suc. fa. 5 June 1675 (a minor) as 2nd Visct. MORDAUNT; cr. 9 Apr. 1689 earl of MONMOUTH; suc. uncle 19 June 1697 as 3rd earl of PETERBOROUGH; suc. cos. 17 Nov. 1705 as 8th Bar. MORDAUNT
First sat 21 Dec. 1680; last sat 16 Jan. 1733
b. c. Feb. 1658, 1st s. of John Mordaunt, Visct. Mordaunt and Elizabeth (d. 5 Apr. 1679), da. and h. of Hon. Thomas Carey‡. educ. Westminster; Christ Church, Oxf. matric. 11 Apr. 1674; travelled abroad (France) 1676-7.1 m. (1) c. 1679-80, Carey (d. 13 May 1709), da. of Sir Alexander Fraizer, bt. [S], physician to king, 4s. d.v.p., 1 da.; (2) 1722/1735, Anastasia (d.1755), da. of Thomas Robinson, portrait painter, s.p. KG 3 Aug. 1713. d. 25 Oct. 1735; will 9 Sept. 1735; pr. 26 Nov. 1735.2
Gent. of bedchamber 1689-97; PC 14 Feb. 1689-21 Jan. 1697, Mar. 1705-May 1707; first ld. of treasury Apr. 1689-Mar. 1690.
Ld. lt. Northants. 1689-1715; custos rot., Northants. Mar.-Sept. 1689; water-bailiff, river Severn 1689;3 commr., Greenwich Hosp. 1695.4
Vol., RN 1677-80;5 col., regt. of ft. Nov. 1688-94; lt.-col., vol. horse July 1689; c.-in-c., forces accompanying the Fleet to Spain 1705; jt. adm. of Fleet 1705; gen., marines 1710; col., Royal Horse Gds. 1712-15.6
Gov., Jamaica 1702, Minorca Apr.-Aug. 1714; amb. extra. and plenip., Spain 1706-7; envoy, Frankfurt, Vienna, Augsburg, Savoy 1710-11, Saxony 1711, 1712, ? France Nov.-Dec. 1713 ; amb. extra. and plenip. Italian states Nov. 1713-Apr. 1714.
Master, Skinners’ Co. 1690.7
Associated with: Villa Carey/ Peterborough House, Parson’s Green, Fulham, Mdx.; Dauntsey, Wilts.; Turvey, Northants.
Likenesses: oil on canvas by Sir G. Kneller, c.1675-1700, English Heritage, Marble Hill House; oil on canvas by Sir G. Kneller, 1715, NPG 5867.
Early Life to 1680
The exact date of Charles Mordaunt’s birth is unknown, but his mother was pregnant in June 1657, and it is likely that he was born at Berkshire House in mid-February 1658 and named after the exiled Charles II.8 His father, John Mordaunt, created Viscount Mordaunt in July 1659, was the only surviving younger brother of Henry Mordaunt, 2nd earl of Peterborough, who had no male heirs. Thus from his first years Charles was in line to inherit not only the Mordaunt viscountcy from his father but the Peterborough earldom from his uncle. In December 1674, Sir Ralph Verney‡ reported that Mordaunt had been ‘offered’ to one of the daughters of the lord treasurer, Thomas Osborne, earl of Danby (later duke of Leeds), and described him as ‘a very fine youth, few like him in England, and some say his uncle Peterborough brings on this match, though he hath no kindness for my Lord Mordaunt’.9 In March 1675 Lady Mordaunt further outlined to Danby her son’s case for the hand of Lady Bridget Osborne. His prospects had been improved by ‘the king adding 31 years to the coal farm after current term expired’, an extension of the lease on the Newcastle coal farm, worth £2,000 a year, which had originally been obtained after the Restoration. Other assets included the manor of Reigate worth £700 a year, Lady Mordaunt’s property at Parsons Green in Fulham and land there worth £1,000 a year, and her estate at Bletchingley, worth £300 a year. Most attractive of all was the enticing ultimate prospect of the Peterborough inheritance. In return Danby was to pay a portion of £6,000, which was to be used for clearing the debt on Parsons Green.10 The marriage negotiations, however, fell through and Lady Bridget married Charles Fitzcharles, earl of Plymouth.
Mordaunt succeeded his father as 2nd Viscount Mordaunt on 5 June 1675. At the end of February 1676, John Evelyn wrote in his diary that he ‘took leave of my young Lord Mordaunt going into France’ to continue his education at Foubert’s Academy.11 In August 1676 Henry Savile‡ wrote of ‘a very warm report’ that Mordaunt had ‘married Moll Kirke at Paris’, although this was quickly denied.12 With a restless spirit and penchant for adventure, Mordaunt volunteered to go to sea with the navy in May 1677, returning to England at the end of May 1678.13 On 29 Sept. 1678 he joined the Bristol man-of-war at Portsmouth for service in the Mediterranean, transferring to the Rupert at Cadiz in late November, after a memorable run-in with the ship’s chaplain.14 At this point he seems to have returned home with Sir John Narborough, arriving in June 1679, for on 2 July John Stewkeley met him while dining with Peter Mews, bishop of Winchester, he having been ‘as I heard him say, 27 weeks at sea’.15
Once back in England Mordaunt embarked on three of his favourite pastimes: duelling, romance and litigation. At the end of February 1680 he acted as a second to Plymouth in a duel with Sir George Hewett, and was wounded in the shoulder by William Cavendish, styled Lord Cavendish, the future duke of Devonshire.16 On 18 May 1680 the dowager countess of Sunderland wrote that ‘Mrs Fraser [Carey Fraizer, daughter of the king’s physician, Sir Alexander Fraizer] has taken her leave at court, in order, they say, to being owned [as] my Lady Mordaunt, though yet he denies it, but she and her friends do not’.17 It was reported to James Butler, earl of Brecknock and duke of Ormond [I], on 22 May that Mordaunt would soon marry ‘Mrs Frazier’, as she was pregnant, ‘my Lord seeming to own something of a contract’.18 On 24 May Cary Gardiner reported that Mordaunt denied the marriage.19 It was not until December 1681 that Mordaunt ‘brought out as well as owned his lady’ as his wife.20 In June 1680 Mordaunt put an answer into Chancery with reference to an earlier decree which had settled Turvey in Bedfordshire on Penelope, countess of Peterborough, for her dower if she survived her husband, the 2nd earl of Peterborough, in which he agreed not to hinder her from possession.21 At this date Mordaunt had two residences close to London, at Parsons Green and Reigate in Surrey.22 He soon departed from England again, this time to serve as a volunteer in the relief force for Tangier, which left in June 1680.23 He returned home with the body of the earl of Plymouth, who had died there of dysentery, arriving in England in December 1680.24
The Last Years of Charles II, 1681-4
As he had approached his majority, Mordaunt had become of increasing interest to the leading political figures. On the list of lay peers compiled over 1677-8 by Anthony Ashley Cooper, earl of Shaftesbury, Mordaunt had been classed as ‘doubly vile’, which given his future conduct proved to be an inaccurate assessment, but may have been owing more to his connection with his uncle Peterborough, whom Shaftesbury considered ‘triply vile’. Danby, too, was unsure of Mordaunt’s politics, marking him as doubtful and absent in March-April 1679 in his calculation of likely voting in the proceedings against him. Mordaunt had been excused attendance on the Lords on 9 May 1679 on the (probably erroneous) assumption that he was under-age. On 30 Oct. 1680, Mordaunt was again excused attendance, this time on the grounds that he was still abroad. He was therefore absent from the division of 15 Nov. on the exclusion bill. He first took his seat in the Lords on 21 Dec. 1680, having received a writ of summons dated the previous day. A contemporary list of those who on 7 Jan. 1681 entered their dissent from the Lords’ decision not to put the question to commit the lord chief justice, Sir William Scroggs, following his impeachment by the Commons, includes Mordaunt’s name, although the printed version of the Journal does not include him among the signatories.25 He had attended on seven days of the session, 12 per cent of the total, though these were almost all of the sittings of the House after he had received his writ. He had been named to two committees.
Mordaunt was a signatory of the petition presented to the king on 25 Jan. 1681 requesting that the Parliament called for Oxford should sit at Westminster as usual.26 On 22 Feb. Robert Spencer, 2nd earl of Sunderland, wrote to Henry Sydney, the future earl of Romney, to recommend Mordaunt to William of Orange as ‘a young man very desirous to serve him’. The Prince in May agreed to employ Mordaunt, ‘if he comes to court’.27 On 17 Mar. Mordaunt’s name appeared on Danby’s pre-sessional forecast on his petition for bail among those ‘such as I conceive if they vote not for me will be neuters’. On 19 Mar. the secretary of state, Sir Leoline Jenkins‡, wrote to William Craven, earl of Craven, asking him to employ his ‘credit with Lord Mordaunt to dispose him to say he is sorry’ for the ‘breaking of windows at Prince Philip’s house’, which may refer to a dispute between Mordaunt and the son of the Prince d’Arenberg.28 It may explain why Mordaunt missed the opening day of the Oxford Parliament on 21 Mar., but he was there on 22 Mar. and attended in total five of the seven days. On 26 Mar. he protested against the resolution to proceed against Edward Fitzharris according to the common law and not by impeachment in Parliament. On 31 Mar., following the dissolution of Parliament, Mordaunt wrote to his mother’s half-brother and trustee of her estate, Arthur Herbert, the future earl of Torrington:
I am called one of the discontented and factious, but am glad to be sure you are of my mind in this; there is no tie but honour and gratitude. I am sure you, as little as anybody, can bear ill-usage and contempt, and since I never could deserve a good word from the king, nor ever had any obligation from Whitehall, whatsoever your thoughts are you will allow me the liberty of mine, and not confound as some do betwixt public and private concerns.29
After the Parliament, Mordaunt contributed to a present of a gilt bowl from 14 Whig lords to Balliol College.30 He also attended the court of king’s bench in support of Fitzharris on 4 and 7 May 1681, and his trial on 9 June.31
At the beginning of August 1681, ‘Romantic Lord Mordaunt’ fought a ‘pretty duel’ in Greenwich Park with James Hamilton, styled earl of Arran [S], the future 4th duke of Hamilton. Even the preliminaries reflected Mordaunt’s opposition to the court for, in attempting to arrange the duel, Mordaunt wrote that ‘circumstances force me to hazard as little as I can, hoping no favour from the Court, therefore will engage nobody’, and so the two men fought without seconds and were both wounded.32 After he had recovered from his wounds, at the end of August, Mordaunt ‘submitted himself and kissed the king’s hands and was with him almost two hours in his closet and, it is said, has made great discoveries’. As a reward, his new-built man-of-war ‘of about 50 guns, of which he designed to go commander’, which had been embargoed at Woolwich, was permitted to sail. This was probably the same ship of 50 guns and 300 men for which Mordaunt had been summoned in June 1681 to give an account, it being alleged to have been set out by Sir William Courteen’s executors, with Mordaunt acting as one of their assignees, to exact reprisals on the Dutch in a long-running dispute over the assets of a trading association founded in the 1620s.33
On Mordaunt’s majority there were serious legal issues to be addressed relating to his mother’s will. She had died in April 1679, leaving as her executors Peterborough, Henry Hyde, 2nd earl of Clarendon, Laurence Hyde, the future earl of Rochester, Hon. Andrew Newport‡, Sir Charles Wheeler‡, bt., Charles Herbert‡, (Sir) Edward Herbert‡, Arthur Herbert and John Evelyn. They had met in November 1679 ‘for the examining, auditing and disposing of this year’s account of the estate’. They also had some difficult matters to resolve, such as the provision for Mordaunt’s younger siblings. Some of them met at the end of April 1680 to consider Lady Mordaunt’s instructions to sell Parsons Green. This was clearly not to Mordaunt’s liking for on 18 Sept. 1681, Evelyn attended a further meeting of trustees to discuss Mordaunt’s ‘offer to procure’ £2,000 ‘for the payment of his brother and sisters’ portions, in consideration that we would possess him of Parsons Green and the coal farm’, worth £3,000 a year. On 21 Mar. 1682 the lord chancellor, Heneage Finch, earl of Nottingham, appointed in Lady Mordaunt’s will as an arbiter in any disputes, made an order detailing the payments Mordaunt would undertake to gain possession of his mother’s ‘real and personal estate’.34 Instead of selling Parsons Green, Mordaunt disposed of at least some of the Reigate property to Sir John Parsons in 1681.35
So successfully had Mordaunt mended his fences at court that while at Newmarket on 6 Oct. 1681 he kept the king up until midnight ‘having got him accidently in his closet’. He spent two hours attempting to reconcile the king to his son, James Scott, duke of Monmouth, but to no avail.36 On 10 Nov. Charles II dined with him aboard his ship, the Loyal Mordaunt, which Mordaunt disposed of to the admiralty in 1683.37 Following the murder of Thomas Thynne‡ on 12 Feb. 1682, Mordaunt was involved in the pursuit of the killers and in subsequent failed attempts, along with Lord Cavendish, to challenge Count Königsmarck to a duel.38 Restless as ever, on 8 Sept. 1683 Mordaunt and Sir Rowland Gwynne‡ were granted a pass to go into Flanders, and on 30 Mar. 1684, it was reported that Mordaunt was intending to be at the opening of the Spanish campaign.39
Reign of James II, 1685-8
Mordaunt was not present when James II’s Parliament opened on 19 May 1685, but he was in attendance at the next sitting on the 22nd. He attended on eight days of the 31 days of the first part of the session, before the adjournment on 2 July, and was named to two committees. After Parliament resumed on 9 Nov., Mordaunt was one of those who on the 19th seconded the motion of Devonshire (as Lord Cavendish had since become) to consider the king’s speech, which ended in an order for it to be considered on the 23rd. Before it could be discussed, though, Parliament was prorogued.40 Mordaunt, ‘who had never spoken in the House until then’, was said to have moved the motion and ‘spoke handsomely’: to keep up a standing army when there is neither civil nor foreign war, he was reported as having said, was to establish an arbitrary government.41 Mordaunt had attended on eight of the 11 days of November 1685, being named to a single committee. Overall, he had attended on 16 days of the session, 37 per cent of the total. On 26 Nov. Mordaunt attended the trial of Charles Gerard, styled Lord Brandon, the future 2nd earl of Macclesfield, and was one of those peers who spoke ‘very much both for the loyalty of the family, and also touching his Lordship’.42
Gilbert Burnet, bishop of Salisbury, later wrote that ‘Mordaunt was the first man of quality that came over to try the Prince with relation to the affairs of England’.43 On 26 Aug. 1686 Mordaunt was granted a pass to go beyond the sea, and he visited William of Orange at Het Loo, where he met Hans Willem Bentinck, the future earl of Portland, and also Utrecht where John Locke was staying.44 On his return to London, he wrote to Bentinck on 12 Oct. of the decision to prorogue Parliament when it was due to meet in November.45 Mordaunt attended the prorogations of 22 Nov. 1686 and 15 Feb. 1687. In November 1686, Bevil Skelton, the former ambassador at The Hague, revealed that he had two informants from Utrecht who had sworn that Mordaunt ‘had practised with the prince of Orange to make himself head of the Protestant interest, and to do many other things to the prejudice of the king of England’. Mordaunt immediately bullied the names out of Skelton, went straight to Utrecht and discredited them before the magistrates.46 This episode may have given Mordaunt pause for thought, for on 11 Mar. 1687 he wrote more cautiously to Bentinck, though he nevertheless assured him of his continued commitment to the Prince, and revealed that he was already consulting William’s agent, Dijkvelt, in England in the spring of 1687.47 In five separate lists compiled from early 1687 to the start of 1688, Mordaunt was consistently listed as one of those thought likely to oppose the repeal of the Test Act, or as an opponent of James II’s policies.
On 28 July 1687 Mordaunt was granted another pass to go beyond the seas and by the end of August it was reported that he had arrived in Holland with his wife, and that he would command a regiment in the army of the States General and she serve as Princess Mary’s groom of the stole.48 The trip probably had more to do with a commercial enterprise than a design to encourage William’s involvement in English politics. On 2 Aug. he had taken half of the 32 shares in a partnership ‘for the raising a joint stock of £6,400 for an undertaking to the West Indies’, although he assigned two of his allocation to Charles Talbot, 12th earl (later duke) of Shrewsbury in late September.49 On 4 Sept. Mordaunt wrote a letter to the prince playing down the likely success of the venture, but ‘any private disappointment’ he felt was counterbalanced by ‘the prospect of public affairs, and the hopes I have of your highness’s interest increases every day more and more in strength’. He then noted that as his ‘old passport stands good still’ he hoped soon to visit Loo, and he answered the prince’s questions on the likelihood of Parliament meeting.50 On 9 Sept. William wrote to Bentinck of his willingness to countenance Mordaunt’s project subject to the agreement of the Dutch admiralty.51
On 15 Oct. 1687 Mordaunt arrived at The Hague, and on the following day he and Henry Sydney visited William at Loo, the report being that he would be made lieutenant colonel of the regiment of Sir Henry Belasyse‡.52 By February 1688 Mordaunt was with ‘his Dutch squadron’ seeking for treasure in the wrecks in the West Indies.53 The mission was not a success and by July 1688 Mordaunt was in London reporting that ‘the booty at the Spanish wreck was all gone before he went thither’.54 Presumably he then travelled back to Holland with his wife. In the discussions prior to the publication of William’s Declaration of his Reasons for Appearing in Arms in the Kingdom of England at end of September 1688, Mordaunt favoured the view of John Wildman‡ which sought to blame the government of Charles II, as well as James II, and to rely on the support of the Whigs and Dissenters.55 In late September it was reported that Mordaunt was one of those likely to command part of the invasion force.56 James II later wrote that Mordaunt had ‘been always of a turbulent, factious spirit and incapable of doing good, sought where he might do most mischief’.57 He accompanied the Dutch invasion fleet and on 8 Nov. 1688 he marched into Exeter, being named in early December co-governor of the city with Sir Edward Seymour‡.58 Mordaunt was allowed to raise a regiment of foot in November 1688.59
The Revolution and the Convention, 1689
According to one report, Mordaunt had reached London by 13 Dec. 1688 with the advanced party of William’s army led by Henry Fitzroy, duke of Grafton.60 He did not attend the meeting of loyalist peers at the Guildhall and presumably returned to Windsor with Grafton, because he played a full part in the discussion at Windsor on the 17th over the message to be sent to James II.61 He was present at the meeting of peers held at St James’s on 21 December. In the discussion of the response to the prince’s Declaration he argued that ‘no notice should be taken in their return to the prince for the meeting of the peers, for they met of right’, supported Henry Booth, 2nd Baron Delamer (later earl of Warrington) in moving for the addition of the words ‘lives and fortunes’ in the address to the prince, and suggested signing the association as the peers had at Exeter. He also suggested that Catholics should be removed from London. Mordaunt attended the meetings on 22 and 24 December. On the latter occasion he was one of those who opposed reading the letter that James II had left for Charles Middleton‡, 2nd earl of Middleton [S], noting that the meeting of the peers in the House of Lords ‘shows that the king is absent, either in power, or otherwise, and therefore not to be applied to’. He also opposed the suggestion that James II’s recent parliamentary writs of summons be used to select a new House of Commons, and argued for new writs, stressing the importance of a free, newly elected, Parliament: if Members met using the king’s writs, they would have to take an oath to James which would ‘take off the freedom of a Parliament’. The prince had acted according to his Declaration in favour of a free parliament until the king, by his withdrawal, had made it impossible, ‘so there could not be that free Parliament’ with the current writs. He also attended on 25 December.62 A key adviser to the prince, Mordaunt was ‘shut up a long time’ with William on 29 Dec. 1688.63
Mordaunt attended on the opening day of the Convention, 22 Jan. 1689. On 23 Jan. he was named to a small committee to look into the death of Arthur Capell, earl of Essex, and on 5 Feb. to a secret committee of four on the same matter. On 25 Jan. he presented a petition from his uncle, Peterborough, praying to be admitted to bail, but it being opposed, the earl was merely granted the liberty of the Tower.64 On 29 Jan. Mordaunt spoke in the debate in committee of the whole on the state of the nation. He wished ‘to have the dangers considered in which we were six months ago’, and supported the need for a quick end to the crisis of government, stressing the dangers from King James, and the acceptance of the idea that James had abdicated.65 On 31 Jan., in committee of the whole, he voted in favour of declaring the prince and princess of Orange king and queen and entered his protest against the failure to agree with the Commons ‘that the throne is thereby vacant’. Morrice recorded that Mordaunt had observed ‘with great satisfaction’ that ‘there was not above four of the ancient nobility on that side (with those that said the throne was not vacant)’.66 Mordaunt attended a key meeting, probably on 3 Feb., when William made it clear that he would not settle for less than the crown in his own right, although he would accept Mary being named as queen and for precedence to be given to Princess Anne’s children over his own by a second marriage.67 On 4 Feb. Mordaunt voted in favour of agreeing with the Commons in the use of the word ‘abdicated’ instead of ‘deserted’ and then entered his dissent when the motion was defeated, and when the Lords also disagreed with the Commons over the vacancy of the throne. Thomas Bruce, 2nd earl of Ailesbury, at this point recorded Mordaunt as indulging in blatant pressure, making ‘a great noise according to custom, and gave out as if the militia should be placed in the Palace Yard, which intimidated some weak hearts that did not appear when the question was put’.68 On 6 Feb. Mordaunt voted, this time with the majority, to agree with the Commons in the use of the word ‘abdicated’, and of the words ‘that the throne is thereby vacant’. The majority included the ‘half-mad’ Edward Clinton, 4th earl of Lincoln, who was apparently persuaded to attend to do whatever Shrewsbury and Mordaunt told him to do.69 On 8 Feb. Mordaunt was named to report a conference about the declaration to be offered to the prince and princess of Orange as king and queen, and about the oaths to the new monarchs. Following the conference, on the 9th, the Lords amended the declaration and Mordaunt was appointed to the committee to draw up reasons to fortify these amendments in conferences on the 11 and 12th.
Mordaunt’s wife arrived on 12 Feb. 1689, returning with Locke in the flotilla which brought Princess Mary to England.70 The following day the crown was offered to William and Mary and on 14 Feb. a newsletter noted that the king had named Mordaunt among his privy councillors and officers of his household.71 In late February he was appointed a lord of the bedchamber.72 Mordaunt was dispatched to tell Philip Stanhope, 2nd earl of Chesterfield, that he ‘forgave me what I had said in the Convention because he thought that I had no malice to his person’.73 According to Clarendon, in February Chesterfield had been visited by Mordaunt and Thomas Belasyse, 2nd Viscount (later earl of) Fauconberg, who wanted him to be a member of the council, ‘pretending that they knew it would be agreeable to King William’.74 By late March he was acting as custos rotulorum of Northamptonshire as he was most probably responsible for the new commission of the peace in that county, which restored some of those omitted in the Tory reaction and left out those admitted in 1687-8.75 In late May he was also made lord lieutenant of Northamptonshire. The favour William showed to some of the old ministers of Charles II, was not particularly welcome to Mordaunt. George Savile, marquess of Halifax, was a particular target of his ire. Halifax told Sir John Reresby‡ as early as March 1689 that ‘Mordaunt and others were violent against him, being disappointed of their expectations at court’, especially by the appointment of Daniel Finch, 2nd earl of Nottingham, as secretary of state. 76
Mordaunt acted as William’s messenger to the Lords as well as to individual peers. On 1 Mar. 1689 he acquainted the House on the king’s orders of a series of arrests: Mordaunt reported a draft of the Lords’ response, which called for any means necessary for the safety of the realm resulted in a suspension of habeas corpus. On 23 Mar. he entered his protest against the rejection of a proviso to the bill for abrogating the oaths which, by extending the time for taking the sacramental test and allowing it to be taken in any Protestant church, would have allowed Protestant Dissenters to qualify for office.77 On 5 Apr. he entered a protest against the rejection of an amendment to the bill for comprehension which would have included lay members in the proposed commission for the revision of the Anglican liturgy and canons.
