notts.
Upon the premature death of his eldest brother, Robert Pierrepont, 3rd earl of Kingston, in June 1682, William Pierrepont, the second of three brothers, inherited that title as well as the estates of both his paternal grandfather William Pierrepont‡ of Thoresby, Nottinghamshire, and of his great-uncle Henry Pierrepont, 2nd earl of Kingston and marquess of Dorchester (the marquessate having been extinguished at his death). At the time of his marriage in October 1682 Kingston was estimated to be worth £12,000 a year, and his later marriage settlement of January 1685 (when he was of age) reveals that he was in possession of a large number of manors and rectories in Nottinghamshire as well as substantial holdings in Derbyshire, Lincolnshire and Huntingdonshire. The marriage itself was lucrative, as the settlement reveals that it garnered a portion of £20,000 (contemporaries reported it as £15,000 at the time of the marriage).4
He made his first foray into parliamentary politics during the elections for James II’s Parliament when he played a decisive part in the return of Sir William Clifton‡ and Reason Mellish‡, the two ‘loyal’ candidates for Nottinghamshire supported by his paternal uncles (both married to daughters of Kingston’s grandfather, William Pierrepont), Henry Cavendish, 2nd duke of Newcastle, and George Savile, marquess of Halifax. Newcastle reported to Robert Spencer, 2nd earl of Sunderland, that Kingston ‘coming into the country two days before the election [23 Mar. 1685], and hearing his freeholders were for the factious, he sent to them to be for Sir William Clifton and Mr Mellish, which hindered a poll’.5 Newcastle was even more enthusiastic for his nephew in a letter to Halifax of 13 April:
We that are devoted to his majesty’s service in this county will ever acknowledge ourselves mightily obliged to my Lord Kingston for his great loyalty, and it is certainly true that his lordship declaring for Sir William Clifton and Mr Mellish suppressed the factious to that degree that they durst not offer to oppose the loyal gentlemen, and my Lord Kingston’s great loyalty has settled this country, which I humbly beg of your lordship to represent to his majesty.6
Kingston himself first sat in the House on the very first day of James II’s Parliament, 19 May 1685, but he came to only one more gathering, on 27 May, before the House was adjourned for the summer. On 1 June 1685 he registered his proxy with his uncle Halifax, who held it until Kingston returned to the House for the November sittings. He only sat in the first six meetings of the reconvened house and on 14 Nov. registered his proxy in favour of John Egerton, 2nd earl of Bridgwater, who held it for the remaining week of the session before its prorogation.
From at least August 1686 Kingston was planning a long trip abroad.7 On 29 Mar. 1687 he was granted a pass ‘to go beyond the seas’ for five years, and two days later he composed his will, ‘purposing God willing shortly to travel into foreign parts beyond the seas’.8 Despite his absence on the continent for at least the following year, political observers consistently listed Kingston as an opponent of James II’s policies, and in 1688 Thomas Osborne, earl of Danby (later duke of Leeds), included him among the opponents of James II, both in Parliament and in the country at large. It is possible that Kingston was not in England at the Revolution. He was still in Italy in the summer of 1688, and it is significant that his name does not appear among those who conspired with Danby and William Cavendish, 4th earl (later duke) of Devonshire, to capture Nottingham, so close to Kingston’s central estates, for William of Orange in December.9
He sat in the Convention on its first day, 22 Jan. 1689, but only attended 41 per cent of the meetings during its first session. He was most active in the first weeks of the Convention and its debates on the disposition of the crown. On 31 Jan. he voted to declare the Prince and Princess of Orange king and queen and then joined in the protest when the House rejected the Commons’ opinion that the throne was vacant. On 4 Feb. he voted to agree that James had ‘abdicated’ and that the throne was empty and again protested when that motion was rejected. Two days later he once more voted in favour of these words, which were finally passed. On 12 Feb. he was appointed a manager for the conference concerning the proclamation of William and Mary as king and queen, and it was he who reported back to the House that the Commons agreed with its terms. On 5 Mar. he was appointed a reporter of the conference concerning the Commons’ declaration on assisting William III ‘with their lives and fortune’ in the reduction of Ireland. Three days later Kingston was commissioned a colonel of a regiment of foot, one of 14 drawn up for service in Ireland. On 6 Mar. he protested against the passage of the bill for the trial of peers, while a little over a week later on 15 Mar. he was named to a committee charged with drawing up clauses which would rescind the sacramental test in the bill to devise new oaths of allegiance. On 24 Apr. he was made a manager of a free conference on this bill, from which he reported the Commons’ concurrence with the Lords’ amendments.
