cr. 2 Dec. 1697 Bar. SOMERS
First sat 2 May 1693; last sat 27 Jan. 1716
MP Worcester 1689–23 Mar. 1693
b. 4 Mar. 1651, o. s. of John Somers, att. of College Churchyard, Worcester, and Catherine, da. of John Severne of Powick, Worcs. educ. King’s sch. Worcester; Sheriff Hales, Salop (Mr John Woodhouse); Walsall g.s. Staffs.; Trinity, Oxf. 1667; M. Temple 1669, called 1676. unm. suc. fa. 1681. Kntd. 31 Oct. 1689. d. 26 Apr. 1716; admon. 15 May 1716 to his sisters (Elizabeth, w. of Sir Joseph Jekyll‡, and Mary, w. of Charles Cocks‡).1
Standing counsel to dean and chapter, Worcester 1681; bencher M. Temple 1689, reader 1690, treas.1690–1.
Solicitor-gen. 1689-May 1692; attorney-gen. May 1692-Mar. 1693; PC 23 Mar. 1693-Mar. 1702, 25 Nov. 1708-d.; ld. kpr. Mar. 1693-7; ld. chan. Apr. 1697-1700; ld. justice 12 May-10 Oct. 1695, 1 May-6 Oct. 1696, 25 Apr.-16 Nov. 1697, 20 July-3 Dec. 1698, 2 June-18 Oct. 1699; ld. pres. 1708-Sept. 1710
Freeman, Worcester Sept. 1688, Nov. 1688, Gloucester 1688; recorder, Worcester 1688–d., Gloucester 1690–d., Orford by 1692–?; trustee, Droitwich workhouse (later hosp.) 1688, Reigate par. lib. 1708, for poor Palatines 1709; commr. finishing St Paul’s Cathedral 1692, Greenwich Hosp. 1695; gov. Charterhouse by 1696; custos rot. Worcs. Aug. 1715.2
Commr. preventing export of wool 1689–92, union with Scotland 1706; chairman, cttee. supply and ways and means 9 Oct. 1690–3.
Mbr. New England Co. by 1698.
FRS 1698, pres. 1698–1703.
Associated with: Pump Court, Middle Temple, London; Powis House, Mdx. (1693–1700); Belbar, Herts.; Winchester House, St James Sq., Westminster (1701–2);3 Leicester Fields, Westminster (c.1713–d).4
Likenesses: oil on canvas by Sir G. Kneller, c.1700–1710, NPG 490; oil on canvas by Sir G. Kneller, c.1711, NPG 3223.
Early career
A man of comparatively humble origins (Jonathan Swift spoke disparagingly of him coming from a ‘very mean’ family) Somers became one of the foremost political leaders of his age. There is some doubt about his date of birth, which is normally given as 1651 but may have been two or three years earlier.5 The accepted modern spelling of his surname is Somers but in writing his signature he used a macron over the m, indicating that he himself regarded the correct spelling as Sommers. His aloof and studied air of statesmanship enhanced his reputation both with his contemporaries and with whiggishly inclined historians but also serves to obscure his real character and motivations. The destruction of his papers by fire in 1752 hampers matters still further.6 Although he never married, he is known to have had a number of relationships with women, to the extent that he was regarded as a libertine. By the late 1690s he was commonly believed to be under treatment for syphilis. Delarivier Manley, who was scarcely entitled to take the moral high ground herself, condemned him for his long relationship with Elizabeth Blount, who was married but separated from her husband.7 The insistence by one of his earliest biographers that Blount was merely a nurse-cum-housekeeper probably belongs more to the realms of hagiography than accurate biography.8
Somers was brought up in an atmosphere steeped in opposition politics. His father was a parliamentarian sympathizer who found it sensible to sue for a pardon at the Restoration, while his patron, Sir Francis Winnington‡, was an exclusionist who had voted against Thomas Osborne, earl of Danby (later duke of Leeds), in 1679.9 Despite the conventional association between opposition to the policies of the Stuart brothers and Dissent, Somers seems to have been a committed Anglican. William Nicolson, bishop of Carlisle, noted on 3 Dec. 1702 during the debate on the Occasional Conformity bill that Somers had never been at a conventicle; he also recorded Somers’ presence at Anglican services and as a member of the vestry of St Martin-in-the-Fields.10
Somers’ own first involvement in national politics was as a polemicist writing in favour of the Whigs during and immediately after the exclusion crisis.11 He then lapsed into political obscurity until the trial of the Seven Bishops in 1688, when he acted as junior counsel for the defence. The publicity afforded by the trial may well have been responsible for a report that he had been offered (and refused) the recordership of London.12 After the Revolution he was elected to the Convention, whence he could foster the election (and careers) of his brothers-in-law, Sir Joseph Jekyll and Charles Cocks. His outstanding talents were rapidly recognized, the more so because, as Swift was later to point out, he was ‘in the highest degree courteous and complaisant’ (unlike many of his Whig colleagues). This was only spoiled, according to Swift, by his rather over-formal manner.13 Somers played a leading role in devising the bill of rights and was rewarded with rapid advancement.