Mordaunt’s reward for his early commitment to William was his appointment on 9 Apr. 1689 as first commissioner of the treasury. Confident as ever, he was convinced ‘he would understand the business of it’ as well as Sidney Godolphin, Baron (later earl of) Godolphin, ‘in a fortnight’.78 Others were not quite so sanguine, Reresby noting with incredulity that Mordaunt should be first commissioner ‘that never saw £100 together of his own money’.79 Another reward was a promotion in the peerage at the coronation. On 28 Mar. a warrant was issued for him to be created earl of Chichester, but as this was already a subsidiary title of Charles Fitzroy, duke of Southampton, another title had to be substituted.80 On 9 Apr. he was raised to the earldom of Monmouth, a controversial choice of title, which was variously interpreted as reflecting Mordaunt’s hope of the ‘inheritance’ of the popularity of the late duke of Monmouth, or as a manoeuvre by the king to prevent the title being revived for a more hostile candidate. It was probably used merely because his maternal grandfather had held the title.81 On 13 Apr. Mordaunt was introduced to the House as earl of Monmouth by Shrewsbury and Charles Gerard, earl of Macclesfield. On 20 Apr. he entered his protest against the Lords’ adherence to their amendments to the bill for abrogating the oaths which enabled the king not to tender the oaths to clerical incumbents. On 23 Apr. he acted as a teller, in opposition to John Lovelace, 3rd Baron Lovelace, in a procedural division on a debate about allowing the king to exempt up to 12 members of the clergy from taking the oaths.82
On 10 May 1689, a warrant was issued appointing Monmouth and eight others as commissioners for reforming abuses in the army, a task which took him away from Westminster into the Midlands and the North.83 On 22 May he was one of several peers granted leave to be absent by the Lords. On 9 June he was at Newcastle writing a letter to Locke critical of Delamer’s regiment.84 While absent Monmouth received news of events from the secretary to the treasury, William Jephson‡.85 One significant piece of legislation which passed during his absence was the bill to make good a recovery suffered by the earl of Peterborough and Lord Mordaunt which had received its first reading in the Lords on 24 May. Rochester (as Laurence Hyde had since become) reported the bill from committee on 3 June with the addition of a proviso and it passed the following day. In the Commons either Richard Hampden‡ or John Hampden‡ reported the bill on 18 June without amendments and on 22 June it received the royal assent. Monmouth next attended the Lords on 25 June, vacating the proxy he had registered with Shrewsbury on 22 May.
On 12 July 1689 Monmouth entered his dissent from the proviso added to the bill reversing the judgments in the court of king’s bench against Titus Oates, which enacted that until the matters for which Oates had been convicted had been heard and determined in Parliament, Oates should not be a witness, or give evidence, in court. On 30 July he entered his protest against the Lords’ resolution to adhere to their amendments to the bill. Also on 12 July he was named to manage a conference on the bill concerning the succession to the crown. On 14 Aug., in the company of Edward Fowler, the future bishop of Gloucester, and Thomas Firmin, he helped to pacify the silk weavers lobbying the House with their petition against the bill enjoining the wearing of woollens.86 About this time, Roger Morrice reported obscurely the likelihood of a ‘good understanding’ being brought about between Monmouth and Ralph Montagu, earl (later duke) of Montagu, with, probably, Sir James Montgomery, the leader of the Scottish ‘club’, and future Jacobite conspirator; in mid-October Monmouth intervened with William in order to support Montgomery’s pretensions and to oppose those of James Dalrymple, Viscount Stair [S], to be nominated as lord president of the sessions. In October Monmouth accompanied the king to Newmarket.87 He attended on Parliament’s resumption on 19 Oct., following the adjournment on 20 Aug., but was not present at the prorogation on 21 October. In all he had attended on 85 days of the session, 52 per cent of the total, and been named to a further 17 committees.
Monmouth attended on the first day of the new session which followed almost immediately afterwards, opening on 23 Oct. 1689. He was classed among the supporters of the court in a list prepared by the marquess of Carmarthen (as Danby had become) between October 1689 and February 1690. On 2 Nov. he was one of those instrumental in the appointment of a committee (of which he was a member) to investigate ‘the advisers and prosecutors of the murders’ of William Russell‡, Lord Russell, Algernon Sydney‡, Sir Thomas Armstrong‡, Henry Cornish, and others, and to establish ‘who were the advisers of issuing out of writs of quo warrantos against corporations, and who were their regulators, and also who were the public assertors of the dispensing power.’88 On 13 Dec. he acted as a teller in committee of the whole House on two motions during debate on the land tax bill, one on the opposite side to Macclesfield, and another on the opposite side to Montagu. On 31 Dec. Lovelace registered his proxy with Monmouth. Monmouth had attended on 36 days, 49 per cent of the total, and been named to a further nine committees.
Monmouth made great play with his links to the City, dining on 18 Dec. 1689 with Sir Stephan Evance‡, John Foche and Charles Duncombe‡ (who was ‘much devoted’ to him), and proposing that they lend the king £300,000. Having secured their agreement he could not resist the observation that the money had been raised by ‘some that were countered disaffected to his government, and friends to a commonwealth, for it was mostly fanatic and Whigs money’.89 His closeness to City radicals engendered some criticism; although Burnet thought Monmouth ‘was not corrupt in disposing that vast number of places which in a great measure depended upon him’, he chose ‘commonwealth’s men’, and was soon setting up ‘cabals everywhere in order to the breaking of the prerogative, and the putting all Tories out of employment’.90 William, too, had become alarmed by his associates, once telling Monmouth ‘I have done as much for your friends as I can do without danger to the state; and I will do no more’.91
As early as February 1690 Morrice had heard that Monmouth would be put out of the treasury, and saw it as an indication of William’s inclination towards the Tories. ‘No man’, Morrice thought, ‘hath done more for his majesty’.92 The new treasury commission appointed on 18 Mar. did indeed omit Monmouth. He had attended slightly over half the meetings of the treasury board.93 Burnet thought that Monmouth was removed because he had opposed Godolphin’s employment as a colleague on the board, and although he had great credit in the City, which could be used to raise loans, ‘when he saw that the king would not go into all his notions, he hindered the advances of money so effectually that the king turned him soon out of the treasury’.94 One contemporary gave more specific reasons for his removal: Monmouth had claimed he had a promise of a loan of £40,000 from a City merchant who in the end preferred to bypass the treasury commissioners altogether, delivering his loan direct to the king; and the king was reported to be less than happy that the earl had obtained a grant of some fishing rights from the king by vastly under-valuing them.95
The Parliament of 1690
Monmouth attended the opening of the new Parliament on 20 Mar. 1690, but on 31 Mar. he was absent from a call of the House. Despite his removal from the treasury Monmouth kept his bedchamber place and his regiment. Nor did he cut his ties to the radicals: on 3 Apr. Edward Harley‡ delivered a letter from his father to Monmouth when ‘Major Wildman was with him’.96 On 4 Apr. Monmouth acted as a teller twice in committee of the whole House on the bill recognizing William and Mary and the Parliament, on both occasions acting opposite Nottingham: firstly on whether the acts of the Convention should be ‘confirmed’ (which was rejected) and then on whether to agree that the acts should be ‘declared’ to have the full force of acts (which was agreed to). At the report stage of the bill on 5 Apr. he entered his protest over the decision of the House to reject the committee’s amendments: the dissentients believed that this was to call into question the validity of the previous Parliament. Two days later in committee of the whole on the bill, Monmouth offered several clauses and acted as teller opposite Evelyn Pierrepont, earl of Kingston, on whether a clause declaring the acts of the Convention to be good should pass unamended. On 10 Apr. Monmouth both spoke and acted as a teller, opposite Nottingham, in favour of expunging the reasons for a protest of 8 Apr. against the passage of the bill.97 Meanwhile, on 9 Apr. John Stewkeley reported surprising and inaccurate rumours that Monmouth would be made a duke, although he did correctly predict that Richard Lumley, Viscount Lumley, and Delamer would be made earls, as Scarbrough and Warrington respectively.98
On 2 May 1690 notes made by Carmarthen on the second reading of the abjuration bill record Monmouth making several interventions in support of the bill, including asking of the peers why anyone who had taken the oath would ‘scruple the declaration’, and suggesting ‘that Lords would submit their private scruples to the acts of Parliament’.99 On 3 May during the proceedings on the bill Monmouth and Kingston were enjoined to ‘demean themselves peaceably to each other’.100 The following day Shrewsbury and Devonshire registered their proxies with Monmouth, before leaving for Newmarket on the 5th.101 John Horton reported on 6 May that Henry Compton, bishop of London, and Monmouth ‘brought a new Test today into the House of Lords: which was well received and the former (which caused such great heats) thrown out’.102 This was only partially correct: Monmouth offered ‘a declaratory clause’, and the committee on the bill agreed to consider it together with a clause previously offered by the bishop. Monmouth’s clause was considered on 8 May, and the committee seems to have rejected it in favour of one proposed by Carmarthen. Monmouth also appears to have drafted part of a clause detailing those people who should be asked to take the abjuration oath, although he was not named to the committee charged with this task on 12 May.103
On 7 May 1690, Monmouth supported an enquiry into the lists of the lieutenancy and militia of London.104 When Burnet, now bishop of Salisbury, likened such enquiries to the Inquisition, he responded that though he disliked the Inquisition as much as the bishop, ‘the more because it was managed by clergymen, but he did not know but that an inquisition made by laymen into the personal qualification of men fit to serve the king and the government, might be very commendable and necessary in this very cause’.105 The following day Monmouth asked one of the four questions put to the judges requesting clarification of the legal position in the regency bill.106 He acted as a teller three times on 10 May, each time in opposition to Robert Shirley, 8th Baron (later Earl) Ferrers, in divisions on the bill reversing the quo warranto judgment against the City of London, all on the matter of setting a date to hear the City’s petition. On 13 May Monmouth entered his protest against the resolution not to allow the City more time to be heard by their counsel, and the following day he was one of the Whig lords who went out of the House in ‘discontent’, presumably after the report stage had left the bill unamended.107 Monmouth had attended 44 days of the session, 82 per cent of the total, and been named to a further seven committees.
After the prorogation of January 1690, William had announced that when he went to campaign in Ireland the queen would be assisted by a council of nine, including Monmouth.108 On 7 June Robert Harley, the future earl of Oxford, reported that Monmouth had been named as one of the council ‘to administer affairs as councillors until the queen takes it upon her’.109 Monmouth attended the council regularly during June-September 1690, although the queen did not repose much confidence in him. She commented that he was ‘mad, and his wife who is madder, governs him. I knew him deeply engaged in Scotland and not much to be trusted, yet must know all’.110 William, too, had his reservations, it being a moot point whether Monmouth would be more trouble to him in London or in Ireland.111 He was certainly troublesome to the queen; he tried to undermine Nottingham and she rebuked him for meddling. A contemporary ‘poem’ of the nine ‘worthies’ portrayed Monmouth as ‘a monkey turned into a magistrate’, who was ‘fit only for a ring-leader of boys’.112
On 19 June 1690 Monmouth was elected master of the Company of Skinners, in another show of his popularity in the City, which not everyone regarded with equanimity.113 William feared that Monmouth’s regiment ‘perhaps was for a commonwealth’. The regiment had been very visible at the pageant at the installation of the lord mayor in October 1689, when it had headed the cavalcade heralding the entrance of the king and queen.114 In the summer of 1690 Monmouth’s activities had given rise to the fear that he was supportive of a Jacobite rising in London (and Richard Grahme‡, Viscount Preston [S], would later implicate him as a participant in discussions held with William Penn about a Jacobite restoration in the coming winter).115
The threat of a French invasion brought Monmouth’s meddling to a peak. With Torrington (as his uncle Arthur Herbert had since become) apparently unwilling to risk a naval battle with the French, Monmouth had offered to join the fleet in late June 1690, an offer the queen was willing to consider in order to remove him from London, especially because he was suspected of leaking details of government discussions.116 The Anglo-Dutch fleet was defeated at Beachy Head, however, before Monmouth could reach it.117 The queen continued to share suspicions of Monmouth with Edward Russell, the future earl of Orford and other ministers, believing that ‘he tells all to Major Wildman’ and that he was working to cast blame for the poor progress of the war on ‘the faults of those who were in trust’. Carmarthen had written to the king, setting out his suspicions about Monmouth’s attempts to undermine the Council and his relationship with Wildman.118 Ailesbury had also heard that the king objected to Monmouth having ‘always commonwealth men about him, as Major Wildman and Major [John] Braman‡ of Chichester’.119
On 15 July 1690 the queen informed the king that on the previous day, she had received an offer from Monmouth of £200,000 to dissolve Parliament, to which she replied that it was ‘a thing I could not promise, and unless they would lend money, which is extremely wanted, upon other terms, I must go without it’.120 When the queen asked the corporation of London to sponsor an alternative loan from the citizenry, Monmouth, along with Charles Powlett*, duke of Bolton, and others, did his best to hinder it.121 Monmouth was also to be disappointed of his desire to command the fleet. When the queen asked Russell for his view on who should be appointed, he proposed a commission comprising two seamen and a ‘man of quality’: he stressed, however, that the latter should not be Monmouth. Monmouth was in any case unwilling to be part of a commission: Carmarthen had advised him not to solicit for the sole command of the fleet, but Monmouth ‘in a passion begged not to be named as one who would go in commission’.122
Monmouth attended the prorogation on 28 July 1690. On 8 Sept. he met the king at Marlborough upon his return from Ireland, and four days later he spoke three times in council against the king’s plans to go to Holland before the parliamentary session.123 He was present on 2 Oct. when the new session opened. Four days later he voted against the discharge of James Cecil*, 4th earl of Salisbury and the earl of Peterborough, from their imprisonment in the Tower. Carmarthen added the comment that he was ‘not willing to lose his patent for lands not yet perfected’.124 On the same day he acted as a teller opposite Godolphin on the question of desiring the concurrence of the Commons to the Lords’ address of thanks for the king’s decision to campaign in Ireland. On 21 Oct. Monmouth acted as a teller in opposition to Charles Cornwallis, 3rd Baron Cornwallis, on a question about seeking advice from the judges about whether Torrington should have been committed by the Privy Council; and then again opposite Charles North, 5th Baron North, in a division on the question that Torrington’s commitment by the privy council for high crimes and misdemeanours was a breach of the privilege of the House. On 16 Dec. Edward Harley wrote that Monmouth and Sir John Lowther, the future Viscount Lonsdale, had been turned out of ‘the cabinet or council of nine’.125 This may have been connected to another report that the king had so resented the proceedings of the court martial against Torrington, and its acquittal of him, that he had forbidden the admiral to attend court.126 On 27 Dec. Monmouth entered his protest against the decision to allow written protections to be given to menial servants. He was present on the last day of the session, 5 Jan. 1691, having attended on 46 days, 63 per cent of the total, and been named to 11 committees.
In January 1691 Monmouth was one of those who accompanied the king into Holland, arriving back in England in mid-March.127 On 9 Apr., a fire in Whitehall severely damaged his lodgings. Two weeks later he was one of those dining with the king at Montagu’s residence. 128 Monmouth was not appointed to the new council of nine to advise the queen during the king’s absence in the summer of 1691, and early in August he retired to Bath.129 Monmouth attended on the opening day of the next session, 22 Oct. 1691. On 19 Nov. he acted as a teller opposite Thomas Grey, 2nd earl of Stamford, on whether the House should go into committee on a bill concerning procedure in chancery and other courts of equity. On 23 Nov. Lincoln registered his proxy with Monmouth and on that same day Narcissus Luttrell‡ reported that the ‘great cause’ was heard in the Lords between John Danvers and Monmouth, a case known as Brown v. Waite.130 This concerned the estate of Dauntsey, Wiltshire, which had belonged to the regicide Sir John Danvers‡, was forfeited to the crown after the Restoration and granted to James Stuart, duke of York, and subsequently made part of his queen’s jointure. In June 1690 it had been granted to Monmouth, but firstly the legal claims of Danvers’ heir had to be considered, hence the appeal of his tenant, Brown, against York’s tenant, Waite.131 The outcome of the case was seen as important for Monmouth, who was not a rich man.132 The judges gave their opinions on 25 Nov. and when the question was put five days later, the House divided equally, 39-39, so the petition, and hence Danvers’ case, fell, ‘it being a new thing to be done’.133 This equality of votes was achieved with Monmouth voting for himself and in the face of the opposition of Carmarthen and Halifax. His supporters included Rochester, Godolphin, Shrewsbury, Nottingham and Portland (as Bentinck had since become).134 Monmouth allegedly promised to give the £300 annual reserved rent to the crown to Danvers, and he quickly fell into arrears to the crown. Periodically, he had to defend himself against petitioners to the crown for a grant of the reserved rent.135 On 1 Dec. 1691 Monmouth was named to report a conference on the oaths in Ireland bill and 16 days later he was similarly named to report a conference on the treason trials bill.
Monmouth was also involved in the case of Foulke Wallwin, an ‘idiot’, having been awarded custody of his estate and person on 7 Dec. 1689 and granted wardship of the boy on 5 Apr. 1690. On 17 Dec. 1691, the boy’s mother, Mary Wallwin, petitioned the Lords complaining of some of Monmouth’s proceedings, which he was ordered to answer on 21 December. Once he gave in his answer the matter was referred to the committee for privileges. On 31 Dec. Locke commented that ‘the idiot occasions much talk, I know nothing of it but that it shortly comes before the House of Lords’, where it lapsed, possibly because of an agreement drawn up between the parties in February 1692, or the death of Foulke shortly afterwards.136
On 31 Dec. 1691 Monmouth was named to draw up reasons for a conference concerning the votes of the Commons on the 18th relating to the regulation of the East India Company. He acted as a teller on 12 Jan. 1692, in opposition to Scarbrough, on the question whether to receive the bill of Henry Howard, 7th duke of Norfolk, for a divorce from his wife, Mary, duchess of Norfolk, the only daughter and heiress of Peterborough, and consequently Monmouth’s cousin and eventual rival for Peterborough’s estate. Ten days later Monmouth was once again a teller, this time in opposition to Norfolk, in a division in committee of the whole House on the bill against adhering to their majesties enemies on a clause concerning returning to England from France without the king’s leave. On 26 Jan. Monmouth was selected to count the ballots in the election of peers to act as commissioners for examining the public accounts. He was named on 22 Feb. to report a conference on the small tithes bill. On the same day he acted as a teller in opposition to Thomas Tufton, 6th earl of Thanet, in a division on a bill on judges’ commissions and salaries, on a proposed clause that if a judge gave a corrupt judgment, the aggrieved party might bring an action against the judge. A clause was included in the Commons’ bill vesting the forfeited estates in England in the crown to help pay for the war exempting Monmouth’s grant of the manor of Dauntsey. The bill, however, was lost in the Lords at the prorogation.137 He had attended on 66 days of the session, 68 per cent of the total, and been named to a further 13 committees.
On 14 Apr. 1692 Robert Yard‡ reported that Monmouth was going to Guernsey to command there in the absence of its governor Christopher Hatton, Viscount Hatton. Monmouth’s regiment was quartered there and at Jersey. He left London on 18 Apr. and after a spell organizing the defences of Guernsey, he went over to Flanders in June, arriving back in England on 20 July.138 On 10 Oct. Monmouth referred in a letter to Locke to his post being opened or ‘used so familiarly’, a sign perhaps that the government remained suspicious of some of his activities.139
Monmouth attended on the opening day of the next session, 4 Nov. 1692. On 19 Nov. he wrote to Locke that ‘our revolving government always affords us something new every three or four months, but what would be most new, and strange, were to see it do anything that were really for its interest’. Although, he wrote, it had been reported that the king was
grown in love with Englishmen and Whigs, it is true he smiles and talks with us, but Mr [Edward] Seymour and [Sir John] Trevor‡ come up the backstairs’. Having been informed that ‘Nottingham is a little lawyer and no man of business, yet the Court have taken all possible pains to prevent the petition against him and my good Lord Mayor to set it aside broke up the court’.
The reference was to the mayor adjourning the common council on 11 Nov. to prevent it voting to petition against Nottingham.140 On 7 Dec. Monmouth entered his protest against the rejection of a motion that a committee of both Houses consider the present state of the nation. On 29 Dec. he was one of those appointed to inspect the Journal for precedents concerning the Commons’ resolution praising Admiral Russell, which had been delivered at a conference on the 21st. The same managers were appointed to manage the subsequent conference on 4 Jan. 1693. On 31 Dec. Monmouth voted in favour of committing the place bill; he spoke and voted in favour of its passage on 3 Jan. 1693, and entered his dissent when the bill was rejected.141
After being forecast as a likely opponent of the duke of Norfolk’s divorce bill, on 2 Jan. 1693 Monmouth acted as a teller against its first reading. On 31 Jan. he protested against the decision not to continue with the trial of Charles Mohun, 4th Baron Mohun, that day. On 3 Feb. he posed two questions to be asked of the judges relating to the circumstances of the killing of their victim, Mountford, and on 4 Feb. he was one of a minority of peers that voted Mohun guilty of murder.142 On 14 Feb. the Lords gave a first reading to a bill for the exchange of several small parcels of land in Fulham between the bishopric of London and Monmouth and his heirs. The bill was reported on 23 Feb. by Stamford and passed the following day. It was managed through the Commons by Locke’s friend, Edward Clarke‡. Monmouth was present on the last day of the session, 14 Mar. 1693, having attended on 54 days, 53 per cent of the total, and been named to a further 16 committees.