He registered his proxy from 23 Mar. until his return on 6 Apr. with John Egerton, 3rd earl of Bridgwater, and then again with that same peer during Kingston’s continuous absence from the House from 4 May. His departure was most likely prompted by the number of local responsibilities that had been loaded on him in March and April. Newcastle had been a political outcast since the Revolution owing to his support for James II, and he willingly surrendered his patent as lord lieutenant of Nottinghamshire and of the East Riding of Yorkshire to Kingston in late March 1689. Newcastle was also happy, indeed grateful, to pass over his patent as chief justice in eyre north of Trent to the young earl in April. On 10 May the king also approved his election as high steward of Kingston-upon-Hull.10 It is clear that by the spring of 1689, when Kingston had also been appointed carver to the Queen for the royal banquet following the coronation, he was quickly becoming one of the most favoured and loyal adherents of the new regime.11 Throughout the summer of 1689, while Parliament was still in session, Kingston appears to have been based in Nottinghamshire where he proved himself an involved and active lord lieutenant, constantly harrying his agents in London to ensure that the new commission of peace for the county was sent up in a timely manner and asking legal counsel about his responsibilities as chief justice in eyre.12
He may even have joined his regiment in service in Ireland for a time in early autumn 1689, for he was not in the House when the Convention reassembled for its second session on 23 Oct. 1689. It was not until 6 Nov. that he was in Westminster to attend three-quarters of the meetings of winter 1689-90. On that day he was added to the committee charged with inspecting the misdeeds of the previous decade – the writs of quo warranto, the claims to a dispensing power and the judicial proceedings of the 1680s.
He was even more diligent in his attendance of the first session of William and Mary’s first Parliament in early 1690, attending the House on all but two of the days on which it sat. Danby, now raised to marquess of Camarthen, included him among the ‘opposition lords’ in his working lists for this Parliament. Yet judged by his frequent tellerships during the session, and also by some of his actions in the following summer months, it appears that his most defining characteristic was loyalty to the new regime. During this session Kingston was frequently a teller in divisions on largely procedural matters, often with Thomas Grey, 2nd earl of Stamford, and other such forthright Whigs acting as tellers for the opposite side. In the first week of April he was teller in three divisions concerning the bill to recognize William and Mary as king and queen, twice with Stamford and once with Charles Mordaunt, earl of Monmouth (later 3rd earl of Peterborough), on the other side.13 On 2 May he took part in the debate on the second reading of the Abjuration bill, in which he followed the government’s cautious line in wishing to avoid dispute on this measure by suggesting that it should be rejected ‘by reason of garbling the House’.14 The following day he was a teller in a division in a committee of the whole, where the opposite teller was again Stamford. The manuscript minutes note that after the House resumed Kingston and Monmouth received an injunction of the House ‘to demean themselves peaceably to each other’.15 He was a teller in the debate on the declaratory clause of this bill on 8 May, and once again he told opposite Stamford. A week later, on 15 May, he received the proxy of his wife’s uncle Fulke Greville, 5th Baron Brooke, and the following day he was again a teller in a division on the motion to go into a committee of the whole to discuss the bill to enforce forfeitures of £500 on those who infringed the Test Act.
Kingston continued to be a busy and perhaps overzealous lord lieutenant during the summer of 1690. At one point he had to justify his confiscation of the arms of the mayor of Nottingham, Charles Harvey, whom he was persuaded was a Whig ‘collaborator’ distributing arms prior to the feared French invasion.16 As a faithful servant of the crown Kingston was unable to serve it for much longer as he died suddenly and unexpectedly ‘of an apoplexy’ on 17 Sept. 1690.17 His will, which had not been updated before his continental travels, bequeathed about £7,500 in total to various family members and confirmed the entail of his estates, done in January 1685, as part of his marriage settlement. As Kingston died childless the estate, as well as the title, passed to his younger brother, Evelyn Pierrepont, who was also constituted executor. He lived much longer than either of his brothers and would many years later be raised to be duke of Kingston.
C.G.D.L.- 1 Verney ms mic. 636/37, J. to Sir R. Verney, 24 July 1682.
- 2 Eg. 3526, ff. 2-5.
- 3 TNA, PROB 11/401; Eg. 3517, ff. 130-43.
- 4 Eg. 3526, ff. 2-5; Verney ms mic. 636/37, J. to E. Verney, 23 Oct 1682.
- 5 CSP Dom. 1685, p. 105.
- 6 Add. 75359, Newcastle to Halifax, 23 Mar., 13 Apr. 1685.
- 7 Add. 75359, Newcastle to Halifax, 21 Aug. 1686; Verney ms mic. 636/41, H. Paman to Sir R. Verney, 25 Aug. 1686.
- 8 CSP Dom. 1686-7, p. 449; PROB 11/401; HMC Portland, ii. 242.
- 9 Eg. 3526, f. 60ff.; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. ii. 372.
- 10 Eg. 3516, ff. 16, 18, 57, 61-62; CSP Dom. 1689-90, p. 98.
- 11 HMC 9th Rep. ii. 378.
- 12 Eg. 3516, ff. 47-48, 51, 53-55.
- 13 HMC Lords, iii. 3-4.
- 14 Eg. 3347, ff. 4-5.
- 15 HMC Lords, iii. 41.
- 16 HP Commons 1690-1715, ii. 465; CSP Dom. 1690-1, pp. 64, 91.
- 17 Luttrell, Brief Relation, ii. 106.