His career in the Commons identified Somers as a skilful and reliable politician who could reconcile service to his party with the demands of the king. A key ministerial supporter, he drafted and managed legislation, often acted as a committee chairman (including committees of the whole, supply, and ways and means), directed government prosecutions such as that against Sir Richard Grahme‡, Viscount Preston [S], who was tried for treason in January 1691, and still managed to find time to maintain an extensive private practice. He was also concerned with aspects of electoral management not just in his home town of Worcester but elsewhere, as in his involvement in the attempt to restore the pre-Revolution charter in Ludlow.14 A more detailed study of his activities in the Commons appears in the House of Commons, 1690–1715.
Lord keeper, 1693–7
Somers’ careful and thoughtful conduct during the difficult 1692–3 session stood him in good stead when the king decided to strengthen his administration. In March 1693 Somers was appointed lord keeper, with a salary of £4,000 a year plus the promise of a pension of £2,000 a year for life after leaving office. At the same time Sir John Trenchard‡ was appointed secretary of state for the northern department.15 Somers seems to have been reluctant to accept the keepership, probably because it meant abandoning his lucrative private practice but perhaps also because, having built a considerable reputation in the Commons, he would have no opportunity to build a similar one in the House of Lords.16 His appointment annoyed the Tories and at least one Whig. The seals had been in commission since the Revolution and Sir Robert Atkyns‡, chief baron of the exchequer, who had been appointed acting Speaker of the House of Lords on 19 Oct. 1689, believed that the post ought to have been his. He was so angry that he threatened to resign, although in the event he stayed in office for a further year.17 The appointment of Somers and Trenchard has been seen by historians as presaging the more marked turn to the Whigs of the following year. His contemporaries also saw the appointment in this light, with one correspondent writing fulsomely about ‘the new life and vigour’ that these appointments would infuse into the king’s affairs and the extent to which they would draw the Whigs into supporting the ministry for ‘the Whigs have no reason to fear a court which Dr Tillotson [John Tillotson, archbishop of Canterbury], Sir John Somers and Sir John Trenchard are willing to serve’.18
It was perhaps just as well that Somers had a reputation for civility, since almost his first act as lord keeper was to argue with the king over the issue of judicial appointments. On his departure for Flanders William III had left instructions for three appointments: Sir William Rawlinson to succeed as chief baron, Sir William Wogan‡ as chief justice of Chester and Edward Ward as attorney general. Somers and his fellow Whigs wanted the solicitor general, Sir Thomas Trevor‡, to succeed as attorney general and it was an open secret that the king had promised this. Somers stressed that his objections to the king’s appointments had nothing to do with the individuals themselves for ‘it has been to the honour of your reign that your judges have been men of known ability’. Rather it was, as Somers pointed out, part and parcel of the political functions of the lord keeper to dispense legal patronage. This enabled him to command the loyalty of lawyers who ‘were spread over every part of the kingdom’ and exercised great influence. Such patronage:
has always given weight to that office in public affairs; and, if I understand you aright, making the Great Seal thus considerable was one of the effects you expected from placing it in a single hand; but I submit it to you how far it is likely to succeed, or any other of your Majesty’s ends to be answered, when such eminent offices are disposed of in such a manner at my entrance upon this charge. … This being the case let me offer it to your consideration whether if the passing of these patents must be the first use I am to make of the seal it can be supposed I have that credit which ought to go with it, and without which it is impossible it should reach what you aimed at in this change.19
Somers’ threatened resignation was not accepted, and the king refused to back down on the appointment of Ward, although Rawlinson’s appointment was not proceeded with, Atkyns having agreed to stay on as chief baron. Trevor’s promised appointment as attorney general was postponed for nearly two years.