When Middleton left England for St Germain in March 1693, he carried with him offers of assistance from Monmouth among others, which led to James II’s conciliatory declaration of April 1693.143 On the king’s turn to the Whigs that month, however, Monmouth was determined to enjoy the ‘ill humour of the Tories’, even though, he wrote, ‘I rather wish we had had our Whiggish laws’, including the triennial bill.144 Nor did it prevent him from fishing in the troubled waters of Irish politics. In June Colonel James Hamilton, who had married Monmouth’s sister Anne, was one of those who entered a caveat against the pardons granted to Thomas Coningsby†, the future Earl Coningsby, and Sir Charles Porter‡.145 On 7 Aug. Richard Coote‡, earl of Bellomont [I], invited Robert Harley to a dinner convened by Monmouth at Parsons Green, to which were also invited Hamilton and James Sloane‡: ‘the design of our meeting is to talk of what is to be said or done by Colonel Hamilton and myself on Thursday come sevennight when we appear before the queen in council’, presumably concerning their criticism of the Irish administration.146
Having had personal experience of Guernsey, in March 1693 Monmouth had approached Hatton, through Nottingham, with a proposal touching the government of the island. As Nottingham explained it, ‘upon your Lordship’s resignation of it to him, you shall have ample security for the payment of all the profits of it during your two lives and in case that he should die before your Lordship that he believes his majesty would grant your Lordship the government, which must be intended of a present grant of the reversion after my Lord Monmouth’. Negotiations continued until August, when the project appeared to stumble on the king’s unwillingness to decide the matter while on campaign. It then lapsed.147
Monmouth attended on the opening day of the 1693-4 session, 7 Nov. 1693. On 1 Dec. he acted as a teller in opposition to Norfolk on the question whether to adjourn the House in the cause of Grafton v. Holt.148 On that same day he also brought in ‘the same bill for a triennial Parliament as past [sic] the last sessions, and was refused by the king’. On 4 Dec., in committee of the whole on the bill, Monmouth ‘spoke often’ in a debate on the definition of what constituted holding a Parliament, and acted as a teller opposite Kingston on whether the word ‘holden’ should be included the bill. Nevertheless, Thomas Watson, bishop of St Davids, suggested that ‘Lord M. seems not so zealous as last session’, and when the House resumed its deliberations on the bill in committee of the whole House on 6 Dec. Monmouth ‘withdrew and said nothing in the debate’. When a proviso was offered to the bill at the third reading on 8 Dec., defining a Parliament as sitting even if no act or judgment was passed, Bishop Watson was surprised that not only those against the bill but some others, such as Monmouth, also supported it.149 In George Stepney’s opinion the Commons then threw out the bill on second reading ‘because the bill was not worded strongly enough, and therefore the violent party would rather let it fall for this session, out of design to renew it with more vigour next’.150 Despite his apparent moderation, Humphrey Prideaux had heard by 25 Dec. that Monmouth would be ‘discarded’ by the king.151 On 4 Feb. 1694 Portland intimated to Monmouth ‘that he was dismissed from all his commands and public employments. The common discourse is that his disgrace proceeded from his bringing in the bill for a triennial Parliament’.152 He may have derived some consolation from the fact that his regiment was later given to his brother, Harry Mordaunt‡.153
Meanwhile, on 15 Jan. 1694 Monmouth was named as a manager of a conference relating to the previous summer’s expedition at sea. He voted on 17 Feb. in favour of reversing the court of chancery’s dismission of Montagu’s petition in the case of Montagu v. Bath and entered his protest against the order to dismiss the petition and to affirm the judgment. A week later he entered his dissent from the order dismissing a further petition from Montagu. On 19 Feb. George Horton and John Deverell were ordered into custody for using violence when preventing the delivery to the servants of Charles Seymour, 6th duke of Somerset, of a horse belonging to Monmouth. In his report of the proceedings of 26 Feb. L’Hermitage noted that Monmouth had been in favour of the bill for regulating treason trials: it was rejected at second reading, however, without a division being called for.154 In the debate in committee of the whole House on the tonnage bill on 23 Apr. Monmouth opposed the establishment of the Bank of England.155 He last attended the session on that day, having been present on 64 days of the session, 50 per cent of the total, and had been named to a further five committees.
On 17 July 1694 Shrewsbury, promoted to a dukedom the previous April, wrote to the king concerning reports that Monmouth had been reconciled to the exiled court at St Germains: ‘it is natural for a man that is very ill of one side, to desire not to be so on the other’. Shrewsbury pleaded his case: ‘although he may have made what advances are possible of that kind, if he could find his account under your government, it is what he would prefer much before any such alteration’. Given that in Shrewsbury’s opinion ‘he appears in so much better a temper to act anything for your service than you can believe’ he did ‘not think it at all advisable to turn him out of his lieutenancy’. He cleared Monmouth of involvement in the recent corn riot at Northampton. Monmouth kept his lieutenancy.156
Monmouth attended on the opening day of the 1694-5 session, 12 Nov. 1694, but two weeks later he was excused attendance at a call of the House. When the Lords passed the triennial bill on 18 Dec., ‘without a division or amendment’, Robert Sutton, 2nd Baron Lexinton, recorded that ‘eight or ten Lords were against it; that is, they would have this Parliament determine in 1695 [the act as passed provided for the termination of the current Parliament in November 1696]. The earl of Monmouth began it, but did not insist upon it, as being convinced if the Commons should oppose the amendment, the bill was not to be hazarded, or the House put to retract for so small a difference as one year’.157 Monmouth did not sign the protest against the passage of the bill with the termination date altered, as the marquess of Halifax did. On 23 Jan. 1695 Monmouth entered his dissent from an amendment to the bill for regulating treason trials postponing its implementation to 1698. Two days later, in committee of the whole House on the state of the nation, Monmouth supported Nottingham’s motion for set days to be ordered for discussing the ‘several heads upon which the nation’s welfare was so immediately concerned’.158 Monmouth acted as a teller on 1 Feb. opposite Charles Montagu, 4th earl (later duke) of Manchester, on the question whether to adjourn discussion of the trials of the accused in the Lancashire Plot (which Nottingham was arguing had been concocted by the ministry and others to serve their own interests) until the following day, and four days later he again acted as a teller, this time in opposition to Nottingham, on whether the treasury solicitor Aaron Smith should be required to give a written account on oath to the House of the money he had received for carrying on the prosecutions in Lancashire.159 On 16 and 23 Feb. and 11 and 20 Apr. he was named as a reporter of conferences on the Lords’ amendments to the bill regulating treason trials.
On 12 Mar. Monmouth was represented by counsel as one of several peers claiming baronies by descent, whose ancestors were called by writ, part of the debate over the peerage claim of Sir Richard Verney, who would eventually become 11th Baron Willoughby de Broke. A week later Monmouth acted as a teller, in opposition to John Churchill, earl (later duke) of Marlborough, on the previous question: the main question was over whether the child of a daughter of a person summoned to Parliament by writ had a right to demand a summons to Parliament. As John Verney‡, the heir to the disputed barony, reported the debate lasted till six o’clock with Monmouth one of those undertaking ‘the cause of the barons’.160 On 26 Mar. James Vernon‡ reported that Monmouth ‘by his behaviour this sessions’ had restored himself to the king’s favour, taking his place at the council on 24 Mar., and waiting on the king as a gentleman of the bedchamber at the beginning of April.161
Monmouth was one of the most determined pursuers of John Sheffield, marquess of Normanby (later duke of Buckingham) when it was discovered that he had apparently taken and distributed bribes to promote the passage of the convex lights bill, relating to the illumination of the city of London, which had been taken on by the Convex Light Company the previous year. On 5 Apr. 1695 Vernon noted that Monmouth was determined to attack Normanby, and if it failed ‘he will endeavour to enter a protestation that shall contain the substance of the whole affair’.162 On 18 Apr. Monmouth indeed entered his protest against the loss of a resolution censuring Normanby’s conduct over the matter. When Normanby complained in a speech that Monmouth had not ‘treated him like a gentleman’, Monmouth replied that ‘if he pleased out of the House he would give him the satisfaction of a gentleman’.163 On 17 Apr. Monmouth was appointed to prepare for and manage a conference on the bill to oblige Sir Thomas Cooke‡ to account for the money he had received from the East India Company. On 22 Apr. he came fifth (with 37 votes) in the ballot of lords for places on the committee of both Houses examining Cooke.164 As one of the committee he was named to a conference on the matter on 24 April. On 2 May he was named to draw up reasons for a conference on the bill for imprisoning Cooke and others, and to manage the conference. The following day he was named to manage a conference on the impeachment of the duke of Leeds (as Carmarthen had since become). Monmouth had attended on 96 days of the session, 80 per cent of the total, and been named to a further 22 committees.
On 18 May 1695 Robert Price‡ told Henry Somerset, duke of Beaufort, that it had been ‘positively affirmed’ by Monmouth, that ‘the king declared the night before he went hence that this Parliament should be dissolved next September’.165 Monmouth attended the prorogations on 30 July, 17 Sept. and 8 Oct. 1695, and Parliament was dissolved on 11 October. He accompanied the king on his tour of the Midlands during the election campaign, but he was injured in a coach accident and had to be left behind at Lincoln.166 He was instrumental, together with Sunderland, in ensuring the election of his brother, Harry, for Brackley.167
The Parliament of 1695
Monmouth attended on the opening day of the 1695-6 session, 22 Nov. 1695. On 3 Dec., in committee of the whole House debating the state of the nation, he favoured enquiring into the state of trade first ‘because the ill coin is a disadvantage’. Then when the state of the coin was debated the following day, he was in favour of setting a date by which clipped money could no longer be used, and called for an address to be drawn up on the subject matter. He was appointed to the committee to draw up the address, which was also entrusted with attending a conference on it on the 5th. On that same day, in a debate in committee of the whole on the proceedings of the Scottish East India Company, Monmouth opposed the suggestion that the merchants also attend. In a debate on the state of the nation the following day he noted the losses of merchant shipping and moved to enquire into the management of the fleet.168 On 12 Dec. he was critical of the prevarications of the king over the establishment of a council of trade, which led to the Commons advocating a parliamentary body for trade instead and nearly pre-empted the king’s commission for the same purpose. Monmouth hoped to see the appointment of his friend, John Locke, to the commission.169 On 13 Dec. Monmouth was named to manage a conference about an address against the Scottish East India Company.
On 3 Jan. 1696 Monmouth was named to prepare for a conference on the Lords’ amendments to the bill regulating the silver coinage, and to manage subsequent conferences. Following the report on 8 Jan. of the conference the House resolved to vindicate its rights to inflict pecuniary penalties in legislation, before it finished going through the Commons’ amendments. Monmouth acted as a teller, in opposition to Louis de Duras, 2nd earl of Feversham, on the question whether to adjourn or to proceed with consideration of the amendments.170 On 17 Jan. he entered his protest against the resolution that the counsel of Sir Richard Verney be heard at the bar concerning his petition for a writ of summons and a week later he acted as a teller, in opposition to Feversham, in committee of the whole, on a division on a clause in the bill to prevent false and double returns of Members, and again on the question whether to pass the bill.
On 20 Feb. 1696 Monmouth and Algernon Capell, 2nd earl of Essex, introduced William Henry Nassau de Zuylestein, earl of Rochford, into the House. Monmouth was named on 24 Feb. to manage a conference on the address following the king’s speech on the Assassination Plot. He was one of those peers that ‘made very learned speeches upon the occasion’ of Devonshire bringing in the Association on 26 February.171 According to one account, Monmouth and Ford Grey, earl of Tankerville, were ‘the chief Court managers’, but other accounts have Monmouth joining with Tankerville, Nottingham and Thanet to oppose the change whereby William was king by law, rather than being right and lawful monarch.172 He signed the Association on 27 February. On 6 Mar. Monmouth acted as a teller, in opposition to Kingston, in committee of the whole on the question whether to reject a clause in the wine duties bill. Monmouth on 8 Apr. introduced the Quakers to the king for them to present their address, ‘somewhat like the association’.173 Five days later in a committee of the whole on the bill for the security of the king’s person, Normanby, Nottingham and Rochester ‘made speeches for moderation’, to which Monmouth, among others, responded that ‘moderation will spoil all’.174 Monmouth was present on the last day of the session, 27 Apr., having attended on 81 days, 65 per cent of the total, and been named to a further 16 committees.
Monmouth was one of those Whigs touted for office after the end of the session.175 One newsletter, of 2 May, had him as the replacement for Edward Russell at the Admiralty, but when Russell chose to remain in post, Monmouth declined to serve on the board.176 He attended the prorogation on 28 July. In September Monmouth was assaulted in the precincts of Chelsea College.177 An information on the attack taken in April 1697 gave Monmouth’s address as Arlington Street.178 He was still resident there in December 1698.179 By 1703 he was residing in Bow Street, Covent Garden.180
In the wake of the Assassination Plot, Sir John Fenwick‡ was arrested in June 1696. Rumours abounded as to whom he had implicated during interrogation as in contact with the Jacobite court. Many assumed that Monmouth would be one. Monmouth reacted to these rumours by spreading his own, chiefly against Godolphin, and he may even have been behind some agitation in the City for a full parliamentary examination of the Plot.181 Monmouth’s spreading of rumours and dabbling with informers, such as Matthew Smith, nephew of Sir William Parkyns, who had been executed for his part in the Plot, threatened to disrupt the defence of Shrewsbury and Edward Russell. On 24 Sept. the lord keeper John Somers, the future Baron Somers, told Shrewsbury that Monmouth had ‘entered into a foolish business beyond what I could have thought’, although he believed, after talking with him, that he was ‘resolved to stir no more, at least till he shall discourse with your grace’. On 15 Oct. Sunderland wrote that as so few people knew what Fenwick had revealed, Monmouth still felt himself ‘principally concerned’ in it. Four days later Somers noted that reports of Monmouth being named by Fenwick ‘transported him again to great extravagancies in talk; but after some days treating with him, he came to a positive promise to say no more of the matter, till he had first discoursed with your grace’.182 The hope that a personal meeting between Monmouth and Shrewsbury would dissuade Monmouth from meddling was nullified by the duke’s inability to travel to the capital, and so left Monmouth free to exploit the situation.
Monmouth attended the opening day of the 1696-7 session, 20 Oct. 1696. Two days later he informed the House that the king had appointed later in the day to receive the Address on his speech. When Vernon sent a copy of the Address to Shrewsbury on 29 Oct., he noted that it had been ‘drawn by’ Monmouth.183 On 4 Dec. Monmouth was one of seven peers appointed by the House to negotiate an agreement between Devonshire and Normanby over the sale of Berkeley House.184 Meanwhile, proceedings against Fenwick by the normal course of law had been blocked by the disappearance abroad of one of the two witnesses against him, Cardell Goodman. As an alternative it was decided to proceed by a bill of attainder. Monmouth remained convinced that Fenwick knew more than he was telling, and was ready to use Smith to allege that Shrewsbury had ignored his previous warnings about the plot. On 7 Nov. Somers revealed to Shrewsbury that Monmouth had claimed to have had great difficulty in keeping Smith from the Commons, so that Somers had invited Monmouth ‘to consider what work this might make at such a time’, and ‘given him such a view of Sir John Fenwick’s paper, that he is much startled, and convinced him that he and every Whig is as much concerned in it, and as open to an accusation, as the persons who are named’. On 19 Nov. Somers, at the prompting of Thomas Wharton, 5th Baron (later marquess of) Wharton, ‘spent some time with him [Monmouth] this day, and shall, in another conversation, learn what is to be expected from him, as to his carriage in the House of Lords, in relation to Sir John Fenwick’s business.’185 A few days later, on 24 Nov., Somers reported back that Monmouth ‘says he will act as I would have him’. Four days after that Shrewsbury was informed that Monmouth spent an hour and a half walking with Nottingham in the court of Requests and Westminster Hall, and later claimed that while Nottingham was trying to persuade him to be against the bill, Monmouth was trying to convert Nottingham to be for it. Vernon wrote that Monmouth ‘argues very much for the bill; and it is very probable he will vote that way’. On 1 Dec. the Lords began their proceedings on Fenwick, which after the attainder bill had been given a first reading. Monmouth contested the proposed way of handling the questioning of Fenwick (through Lord Keeper Somers asking the prisoner a series of questions approved by the House): Monmouth’s objections were attributed by ‘some, who are in the dark as to his good intentions … to his humour of disliking what don’t proceed from himself’.186
According to Vernon, Monmouth was one of the peers involved in making the case for the second reading of the Fenwick attainder bill on 18 December. During his speech, ‘making his observations on some iniquities in the late times’, Monmouth happened ‘to jumble’ George Jeffreys, Baron Jeffreys, with James II’s notorious agents, Philip Burton and Richard Graham‡, provoking a complaint from John Jeffreys, 2nd Baron Jeffreys. Thomas Herbert, 8th earl of Pembroke, as lord privy seal, intervened to prevent a quarrel, and Monmouth apologized.187 His was reputedly the longest speech in the debate, ‘being for the most part full of rhetorical flourishes’, critical of Fenwick for being a Protestant that had endeavoured to re-establish a tyrannical and arbitrary government.188
At the same time Monmouth was manoeuvring behind the scenes. On 19 Dec. George Rodney Bridges‡ told his step-son, Shrewsbury, that Monmouth had ‘employed persons’ to Lady Mary Fenwick, suggesting that if Fenwick would continue to endeavour to prove his ‘hearsay paper’, Monmouth would ‘send him letters to make it good’, presumably from Smith.189 To Lady Fenwick’s fears that if the case was thrown out of the Lords it might be revived at the Old Bailey, Monmouth had replied that ‘he had as much power there as here, for he often conversed with those persons that were of juries and he would secure me he would be cleared there.’190 Monmouth’s machinations emerged because in response to his powerful advocacy of the attainder bill, Fenwick’s relatives among the Howard family decided to make them public. When Fenwick appeared before the Lords on 22 Dec., he was asked by Charles Howard, 3rd earl of Carlisle, whether he had received any directions in writing as to how to behave himself at his trial. In reply, Fenwick revealed that he had been ‘told of some things for his advantage by his wife, who had them in writing from the duchess of Norfolk, and that the duchess received them from the earl of Monmouth’. The House then ordered Lady Mary Fenwick, the duchess of Norfolk and Mrs. Lawson to attend the House, and Lady Fenwick delivered three papers into the House. Ailesbury later remembered that Monmouth had encouraged Fenwick to accuse Godolphin, Marlborough, Shrewsbury and Russell of corresponding with the Jacobite secretary of state, Middleton.191
Despite the revelations of the previous day, Monmouth ‘spoke and voted’ for the third reading of the Fenwick attainder bill on 23 Dec. 1696.192 He would, he said, ‘crack his lungs, but he would have the bill carried’.193 In one account Monmouth was reported as saying ‘we ought [to] distinguish known laws of courts below, and known laws of Parliaments’; that Fenwick’s ‘guilt is notorious, and if there be no way to punish it that is of the highest consequence’. He then answered ‘the objections to Porter’s evidence’, insisting ‘that matters of note may live in one’s memory, whilst things indifferent may be forgot’.194 Although Vernon had noted that Monmouth had been ‘a great advocate for the bill’, he felt ‘there lies a mystery that is not yet unriddled, but tis certain a plan was formed how Sir John Fenwick might colourably justify the accusations given in against the principal persons mentioned in his paper’.195 Following the passage of the bill, the duchess of Norfolk was called in and examined about the three papers delivered in on the previous day, and ordered to attend with Lady Fenwick and others after the Christmas adjournment. According to Wharton, the duchess ‘seemed to turn the matter as much to the advantage of my Lord Monmouth as she well could’, while Normanby ‘carried it on with his usual kindness to the Lord concerned, who behaved himself with more disturbance of mind than I thought he could have been capable of’, being ‘so confused in what he said, and it was so late, and the House so weary, that it was hard to make either head or tail of what he said’, and so the peers adjourned. Somers thought that ‘we have heard of it before, in general, and, amongst other things, that he had encouraged Sir John Fenwick to name Smith, upon a pretence that he would produce original letters, to justify his paper, which we took to be a contrivance to bring Smith before the House’.196
Those willing to put a favourable gloss on Monmouth’s dabblings thought that the duchess and Mrs Lawson had applied to Monmouth to ‘ask what was fit for him to do on this occasion and the answers he gave them and occasional discourses he had with them at several times the duchess put in writing in one paper and styled it instructions for Sir John Fenwick how to behave himself at his trial.’197 The exposure of his activities evidently worried Monmouth: on 29 Dec. Bridges informed Shrewsbury that since Monmouth’s machinations had come to light, he had ‘almost gone mad, and his whole business has been to run into all public places to justify himself’, including visits to the king, lord chief justice, Sir John Holt‡ and the secretary of state, Sir William Trumbull‡.198 He also tried to make peace with Russell, using Sunderland as an intermediary. Russell was having none of it, replying that he would ‘endeavour to drive it as far as it would go’, as Monmouth ‘had run about the town, to all people that would give him the hearing, to asperse us, and now seeing he could do nothing in order to justify himself, he desires to have this matter made up and his villainy concealed’. Somers was more receptive, accepting that ‘no one could be responsible to what a degree such a temper might be driven’.199
On 9 Jan. 1697, following the Christmas adjournment, and after the House had read the three papers, Monmouth was heard in a speech lasting over two hours in which he attempted to discredit them.200 At the end of the debate, however, the Lords resolved that the ‘three papers, which were delivered into this House by the Lady Mary Fenwick, do contain in them matter of a scandalous nature; and that the contrivance of them is a high crime and misdemeanour’. The following day it was reported that Monmouth had ‘tried all ways to avoid the censure, which must fall upon him, if the contrivance should be applied to him’, but that since the king would not ‘interpose in his behalf’, he had ‘seemed to acquiesce, if he might come off with a censure for indiscretion, but applies himself to avoid having the papers adjudged to be his’.201 The House heard Matthew Smith on 11 and 12 Jan. about the three papers and on the latter day were read ‘some copies of his letters writ to the duke of Shrewsbury in February last’. At the conclusion of that day Bridges reported that Monmouth ‘is quite given up by the Court, from whence he expected his support’, and that the king had merely listened for an hour and a half to Monmouth without offering more than ‘very well my Lord’ in reply.202 On 13 and 14 Jan. further witnesses were heard at the bar and on 15 Jan. the House passed a resolution that Monmouth had had ‘such a share and part in the contrivance of the papers delivered into this House by the Lady Mary Fenwick, that for that offence, and for the undutiful words which were sworn before this House to be spoken by him of the king’ he should be committed to the Tower, ‘there to remain during His majesty’s pleasure, and the pleasure of this House’. Lady Mary Fenwick’s most damaging accusation was that Monmouth had told the duchess of Norfolk that ‘the king had used Sir John Fenwick basely, by exposing that paper to the House; for, by the Almighty God, the king knew it before, and that it was true; for he himself had acquainted him with many things of that nature’, and that ‘the king was the worst of men, and had used him ill; that, if Sir John Fenwick did not do this that he desired him, he would do it at some time himself, which was the reason he would have this bill’.
Monmouth may have escaped lightly, for as Somers reported, ‘the thing at first insisted on, was, to have voted him the contriver; but this way was accepted of at last, as not being altogether so hard. I can hardly remember a question insisted on, when there were so few negatives; six or seven at most were the number’.203 As it was described to Locke, Monmouth’s friends ‘were forced to struggle hard to obtain so moderate a sentence, other lords pressing to have expelled him the House and laid a judgment of disability on him ever to sit and vote as a peer during his life’, and there were only six votes against the resolution which passed, one of whom was the bishop of London, though on 16 Jan. Godolphin reported that there had been 12 or 13 votes against Monmouth’s imprisonment and an address against him.204 Vernon, in a letter of 15 Jan., mentioned Aubrey de Vere, 20th earl of Oxford, as favouring an acquittal and John Thompson, Baron Haversham and the duke of Bolton arguing that although ‘there was a good deal of indiscretion in his conduct … that deserved the censure of the House’, but that was all. In all only eight or ten peers ‘appeared any way favourable’ to Monmouth, some of whom had convened at Bolton’s on the evening before the vote ‘to consider how they might mitigate his censure, if they could not bring him off’.205 On 18 Jan. the Lords sent to the king an account of their proceedings in the case; William replied to it on the 19th, thanking the Lords ‘for the consideration they have had of him in that matter’.
On 20 Jan. James Brydges, the future duke of Chandos, reported that Monmouth had ‘a vast deal of company’ visiting him in the Tower.206 It was ‘buzzed about’ that he aimed to get himself impeached, though Somers heard on the same day that Monmouth was thinking of asking the king’s leave to petition the Lords. He may, however, already have been dissuaded by Sunderland who visited him on the 18th.207 On 21 Jan., the king struck Monmouth’s name out of the Privy Council.208 Monmouth also lost his bedchamber office, but not his lieutenancy. According to Vernon, Monmouth had not expected to be dismissed from the Council, believing that ‘he had satisfied the king that he was wronged in what was sworn of his disrespectful behaviour’. He also denied any difference with Shrewsbury or Russell, ‘and wonders any body should think he designed a mischief to either. He talks all manner of ways, according to the humour of those that come to him. But I hear no more of his project if impeachment; perhaps it was only to delay his being turned out.’209
At the beginning of February Monmouth approached Portland in an attempt to obtain his release, suggesting that Thomas Tenison, archbishop of Canterbury, and Somers might move the matter in Council. On 9 Feb. Vernon reported that Monmouth will ‘forbear moving for his liberty till next week. In the meantime, he is pretty much visited by my Lord Sunderland, and Blanchard goes sometimes to him. So that some people intend to keep fair weather with him’.210 On 26 Mar. Richard Powys wrote that Monmouth ‘is about petitioning the House for his liberty, but the application will be first made to the king’. On 30 Mar., the House ordered his discharge from the Tower following notice from the king that he had received a petition from the earl and that he consented to his release. He delayed his release until 1 Apr. owing to a fit of the gravel; nor had his temper been improved by the disposal of his bedchamber place to Charles Boyle, Baron Clifford of Lanesborough (later 2nd earl of Burlington), and the news that his uncle Peterborough was likely to recover from an illness.211 On 6 Apr. he was spotted at Sunderland’s, although the rumours about Sunderland’s association with Rochester, Marlborough and Godolphin suggested that the two were unlikely to be in agreement in all things.212 He had attended on 41 days of the 1696-7 session, 36 per cent of the total, and been named to a further nine committees.
Vernon commented that it would be ‘better for himself and his neighbours’ if Monmouth were to be ‘a quiet one’.213 This sage advice may even have been followed for a while, for on 13 May 1697 he reported that Monmouth ‘talks only of following the plough, and his wife of being a dairywoman, yet nobody takes them at their word’.214 On 10 June Orford (as Edward Russell had become on 7 May) informed Shrewsbury that Sunderland was seeking to reconcile Shrewsbury and his friends, with ‘a certain Lord, who has justly deserved your anger, or rather disdain’.215 Monmouth maintained his links with Sunderland, dining with the earl on 19 June, the day his uncle Peterborough died.216 By his uncle’s death, he inherited a new title, as 3rd earl of Peterborough, and about £4,000 a year, with the residue going to the duchess of Norfolk.217 The inheritance included Turvey, and several other manors in Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire, with which Peterborough was ‘very well pleased’.218 Vernon’s view was that as he ‘succeeds to the honour’ he would not ‘be content to inherit only one part of the estate, but is like to have a contest with his cousin [the duchess of Norfolk], for Drayton’.219 On 20 July Blanchard reported to Portland malicious gossip against Sunderland (recently appointed lord chamberlain) at Lord and Lady Peterborough’s the previous day and thought it doubtful whether Sunderland’s frequent visits there had won him any friendship.220
On 3 Dec. 1697 Peterborough attended the opening day of the 1697-8 session. He visited the king on 15 Dec., and (despite Blanchard’s comments) Vernon noted that he was keen to support Sunderland against his detractors in Parliament, declaring himself ‘a champion of my lord chamberlain, and if he be attacked he will break his truce, which, he says, he only entered into at his solicitation’. However, as Vernon implied, Sunderland may not have found that too helpful.221 Indeed, following Sunderland’s resignation as lord chamberlain at the end of December, in January 1698 Vernon reported that he had said that ‘there was no rack like to what he suffered, by being ground as he had been, between Lord Monmouth [sic] and Lord Wharton’.222 Vernon felt that Peterborough would ‘now let himself loose again’, but added that if he ‘intends to be troublesome, either on this account or any other, I really think he will only expose himself; he is too well known to be much feared’.223 Somers, created a baron in December 1697, likewise thought in early 1698 that Peterborough had contributed to Sunderland’s resignation because while Charles Duncombe, Henry Guy‡ and Trevor ‘did so perpetually alarm him [Sunderland], with stories of his being delivered up by the Whigs’, in an attempt to get him to change sides, those stories ‘were aggravated in such a fiery manner’ by Peterborough, that ‘the physic was too strong, and operated quite contrary to their design; so that he durst not stay the tie of turning out others, but shifted away himself.’224
Vernon reported to Shrewsbury on 1 Jan. 1698 a conversation with the recently resigned Sunderland in which he told the latter that people ‘were puzzled to think what should occasion so great a familiarity’ between himself and Peterborough; Vernon was also ‘amazed’ by Sunderland’s suggested recipe for keeping Peterborough ‘quiet’, ‘by making him easier in his fortune, which was very low’, and therefore he proposed asking the king to give him a pension of £2,000 a year and to restore him to the Council. Vernon still thought it necessary to make plans to counter any moves Peterborough might make to revive the charges made in Fenwick’s papers.225
In the new year, Peterborough’s name was mentioned in the context of a series of factional battles, starting with the attempts in the Commons to accuse the chancellor, Charles Montagu, the future earl of Halifax, of corruption. On 18 Jan. Vernon informed Shrewsbury that ‘there are four taken notice of in the House of Lords, who would be troubling the waters’, including Peterborough, but that they were ‘so well-known as to have all their motions narrowly watched’.226 Montagu vindicated himself and mounted a counter-attack against Sunderland’s associate Duncombe, resulting in the latter’s expulsion from the House. He told the duke of Shrewsbury on 1 Feb., the day of the explusion that Duncombe’s departure would help to produce a new political landscape as he had been ‘the cement’ which had glued Peterborough, Bolton, Sir Edward Seymour ‘and the rest’ together.227 On the same day, Vernon noted that proceeding by a bill against Duncombe was preferable to an impeachment, ‘when it was considered that his money and Lord Peterborough’s tricks might puzzle the cause’.228 On 24 Feb. it was reported that ‘many are of opinion’ that the bill for punishing Duncombe for the false endorsement of exchequer bills would never pass the Lords ‘as it now is’ because Peterborough ‘and some others of the chief speaking peers of the House have in public declared against it’.229 On 4 Mar. Peterborough was indeed one of those that spoke against the second reading of the bill, on the grounds that it was as a ‘method introduced to intermeddle in their judicature’.230 By 8 Mar., it was noted that ‘some are of opinion that it will be thrown out’ because ‘a great many other speaking peers’, including Peterborough, were against it.231 On 5 Mar. Peterborough was one of those peers named to prepare for a conference aimed at elucidating the grounds upon which the bill had proceeded in the Commons, and was appointed to manage conferences on the 7th and 11th. When the bill was lost by one vote, on 15 Mar., Robert Yard noted Peterborough’s opposition and he was duly listed as voting against it.232 It was perhaps opposition such as this which led French ambassador Tallard on 8 Apr. to inform Louis XIV that the strong cabal in the Lords against the court was headed by Leeds, Rochester, Nottingham and Peterborough.233 As a coda to the proceedings against Duncombe, on 14 May, when the Lords rejected at second reading the bill for punishing John Knight for procuring counterfeit endorsements of exchequer bills, it was reported that ‘there were but five that appeared to be for it’, one of whom was Peterborough.234 When Duncombe appeared in the court of king’s bench on 13 July, to enter into a recognizance of £10,000, Peterborough was one of his four sureties, who pledged ‘£5,000 each to appear the first day of the next term’.235
Minor controversy followed Peterborough, when, on 22 Mar. 1698, Joseph Wilson and others were ordered into custody for breach of privilege for fishing in a tumultuous manner in the river Nene within one of the manors of George Compton, 4th earl of Northampton. The men petitioned on 31 Mar., claiming they had the right to do so, but on 18 Apr. the Lords found in Northampton’s favour. Luttrell described the dispute as ‘by breaking into his fishery, which the earl of Peterborough’s son claimed a right to do’.236 On 24 May Peterborough was named to a conference on the Lords’ amendments to the bill for the more effectual suppressing of blasphemy and profaneness. A week later he acted as a teller, in opposition to Manchester, on the question of whether to insist on an amendment to the bill. Godolphin reported on 2 June to Viscount Lonsdale (as Sir John Lowther had since been created) on the progress of the Aire and Calder navigation bill, noting Peterborough among those ‘that think they have an interest against it’.237 On 9 June, when the Lords were debating the bill for settling the trade to Africa, Peterborough came out of the House to consult with some members of the Africa Company and some of the free traders to Guinea, extracting a promise from the former that the latter could use their forts and be protected by the Company.238 On 15 June he was named to draw up heads for a conference in which the Lords insisted on their rights over the impeachment of Jean Goudet. When the House considered a report of the conference a week later, Peterborough entered into the debate.239 On 1 July he entered his protest against giving a second reading to the bill for raising £2 million (the East India bill). Peterborough had attended on 79 days, 60 per cent of the total, and been named to 31 committees.
The Parliament of 1698
Just prior to the sitting of the 1698 Parliament, Sunderland felt the need to reassure Shrewsbury that ‘I cannot imagine Lord Peterborough can be so mad as to revive a thing, which, when new, had such a reception as that had. If he should, it is certain it will hurt nobody but himself.’ He told the duke that his last communication with Peterborough had been five or six weeks previously, from Drayton, where he said he ‘avoided company, was a philosopher, and very easy in his own concerns’. Over the summer, Sunderland wrote, Peterborough had written to him with ‘a good deal against the present men employed, but nothing particular, and much compliment to me and kindness, which I have deserved if giving good and friendly advice were the way, for that I have done very plainly and very often’.240
Peterborough attended on the second sitting of the 1698-9 session, 9 December 1698. On 8 Feb. 1699, in the debate in committee of the whole House on the king’s speech of 1 Feb., Peterborough intervened to ask Burnet if, given his writings on the subject, his support for retaining the Dutch Guards meant that he was a bad historian.241 Peterborough then acted as a teller in opposition to Tankerville, against resuming the House. He was one of many who entered a dissent to a resolution offering to assist the king in retaining his Dutch guards. The House then had to intervene to prevent a quarrel between Peterborough and Orford from going further. On the following day the House had to intervene again to prevent Peterborough, Orford and Richard Savage, 4th Earl Rivers, from continuing the quarrel.242 On 21 Mar. Peterborough acted as a teller, in opposition to Marlborough, on the question of appointing a date to consider the report on the petition of Captain Desborrow (concerning the capture of a prize off Newfoundland, and aimed against Captain Sir John Norris, a client of Orford’s). Peterborough was absent from the House between 29 Mar. and 29 Apr., and last attended on 2 May. He had attended on 38 days of the session, 47 per cent of the total, and been named to a further 11 committees.
Vernon continued to keep a close watch of Peterborough’s activities. In August 1699 he wrote a lengthy note for Shrewsbury detailing Peterborough’s state of mind. The earl, he wrote, professed he had always felt ‘a coldness from the duke, even while both of them were carrying on the business of the Revolution’. He did express some esteem for Shrewsbury, but none at all for Orford. Peterborough also believed there were ‘contrivances to ensnare and ruin him; that he was forced to be upon his guard; and for these three years he had not gone anywhere, or spoke to anybody, without noticing it down in his table-book’. He thought he had been ‘turned out disgracefully, and expected amends to be made him; but did not mean it by being restored to any of his employments, for he declared he would accept of none’. He thought the Whigs had been ungrateful to Sunderland: he understood, he said, that the Whigs ‘took a pretence to suspect him’ on account of his friendship with Peterborough himself. In fact, he said, Sunderland had taken ‘great pains to restrain him following his own resentments’; indeed Sunderland had told him ‘that he must and would be his enemy, while he and the party were at variance, which, he said, he could not take ill from him.’243
Peterborough attended on the opening day of the 1699-1700 session, 16 Nov. 1699. At this point Matthew Smith’s allegations, chiefly against the shortcomings of Shrewsbury, resurfaced. In late November Vernon’s assessment of Smith’s Remarks upon the D-of S-‘s Letter to the House of Lords, concerning Captain Smith was that ‘Peterborough has a greater hand in it than I thought at first’. On 7 Dec. the Lords took Smith’s allegation into consideration. Peterborough intervened to ‘know whether the printed letter agreed with what [was] entered in the Journal’, presumably attempting to divert attention from his own role in the work. Vernon noted that Peterborough had ‘affected very much of late to be whispering with’ Edward Villiers, earl of Jersey, the secretary of state, who ‘says Lord Peterborough told him this morning, he wondered what Smith meant by publishing this book; that if he had had any hand in advising him, he should have gone another way to work’. On 11 Dec. Smith was examined before the Lords, where he admitted writing a book he sent via lord chancellor Somers to the House. As Vernon recounted, ‘Peterborough behaved himself like one that raved’; after insisting that Smith’s book be read, ‘while it was reading, in a careless manner, he fell a talking all the while with my lord chancellor, and then would have it read again, because he had not minded it; but the Lords were not for humouring his frenzies’. They resolved that Smith should be re-committed for a breach of privilege in printing their proceedings. At this Peterborough spoke against the first order for Smith’s commitment, ‘though he had seconded the motion, there being no proof that he had published the book till he came to the bar and owned it; and I hear some Lords were not satisfied that it was very regular’. On 15 Dec., according to Somers, the Lords resolved that the written book ‘sent to the House by Smith’ and the printed book, ‘being a copy of it, was a false and scandalous libel, reflecting on your grace’s honour, and the honour of the House, and have ordered it burnt by the hangman’. Somers added, ‘that which I am most pleased with’, that Peterborough, ‘after much ado, was brought to tell his long-threatened story, and, I think, it is not possible a thing should come off more poorly’.244 On 22 Dec. Peterborough acted as a teller, opposite the 2nd earl of Macclesfield (as Charles, Lord Brandon, had since become) on the question of reversing the decree in the case of Beisley v. Stratford.
This session also saw the revival of the dispute between Peterborough and the duchess of Norfolk over her father’s estates in Northamptonshire, which Peterborough was pursuing through chancery. The matter at issue was some work in Drayton Park; Peterborough had failed in an attempt in chancery to prevent it taking place, so he had resorted to claiming a breach of privilege. On 7 Dec. 1699 Thomas Hoite was ordered into custody. On 22 Dec., the duchess petitioned the House, owning Hoite to be her servant, and praying to be heard by counsel on the matter. After the House heard Serjeant Nathan Wright (shortly to be appointed lord keeper) on behalf of Peterborough and Sir Thomas Powys‡ for the duchess, on 9 Jan. 1700, Hoite was discharged, without paying fees. The House indicated their unhappiness with the whole proceeding by ordering that in future, if the House adjudged a complaint not to be a breach of privilege, the Lord who made the complaint should pay the fees and expenses of the person taken into custody. 245
Peterborough ‘took notice’ in the Lords on 10 Jan. 1700 of the pamphlet An Enquiry into the Causes of the Miscarriage of the Scots Colony at Darien. He described the book as written ‘in the language of persons that smarted under great losses’, although they aimed at ‘being admitted to an union with England’. He thought a union both convenient, ‘and in this conjuncture’, necessary, ‘in regard to our present and future tranquillity’.246 Charles Hatton reported that this ‘very libellous book, published in the defence of the Scots settlement at Darien’, had led Peterborough to move for ‘a union betwixt England and Scotland’, arguing that ‘under great hardships’, the Scots might turn to ‘a young prince abroad’ (the pretender) who, ‘in this age when it is so fashionable for princes to change their religion for a crown, might follow that mode, and, if he turned Presbyterian, might not only be acceptable to the Scots, but to the English too, as another prince, tho’ educated by a bishop but a Scot’. The House appointed 16 Jan. to take into consideration the Darien affair. When Charles Montagu in the Commons alluded to his motion as if it were a joke, Peterborough ‘was so incensed that he sent a challenge’ to him, while Sir Richard Cocks‡ also noted that it was originally looked upon as a ‘jest’ until the court came into the proposal.247
Although Peterborough had struck a chord with the court and James Ogilvy, earl of Seafield [S], thought ‘the king has a good while resolved to propose it to both Houses and was only considering a good opportunity for it’, he also added ‘it would have done much better’ had it come from him. John Campbell, 2nd duke of Argyll [S], felt that Peterborough had acted to pre-empt the court, possibly with the intention ‘to ruin the success of the project, though on other occasions he professes a regard to the Scots nation’.248 When discussion was resumed on 16 Jan., Lord Basil Hamilton wrote that ‘Lord Peterborough spoke well and long’.249 On 23 Feb., after the passage of the bill authorizing commissioners to treat with commissioners of Scotland for a union of the two kingdoms, Peterborough was appointed to prepare for a conference with the Commons.
In response to the Commons’ refusal to vote thanks to William Stephens for preaching a sermon before them on the anniversary of the execution of Charles I, Peterborough was reported to have given him a living valued at £150 a year, though Stephens turned it down.250 In about February, Peterborough was forecast as likely to support the East India Company bill and on the 23rd he voted in favour of adjourning during pleasure, and for going into committee to discuss two amendments to the bill. On 16 Feb. Vernon discounted Peterborough having a role in the publication of Matthew Smith’s latest book, supposing ‘his head filled with another project, which is to carry on a bill for the duke of Norfolk’s divorce, though he formerly threw it out’. He had procured the bill a first reading on that day. Some interpreted the volte face as being connected to Peterborough’s plan to marry his daughter to the duke, while Vernon thought it might be a ruse to ‘oblige’ the duchess to settle Drayton upon him ‘and then he will change sides again’. On 24 Feb. Vernon found him showing great pleasure in taking his revenge against the duchess.251 During the reading of the depositions relating to the bill on 6 Mar., Peterborough ask questions of Francis Negus, presumably to clarify what he had said about the duchess promising to leave her estate to the duke (an estate which Peterborough claimed for himself). On 8 Mar. he acted as a teller twice on the bill: once opposite Feversham on the question of adjourning further consideration of the bill until the following day; and a second time opposite Jeffreys on the question for a second reading. The bill was passed in April. On 2 Mar. Peterborough seems to have been appointed as a teller opposite Charles Granville, Baron Granville, styled Lord Lansdown, on the question of whether a writ of error brought in by the bishop of St Davids should be received. The division, however, was called off as those in favour yielded the question.252 Also in April, the Commons bill resuming the Irish forfeited estates and levying a land tax reached the Lords. Widely perceived as a ‘tacking’ measure, Peterborough supported it with the bizarre analogy of a man whose affairs had fallen into disorder, and was compelled to take a rich wife, even though she was a ‘baggage’, in order to obtain security.253 He was present on the last day of the session, 11 Apr., having attended on 54 days, 68 per cent of the total, and been named to six committees.
With the Whig ministers under pressure during the session, Peterborough was not perceived as favourable to the Junto. On 27 Feb. Vernon reported that Somers was aware that Peterborough ‘lay in wait to show him a mark of his kindness’, seeing that Somers ‘stood in his way against his being revenged’ on Shrewsbury and Orford. Peterborough, he wrote, ‘could not bear’ Shrewsbury having the white staff as lord chamberlain, and although ‘Orford were out of employment, yet he must be brought lower, and it must not be deferred’, otherwise Orford, he feared, would return to the admiralty. Nevertheless, Somers thought that although Peterborough ‘was an ill man, yet there were others as bad as he’.254 Peterborough’s name, in fact, was marked with a cross on a list of Whig peers made after 10 July 1700, as were Somers, Wharton and Orford, rather than bracketed with the other group which may indicate a more favourable attitude to the new ministry. On 9 Aug. Peterborough attended the interment of the duke of Gloucester, as one of the assistants to the chief mourner, Norfolk.255 The coming of age of his son, John Mordaunt‡, styled Viscount Mordaunt, raised the question of his political career. Peterborough’s Dauntsey property formed the basis of an electoral interest in Chippenham, for which Mordaunt was chosen in three successive elections from January 1701. Peterborough also campaigned for Maurice Ashley‡ in the Wiltshire county contest of December 1701.256
Peterborough attended the opening day of the 1701 Parliament on 10 Feb. 1701. Three days later he chaired and reported from the committee on the Address.257 A newsletter reported that during the resultant debate on the 13th, Peterborough had ‘made a very eloquent speech … tending to shew the necessity there is of declaring war against France: and they say he gave so many strong arguments for it: that he met with a general applause’.258 On 17 Feb. he was named to manage a conference on the Address. On 15 Mar. Peterborough acted as a teller, in opposition to Stamford, on the report of the committee on the partition treaty, on whether the second point in the committee’s report, ‘that the Emperor was not a party to this treaty, though principally concerned’ should be agreed (it was rejected). On 10 May he was named to the committee to draw up an address on the letter sent by the States General to the king on 2 May, which he then reported to the House; the address backed the formation of alliances against France. When, on 15 May, ‘the new ministry carried two questions about the dissolution of the last Parliament’ and against the Junto, Peterborough observed ‘that some Lords had frequently of late affirmed in that House, in their own defence, that the king did not use to advise with anybody in his proceedings, but now nothing would satisfy them but they must enquire into the advisers of the late dissolution’.259
Peterborough entered wholeheartedly into the attack on the Junto of 1701, taking the Commons’ part in the increasingly angry exchanges over the impeachments of the Junto lords. On 9 June he entered his protest against the decision not to appoint a committee to meet with a Commons’ committee regarding the impeachments. Five days later he protested against sending a message to the Commons requesting a conference on the subject, and later in the day he entered another protest against a second resolution not to appoint a committee of both Houses. He entered a third protest on 17 June against the resolution that the Lords go into Westminster Hall, in order to proceed upon the trial of Somers, and then he voted against Somers’s acquittal and entered a protest against the decision to acquit. Two days later he acted as a teller, opposite Rivers, on a question about when to give a third reading to a supply bill. On 23 June he entered a sole protest against the resolution that the delay in passing supply was occasioned by the ‘fatal counsel’ to delay the meeting of Parliament, and by the ‘unnecessary delays’ of the Commons. In the protest he argued that while ‘nothing could be more fatal to the interest of Europe, to the interest of the Protestant religion, and the safety of England, than the so long delay of the meeting of a Parliament, after the death of the King of Spain’, yet he rejected the imputation of ‘unnecessary delays’ to the Commons. On that same day, following the arrest on the 21st of Peterborough’s servant, James Drake, all four men involved in the arrest were ordered into custody for breach of privilege. On 24 June he was one of four peers given the task of counting the ballots for a committee of nine to examine proceedings on a union between England and Scotland, and reported the result to the House, including his own election. The House was prorogued on 24 June, Peterborough having attended on 58 days, 55 per cent of the total. He had been appointed to a further ten committees.