If Somers felt any lingering resentment it did not stop him from joining in the attempts of Robert Spencer, 2nd earl of Sunderland, to secure the support of the Commons for the proposed new excise. He was nevertheless embarrassed by Sunderland’s attempt to discipline the maverick John Granville, later Baron Granville of Potheridge, by preventing the renewal of the commissions for the lord lieutenancies of Devon and Cornwall to Granville’s father, also named John Granville, earl of Bath. Sunderland pressurized Somers to block the renewals, while Daniel Finch, 2nd earl of Nottingham, questioned the delay. Bath added to Somers’ difficulties by pointing out that without the commissions he would be unable to assemble the militia in case of necessity – a serious issue given the international situation.20 There were also personal factors to take into account: Somers had been counsel for Bath in his fight over the Albemarle inheritance and, despite their very different political outlooks, the two men remained on good terms. Somers sealed the commissions.21
Throughout 1693 Somers was active in helping to secure loans from the City, and even before Nottingham’s fall from office in November 1693 he had become a central figure in the ministry. As lord keeper he attended the House assiduously and was rarely absent. John Sheffield, marquess of Normanby (later duke of Buckingham and Normanby), deputized for him at three sittings in late November/early December 1694 when Somers had hurt his head in a fall from his chair.22 Sir George Treby‡ and Sir Edward Ward deputized for him at the prorogation days in the summer of 1695 when he was incapacitated from acting by virtue of his appointment to the regency; he was also ill.23 His longest absence was early in 1696. On 31 Jan. 1696 the House was informed that Somers was indisposed and that Treby would deputize for him. Somers, who was apparently too sick to leave his house, did not return to the woolsack until 10 Mar. 1696.24 His inability to attend to his duties coincided with a similar absence from public life, also through illness, of Charles Talbot, duke of Shrewsbury, and, according to at least one observer, this left the field clear for the duke of Leeds (as Danby had become) to gain ground in both Houses of Parliament.25 Somers’ appointment to the regency again made it necessary to appoint deputies in the summer of 1696 and 1697.
Since Somers’ appointment as lord keeper meant that he was banished from the Commons but was not yet a member of the House of Lords, his parliamentary influence, despite his exemplary attendance, was necessarily indirect and, given the poor survival of his papers, difficult to trace. Sir Ralph Verney‡ thought Somers ‘carries himself very discreetly in his place’.26 Yet a letter from the soi-disant Lady Purbeck suggests that Somers had something of a reputation for petty-mindedness. She had apparently been told that an attempt to appeal one of Somers’ decrees in chancery to the House of Lords meant that ‘we must expect severe usage from your lordship’.27
As one of the leading politicians of the group that came to be known as the Junto, Somers certainly exercised considerable political influence. In acknowledgment of his prominent role, it was sometimes referred to as the Summerian Whigs.28 He was also one of the inner circle of ministers who helped draft the king’s speech to Parliament.29 Despite the initial setback over nominations to senior legal positions he was later regularly involved in discussions about appointments to legal and other offices, including ecclesiastical ones, and made his recommendations with an eye to parliamentary management. So extensive were his powers of patronage that after a short bout of illness in the summer of 1697 his doctor advised him that the need for rest precluded a visit to the then fashionable spa town of Tunbridge Wells because he would be plagued by ‘multitudes of visitors and crowds of earnest solicitors’.30 He was instrumental in encouraging Hans Willem Bentinck, earl of Portland, to intercede with the king to secure a place as teller of the exchequer for Guy Palmes, the son of William Palmes‡, whose assistance was considered crucial to the management of the Commons.31 He was also able to exploit his office in order to control the composition of local commissions of the peace, which he was ready and willing to alter according to the king’s commands and which he went on remodelling to favour Whig allies throughout his term of office.32
Deputy lieutenants also came within Somers’ purview, and purges went hand in hand with exhortation. Government policies and requests to examine carefully the activities of justices and other local officials were communicated via Somers’ addresses to the judges before they travelled their circuits.33 He assisted Portland in the management of intelligence.34 He also used his local correspondents to acquire information of his own, as when Robert Harley, later earl of Oxford, reported that Thomas Ken, the former bishop of Bath and Wells, ‘or some other of that clan’ had been visiting ‘most of the non-swearers’ houses in Herefordshire and adjacent places’.35 Furthermore, among the remnants of Somers’ papers are some that suggest that he held a watching brief over affairs in Ireland. It was not simply a question of dealing with disaffection in Ireland but, particularly in the troublesome period that followed the appointment of Henry Sydney, earl of Romney, as lord lieutenant, of taking steps to ensure that Irish political quarrels should not be allowed to spill over into the English Parliament.36 Finally, his position as Speaker of the House conferred power over the day-to-day conduct of business and with it the ability to assist, discourage or thwart those who brought petitions, bills and appeals before the House.
Somers was closely involved in the various extra parliamentary social activities centring on the Kit Kat Club, race meetings and country-house gatherings that helped cement Whig relationships. His direct electoral influence was limited, being largely restricted to Worcestershire and, after 1697, in Reigate, where, as lord of the manor, he ensured that burgage votes were distributed among loyal supporters of the Junto. Nevertheless his key position within the ministry and the patronage opportunities provided by his office, coupled with his political and social contacts, ensured that he was able to offer considerable support to his political allies and build up something of a parliamentary following of his own. He was involved in the selection of suitable candidates and was kept informed about electoral prospects throughout the country.37 He corresponded with Sir George Treby about the possibility of abolishing the palatinate of Lancaster.38 He also played a role in framing new charters, such as those for Tewkesbury and Plymouth issued in the summer of 1696.39 In a conscious reference to the practices of parliamentary management of the Tory reaction, Sir Francis Drake‡, who became recorder of Plymouth for life under the new charter there, became known as ‘the regulator’.40 Drake worked closely with Somers in favour of ‘the friends of the government’ and to undermine Bath’s influence, and also managed Bere Alston and Tavistock in the Whig interest.41 By 1698 Somers’ allies in the Commons included his two brothers-in-law, Charles Cocks and Joseph Jekyll, and clients or friends such as William Bromley‡, William Cowper, later Earl Cowper, Richard Dowdeswell‡, Stephen Harvey‡, John Rudge‡, Edward Thurland‡ and William Walsh‡.
Rumours that Somers was to be raised to the peerage circulated at the same time as Nottingham’s dismissal in November 1693.42 It was said that a barony had been offered but that Somers had refused it because he did not think his estate would support such a dignity.43 He was again offered and (despite considerable pressure) refused a barony in 1695.44 Public perceptions of his centrality to the ministry meant that in July 1696 his abrupt departure from a church service in response to a summons from the newly returned Portland spurred a host of rumours, including one that the king had been killed in action.45
During 1696 Somers was at the heart of the decision to bring Sir John Fenwick’s‡ confession to the attention of the Commons and the associated resolution to proceed against him by an act of attainder. Somers was well aware that the evidence against Fenwick was insufficient to procure a conviction in an ordinary court; he was clearly involved in the backstage management of the proceedings, even hosting meetings at his own residence and on at least one occasion spending time with Charles Mordaunt, earl of Monmouth (later 3rd earl of Peterborough), at the request of Thomas Wharton, 5th Baron (later marquess of) Wharton, who wanted Monmouth ‘in good humour’.46 In the Commons his protégé Cowper exerted his considerable talents in favour of the bill. In the Lords, Somers was responsible for enforcing the decision of the House that all peers be summoned on pain of imprisonment for failure to attend. As the arbiter of procedure he must have suggested or at the very least approved the decision that the passage of the bill was to be facilitated by the virtually unprecedented relaxation of the House’s rules that permitted peers to enter their protests when next in the House. Some 50 peers signed the protest on their return to the chamber, one as late as 26 Feb. 1697.47 The dispensation enabled the bill to be passed on the last day before the House rose for the Christmas recess. Even so, it scraped through its third reading by only seven votes.