Peterborough attended on the opening day of the 1701-2 Parliament, 30 Dec. 1701. On 1 Jan. 1702 he signed the address expressing the resentment of the House at the proceedings of the French king in owning the Pretender. The following day he was named to the committee to draw an address promising that the Lords would assist the king ‘in reducing the exorbitant power of France, and settling the balance of Europe’, which he reported to the House. On 12 Jan., in a debate in committee of the whole House on the abjuration bill, there was much discussion of the definition of ‘abjuration’: Peterborough ‘explained in several particulars what he thought was meant by the word abjure vizt - that the rich man should fight against the pretended P. of W. with his purse and the poor man with his person &c’.260
Possibly through Harry Mordaunt’s political connection to Wharton, Peterborough had been drawn into the election at Malmesbury in November 1701. Mordaunt delivered an election petition to the Commons on 14 Jan. 1702 from five burgesses complaining of bribery by William Adye in the return of Sir Charles Hedges‡ and Edward Pauncefort‡. On 29 Jan. the Commons heard the evidence and in the end resolved to take the petitioners and the defeated candidate Daniel Parke into custody. Although Parke absolved Peterborough from any role in the bribery, Adye challenged this view. Peterborough was present in the chamber, because when Robert Dormer‡ asked that Peterborough should have leave to make his defence before the Commons, Sir Christopher Musgrave‡ responded that ‘there never was such an invasion of our rights to have a Lord come into the House and prompt the counsel as a solicitor and stand with his hat on as a member’. The Speaker affected not to be aware that Peterborough had been there; but he was eventually invited to speak. He did so for around an hour and a half, but to no avail, it being voted that he was ‘guilty of many indirect practices’ in endeavouring to get Parke elected.261 According to one newsletter, Peterborough ‘speeched it forward and backward for more than two hours, and several time urged the House to impeach him that thereby as he said he might have an opportunity to vindicate himself’.262 The irony of this was not lost on Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd earl of Shaftesbury, who wrote that:
our good friend Lord Peterborough was by the treachery and malice of the Tory Party censured yesterday in the House of Commons, for which he is the less pitied because he last year joined so much with that party, and in the impeachment and prosecution of his Brother-Whigs, for which his new friends the Tories have well repaid him. But I thank them for the example: not only for setting my Lord Peterborough right (for this fixes him ours) but for shewing all those of our party who tamper with them, what they have to expect.263
After the third reading of the abjuration bill on 24 Feb., Nottingham’s proposal for union with Scotland was seconded by Peterborough, although the matter did not proceed for the moment as the ministry had no instructions from the king.264
The Accession of Anne and the 1702 Parliament
As Peterborough was present in the House on 8 Mar. 1702 he was appointed to manage a conference on the death of the king, and later reported from the committee of the whole House drawing up an address to Queen Anne. He also reported from committee on 12 Mar. the Address on the Queen’s Speech. On 18 and 20 May he was named to manage a conference on the prevention of correspondence between England and the allies with France and Spain. Also on 20 May he was named to manage a conference on the Lords’ amendments to the bill for the encouragement of privateers and on 22 May he was named to draw up an address on the same matter, which he reported on the following day. Peterborough was present on the last day of the session, 25 May, having attended on 71 days, 71 per cent of the total. He had been named to a further 17 committees.
The death of Sunderland on 28 Sept. 1702 removed a steadying influence on Peterborough. He had arrived at Althorp shortly after the event and felt sufficiently moved to write to the countess of Marlborough on 6 Oct. acknowledging the ‘many obligations’ he had owed to the earl.265 Shaftesbury, for one, was a little unsure of Peterborough’s political stance at this point, writing on 4 Nov. that he had little interest with Peterborough, ‘since this last year or two that he threw himself so eagerly into the Tory interest, and prosecuted both the impeachments and all those other fatal, obstructive, and unjust measures, with so much violence’. He had ‘now smarted for it, having been barbarously treated by that party he went over to, who sacrificed him last year in the House of Commons’, over the Malmesbury election case. Although Peterborough had ‘now come back to his original friends and principles, and those sores are all healed up’, he was unsure as to relations between them.266
Queen Anne’s new ministry faced the stark dilemma of how to employ Peterborough’s talents. Even before William’s death, as early as January 1702 Peterborough had been rumoured to be in line for a commission as captain general of the forces to be sent to the West Indies.267 At the end of July Marlborough was thinking of Peterborough for the governorship of Jamaica, he having had ‘it long in his head’.268 Macky noted that Peterborough had been ‘a great projector for the improvement of our plantations’, and that Nottingham had secured him the post.269 It was a post of potential importance given Jamaica’s position as a base for the clandestine trade with the Spanish West Indies and for military operations should the islands not declare for the allied claimant of the Spanish monarchy.270 Newsletters in October reported that Peterborough had obtained the governorship and that he was preparing to travel there. However, by 7 Nov. it was reported that ‘Peterborough is not like to be going so soon to the government of Jamaica as has been given out and some make a question whether or no his Lordship will at all his commission having met with some opposition at Court.’271 Nevertheless, on 2 Dec. the treasury ordered £600 to the treasurer of the navy for transporting Peterborough’s equipage and on 13 Jan. 1703 Peterborough wrote to Marlborough, in order to explain his thoughts on the proposed venture to the West Indies rather ‘than by an interrupted discourse in the House of Lords’.272 Then on 16 Jan. it was reported that the ‘difficulties’ raised by Peterborough had been ‘adjusted’ and that he would ‘be going without delay, if the proceedings on the resumption bill do not retard him, his lordship having a grant from the late king of about £1500 p.a. value.’ Newsletters continued to report that Peterborough was making ‘fresh difficulties’ about his commission which he thinks ‘not ample enough’, and some people thought ‘his aim was to have had not only the government of Jamaica but the absolute command of all the land forces and fleet too that shall be employed in those parts which will not be complied with’.273 On 23 Jan. Nottingham informed Colonel Codrington that Peterborough was not going.274 Peterborough told Locke that the reason for his refusal to go was the lack of forces at his disposal, which had been cut by half. This had been something of a shock: ‘our American expedition is fallen as a mushroom rises in a night’, he wrote, and he had desired to be excused the task of going ‘to the other world loaded with empty titles and deprived of force’.275
Peterborough had been present on the opening day of the 1702 Parliament, 20 Oct. 1702. On 10 Dec. William Nicolson, bishop of Carlisle recorded receiving ‘a very pleasant account of the earl of Peterborough’s turning himself into all shapes (of porter, chairman &c.) to ferret out intrigues’. On 23 Dec. Peterborough petitioned, as the grandson and heir male of John Mordaunt†, earl of Peterborough, against an order made in the court of Chancery on 16 Dec., on behalf of Lady Mary Mordaunt (as the dowager duchess of Norfolk was sometimes known) and her husband, Sir John Germaine‡. On 20 Jan. 1703, the Lords heard the case for five hours, with Sir Simon Harcourt, the future Viscount Harcourt, and Sir William Cowper, the future Earl Cowper, acting as Peterborough’s counsel. The case rested on the relative status of two deeds from the reign of Charles I: Peterborough claimed the lands in question by the second deed. Lord Keeper Wright explained why he regarded both deeds as of equal regard and that the earl’s title was maintainable at common law, so that Chancery had no jurisdiction. The House then ordered one counsel on either side to argue the issue. On the advice of the judges the Lords dismissed his petition and affirmed the order.276
In about January 1703 Nottingham forecast Peterborough as likely to oppose the bill against occasional conformity. On 17 Dec. 1702 and 9 Jan. 1703 he was named as a manager of conferences on the bill. On 16 Jan. he managed and spoke at the conference on the bill and supported adhering to the Lords’ wrecking amendment to the penal clause of the bill.277 On 5 Feb. Peterborough ‘jested a little’ in reply to Nottingham, in the debate on the actions of Halifax (as Charles Montagu had been created in December 1700) as auditor of the exchequer that ended in a vote approving of his conduct.278 On 9 Feb. he brought in a bill for better carrying on the war in the West Indies.279 He last attended on 24 Feb., having been present on 48 days, 56 per cent of the total and been named to a further 25 committees.
The death of the dowager countess of Peterborough on 18 Apr. 1702 saw Peterborough gain her jointure of £1500 a year, although the duchess of Norfolk received her personal estate.280 This did not seem to improve Peterborough’s somewhat hand-to-mouth existence: on 20 July 1703 he assigned his legacy of £1,000 from Lady Philadelphia Wentworth (d. 1696) to John Nicolson, a merchant, for £250 ‘and all the interest and damages for non-payment thereof’.281 On 6 Aug. 1703, in advance of the next political season, Peterborough wrote to the duchess of Marlborough to complain about his erstwhile ally Nottingham, ‘in whose defence no Whig hath so often engaged’:
but I must at the same time confess he hath not that gift I wish in a minister, of timing things aright. He should with less difficulty in my poor opinion and with less dispute have abjured the prince of Wales and with greater dispatch and less hesitation have accepted the Portugal Treaty, and I fear he is likely to trouble us again unseasonably, and without occasion, with his occasional bill.282
In about November, Charles Spencer, 3rd earl of Sunderland, forecast Peterborough as likely to oppose a new bill against occasional conformity. Sunderland did not feel the need to alter his assessment in a second forecast made around the end of November.
Peterborough attended the opening day of the 1703-4 session on 9 Nov. 1703. On 11 Nov. he reported from the committee on the Address. On 14 Dec. he spoke and voted against the occasional conformity bill, having assured Swift ‘in the most solemn manner, that if he had the least suspicion, the rejecting this bill would hurt the Church, or do kindness to the dissenters, he would lose his right hand rather than speak against it’.283 On 17 Dec. he was present at a meeting of 17 peers at Sunderland’s, presumably about the coordination of the ballot to be held the following day for a committee of seven to examine two of the Scotch plotters.284 On 6 Feb. 1704 he reported from the committee on the estate bill of Sir John Astley‡. On 23 Feb. Peterborough reported from the committee of the whole on the bill for the increase of seamen. On 27 Mar. he was named to manage a conference on the Lords’ amendments to the bill for taking the public accounts. He last attended on the penultimate day of the session, 3 Apr., having attended on 64 days, 65 per cent of the total, and been named to a further 25 committees.
On 8 July 1704 Peterborough wrote to the duchess of Marlborough that the queen had now, he wrote,
what is so necessary in England[’s] success. The victory at home is of equal importance with that abroad. The elector of Bavaria reduced is not of greater advantage to the common cause, than that the queen has now at her feet all faction here. Everybody will now own the effects of the happy influence of those she confides in, malice and all cabals are defeated even Parliaments (I will not say are subdued) but overcome by her majesty’s virtue and the good fortune of her general.285
On the death of the Tory leader, Sir Christopher Musgrave, at the end of July, he remarked that although they ‘were not always of opinion’, ‘there was so much of a sturdy Englishman in him, that I always wished him well’.286 On 1 Aug., Peterborough wrote to Marlborough that his success in the campaign leading up to Blenheim would make the lord treasurer’s task in Parliament easy, although he was ashamed to say that ‘we have some amongst us who are yet jealous and not satisfied, and we have monsters of five hundred pounds a year insensible of this public happiness’. He commented on Scotland (whose Parliament had recently passed the Act of Security), ‘what parts would they have acted under other circumstances.’287
Peterborough attended the opening of 1704-5 session, on 24 Oct. 1704. On 23 Nov., following one of Haversham’s set piece speeches on the ills of the nation, Peterborough remarked that ‘when we live without French drink, the French must live without English victual’. He also remarked on the ‘different figures made by our land and sea-commanders; an admiral being forced to foot in, from Whitehall to Wapping, whilst a field officer greater than a lord’, presumably comparing the poor reception given to the returning Sir George Rooke‡ after his capture of Gibraltar and holding off the French fleet off Cape Malaga to the status of the victors of Blenheim, fought on the same day as Malaga. In the debate in committee of the whole House on the state of the nation with regard to Scotland on 6 Dec., provoked by the Scottish Act of Security, Peterborough ‘was for playing act against act, and all would be safe’. He said he had been frightened by a series of dangers: the joining of the French army with the Bavarians, the French attack on the English fleet in the Mediterranean, and ‘the late noise of a Tack’; but all of these ‘had blown over’. Scotland, he concluded, was ‘our little sister, and she will squawl till something’s given her’. James Johnston‡ also recorded the debate noting that when it was said that the queen should have resisted the Scottish acts, Peterborough replied that the queen ‘had the power of France to resist, with the folly of Austria, the selfishness of the Dutch, and the ignorance of the Portuguese, with factions and other disorders at home; all which she had resisted, and would resist; but he should be sorry to have her accustomed to resist Parliament’. On 15 Dec., when the House debated the occasional conformity bill, Charles Finch, 4th earl of Winchilsea, seemed to argue that the House would be forced by the Commons to pass the bill. Peterborough thought that this was ‘to bully the House’. Winchilsea’s riposte that he was neither for bullying, nor would be bullied, then seemed to lead to a whispered challenge: it was overheard, and the House intervened to prevent a duel.288
Peterborough was absent from the Lords from 20 Feb. to 12 Mar. 1705, when he was named as a manager of a conference on the Lords’ amendment to the militia bill, and further business on the bill on that and the following day. Also on 13 Mar. he was named to manage a conference on the amendments made by the Commons to a naturalization bill. Peterborough attended the last day of the session, 14 Mar., having been present on 47 days, 48 per cent of the total, and been named to 26 committees. At some point around this date, in an analysis of the peerage in relation to the Succession question, he was noted as a Hanoverian.
The 1705 Parliament and Service in Portugal
On 2 Mar. 1705 Peterborough wrote to the duchess of Marlborough, that ‘I am sorry to find we are so mad a people’, who ‘show in some public assemblies our folly and pride’, adding ‘I have not had the honour of seeing your grace since I received the queen’s commands in relation to what I first heard of from yourself’. The ‘queen’s command’ was a commission, which he received on 31 Mar., to be commander-in-chief of all troops accompanying the fleet to Portugal. After receiving the sacrament on 20 May, and taking the oaths on the day following in Westminster Hall, he went to Plymouth to embark, arriving at Lisbon on 9 June.289 Before his departure Peterborough had attempted to secure his son, Viscount Mordaunt, a seat in the new House of Commons elected in May. As early as December 1704 he had promoted the interest of his son for Bedford (seven miles from Turvey), upon hearing that the Whig William Spencer‡ was not going to stand at the ensuing election.290 By January 1705 he had turned his attention to getting Mordaunt in at Northamptonshire, though Robert Hesilrige thought he had jumped the gun, canvassing before Sunderland had had a chance to confirm the other Whig candidate: Hesilrige wrote to Sunderland that ‘I wonder my Lord P[eterborough] should write to any (but friends) before an answer of your Lordship’s came from Sir St Andrew [St John‡]. It hath set our enemies at work and we know not who to ask for (one I count as nothing) in case we want another’.291 Peterborough’s intervention certainly alarmed the Northamptonshire Tories: in January 1705 Sir Robert Clerk wrote to Sir Justinian Isham‡ that he ‘had thoughts to have wrote to Lord Peterborough because I fancy I could have satisfied him the necessity of his affairs would require positively that he must disoblige no party’. Clerk’s prediction that ‘there will be no opposition for this county next election’, proved wide of the mark as Lord Mordaunt suffered only a narrow defeat. Peterborough’s lord lieutenancy gave him some advantage, for as Isham put it several years later, although Peterborough had ‘little or no interest in our county, yet being lord lieutenant he may expect to be asked’.292 Peterborough was criticized for arbitrary behaviour in the course of the election, making threats against a former sheriff of the county and ensuring dismissal from the bench and threatening an action of scandalum magnatum against a Northamptonshire justice, Thornton, who had spoken ‘reflecting’ words on Peterborough.293 Mordaunt was eventually returned for Chippenham in a by-election in November.
In July 1705, John Methuen‡ in Lisbon gave Godolphin his opinion of Peterborough that ‘beside the life, spirit and resolution which indeed I expected there appears in him a great temper and calmness which seem the effects of a strong judgment’.294 His calm was no doubt disturbed by the news that in about September, Viscount Mordaunt had married Lady Frances Powlett, a daughter of Charles Powlett, 2nd duke of Bolton. The match had been sanctioned by neither set of parents and led to a rift between Peterborough and his son. Many people tried, unsuccessfully, to heal it, including the duke and duchess of Marlborough, Dr Samuel Garth and Shaftesbury.295 Nor did the birth of an heir to Mordaunt in October 1708 end the feud, although father and son appear to have been reconciled by September 1709 when Peterborough visited Lord Mordaunt’s house in Yorkshire, and heard the ‘agreeable’ news of Malplaquet.296
At the beginning of October 1705 Barcelona fell to the Allies, with Peterborough very much in the forefront of the action. He was keen to make clear to Godolphin his personal losses in the process, writing that month:
I have in a manner supported all here with my little stock. I sold, mortgaged and took up a year’s advance upon my estate, got all my pay advanced, took all the money up at Lisbon upon my own account, that I could anywise get, and all gone to support of this siege and other services. I have left my wife and children nothing to live upon, little expecting my stay in these parts. I conjure your Lordship pay the bills I have drawn for the last money lent towards raising a Spanish regiment.297
On 12 Nov. Peterborough was excused from a call of the House. Following the death on 19 Nov. of the duchess of Norfolk, Peterborough was reported to be challenging her will which left her estate to her husband, Sir John Germaine.298 When Germaine remarried in September 1706 the daughter of Charles Berkeley, 2nd earl of Berkeley, Robert Price‡ noted that ‘it is his late lady’s estate in Northamptonshire, which the earl of Peterborough designs to push for, and by this politic settlement hopes to ensure it’.299 Lady Germaine was to recollect in 1731 that ‘Peterborough plagued Sir John all his life time’ over the estate.300 In November 1705 Peterborough wrote to James Stanhope†, the future Earl Stanhope: ‘I hope before this comes to your hands you will have fought a parliamentary battle for me in relation to a confirmation of Dauntsey by act of Parliament’, although no bill seems to have been introduced.301
Despite the successes of the campaign, Peterborough’s position in Spain was deteriorating by the spring of 1706. There were personality clashes and disagreements over strategy with the king and his advisors, both Spanish and Imperial, especially the ‘whole Vienna crew’.302 Nor was Peterborough happy with affairs in England, complaining in a letter to Godolphin of May 1706 of ‘that fatal and barbarous humour of our countrymen, who must be fed with continual success’ and ‘a silly parliamentary brawling’ which secured reward. He also referred to ‘an impertinent pamphlet’, whose ‘author I think would pass for my friend but I heartily wish him hanged for his kindness it has put me out of humour ever since’. Finally, he grumbled that he had not received the commission of vice-admiral of England’, which he thought had been promised to him.303 In June 1706 Henri de Ruvigny, earl of Galway [I], advanced from Portugal and taken possession of Madrid; when he was not joined by Peterborough and King Charles, he abandoned the capital to the French. The failure to capitalize on the capture of Madrid led to recriminations: Peterborough ‘wrote a volume’ to Secretary Hedges – ‘a sort of remonstrance against the king of Spain and his ministers’ and ‘a complaint against all the orders and directions sent from hence’. Godolphin thought Peterborough was ‘both useless and grieving there, and is preparing to be as troublesome here, whenever he is called home’. Marlborough warned Godolphin that Peterborough had written a letter to Hedges with the intention that it would be called for and read in Parliament. Peterborough, though, had ‘managed the public money so very extravagantly, that it will be wholly impossible for him to pass his accounts’ making him highly vulnerable to criticism in Parliament.304 The diplomat, Mitford Crowe‡, was notably unsympathetic: Peterborough’s ‘pride, vanity and shattered conduct must undo him as it must undo anybody who practises the same’.305
By the middle of October 1706 Godolphin knew that Peterborough was ‘preparing materials of all sorts to perplex and embroil all the public affairs this winter’, lodging ‘copies of these papers in the hands of his agents here, to be distributed to such peoples as he thinks will be glad to lay hold of things of that nature’—especially Nottingham.306 In October 1706, Peterborough had already got his message across to some in England; Ralph Palmer reported that ‘if his advice had been taken, Madrid had been secured’.307 He was also preparing to defend himself in print. Secretary Hedges had been asked to conduct discreet enquiries into the printers of Peterborough’s ‘memoirs’, but on 31 Oct. Erasmus Lewis‡ told Harley that he had ‘received orders to let that matter take its course’, as Godolphin and Hedges ‘are both of opinion that the book when published can never do so much mischief now, as it would if endeavours were used to suppress it’.308 On 10 Nov. Peterborough wrote from Genoa to Henry St John, the future Viscount Bolingbroke, with a defence of his conduct, giving him permission to show his letter to whoever he thought fit.309 A Letter from an English Gentleman at Genoa to his Friend in Holland in Justification of the Earl of Peterborow’s Conduct, dated 21 Nov. [10 Nov. O.S.] soon found its way into print. Peterborough was also gaining allies among the Tories; on 12 Nov. Sir William Simpson told Paul Methuen‡ that ‘the High Church party here have taken a great deal of pains to magnify his military performances and match him with my Lord Marlborough which has given occasion to a more strict enquiry into the more faulty part of his conduct’.310
Peterborough spent several months in Italy over the autumn and winter, meeting allies and negotiating a loan in Genoa. He returned to Spain at the end of 1706, where he advocated a defensive strategy in opposition to the ministry and the other generals, Galway, Stanhope and Charles O’Hara, Baron Tyrawley [I]. Shortly afterwards news arrived from England of his recall. The official letter revoking his Spanish command was sent by Sunderland on 23 Dec. 1706. On 14 Jan. 1707 Sunderland followed up with a letter telling him that the queen had heard that Peterborough had ‘taken up great sums of money there [Genoa] at a most extraordinary price’, and that she had ‘ordered the bills for the said money not to be accepted, the same having been drawn without any authority or permission.’ It was the queen’s pleasure that ‘you return forthwith to England to acquaint her majesty with the reasons and grounds of your proceedings.’ On 16 Feb. Peterborough wrote from Valencia to Sunderland defending his conduct. He added in a postscript that ‘my impatience was great to come to England, but your Lordship will perceive I could not return with honour till after the campaign, under my engagements to the duke of Savoy, and my obligations to the king of Spain as his general.’311 He affected to be unconcerned by his recall; it would save him the expense of a campaign. He then wrote,
I am as sorry for the ill successes in Spain as if the affairs there were under my care. I cannot but be surprised at the measures have been taken in that country, if the proper measures had been pursued for my Lord Rivers arrival, it was plain we might a second time have been possessed of Madrid before any succours from France could have hindered it. I am confident when I have the good fortune to see you that you will be satisfied I have done my outmost for the public service with and without a character.312
Herein lay the rub for the ministry: having been deprived of his Spanish commands Peterborough was in a prime position to benefit from the allied defeat at Almanza in April 1707. As Godolphin put it, ‘what vexes me most is to think how Lord Peterborough will triumph’. Marlborough was keen that Peterborough should not be allowed to ‘lay his faults’ on Galway, ‘for that would be to let him triumph’. Instead Peterborough should be obliged ‘to give an account of his behaviour and particularly as to money matters’ when he returned to England.313
Peterborough had left Spain in mid-March, sailing not for England, but for Italy. From Milan, on 22 May 1707, he wrote of his intention to visit Marlborough’s campaign on his way home, incidentally challenging the impression that ‘I had an unwillingness to come for England. I can hardly conceive how such mistakes could arise, tho’ I have seen some very strange ones upon my subject’. He promised to ‘satisfy’ Marlborough ‘of the falsehood of that notion’, adding that ‘I would rather put in for a teller’s place of the Exchequer than the command of armies, the most fatal employment for an Englishman, particularly in these parts of the world.’314 Godolphin viewed the prospect of Peterborough’s return from the perspective of a domestic political manager, writing to Marlborough that ‘I always thought, that when his power is taken away from him, and all his commissions recalled, that he would do less hurt abroad than at home … But I don’t at all wonder you should like him better anywhere than with you’. Marlborough told him that Peterborough ‘would do anything to get the payment of an arrear of about £3,000’. Marlborough had gleaned from a letter from Peterborough that he intended to publish his justification, which indeed he did, An Account of the Earl of Peterborough’s Conduct in Spain, written by his physician, Dr John Freind.315 The Account laid out a tendentious interpretation of Peterborough’s conduct, which Swift would later amplify in The Conduct of the Allies (1711), arguing that
by a most corrupt management, the only general, who by a course of conduct and fortune almost miraculous, had nearly put us into possession of the kingdom, was left wholly unsupported, exposed to the envy of his rivals, disappointed by the caprices of a young inexperienced Prince, under the guidance of a capricious German ministry, and at last called home in discontent.316
Peterborough took a long route home from Spain. Before he reached Marlborough’s camp in Flanders, he travelled through Italy, Vienna, and into Germany, stopping to visit the king of Sweden at Altranstadt, and also Hanover.317 A convinced Hanoverian, his name appeared on the list of regents chosen by the Electress Sophia under the Regency Act.318 He arrived at Marlborough’s camp at Meldert on 29 July 1707. In discussions with Marlborough, Peterborough gave the impression that ‘he has been injured in everything that has been reported to his disadvantage’. He backed up his account with a paper in which he refuted allegations that he had failed to march to Madrid and discouraged Charles III from so doing; that he had declined to serve under Galway; that he had gone to Italy without orders and negotiated with the duke of Savoy without authority from the queen; and that he had drawn bills for £50,000 which had not been accounted for. Marlborough seems to have found Peterborough’s company ‘diverting’, for the long conversations between them took place after he had concluded his business for the day. Marlborough advised Godolphin to work with the Junto to neutralize him.319 Following his departure from Marlborough’s camp on 9 Aug. 1707, however, Marlborough wrote that Peterborough ‘will not be able to be governed’, and that he ‘will most certainly run into the notion of 51 [Electress Sophia], and all other things that may cross’, that is support an invitation to her to reside in England. Godolphin thought that Peterborough ‘will be governed by his animosities or his interest; I can’t answer which of them will prevail’.320 On 12 Aug. Joseph Addison‡ referred to the possibility that ‘a certain earl should raise any uneasiness’ in the Lords over the winter.321 On 14 Aug. Godolphin wrote to Sunderland that Peterborough’s sojourn with Marlborough would allow the Cabinet time to consider ‘in what manner he ought to be treated upon his arrival here.’322
Peterborough arrived in London on 20 Aug. 1707, and quickly discovered that he had been omitted from the newly constituted Privy Council of Great Britain.323 He then used this as a pretext ‘to avoid waiting upon the queen’, so she, through Harley, ordered him to ‘prepare an account in writing of his proceedings in pursuance of the several commissions entrusted to him’.324 At this point Harley was seen as ‘rather worse disposed towards him (if possible)’, than his colleague Sunderland. By 29 Aug. Peterborough had still not seen either the queen or Godolphin, keeping to the line that having been struck out of the council it was improper for him to go to court until sent for.325 Meanwhile, he gave ‘intimations among his friends of his intending to be very active in the next Parliament’.326 On 26 Sept. Ralph Bridges wrote that Peterborough was ‘busy in writing an account of his Spanish expedition … to be ready against the opening of the sessions. They say he is so fully bent on publishing that he declares he won’t take 40,000 pound of the Court to hold his tongue’.327 On 21 Nov. John Bridges wrote that ‘the town are in great expectation of the Lord Peterborough’s Case in print, as ’tis drawn up by himself or his own directions, tho’ I’ve some reasons to believe that it will not come out.’328 Peterborough’s extensive contacts with Grub Street can be gleaned from the comment of Lewis on 2 Oct. that ‘Peterborough is in great grief for that true Englishman, The Observator’, a reference to the death of the journalist John Tutchin.329
Peterborough attended on the opening day of the 1707-8 session, 23 Oct. 1707. On the eve of the session, Simpson thought that Peterborough had ‘for about a month forborne coming into those places [coffee-houses] or to speak upon those subjects [Spain] and it is believed he has assurances of some employment or that other means have been used to give him satisfaction.’330 His attention may have been elsewhere, for on 21 Nov. ‘a great trial’ in queen’s bench for part of the duchess of Norfolk’s estate in Northamptonshire, saw Germaine gain property worth £1,400 a year, although the tithes were awarded to Peterborough.331 On 30 Oct. Johnston thought that Peterborough had ‘made his peace’ with the ministry, and ‘he is now silent’, having been visited by Sunderland’s under-secretary Thomas Hopkins‡. He added that ‘I hear he went to everybody in the House but nobody went to him’. He had apparently told the elector of Hanover ‘that he had but two things to ask pardon for, the taking of Barcelona and going to his court’ and ‘he has in discourse used Sunderland as he does others, however they talked together in the House.’332 On 11 Nov. Johnston added that ‘I think my Lord Peterborough’s affair is still not settled’, but that Marlborough ‘will quiet him’ after his arrival.333
There was certainly some trepidation in diplomatic circles about Peterborough’s activities. Daniel Pulteney‡ wrote from Copenhagen at the end of November 1707 that ‘those here who do not wish well to our cause had great hopes that my Lord Peterborough and some others would raise such heats in Parliament as to hinder the despatch of public business and the giving the necessary supplies for pursuing the war’.334 Sunderland’s cabinet minutes for 14 Dec. contain a discussion about Peterborough, which led on 18 Dec. to a letter to Peterborough detailing the unsatisfactory nature of his previous answers to the queen, who ‘expects of you that entire distinct account in writing of all your proceedings’ which Harley had requested in August. Peterborough replied on 30 Dec.: ‘I have reasons to act with proper caution, and therefore shall avoid more writing to no manner of purpose to my own service, but perhaps to my prejudice’. The matters in question would be ‘most effectually answered by oaths and depositions which will allow of no doubts or constructions’, and ‘whenever her majesty will appoint me a hearing before herself and the committee of Council before whom my answers have been laid, or that her majesty will appoint her secretaries of state and the lord treasurer (because of money matters) to receive the informations’, he would provide proofs at same time.335
On 13 Dec. 1707 the Commons were due to consider Spanish affairs, but James Grahme‡ proposed postponing it to the 18th, when he again moved for ‘putting it off’ until 17 Jan.: ‘there were other papers moved for at the same time, by Mr [William] Bromley‡ and Mr [Ralph] Freman‡, which shews they design treating the matter in conformity to their friends in the House of Lords, which looks hitherto towards favouring Lord Peterborough, and laying the blame of miscarriages elsewhere.’ The Commons did take up the case on the 17th and proceeded to examine papers. On 29 Jan. ‘there were some things started to the commendation of my Lord Peterborough, but that was not the design of the day’, which was to address the queen that of 29,000 men paid for, only 8,660 were at Almanza.336
Meanwhile, on 12 Dec. 1707 the Lords decided to add consideration of the state of the war in Spain and the expedition to Toulon to the matters to be considered in committee of the whole House on the state of the nation. On 15 Dec. Rochester ‘started’ the matter of Peterborough’s expedition, maintaining that if his actions were as they had been represented he deserved the thanks of the House. Halifax then referred to Freind’s Account. He had, he said, never met with the like exploits but in ‘Quintus Curtius’, an ironical reference to the exploits of Alexander the Great.337 Vernon’s account of the debate mentioned Tory support for Peterborough from Rochester, Nottingham and Haversham, as well as Halifax’s classical quip, before noting that ‘Peterborough said something, but not so copiously as he used to do, that he hoped he was to have a hearing one time or another, though he forbore pressing it, that he might not interrupt public affairs’.338 With Peterborough welcoming the opportunity to lay his conduct before the Lords, an address was ordered requesting that the relevant papers relating to the Spanish campaign be laid before the House.
On 19 Dec. 1707, when debate resumed in committee of the whole, Peterborough backed the unsuccessful proposal of Nottingham and Rochester to divert troops from Flanders to Spain, saying he was ‘so fully satisfied of the necessity of sending 20,000 men into Spain that he would be for it even tho’ Lord Galway was to command ’em’.339 Another account had Peterborough suggest he was willing that 19s. in the pound ought to be given rather than peace made on other terms and added that he would himself serve in Spain if necessary, ‘even under the earl of Galway’.340 Yet another described Peterborough’s harangue of almost half an hour in which he ‘spoke modestly of his own conduct when there, and justified it, and then concluded the affairs of Spain were not so desperate, and that a good army would restore all, even though Lord Galway should command it’.341
William Wake, bishop of Lincoln, recorded that when ‘Peterborough’s business’ resumed on 13 Jan. 1708, ‘the House sat till near 7 o’clock’.342 Peterborough spoke ‘near three hours vindicating his conduct, and made it appear how he pressed King Charles to go to Madrid, but he took contrary counsel’.343 Vernon agreed that the House had sat until seven: Peterborough had desired that Sunderland’s letter to him might be read, ‘acquainting him that her majesty did not think fit to admit him to her presence till he had given her satisfaction in some points specified, as not marching with the troops to Madrid, his not supplying the king of Spain as was directed, his retiring to Italy without orders, and his taking up money there at a disadvantageous remittance’. This Peterborough ‘called a charge’ to which he made a ‘long answer’ and ‘had not done when my Lord Sunderland desired notice might be taken that he was not his accuser’. Vernon also noted that Rochester, Buckingham, Nottingham and Haversham ‘seem to favour’ Peterborough.344
On 15 Jan. 1708 Nicolson recorded that the grand committee had sat for a second time on Peterborough’s conduct, who had ‘asserted his own innocence with a deal of bravery, in challenging his accusers, here or elsewhere’.345 On 16 Jan. Adam de Cardonnel‡ wrote that ‘Lord Peterborough has been entertaining the House of Peers for these two or three days past, and is like to do so for several more.’346 On the same day, Addison referred to the Lords sitting very late on the previous two days on ‘Peterborough’s expedition’: ‘I hear the first article which his lordship spoke to was the taking up money at so great an interest and the going into Italy for that end without any commission from her majesty. His lordship has been extremely long in his speeches on that occasion and shows more than ordinary gaiety in his behaviour both in the House and out of it’. Addison also noted that Buckingham and Rochester had been favourably disposed to him, defending him from Marlborough and Godolphin’s attempts to keep him to the point by observing that as Peterborough had not been accused before the House, they were obliged to him for his account of the war.347 Vernon thought on 15 Jan. that Peterborough
was long and perplexed. He pretended to make it appear that every article of what he called the charge against him was altogether groundless; and then added that allowing it to be all true, he would make it appear that it did not affect him at all. To avoid running in a circle, it was at last proposed, that the articles he had pretended to answer should be taken one by one: that the proofs to should be read separately, and his lordship confine his justification to each particular as it was proposed, that the House might make a distinct judgment of it, if they thought fit.
He also claimed that ‘at his going over he sold a manor in Northamptonshire for £18,000; that he took up two years’ income of his estate, amounting to £8,000 which he borrowed of Mr Cornish, at six per cent’, and complained of a recent book ‘which represents him little better than a fool and a coward.’348
On 16 Jan. 1708, the matter of this book, Remarks upon Dr Freind’s Account of the Earl of Peterborough’s Conduct in Spain was raised because it ‘contained divers scandalous reflections’ on Peterborough, or as Nicolson described it, it was ‘scurrilous and scandalous’.349 Later in the day, the book’s author, Richard Kingston, its ‘promoter’, Samuel Briscoe, and its printer, Dryden Leech, were ordered into custody. Vernon touched on Peterborough’s ‘peculiar talent in strategems’, whereby he had approached the printer disguised as a French parson, a friend of Galway’s, who had heard the book would vindicate Galway, and offered to translate it into French, thereby obtaining its contents, though Vernon wrote that the discovery ‘was not worth the contrivance’ for the printers had readily admitted that Kingston was the author.350 Briscoe and Leech were discharged after a hearing on 17 Jan.: Nicolson reported that Kingston was remanded in custody until the 19th, so that Jonathan Trelawny, bishop of Winchester, could attend to prove that he was not ordained.351 On 19 Jan., the Lords duly examined Kingston about his book, ordered him to be prosecuted by the attorney general and discharged him from custody.352 On 27 Jan. Wake reported that the House was ‘still reading the papers relating to my Lord P.’, and on the 31st Nicolson referred to the ‘fruitless reading of more papers brought in’ by him. On 4 Feb. Peterborough ‘produced’ Brigadier Hans Hamilton and Colonel Bisset to attest to his ‘good conduct’ in Spain.353 As Vernon had said on 5 Feb., ‘some think this enquiry is industriously spun out, that the Commons may make the first deduction concerning that Lord’s conduct.’354 The Lords’ enquiries petered out in mid-February after the Commons resumed their debate of 29 Jan. and voted on 3 Feb. that there were only 8,660 effective English soldiers at Almanza.
On 5 Feb. 1708 Swift wrote to Archbishop King that ‘it is a perfect jest to see my Lord Peterborough, reputed as great a Whig as any in England, abhorred by his own party, and caressed by the Tories’.355 On 9 Feb., a court martial sat ‘to hear a difference’ between Peterborough and William Caulfield, 2nd Viscount Charlement [I], who had served in Spain, but ‘the cause was not decided’.356 On 23 Feb. Peterborough acted as a teller opposite Scarbrough on the successful question of whether to hear the remainder of the cause Bunker v. Cooke on the following day. Peterborough was present on the last day of the session on 1 Apr., having attended on 52 days of the session, 49 per cent of the total, and been named to nine committees. On 3 Apr. Peterborough wrote to Hanover advocating the residence of a member of the electoral family in England, to which the elector replied that he would only act in concert with the queen.357 In about May, on a list of the first Parliament of Great Britain, Peterborough was classed as a Tory and Whig, illustrating the contemporary confusion as to his political stance.
On 30 July 1708 Peterborough finally waited on the queen. Godolphin remarked that this, together with Haversham doing the same the previous week, was a worrying portent ‘of what was like to happen next winter when people of his behaviour could meet with encouragement to come to court’. Marlborough, too, was curious, believing that as Peterborough and Haversham were friends, the move had been concerted.358 On 31 July Lewis reported that ‘Peterborough has kissed the queen’s hand introduced by [the] lord t[reasure]r’.359 This formality may have given rise to rumours of another employment, for on 28 Aug. White Kennet†, the future bishop of Peterborough, reported that he was to be appointed governor of Jamaica.360 Not surprisingly, the appointment fell through, a newsletter reporting on 26 Aug. that ‘Peterborough some say cannot get such conditions and powers in the West Indies as he thinks necessary’.361
The Parliament of 1708
Peterborough first attended the 1708-9 session on 26 Nov., missing the first four days. Now resident in Bolton Street for the session, Peterborough was active socially in circles not favourable towards the ministry.362 On 10 Dec. John Poulett, Earl Poulett, wrote that Shrewsbury had been reconciled to Peterborough by Harley’s means.363 On 3 Jan. 1709 Johnston described Peterborough’s presence as a dinner guest at the duke of Buckingham’s on 26 Dec., as ‘a true emblem of the present state of affairs’, as those in attendance included Poulett, Mr Nelson, Dr Burch, Queensberry, Shrewsbury, Andrew Fletcher and Matthew Prior‡.364 On 12 Jan., when the Lords considered the intended Jacobite invasion of Scotland the previous year, which had resulted in the arrest and bringing down to London of a number of Scottish peers, Peterborough ‘threw up the ball and in a manner called up those concerned who had suffered hardships in being brought up, yet they did not open their mouth’.365 On 21 Jan. his name appears on a list as voting in favour of the resolution that a Scots peer possessing a British title had the right to vote in the election of Scottish representative peers. On 28 Mar. he reported from the committee on the estate bill of the late Baron Jeffreys. Also on 28 Mar. he entered his protest to the rejection of the rider to the bill for improving the Union which stated that no person should be tried for high treason unless a copy of the indictment was delivered to the prisoner five days before the trial. He then protested against the passage of the bill in its entirety. He was last present on 18 Apr., shortly before the end of the session, having attended on 34 days of the session, 37 per cent of the total and been named to five committees.
In January 1709, the attorney general wrote to the lord treasurer about a draft of a privy seal for discharging Peterborough’s lands from any demands of the crown upon account of his late employment in Spain. Nevertheless, in March Peterborough wrote to the lord treasurer concerning the accounts of his Spanish command. He complained that the reward for all his services was not to be master of his own estate, under the ‘pretence’ that he had had the disposition of public moneys. He asked for directions to be given for the examination of the accounts of the Spanish expedition. Given all this, and his wife’s indisposition (she died in May), he requested him to ask the queen’s leave to go abroad.366
Peterborough only attended for two days of the 1709-10 session, 19-20 Dec., 2 per cent of the total. It was probably on 6 Dec. 1709 that Peterborough wrote to Harley asking him when he intended to arrive for the session, ‘if you do not think of coming soon, I intend to go into the country till after Christmas. If I am not much mistaken there are numbers that are governable which is a great point, so that it depends upon the generals whether peace or war’.367 On 17 Jan. 1710 Peterborough petitioned together with his two sons and two brothers against orders made in chancery on 21 Apr. 1708 and of 18 Nov. 1709 in favour of Germaine and his wife. The cause was heard in the Lords on 21, 23 and 24 Feb. with Sir Thomas Parker†, the future earl of Macclesfield, and Harcourt acting as the earl’s counsel. On 23 Feb. Peterborough wrote to Parker that ‘though I had not the satisfaction of hearing myself, everybody of all sides assures me never cause was better managed’. The objections of Sir Thomas Powys ‘were very pompous and terrible if true, acts of Parliaments overturned, judgments in the House of Lords mortgages settlements but sure this is sufficiently forcing and I doubt not will appear so in the conclusion’.368 On the 24th, however, the House heard counsel on whether the matter before the House was the same as upon Peterborough’s former appeal dealt with by the House in 1702, and after judging that it was, they found in favour of Germaine and affirmed the judgment.369 Perhaps it was this defeat which persuaded Peterborough to sell some of his Bedfordshire properties to Sir Thomas Trevor, the future Baron Trevor, in 1710.370 As if to compound matters, Henry Mordaunt, his second son and a party to the petition, died of smallpox at Bath on the day the Lords delivered their judgment.371 His death was followed a few weeks later, on 6 Apr., by that of Peterborough’s heir, Lord Mordaunt, of the same disease at Winchester. It was reported that ‘the earl himself is also dangerously ill, partly from grief for the loss of his two sons, and partly from bodily distempers, so that it’s believed he’ll not long survive them.’372 A division list on the vote on Sacheverell’s guilt on 20 Mar. records Peterborough as ‘sick’.373
The Parliament of 1710
Peterborough’s grievances against Marlborough, and his dislike of Godolphin and Sunderland, allowed Harley to draw him into his ‘Juntilla’ against the ministry in 1710.374 However, the queen’s dislike prevented him from achieving high office.375 Throughout August 1710 rumours abounded that he would serve in place of Orford, either as lord high admiral or as part of a new admiralty commission.376 Peter Wentworth believed that his appointment was being hindered because ‘the grudge that was between him and Harley upon his return from Spain is not quite wiped off’.377 There was certainly opposition to him in naval circles, Arthur Maynwaring‡ noting at the end of August that James Berkeley, who sat as 11th Baron Berkeley of Berkeley, but was styled Lord Dursley (later 3rd earl of Berkeley), was ‘enraged at Lord Peterborough’s being to preside in the admiralty’. By early September Maynwaring had heard that ‘Peterborough talks more doubtfully of coming into the admiralty, and pretends not to care for that, but only to go to sea’. 378 Godolphin probably hit the nail on the head when he wrote on 10 Sept.: ‘I can never believe 42 [the queen] is capable of being persuaded to think of 30 [Peterborough].’379
Nevertheless, Harley was keen to provide for Peterborough, and on 12 Sept. 1710 his name figures on a memorandum of Harley’s noting members of both Houses to be provided for in a new ministry.380 Following the death of John Annesley, 4th earl of Anglesey, on 18 Sept., Peterborough was slated as his successor as vice-treasurer of Ireland in a newsletter of 26 Sept., although this quickly proved to be false.381 On Harley’s analysis of peers on 3 Oct., Peterborough was expected to support the ministry. On 6 Oct. Mohun revealed to Cowper that Peterborough had approached him with an offer of office on behalf of the new ministry.382 Socially, Peterborough was very much part of the new ruling set. Swift, with whom Peterborough had been meeting for dinner since April 1709, recounted that he was one of the early members of a group of friends Harley invited to dine with him on a Saturday ‘upon the great change made at court’.383 He also recorded Peterborough dining with Harley on several occasions in October.384 On 20 Oct. Shrewsbury opined on the difficult situation the ministry faced in the Lords, identifying Peterborough as one of those peers likely to be dissatisfied, adding that he would be ‘distracted, and not without reason, if you go and leave his concerns undetermined’.385 Perhaps it was his penchant for making trouble which was why Ralph Bridges in October said that he was supposed to be the author (with Andrew Fletcher), of Faults on Both Sides (the author was in fact Simon Clement, though Clement was another associate of Peterborough’s).386
Peterborough was named as general of marines in early November 1710, at a salary of £5 a day, an appointment with the added attraction that it would be seen as ‘lessening’ Marlborough.387 On 7 Nov. Wentworth noted that the town news had Peterborough going ‘three several ways at once to Vienna, West Indies, Spain’.388 On 8 Nov. Ralph Bridges reported that ‘Dr Freind told me today that Peterborough ‘certainly goes abroad very soon, but not without an army as before.’389 On 21 Nov. St John outlined the ministry’s plan for Peterborough: he would go to Vienna and to Turin if necessary, with a stop at The Hague for a few days to discern the views of the States, in order ‘to excite those princes to send speedy succours to Spain’.390 On 23 Nov., Peterborough had Prior, Lewis and Dr Friend to dine with him, prompting Swift to describe him as ‘the ramblingest lying rogue on earth’.391
Peterborough attended the opening day of the 1710 Parliament, 25 Nov. 1710, and on eight days in all before the Christmas recess. On 29 Dec. he dined with St John, in the company of Swift and Harley, the expectation being that he would be going ‘to Vienna in a day or two’. On 3 Jan. 1711 Swift dined with Peterborough at The Globe, in the Strand, ‘among half a dozen lawyers and attorneys and hangdogs, signing of deeds and stuff before his journey’. However, given that Peterborough was ‘one of those many who are mightily bent upon having such enquiries made’ into the ‘late management’, his mission was to be delayed.392 On that very day, the Lords had resolved to inquire into the Spanish war, and on 4 Jan. it was resolved to address the queen that Peterborough might stay for a few days in order to assist in that inquiry. The queen agreed on the 5th. In committee of the whole House on that day he ‘spoke about an hour relating to his conduct there’, giving ‘a long account of matters whilst he had the command there, and how tho’ he had often written to great men here for a supply of money and troops, yet could obtain neither so that the war on that side was (as it were) quite neglected’. Peterborough then had to pause, not having the queen’s leave to answer some of the questions, whereupon the Lords addressed her to allow him to do so. Galway and Tyrawley were also ordered to attend the House. The queen’s agreement to this was relayed to the House on the 6th, and in the committee of the whole on that day Peterborough gave an account of the crucial council of war held in Valencia four years before.393
On 8 Jan. 1711 many papers on the subject were presented, including some from Peterborough. His secretary, Aaron Hill, testified as to their provenance. When the committee of the whole resumed its deliberations on the 9th, the key question was the Valencia council of war. Peterborough wanted his ‘recapitulation’ to be read in the committee of the whole, and that Galway and Tyrawley might be called in to answer questions. He also said ‘that to avoid all mistakes, he desired his paper might not be called narrative, which might look like an accusation, for he accused no body; but only a recapitulation of his answers’. Galway and Tyrawley were then called in and the clerk read them the questions put to Peterborough on 5 Jan. and his answers. During the debate about whether Galway and Tyrawley were being accused of anything, Peterborough said that ‘no man can be accused for giving his opinion in a council of war’. Peterborough and Marlborough then clashed over the efficacy of Tyrawley’s answers. Peterborough also had more papers read, saying, ‘he had overcome all his enemies, but lies, and these he had papers enough with him to defeat.’ After Freind had been called in to corroborate Peterborough, Ferrers proposed the motion that Peterborough had given a ‘very faithful, just and honourable account of the councils of war in Valencia’. The motion was put and carried after a debate of about an hour, following a division on the question of whether to resume the House, carried 59-45.394
When the House resumed its deliberations in committee of the whole on 11 Jan. 1711, Peterborough opened the debate because, with his departure imminent, he wanted an opportunity to clear himself from the heads laid against him by Sunderland when secretary of state. In a long debate about the events of 1707, both Godolphin and Marlborough sparred with Peterborough. Peterborough had the satisfaction of seeing the House agree to the committee’s resolution vindicating his claim that the insistence of Galway, Tyrawley and Stanhope in the conference held at Valencia on an offensive war had led to the defeat at Almanza and to the failed attempt on Toulon.395 On the following day, after leave had been applied for and granted by the queen allowing ministers and others to speak with freedom, the House debated and passed a resolution censuring the conduct of the previous ministry for approving an offensive war in Spain. During this debate Peterborough returned to the subject of the abortive project to take Toulon, and the House passed a resolution that Peterborough, during his command ‘did perform many great and eminent services; and, if the opinion he gave in the council of war in Valencia had been followed, it might very probably have prevented the misfortunes that have since happened in Spain’. Lord Keeper Harcourt was then ordered to give Peterborough the thanks of the House, to which Peterborough replied with his thanks
with a heart full of the greatest respect and gratitude. No services can deserve such a reward; it is more than a sufficient recompense for any past hardships, and to which nothing can give an addition. I cannot reproach myself with any want of zeal for the public service. But your lordships’ approbation of what I was able to do, towards serving my queen and country, gives me new life; and I shall endeavour, in all my future actions, not to appear unworthy of the unmerited favour I have received today from this great assembly.396
That was the last day Peterborough was present in the House for this session. He had attended on 11 days of the session, 10 per cent of the total.