If, as seems likely, one of the objectives of the Fenwick affair was to secure evidence against Thomas Bruce, 2nd earl of Ailesbury, and William Herbert, 2nd marquess of Powis, whose father (also William Herbert, marquess of Powis) had been chamberlain at James II’s exiled court, the prosecution was a lamentable failure. It also provided the opportunity for a smear campaign against Shrewsbury.48 Ailesbury, who regarded Somers as his ‘greatest enemy’, was not surprised to be told that the latter could barely conceal his rage when he realized that Ailesbury would have to be released from prison.49 Somers may well have been behind another piece of legal chicanery. Powis’s father, the 1st marquess, had been outlawed in 1690, putting the entire Powis estate at the mercy of the crown. Dangling a possible restoration of the family lands in return for good behaviour proved to be an extremely effective way of neutralizing the son, who had inherited on his father’s death in July 1696.
Lord chancellor, 1697–1700
In April 1697 Somers was appointed lord chancellor. At the same time, arrangements were made for him to be granted an additional source of income in the form of two Surrey manors and some £2,000 worth of fee-farm rents, a transparent inducement to him to accept a peerage and which would later become the subject of allegations of corruption. When Somers realized that his own grant of fee-farm rents clashed with that of the king’s favourite, Portland, he delayed acceptance.50 Perhaps this also delayed his peerage, for his letters patent were not issued until the following December. In the meantime his earlier support for the appointment of Guy Palmes as a teller caused a minor political crisis among the lords justices when Somers tried to block Sunderland’s attempt to remove Palmes after it was revealed that there was a shortage in his accounts.51 Rivalry between Sunderland and Somers, who ‘do not set their horses together’, was symptomatic of increasing ministerial disarray: although Somers’ elevation to a peerage suggests that he still had the king’s confidence, there were already rumours to the contrary; Sunderland, despite protestations of support, was said to distrust Somers and his Junto allies and to be attempting to have Somers replaced as chancellor by Sir Thomas Powys‡.52
Somers took his seat as a peer on 14 Dec. 1697, introduced between Charles Berkeley, styled Viscount Dursley, sitting as Baron Berkeley (later 2nd earl of Berkeley), and Charles Cornwallis, 3rd Baron Cornwallis. His attendance continued to be assiduous but his contribution to the business of the House is no easier to trace as chancellor than as lord keeper. He almost immediately received proxies from Shrewsbury (30 Dec.) and Portland (8 Jan. 1698). On 7 Jan. 1698 the House appointed a committee to consider the proper methods of appealing from the Irish court of chancery in response to the attempt of the Ulster Society (Irish Society of London) to overturn a decision in favour of their opponent William King, bishop of Londonderry, on an appeal from the Irish court of chancery to the Irish House of Lords. Somers was not a member of the committee but had strong views on the subject. When the committee reported on 15 Jan. he told the House that the Irish House of Lords’ decision to hear the appeal was an ‘encroachment’ and an ‘invasion of the rights of England and a breach of Poynings’ Law’. King’s allies, led from the Commons by John Methuen‡, lord chancellor of Ireland, only managed to prevent the matter going to a vote by carrying a question for an adjournment. Methuen then embarked on a campaign of behind-the-scenes lobbying. By early March he was able to report that he had had ‘good success with many of the most considerable Lords’ and that Somers ‘continues to favour us in everything’. It is not clear what the basis was for Methuen’s opinion, as Somers was indisposed and unable to attend either the House or the king for almost the whole of February. His activities when he returned to the House did not endear him to the king. He supported the woollen bill, whose objective was to suppress the Irish trade, although according to Methuen the king himself opposed it and had wanted it rejected out of hand. Methuen’s opinion of Somers’ attitude to Ireland and Irish affairs seems to have changed on an almost daily basis; sometimes he thought that Somers was sympathetic, sometimes he seems to have become convinced of Somers’ duplicity. Methuen’s various interviews with William III suggested that the king and Somers were at odds and that the king ‘did not entirely approve my lord chancellor’s notions about our [Irish] affairs’.53
Internecine fighting between ministers continued; in March 1698 Somers was forecast to be in favour of the second reading of the bill to punish Sunderland’s ally, Charles Duncombe‡. He was also named to the committee on the bill and on 5 Mar. as one of the managers of the two conferences held on 7 March. On 20 Apr. Somers’ contribution to the debate on the first reading of the act sent up by the Commons for giving time to those who had failed to qualify themselves for office was decisive in ensuring that it be rejected. The purpose of the bill was to rescue those excise commissioners, such as Foot Onslow‡, who had omitted to qualify themselves under the Test Acts. Somers:
spoke against it as if it were undermining the greatest security we had against popery and as that law had never yet been touched or weakened in Parliament he hoped they would continue it in its native strength, which the whole House consented to and the bill was rejected without opposition.54
It was feared that the rejection of the bill might, if followed by a bill of the Lords’ own devising, create opposition in the Commons. The standing of the Junto was now sufficiently shaky for the king to find it necessary to speak ‘in particular’ to Somers, and to his Junto allies Edward Russell, earl of Orford, and Charles Montagu, later earl of Halifax, ‘for the removing any suspicions as if he were altered towards them, and for putting the public business into a quicker motion’.55 In May Methuen somewhat waspishly referred to members of the Junto as ‘the only persons that are at present in the management of affairs, if it may be said that anything is managed’.56
Somers tried to convince the king that he could mend his affairs by appointing Wharton, stressing ‘the necessity of taking men of business into his service, which could not be carried on, as things now stood’.57 According to Methuen it was Somers and the Junto Whigs who persuaded him to lay William Molyneux’s The Case of Ireland’s Being Bound by Acts of Parliament in England before the Commons in order to defuse demands for an investigation into affairs in Ireland but in reality ‘to give an occasion to fall upon Ireland and put a difficulty upon the king’s affairs’.58 Not surprisingly, ‘The effect of this book was seen with the Lords’, who resumed consideration of Ulster Society v. Derry on 20 May 1698 and decisively rejected the claim of its Irish counterpart to an appellate jurisdiction. Although the House appointed a committee (headed by Somers) to draw up a formal order recording its decision, it seems that Somers was still playing some sort of double game. The order was drawn up and approved on 24 May, although Methuen had reported three days earlier that:
I have with much ado, with the assistance of my lord chancellor, prevailed to let the matter rest there and hindered the Lords from sending their order to the government to see it executed, having by this means left it in the power of the parties, and indeed of the bishop [of Derry] himself, to compose the matter that no notice need be taken in Ireland of this matter.59
Matters then deteriorated still further when ‘the friends of my lord chancellor set on foot a matter much worse’ and the Commons sent for all the bills passed in Ireland since the Revolution, ‘pretending to find great faults and breaches of Poynings’ Law … my lord chancellor is deeply engaged in it & these gentlemen speak his very words’. Somers was also expected to stir the pot still further by bringing Molyneux’s book to the attention of the upper House.60 On 28 June he was named as a manager of the conference on the impeachment of John Goudet and others. Further controversy erupted in June over the East India bill, leading Somers to press his Junto ally Wharton to be sure to attend the House, for ‘the agitation against it is very great’ and the bill was in danger of failing.61
Over the spring and the summer recess of 1698 Somers was active in planning tactics for the forthcoming election.62 It was noted that he and Montagu, together with ‘other persons of note’, had been visiting Orford at his country house incognito.63 Somers also took the opportunity to rehabilitate himself in the eyes of the Irish, assuring Henry de Massue de Ruvigny, earl of Galway [I], of his sympathy towards Irish issues and implicitly excusing his previous apparent opposition by suggesting that Irish bills transmitted to England needed to be more carefully scrutinized so ‘as not to leave room for so many objections, as were made last year, which were of that nature, that I may without vanity pretend they would never have been got over without my help’.64 Politics aside, Somers was also involved as an intermediary for Bath in his attempts to petition the king for the dukedom of Albemarle and other benefits which he claimed to be owing to him. His correspondence with Bath continued into the autumn and, despite their apparent political differences, Bath expressed considerable gratitude for Somers’ good offices both as counsel, as chancellor and as Speaker of the House in the long-running dispute over the Albemarle inheritance.65 Since one of Somers’ first acts as chancellor in the autumn of 1693 had been to deliver a somewhat bizarre verdict in favour of Bath, Bath had good reason to be grateful.