Having taken his leave of the queen on 11 Jan., on the day after the debate and his vindication in the House, Peterborough registered his proxy with Shrewsbury and sailed from Greenwich.397 On 25 Jan. he wrote from The Hague to Harley that he had ‘lost a great satisfaction when I could not rejoice with you … before my departure about our parliamentary successes’ in the Lords; ‘as they were advantageous to me, I hope they were not prejudicial to the interest of my friends. I am sure their credit is as dear to me as my own reputation.’398 Peterborough arrived in Vienna in February to mediate between the Emperor and the duke of Savoy.399 No sooner had he departed for Turin, than the Emperor Joseph died on 6 Apr. 1711. Peterborough decided to return to Spain, but in Genoa he met Argyll, who was on his way to take command in Barcelona, and in the event returned to Vienna, and then London via Hanover.400 He landed at Great Yarmouth on 23 June, and arrived in London on the 24th ‘without one servant’, having ‘left them scattered in several towns of Germany’, and even outstripping his own express letters.401 He had taken only ‘six days between Turin and Vienna, a journey for which the courier allows seven.’402
When Swift met up with Peterborough on 3 July 1711 he found him ‘violent against a peace, and finds true what I writ to him, that the ministry seems for it’.403 His arrival created a problem for the ministry, given Peterborough’s propensity to cause trouble. The admiralty seemed one possible solution, for on 7 July Mary Lovett reported ‘great talk’ of Jersey ‘being made lord high admiral, but the Dutch envoy has told my Lord Oxford [as Harley had since become] it would be highly displeasing to them, he being against the Hanover succession, so it’s thought my Lord Peterborough will come in that place.’404 Peterborough attended the prorogation on 10 July. Not everyone was displeased with his presence: Mrs Delarivier Manley regarded him as a possible patron, and someone willing to recommend her to Oxford’s protection.405
The solution seems to have been to despatch Peterborough back to Vienna as ambassador, an appointment which a newsletter writer reported as early as 21 July.406 His initial mission was to encourage the German princes to elect Charles as Emperor.407 On 17 Aug. John Drummond‡ announced that Peterborough had arrived safely in Holland.408 On 1 Sept. Swift dined with St John at Peterborough’s house at Parsons Green, the earl having ‘left it and his gardens to the secretary during his absence’.409 On 4 Sept. St John reported to Oxford that ‘I have had a very sober letter from our friend, Lord Peterborough; he begins to find out that nothing but a peace can deliver us from the present perplexed state, and from the worse prospect of affairs’.410 On 6 Sept. a warrant for £1,500 was signed for his equipage and preparation following his diplomatic mission in Germany.411 A newsletter of 18 Oct. reported that ‘the death of the earl of Peterborough is contradicted by the Holland mails’.412 Swift noted the report, too, but added that he was better and the queen was sending him to Italy.413 On 16 Nov. the queen told Oxford that Dartmouth had suggested sending Peterborough to Venice, adding ‘I think he should be sent somewhere, for I fear if he comes home while the Parliament is sitting he will be very troublesome’.414
Peterborough was absent for the whole of the 1711-12 session, but even in his absence, he cast a shadow over ministerial thinking. On 10 Dec. 1711, in the aftermath of the vote on ‘No Peace Without Spain’, Oxford included Peterborough on his list of loyal peers to be gratified. Nor was Peterborough entirely content, writing in December from Augsburg asking to be made more useful or to return home to ‘York Buildings, my bottle of claret and Dr Swift’.415 On 15 Dec. he wrote to Oxford, again from Augsburg, ‘you must live to complete our security and free us from the fear of relapsing into the same hands which are always grasping at the same power, which they have used so ill.’ After claiming to ‘know my own infirmities’, he continued ‘I value myself upon nothing but diligence and sincerity and shall always be found most willing to quit public employments, but I expect countenance and support whilst I am in them, and above all things to be made useful, or to be restored to my garden and my books.’416
At the beginning of 1712, Alexander Cunningham, about to depart from Venice, wrote to Oxford that having frequently been with Peterborough, he wished to remembered to the lord treasurer—‘we had a world of debates, but knowing him to be an injured person, debated nothing he said of Lord Sunderland and some others’. On other matters ‘we spoke freely’ and Cunningham ‘saw him lay out a world of money, but could not get him in with the virtuosi here, who had not put him to so much charges as the others that haunted his house’.417 Meanwhile, St John reassured Peterborough that his ‘interests’ had been taken care of in case the bill enquiring into William III’s Irish grants had passed, Peterborough ‘having very meritoriously a share in these grants’.418 His constant travelling caused Shaftesbury to refer to Peterborough in May 1712 as the ‘flying spectre’.419 At the end of August his whereabouts were unknown: Prior had dispatched a messenger with Oxford’s letters to Turin, only for the French minister to tell him that Peterborough was expected in Vienna. ‘Monsr. Torcy’, he wrote, ‘knows my lord’s way of voyaging as well as we do.’420 On 22 Sept. Peterborough was in Turin, from where he wrote to Oxford to tell him how ‘it was my esteem and inclination for your Lordship and my dependence on your friendship which engaged me with yourself and others for the rescue of my queen and the good of my country’. He continued, reflecting on the bond between them:
your lordship remembers the time and place where we met yourself and some others, I desired then to prove myself your friend, when you had many enemies which I esteemed such to the public upon many accounts, and for being yours, we were persecuted with the same hatred, we had the same foe to defend ourselves from, and were attacked almost in the same manner, so that many reasons created a correspondence and inclination, the one I shall continue with the greatest sincerity and the other shall endeavour to deserve from your lordship.421
Return to England, 1713
Keen to play a more active part in domestic politics, Peterborough sought, and obtained, leave to return to England.422 On 10 Jan. 1713, he arrived at Oxford’s house in London, where Bolingbroke (as St John had since become) and Swift were dining. As the latter recalled ‘he left England with a bruise by his coach overturning, that made him spit blood, and was so ill we expected any post to hear of his death. But he outrode it, or outdrunk it, or something, and is come home lustier than ever’; at over 60 he had ‘more spirits than any young fellow I know in England’, had ‘acquired a regiment of horse and was talked of for a garter’.423 Adam Ottley confirmed that Peterborough had expected the blue ribbon, but that it had been deferred.424 On 21 Jan. Prior wrote somewhat mischievously to Oxford from Paris, ‘how glad are we that earl Peterborough is in England via Holland?’425 Despite his earlier letter to Oxford, on 16 Feb. the countess of Strafford wrote that she had been told that Peterborough was ‘not at all pleased with lord treasurer’s usage of him’.426
On 26 Feb. 1713 Oxford listed Peterborough as one of those peers to be contacted before the forthcoming session. He attended the prorogation on 3 March. On 14 Mar. Swift recorded that Peterborough was ill of his old bruise and ‘spits blood’, blaming its reccurrence on an Italian lady he had brought with him.427 Before the session began, Peterborough’s name was included on Swift’s list of March-April 1713 (which was amended by Oxford), as one of those expected to support the ministry. He was present on the opening day of the Parliament, 9 April. During the debate on the Address, Peterborough said ‘it was known by everybody that there had been an endeavour to make a captain general for life’. Sunderland challenged him to prove it; Peterborough was said not to have responded.428 Swift noted that Peterborough ‘flirted against duke Marlborough … but it was in answer to one of Halifax’s impertinences’.429 On 12 May Peterborough dined with James Butler, 2nd duke of Ormond, where according to William Berkeley*, 4th Baron Berkeley of Stratton, he was ‘extremely entertaining’.430
On 1 June 1713, when the Lords considered the state of the nation, Findlater (formerly earl of Seafield [S]) made a motion for leave to bring in a bill to dissolve the Union. Peterborough was one of the first Lords to speak against it, joining Oxford and others in opposing it as impracticable and only achievable through the same authority that made the Union.431 According to one account, Peterborough said the Scots would even find fault with God Almighty and that Scotland could not be ‘divorced now by this Parliament.’ Another account revealed that Peterborough’s metaphor was intended to allude to the recent marriage of Archibald Campbell, earl of Ilay [S], to the daughter of Walter Whitfield‡, the paymaster of the marines: Scotland, he said, ‘was a wife to England, and it was in all respects alike, and tho’ after [marriage] matters of the greatest consequence frequently happened, yet these were not sufficient grounds of separation’.432 Berkeley of Stratton remarked only that ‘Peterborough was very pleasant in comparing the union to a marriage, and owned we had been a little rough to our spouse’.433 In another account, Peterborough had further extended the metaphor by claiming that by the Union England (the groom) had mended Scotland’s (the bride’s), fortune, and had contended that the Scots, never satisfied, would have ‘all the advantages of being united to England, but would pay nothing by their good will’.434
On 8 June 1713 in a debate in committee of the whole House on the bill imposing a malt tax on Scotland, the main speakers were North, Leeds and Peterborough, rather than the more prominent members of the ministry.435 About 13 June Oxford classed Peterborough on a list as one of those expected to support the bill confirming the French commercial treaty when it reached the Lords. L’Hermitage reported that on 17 June, during the debate on trade with France, Peterborough spoke for a very long time to defend it, and finished by saying ‘I have made a long speech, but I do not know where I began, I do not know what I said and I do not know how to end. I believe that I have tired you, but I will no longer do so’, because ‘this will be the last time that I will speak of it’.436 On 30 June 1713, Wentworth noted that, the peers were ‘very merry upon one another’ during the debate for an address to the queen for the removal of the Pretender from Lorraine: Peterborough ‘was for sending the pretender to Rome’, joking that ‘it was very fitting one bred in France should be sent to Rome’; Boyer recorded that it was in answer to North and Grey’s question as to where they would have the Pretender live, that Peterborough opined that ‘since he began his studies in Paris, the fittest place for him to improve himself, was Rome’.437 It seems that it was to this incident that Thomas Carte was referring when he reported that when Peterborough asked ‘why would they send him to Rome? Would they make him more a papist than he was?’, Sunderland cried out ‘Yes, by God will we’.438 The only day Peterborough attended the Lords in July was on the 16th, the day on which Parliament was prorogued. He had attended on 26 days of the session, 39 per cent of the total, and had been appointed to four committees.
Peterborough was nominated to the Order of the Garter on 3 Aug. 1713, and was installed on the following day. Apparently, he did not pay his fees (nearly £300) offering ‘his note’ instead.439 Peterborough was also sent on his travels again. By mid-November he was in Paris, where he had an audience with Louis XIV before leaving for Italy.440 At the end of November Josiah Burchett‡ wrote to William Lowndes‡ that he had communicated to the admiralty commissioners the queen’s intention to allow Peterborough £6,000 ‘for the whole time he served in that commission [as general of marines], and in lieu of all salary and demands whatsoever anyways relating thereunto’, though this left Burchett with the problem was that since Peterborough’s commission had not passed through the admiralty, the commissioners could not regularly take cognizance of the matter.441 In January 1714, according to his chaplain George Berkeley (the philosopher), Peterborough had left ‘the greatest part of his family’ in Leghorn, and planned to cross southern Italy from February to May.442 On 1 June Prior wrote from Paris, ‘God knows where Peterborough is or what he is doing or when he will be here. I have letters for him from above six weeks past.’443 On 17 June he was in Alessandria.444 On 18 July he was in Paris, where Prior talked with him about his roving diplomacy: ‘I have confronted him with Count Peron and Monsr. de Torcy, and he will in 10 or 12 days be best able to give you an account of leagues to be made in favour of the king of Sicily and for the security of Italy.’445 On 24 July Peterborough wrote to Oxford from Paris, ‘I am sorry I cannot congratulate with your lordship as I heartily wish I could upon the transactions of this session. I am surprised to find such difficulties in every place, such uneasiness in every person.’ He then referred to ‘those friends which I had hoped to see eternally united, at least in their endeavours against the common foe’, adding that ‘I live under the greatest uneasiness having repeated accounts which give me melancholy ideas. I thank God I have no share either through self-interest or vanity in any of those measures by which I fear we are ruining our friends and exalting our enemies.’446 On 11 Aug. Ralph Bridges reported that Peterborough had come over to England from France on 6 Aug., on hearing the news of the Queen’s death, and had said that ‘the French King will not stir’.447 He attended the Lords on 18 Aug., the only day he sat during the short session. Nor did he stay long in England, it being reported in December that Peterborough was in Paris again on his way to Italy.448 A list of 26 Jan. 1715 included Peterborough among those Tories still in office.449
Peterborough continued his own eccentric course until his death on 25 Oct. 1735, on his yacht off Lisbon. He was buried on 21 Nov. at Turvey. All four of his sons predeceased him (two in infancy), and he was succeeded by his grandson, Charles Mordaunt†, 4th earl of Peterborough. His daughter, Henrietta (1682-1760) had married in 1707 Alexander Gordon, marquess of Huntly, the future 2nd duke of Gordon [S]. Although Huntly was a Catholic, all her children were brought up as Protestants, including Cosmo Gordon†, 3rd duke of Gordon, a future Scottish representative peer.
There seems to be general agreement as to Peterborough’s enigmatic character, talented but unpredictable. Burnet summed him up as ‘a man of much heat, many notions, and full of discourse’, but ‘not a man of solid judgment nor of a firm virtue’. He had ‘republican principles in him to a very high degree, but all his thoughts are crude and indigested, and a little heat brings secrets easily from him, especially to those who go into his notions and flatter him; for vanity is his weak side’.450 Macky’s character sketch from Anne’s reign referred to his ‘natural giddiness’, his ‘fiery inconstant temper’, and that ‘he affects popularity, and loves to preach in coffee houses, and public places; is an open enemy to revealed religion; brave in his person; hath a good estate; does not seem expensive. Yet always in debt and very poor’. To which Swift added, ‘this character is for the most part true’.451 In the 1690s he was perhaps the only peer who could be described as a ‘country Whig’, and he was still a Whig in Anne’s reign, if ‘a distinctly unorthodox one’.452 As a result, the essentially Tory ministry of 1710-14 found it expedient to encourage his absence as much as possible from domestic politics.
S.N.H.- 1 Earl of Roden, Private Diary of Viscountess Mordaunt, 155, 187; Evelyn Diary, iv. 84.
- 2 TNA, PROB 11/674.
- 3 CSP Dom. 1689-90, p. 215.
- 4 Evelyn Diary, v. 210.
- 5 B. Cameron, This Master Firebrand (2009), 5-9; Viscountess Mordaunt Diary, 200; Diary of Henry Teonge, ed. G. E. Manwaring, 222, 227, 229; Verney ms mic. M636/32, J. Stewkeley to Sir R. Verney, 2 July 1679; HMC Ormonde, n.s. v. 331.
- 6 Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 556, iii. 301-2; CSP Dom. 1694-5, p. 115.
- 7 M. Goldie, ‘The Roots of True Whiggism’, Hist. of Pol. Thought, i. 200.
- 8 Viscountess Mordaunt Diary, 15 Cameron, Master Firebrand, 1; Clarendon SP, iii. 389.
- 9 Verney ms mic. M636/28, Sir R. to E. Verney, 21 Dec. 1674.
- 10 Eg. 3329, ff. 7-9.
- 11 Evelyn Diary, iv. 84; Viscountess Mordaunt Diary, 187.
- 12 Rochester-Savile Letters, 42; HMC Egmont, ii. 51.
- 13 Viscountess Mordaunt Diary, 200; CSP Dom. 1678, p. 195.
- 14 Teonge Diary, 222, 277, 229; Cameron, Master Firebrand, 5-6.
- 15 Verney ms mic. M636/32, J. Stewkeley to Sir R. Verney, 2 July 1679.
- 16 HMC Kenyon, 115-16; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk, ii. 221-2; HMC Ormonde, n.s. v. 281.
- 17 Sidney Diary, ii. 62.
- 18 HMC Ormonde, n.s. v. 325.
- 19 Verney ms mic. M636/34, C. Gardiner to Sir R. Verney, 25 May 1680.
- 20 HMC Rutland, ii. 62.
- 21 TNA, C 9/109/62.
- 22 C. Jones, ‘The London Topography of the Parliamentary Elite’, London Top. Rec. xxx. 46.
- 23 HMC Ormonde, n.s. v. 331; Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 47; CSP Dom. 1679-80, p. 520.
- 24 Add. 39757, f. 108.
- 25 Bodl. Carte 81, f. 656.
- 26 Somers Tracts, viii. 282-3.
- 27 Sidney Diary, ii. 180, 198.
- 28 CSP Dom. 1680-1, p. 216.
- 29 Add. 39757, f. 108.
- 30 HMC 4th Rep. 451.
- 31 Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 80, 95.
- 32 Castle Ashby mss, folder 1092, W. Howard or H. Legge to Northampton, 4 Aug. 1681; NAS, GD 406/1/8237-9; Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 113.
- 33 CSP Dom. 1680-1, pp. 328, 427.
- 34 CTB, vi. 441; Evelyn Diary, iv. 188-9, 202, 259, 273, 275; Add. 15892, f. 100.
- 35 VCH Surr. iii. 306.
- 36 CSP Dom. 1680-1, p. 497.
- 37 Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 142; HMC Ormonde, n.s. vi. 222; CTB, vii. 718.
- 38 Reresby Mems. 250; CSP Dom. 1682, pp. 113-14, 116, 129-30, 137-41; Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 174.
- 39 CSP Dom. 1683-4, p. 193; HMC 7th Rep. 481.
- 40 Halifax Letters, i. 459; Dalrymple Mems. ii. pt. 1/bk. 3, p. 63.
- 41 Bramston Autobiog. 216; Macaulay, Hist. of England (ed. Firth), ii. 693.
- 42 Morrice, Ent’ring Bk, iii. 66.
- 43 Burnet Supp. ed. Foxcroft, 287.
- 44 CSP Dom. 1686-7, p. 447; Cameron, Master Firebrand, 16.
- 45 Correspondentie van Willem III en Bentinck, ed. Japikse, pt. I. vol. ii. 8.
- 46 Cameron, Master Firebrand, 16; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk, iii. 282-3; Ellis Corresp. i. 177-8.
- 47 Correspondentie van Willem III en Bentinck, I. ii. 8-11; L. Schwoerer, Declaration of Rights, 106; Burnet, iii. 180-1.
- 48 CSP Dom. 1687-9, p. 400; HMC Downshire, i. 260.
- 49 Add. Ch. 73991.
- 50 Dalrymple Mems. ii. pt. 1/bk. 5 app., pp. 75-77.
- 51 Correspondentie van Willem III en Bentinck, I. i. 32-33.
- 52 Add. 41815, f. 64.
- 53 CSP Col. 1685-88, pp. 506, 529, 536; CTB, viii. 2172; HMC Dartmouth, i. 136.
- 54 Longleat, Bath mss, Thynne pprs. 43, ff. 144-5.
- 55 Schwoerer, Declaration of Rights, 110; Dalrymple Mems. ii. pt. 1/bk. 5, p. 40; Hist. of Pol. Thought, i. 208.
- 56 Ellis Corresp. ii. 228.
- 57 Life of James II, ii. 204.
- 58 Morrice, Entr’ing Bk, iv. 336, 368.
- 59 Cameron, Master Firebrand, 23.
- 60 Add. 36707, f. 51; Evelyn Diary, iv. 612n.
- 61 Add. 75366, endorsed ‘concerning the message to the king’.
- 62 Kingdom without a King, 124, 151, 153, 158, 159-161, 165; Add. 75366, Halifax’s notes on debate of 24 Dec. 1688; Rev. Pols. 67-68.
- 63 Clarendon Corresp. ii. 237.
- 64 HMC Portland, iii. 423; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk, iv. 498.
- 65 BIHR, xlvii. 50; Rev. Pols. 75.
- 66 Morrice, Ent’ring Bk, iv. 511.
- 67 Horwitz, Parl. Pol. 11.
- 68 Ailesbury Mems. i. 230.
- 69 Clarendon Corresp. ii. 261.
- 70 Cameron, Master Firebrand, 34; Locke Corresp. ed. de Beer, iii. 527-8, 538.
- 71 NAS, GD 157/2681/40.
- 72 Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 505; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk, v. 15.
- 73 Add. 19253, ff. 191-2.
- 74 Clarendon Corresp. ii. 264.
- 75 Glassey, JPs, 104.
- 76 Reresby Mems. 564; Clarendon Corresp. ii. 295-6; Burnet Supp. 313.
- 77 Morrice, Ent’ring Bk, v. 75-77.
- 78 Horwitz, Parl. Pol. 19.
- 79 Reresby Mems. 565.
- 80 CSP Dom. 1689-90, p. 45.
- 81 Halifax Letters, ii. 207; Dalrymple Mems. ii. pt. 2/bk. 3, p. 109.
- 82 HMC Lords, ii. 55.
- 83 CSP Dom. 1689-90, p. 97; Add. 17677 II, ff. 77-78.
- 84 J. Childs, British Army of William III, 27-29; Locke Corresp. iii. 638.
- 85 Bodl. Carte 228, f. 186.
- 86 Morrice, Entring Bk, v. 168.
- 87 Morrice, Ent’ring Bk, v. 184, 194, 200.
- 88 Halifax Letters, ii. 91.
- 89 Morrice, Ent’ring Bk, v. 335-6.
- 90 Burnet Supp. 313.
- 91 Morrice, Ent’ring Bk, v. 399n.
- 92 Morrice, Ent’ring Bk, v. 399.
- 93 CTB, ix. 26-78, 353-76, 425.
- 94 Burnet Supp. 313.
- 95 NAS GD 406/1/3462.
- 96 Add. 70014, f. 312.
- 97 HMC Lords, iii. 2-5; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk, v. 423.
- 98 Verney ms mic. M636/44, J. Stewkeley to Sir R. Verney, 9 Apr. 1690.
- 99 Eg. 3347, ff. 4-5.
- 100 HMC Lords, iii. 41.
- 101 Morrice, Ent’ring Bk, v. 435.
- 102 Add. 29564, f. 355.
- 103 HMC Lords, iii. 42-43.
- 104 HMC Lords, iii. 48.
- 105 Morrice, Ent’ring Bk, v. 437-8.
- 106 HMC Lords, iii. 34-35.
- 107 Morrice, Ent’ring Bk, v. 442.
- 108 HEHL, HM 30659 (4), newsletter, 30 Jan. 1690; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk, v. 371.
- 109 Add. 70270, R. Harley to his wife, 7 June 1690; Luttrell, Brief Relation, ii. 51; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk, v. 456.
- 110 HMC Finch, iii. 378-89; Mary Mems. ed. Doebner, 30.
- 111 Halifax Letters, ii. 215, 245.
- 112 Bodl. ms Eng. poet. d. 53, ff. 53-55.
- 113 J.F. Wadmore, History and Antiquity .... of the Worshipful Company of Skinners, 57.
- 114 G. De Krey, Fractured Society, 59; Hist. of Pol. Thought, i. 200.
- 115 Horwitz, Parl. Pol. 99; Surr. Hist. Cent., 371/14/J3; HMC Finch, iii. 309.
- 116 CSP Dom. 1690-1, p. 40; Dalrymple Mems. iii. pt. 2, bk. 5 app., pp. 81-82; HMC Finch, ii. 319.
- 117 NLS, ms. 7012, ff. 109-110.
- 118 CSP Dom. 1690-1, p. 45; Dalrymple Mems. iii. pt.2, bk. 5, app., pp. 87-88, 93-95, 132-3.
- 119 Ailesbury Mems. 391.
- 120 CSP Dom. 1690-1, p. 66.
- 121 De Krey, Fractured Society, 68; Dalrymple Mems. iii. pt. 2, bk. 5 app., pp. 117-18.
- 122 CSP Dom. 1690-1, pp. 58-59; Dalrymple Mems. iii. pt. 2, bk. 5 app., pp. 103-4.
- 123 Cameron, Master Firebrand, 62; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk, v. 523.
- 124 Browning, Danby, iii. 180.
- 125 HMC Portland, iii. 455.
- 126 HMC Le Fleming, 307.
- 127 Luttrell, Brief Relation, ii. 165; Locke Corresp. iv. 226; HMC Le Fleming, 320.
- 128 Luttrell, Brief Relation, ii. 206, 215; Add. 70270, R. Harley to his wife, 14 Apr. 1691; HMC Le Fleming, 325.
- 129 Locke Corresp. iv. 303.
- 130 Luttrell, Brief Relation, ii. 308.
- 131 CSP Dom. 1690-1, p. 29; CTB ix. 685; Cameron, Master Firebrand, 66-7.
- 132 HMC 7th Rep. 208.
- 133 HMC Lords, iii. 261-4; Add. 70015, ff. 258, 260; Verney ms mic 636/45, J. Verney to Sir R. Verney, 2 Dec. 1691.
- 134 Ranke, Hist. of England, vi. 171-2; HMC 7th Rep. 209.
- 135 CTP, 1556-1696, pp. 360-1; CTP, 1697-1702, pp. 318-19.
- 136 CSP Dom. 1689-90, pp. 350, 542; Locke Corresp. iv. 352; HMC Lords, iii. 454-64.
- 137 HMC Lords, iv. 67.
- 138 CSP Dom. 1691-2, pp. 234, 244, 381; HMC Finch, iv. 83-88, 97-98, 112; Luttrell, Brief Relation, ii. 478.
- 139 Locke Corresp. iv. 527-8.
- 140 Locke Corresp. iv. 583-4.
- 141 HMC 7th Rep. p. 212; Ranke, Hist. of England, vi. 199.
- 142 HMC Lords, iv. 296; State Trials, xii. 1048-9.
- 143 Horwitz, Parl. Pol. 199.
- 144 Locke Corresp. iv. 662.
- 145 Luttrell, Brief Relation, iii. 121.
- 146 Add. 70219, Bellomont to R. Harley, n.d. [7 Aug. 1693].
- 147 Add. 29595, ff. 1-25; HMC Finch, v. 198, 201, 207, 224.
- 148 HMC Lords, n.s. i. 32.
- 149 Luttrell, Brief Relation, iii. 234; HMC Hastings, ii. 232-4; HMC Lords, n.s. i. 51-52.
- 150 TNA, SP 105/60, ff. 123-6.
- 151 Prideaux Letters, 165.
- 152 Hatton Corresp. ii (Cam. Soc. n.s. xxiii), 200; Verney ms mic. M636/47, J. Verney to Sir R. Verney, 6 Feb. 1694; CSP Dom. Addenda 1689-95, p. 238.
- 153 Horwitz, Parl. Pol. 132.
- 154 Add. 17677 OO, ff. 191-3.
- 155 Luttrell, Brief Relation, iii. 299; Halifax Letters, ii. 175; Ranke, Hist. of England, vi. 247.
- 156 CSP Dom. 1694-5, p. 228.
- 157 Lexington Pprs, 23-24.
- 158 Luttrell, Brief Relation, iii. 432.
- 159 HMC Lords, n.s. i. 441-2.
- 160 HMC Lords, n.s. i. 404, 406; Add. 29565, f. 545.
- 161 Add. 46527, f. 74; Luttrell, Brief Relation, iii. 457.
- 162 Add. 46527, f. 77.
- 163 HMC Hastings, ii. 247.
- 164 HMC Lords, n.s. i. 551.
- 165 Bodl. Carte 130, ff. 355-56.
- 166 Luttrell, Brief Relation, iii. 547; CSP Dom. 1695, p. 92.
- 167 HMC Downshire, i. 586.
- 168 HMC Hastings, iv. 310-16.
- 169 Locke Corresp. v. 580.
- 170 HMC Lords, n.s. ii. 129.
- 171 HEHL, HM 30659 (57).
- 172 HMC Hastings, ii. 259; Add. 29566, f. 156; Add. 30000A, f. 19.
- 173 Luttrell, Brief Relation, iv. 42.
- 174 HEHL, HM 30659 (65); Leics. RO, Finch mss DG 7, box 4959, P.P. 113 (vi).
- 175 Horwitz, Parl. Pol. 178.
- 176 HEHL, HM 30659 (69); Portledge Pprs. ed. R.J. Kerr and I.C. Duncan, 229; Horwitz, Parl. Pol. 178.
- 177 CSP Dom. 1696, pp. 394, 398.
- 178 HMC Buccleuch, ii. 463.
- 179 N. and Q. ser. 3, xi. 109.
- 180 CSP Dom. 1702-3, p. 539.
- 181 J. Ralph, Hist. of England, ii. 678; Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, i. 11-14, 29-30.
- 182 Shrewsbury Corresp. 408, 411, 413.
- 183 Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, i. 35.
- 184 HMC Lords, n.s. ii. 260.
- 185 Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, i. 1-3, 103-5, 108; Shrewsbury Corresp. 427-8, 433.
- 186 Shrewsbury Corresp. 435, 439; Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, i. 88-89, 95.
- 187 Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, i. 133, 135-6.
- 188 WSHC, 2667/25/7.
- 189 HMC Buccleuch, ii. 430.
- 190 Add. 33251, f. 60.
- 191 Ailesbury Mems. 392-3.
- 192 Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, i. 140.
- 193 Add. 33251, f. 63.
- 194 Staffs. RO, D260/M/F/1/6, ff. 96-98.
- 195 Lexington Pprs. 237; HMC Bath, iii. 100.
- 196 Shrewsbury Corresp. 447-9.
- 197 Locke Corresp. v. 742-3.
- 198 HMC Buccleuch, ii. 434-5.
- 199 Shrewsbury Corresp. 454-6.
- 200 Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, i. 164.
- 201 Shrewsbury Corresp. 457.
- 202 HMC Buccleuch, ii. 438-9.
- 203 Shrewsbury Corresp. 462-3.
- 204 Locke Corresp. v. 754; HMC Buccleuch, ii. 439-40.
- 205 Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, i. 173-4.
- 206 HEHL, Stowe (Chandos) ms 26 (1), p. 2.
- 207 Northants. RO, Montagu (Boughton) mss. 46/56. Shrewsbury Corresp. 465.
- 208 Add. 61358, f. 12.
- 209 Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, i. 177-8, 185.
- 210 Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, i. 199, 205.
- 211 HMC Bath, iii. 105, 107-8.
- 212 Locke Corresp. vi. 81.
- 213 HMC Bath, iii. 107.
- 214 Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, i. 246.
- 215 Shrewsbury Corresp. 482-3.
- 216 Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, i. 275.
- 217 Luttrell, Brief Relation, iv. 241.
- 218 Cameron, Master Firebrand, 112; UNL, PwA 1261/1.
- 219 CSP Dom. 1697, p. 206.
- 220 UNL, PwA 160/1-3.
- 221 Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters,, i. 443, 447; Horwitz, Parl. Pol. 228.
- 222 Shrewsbury Corresp. 511.
- 223 Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, i. 449, 453-4.
- 224 Shrewsbury Corresp. 524.
- 225 Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters,, i. 457-9.
- 226 Northants. RO, Montagu (Boughton) mss. 46/181.
- 227 Shrewsbury Corresp. 532.
- 228 Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, i. 486-8 (misdated).
- 229 Longleat, Bath mss, Thynne pprs. 44, f. 47.
- 230 CSP Dom. 1698, p. 129; Luttrell, Brief Relation, iv. 351.
- 231 Longleat, Bath mss, Thynne pprs. 44, ff. 57-58.
- 232 CSP Dom. 1698, p. 145.
- 233 Letters of William III and Louis XIV, ed. P. Grimblot, i. 352.
- 234 CSP Dom. 1698, p. 248.
- 235 Longleat, Bath mss, Thynne pprs. 44, f. 101.
- 236 Luttrell, Brief Relation iv. 369.
- 237 Cumbria RO, D/Lons/L1/1/36/7.
- 238 HMC Lords, n.s. x. 167-8.
- 239 HMC Lords, n.s. iii. 228.
- 240 Shrewsbury Corresp. 563-4.
- 241 Cameron, Master Firebrand, 119.
- 242 Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, ii. 264.
- 243 Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, ii. 345-9.
- 244 Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, ii. 368, 377-8, 384-5; Shrewsbury Corresp. 597-8.
- 245 Lutttrell, Brief Relation, iv. 601. HMC Lords, n.s. iv. 6-7.
- 246 Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, ii. 404.
- 247 Hatton Corresp. ii (Cam. Soc. n.s. xxiii), 246; Cocks Diary, 59.
- 248 NRAS 2171 (Annandale pprs.), bundle 827; HMC Johnstone, 115-16.
- 249 NAS, GD 406/1/4573.
- 250 Luttrell, Brief Relation, iv. 613, 615.
- 251 Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, ii. 432-3, 443.
- 252 HMC Lords, n.s. iv. 101-2, 117.
- 253 Turberville, Lords William III, 206.
- 254 Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, ii. 445-6.
- 255 Add. 61101, ff. 68-69.
- 256 Marquess of Lansdowne, ‘Wiltshire Politicians’, Wilts. Arch. Magazine, xlvi. 80.
- 257 HMC Lords, n.s. iv. 144.
- 258 Bodl. Carte 228, f. 373; Add. 17677 WW, f. 157.
- 259 Bodl. Ballard 36, f. 6.
- 260 Longleat, Bath mss, Thynne pprs. 44, f. 157.
- 261 Cocks Diary, 191-6.
- 262 Add. 70073-4, newsletter, 31 Jan. 1702.
- 263 TNA, PRO 30/24/20/55.
- 264 Add. 70073-4, newsletter, 26 Feb. 1702.
- 265 Add. 61458, ff. 193-6.
- 266 Shaftesbury Life and Letters, ed. B. Rand, 313.
- 267 Luttrell, Brief Relation, v. 129.
- 268 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 95, 101.
- 269 Macky Mems. 64.
- 270 A.D. Francis, First Peninsular War, 26.
- 271 Add. 70073-4, newsletters, 6, 17 Oct., 7 Nov. 1702.
- 272 CTB, xvii. 95; CSP Dom. 1702-3, pp. 536-7.
- 273 Add. 70075, newsletters, 14, 16, 23 Jan. 1703.
- 274 CSP Dom. 1702-3, pp. 550.
- 275 Locke Corresp. vii. 725, 740-1.
- 276 Nicolson, London Diaries, 142, 179-80, 183; HMC Lords, n.s. v. 174-8.
- 277 Add. 70075, newsletter, 16 Jan. 1703; Nicolson, London Diaries, 175.
- 278 Nicolson, London Diaries, 198.
- 279 Luttrell, Brief Relation, v. 269.
- 280 Luttrell, Brief Relation, v. 165.
- 281 Add. 22230, f. 29.
- 282 Add. 61458, ff. 201-2.
- 283 Timberland, ii. 66; Swift Corresp. ed. Woolley, i. 147.
- 284 C. Jones, ‘Parliamentary Organization of the Whig Junto’, PH, x. 170, 181n.
- 285 Add. 61458, ff. 207-8.
- 286 HMC 10th Rep. V, 338.
- 287 Add. 61164, f. 39.
- 288 Nicolson, London Diaries, 234, 246, 254; Baillie Corresp. 16.
- 289 Add. 61458, ff. 209, 211; CSP Dom. 1704-5, pp. 231, 297.
- 290 Bodl. Rawl. Letters 108, f. 134.
- 291 Add. 61496, f. 82.
- 292 Northants. RO, IC 2734, Sir R. Clerk to Sir J. Isham, 4th bt. 7 Jan. 1705; IC 1804, Sir J. Isham to J. Isham, 20 Sept. 1714.
- 293 HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 431; Luttrell, Brief Relation, v. 546; Glassey, JPs, 167n.
- 294 Add 28056, f. 293.
- 295 Add. 61458, f. 213; HMC Cowper, iii. 64; Shaftesbury Life and Letters, 341-3.
- 296 Cameron, Master Firebrand, 308; Add. 61164, f. 139.
- 297 Add 28056, ff. 329-33.
- 298 Luttrell, Brief Relation, v. 613.
- 299 HMC Portland, iv. 329.
- 300 Add. 4806, f. 42.
- 301 Letters from Peterborough to Stanhope (1834), 4.
- 302 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 530; Marlborough Letters and Dispatches ii. 572; Letters from Peterborough to Stanhope, 2.
- 303 Add 28057, ff. 154-6.
- 304 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 650, 655, 657.
- 305 Francis, First Peninsular War, 214.
- 306 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 710.
- 307 Verney ms mic. M636/53, R. Palmer to Fermanagh, 22 Oct. 1706.
- 308 HMC Portland, iv. 343.
- 309 Add. 61132, ff. 5-6.
- 310 KSRL, Ms C163, Sir W. Simpson to Sir P. Methuen, 12 Nov. 1706.
- 311 Francis, First Peninsular War, 231-3, 235-9, 243; Add. 61514, ff. 15, 19, 23.
- 312 Add. 70249, Peterborough to R. Harley, 8 May 1707 [N.S.].
- 313 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 766, 776.
- 314 Add. 61164, ff. 112-3.
- 315 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 811, 822, 857.
- 316 J. Swift, English Political Writings, 1711-1714, ed. B.A. Goldgar and I. Gadd, 63.
- 317 Add. 61146, ff. 89, 91; Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 861.
- 318 Add. 70278, endorsed ‘the Electorice’s Regents copied by Earl Rivers at Hanover’.
- 319 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 872n., 875, 877n., 888, 905.
- 320 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 877, 889.
- 321 Addison Letters, 74.
- 322 Add. 61494, ff. 142-4.
- 323 Luttrell, Brief Relation, vi. 174.
- 324 Add. 61125, ff. 39, 59.
- 325 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 892, 897.
- 326 Addison Letters, 75.
- 327 Add. 72494, ff. 48-49.
- 328 Add. 72490, ff. 92-93.
- 329 HMC Portland, iv. 454.
- 330 KSRL, Ms C163, Sir W. Simpson to Sir P. Methuen, 21 Oct. 1707.
- 331 Luttrell, Brief Relation, vi. 237.
- 332 HMC Downshire, i. 853.
- 333 Add. 72488, ff. 30-31.
- 334 HMC Portland, ix. 279.
- 335 Add. 61498, f. 94; Add. 61514, ff. 200, 202-3.
- 336 Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, iii. 298, 328.
- 337 Addison Letters, 83-84.
- 338 Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, iii. 297-8.
- 339 Addison Letters, 85.
- 340 Timberland, ii. 184.
- 341 HMC Egmont, ii. 221.
- 342 LPL, Ms. 1770 (Wake Diary), f. 55v.
- 343 Luttrell, Brief Relation, vi. 256.
- 344 Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, iii. 303-7.
- 345 Nicolson, London Diaries, 442.
- 346 Add. 61399, f. 65.
- 347 Addison Letters, 86-87.
- 348 Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, iii. 307-8.
- 349 Nicolson, London Diaries, 443.
- 350 Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, iii. 311-17.
- 351 Nicolson, London Diaries, 443-4.
- 352 Luttrell, Brief Relation, vi. 258.
- 353 LPL, Ms. 1770 (Wake Diary), f. 156r.; Nicolson, London Diaries, 447-8.
- 354 Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, iii. 339.
- 355 Swift Corresp. i. 173-4.
- 356 Luttrell, Brief Relation, vi. 266.
- 357 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 980-1.
- 358 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1056, 1068.
- 359 Add. 70025, ff. 93-94.
- 360 Bodl. Ballard 7, f. 120; Luttrell, Brief Relation, vi. 333.
- 361 HMC Portland, iv. 503.
- 362 London Jnl. xviii. 28.
- 363 HMC Downshire, i. 866.
- 364 Add. 72488, ff. 42-43.
- 365 HMC Mar and Kellie, 479.
- 366 CTP, 1708-1714, pp. 94, 106.
- 367 Add. 70249, Peterborough to R. Harley, 6 Dec. [1709].
- 368 Stowe 750, f. 11.
- 369 HMC Lords, n.s. viii. 348-51.
- 370 VCH Beds. iii. 96.
- 371 Luttrell, Brief Relation, vi. 549.
- 372 Longleat, Bath mss, Thynne pprs. 47, ff. 277-8.
- 373 Add. 15574, ff. 65-68.
- 374 W.S. Churchill, Marlborough, iv. 282-3.
- 375 Pols. in Age of Anne, 202.
- 376 Longleat, Bath mss, Thynne pprs. 47, ff. 19-20; Add. 72495, ff. 15-16; Addison Letters, 232.
- 377 Wentworth Pprs. 138.
- 378 Add. 61461, ff. 82-83.
- 379 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1632.
- 380 Add. 70333, R Harley memorandum, 15 Sept. 1710.
- 381 Longleat, Bath mss, Thynne pprs. 47, ff. 43-44; Luttrell, Brief Relation, vi. 634-5.
- 382 Cowper Diary, 47.
- 383 Account Books of Swift, ed. Thompson, 69; Swift, Works ed. Davis et al., viii. 124.
- 384 Jnl. to Stella, ed. Williams, 59-60, 66.
- 385 HMC Bath, i. 199.
- 386 Add. 72495, ff. 26-27.
- 387 Luttrell, Brief Relation, vi. 650; Add. 61461, ff. 75-78.
- 388 Wentworth Pprs. 154.
- 389 Add. 72495, ff. 28-29.
- 390 Add. 61132, ff. 156-7; Bolingbroke Corresp. ed. Parke, i. 33; Luttrell, Brief Relation, vi. 661-2.
- 391 Jnl. to Stella, 102.
- 392 Jnl. to Stella, 143, 151-2, 155; Swift Corresp. i. 326.
- 393 Luttrell, Brief Relation, vi. 674; Longleat, Bath mss, Thynne pprs. 47, ff. 121-2; HMC Lords, n.s. ix. 19-22; Timberland, i. 282.
- 394 Timberland, ii. 282-4, 292-303, 306-8; HMC Lords, n.s. ix. 23, 34;.
- 395 Timberland, ii. 308-16.
- 396 Timberland, ii. 318-30.
- 397 CTB, xxv. 404; Eg. 2167, f. 2.
- 398 Add. 70249, Peterborough to R. Harley, 5 Feb. 1711 [N.S.].
- 399 Eg. 2167, f. 11.
- 400 Francis, First Peninsular War, 324-5; Swift Corresp. i. 358.
- 401 Cameron, Master Firebrand, 327; Jnl. to Stella, 297.
- 402 Add. 72491, ff. 37-38.
- 403 Jnl. to Stella, 306.
- 404 Verney ms mic. M636/54, M. Lovett to Fermanagh, 7 July 1711.
- 405 HMC Portland, v. 55.
- 406 Longleat, Bath mss, Thynne ppr. 47, ff. 279-80.
- 407 Francis, First Peninsular War, 328.
- 408 Add. 70290, J. Drummond to Oxford, 28 Aug. 1711 [N.S.].
- 409 Jnl. to Stella, 349.
- 410 HMC Portland, v. 84.
- 411 CTB, xxv. 435.
- 412 Longleat, Bath mss, Thynne pprs, 47, ff. 335-6.
- 413 Jnl. to Stella, 386.
- 414 Pols. in Age of Anne, 202.
- 415 Ibid.
- 416 Add. 70249, Peterborough to Oxford, 26 Dec. 1711 [N.S.].
- 417 HMC Portland, v. 147.
- 418 Bolingbroke Corresp. ii. 350.
- 419 Shaftesbury Life and Letters, 491.
- 420 Add. 70253, M. Prior to Oxford, 29 Aug. 1712.
- 421 Add. 70249, Peterborough to Oxford, 3 Oct. 1712 [N.S.].
- 422 Sloane 3811, f. 14.
- 423 Jnl. to Stella, 599-600.
- 424 NLW, Ottley (Pitchford Hall) Correspondence 1618.
- 425 Add. 70253, M. Prior to Oxford, 4 Feb. 1713 [N.S.].
- 426 Wentworth Pprs. 318.
- 427 Jnl. to Stella, 638.
- 428 Wentworth Pprs. 328-9.
- 429 Jnl. to Stella, 657.
- 430 Wentworth Pprs. 334.
- 431 Scot. Hist. Soc. Misc. xii. 155.
- 432 Bodl. Carte 211, ff. 128, 135-36.
- 433 Wentworth Pprs. 331.
- 434 Timberland, ii. 395-6; Add. 17677 GGG, ff. 203-4.
- 435 Scot. Hist. Soc. Misc. xii. 161.
- 436 Add. 17677 GGG, f. 229.
- 437 Wentworth Pprs. 340; Lansd. 1024, f. 420; Boyer, Anne Hist. 640.
- 438 Bodl. Carte 237, f. 1a.
- 439 Wentworth Pprs. 348.
- 440 Add. 39757, f. 134; Cameron, Master Firebrand, 351-2.
- 441 Add. 70318, J. Burchett to W. Lowndes, 30 Nov. 1713.
- 442 Pope Corresp. ed. Sherburn, i. 222; Add. 70249, Peterborough to Oxford, 17 Feb., 5 Mar., 7 Apr. 1714 [N.S.]; HMC Portland, v. 442-3.
- 443 Add. 70253, M. Prior to Oxford, 1/12 June 1714.
- 444 Add. 70249, Peterborough to Oxford, 28 June 1714 [N.S.].
- 445 Add. 70253, M. Prior to Oxford, 18/27 July 1714.
- 446 Add. 70249, Peterborough to Oxford, 3 Aug. 1714 [N.S.].
- 447 Add. 72496, ff. 151-2.
- 448 HMC Stuart, i. 339; HMC Portland, v. 503.
- 449 Add. 47028, f. 7.
- 450 Burnet Supp. 287.
- 451 Macky Mems. 64; Swift Poems, ed. Williams, 397.
- 452 Jones, Party and Mangement, 47; Pols. in Age of Anne, 27.