Almost contemporaneously with his correspondence with Bath, Somers received the first notification from the king of the negotiations for what became known as the First Partition Treaty. He arranged for James Vernon‡ to communicate the terms of the treaty to Orford, Montagu and Shrewsbury.66 He was thus able to respond on behalf of them all when he replied to the king at the end of August 1698. The collective response welcomed peace, since the country was experiencing war fatigue, but queried the sincerity of the French and criticized some specific details. The king’s pre-eminent role in foreign affairs, coupled with his superior knowledge, meant that they were, however, prepared to leave it to him to agree ‘that which is most safe and prudent’.67 Given the urgency of the situation – as the king of Spain was thought to be in imminent danger of death – Somers also sealed a blank commission in response to the king’s request. He subsequently sought and obtained a formal warrant from the king – an admission perhaps that this way of proceeding was indeed irregular and possibly illegal, as would later be alleged in the impeachment proceedings against him.68 Quite why a warrant could not have been used in the first place or why the king required a blank commission remains something of a mystery, since it must have been obvious that the most likely commissioners were Portland and Sir Joseph Williamson‡, who did indeed sign the treaty in September 1698 on behalf of the crown.
As the new Parliament assembled, Somers played a conciliatory role in the negotiations over the choice of a possible Speaker for the Commons, acting to protect Secretary James Vernon from allegations of caballing with the Tories.69 Such were the tensions among the Whigs that he believed that if the Tories ‘were capable of uniting, I take it for granted, the Whigs would, long since, have been laid aside’.70 Irish matters continued to cause problems. In December Somers warned the lord justice of Ireland, Galway, against any attempt to revive discussion of Ulster Society v. Derry for ‘if that business comes to be stirred in the House of Lords here I will not answer what may ensue’. He himself took steps to prevent discussion of the issue while the Irish parliament was sitting. He also warned of the revival of the woollen bill and, acknowledging the hostile reception that this would receive in Ireland, instructed Galway to hasten the passage of money bills in Ireland, offering to facilitate this by delaying the work of the committee in the Commons and any possible complaint in the Lords.71
The advent of peace had led to increasingly vociferous demands for demobilization. Accordingly, the Commons voted in December 1698 for the disbandment of the army, including William’s Dutch guards. The king, more aware than his subjects of the fragility of the peace and deeply upset by what he perceived as ingratitude, began to talk of retiring from England. Somers, initially sceptical of the king’s intentions, was soon convinced that his master was in earnest and became involved in attempts to persuade Members of the Commons to reject or amend their bill. He was also said to be prepared to advance £10,000 towards the necessary loan.72 As the author of a propaganda pamphlet against disbanding the army, his opposition to the measure was well known, but the addition of a clause concerning finance turned it into a money bill so that rejection by the Lords was likely to precipitate a rupture with the Commons.73 Somers was left with no option but to advocate that the bill pass. His speech to that effect was received with ‘universal applause’ and the bill passed without a division on 31 Jan. 1699.74 A long conference between the king and Somers then resulted in a speech delivered to the House on 1 Feb. in which the king accepted the bill but asked for a compromise that would enable him to keep his Dutch guards.
The question of the appellate jurisdiction of the Irish House of Lords continued to trouble king, chancellor and Parliament. By his own account Somers appears to have gone to considerable lengths to defuse the issues raised by Ulster Society v. Derry, using his influence both in the House and with the Ulster Society itself, but his efforts were undone when on 11 Feb. 1699 the case of Ward v. Meath ‘unhappily renewed the whole controversy’. Ordered on 14 Feb. to write to the lords justices about the matter, Somers notified Galway of the need for a speedy expedient to avoid controversy.75 When the case was heard on 29 Apr. the House again ruled that the Irish House of Lords was not competent to hear appeals from the Irish chancery. On 27 Feb. Somers reprimanded the printer responsible for the publication of Cases in Parliament resolved and adjudged, upon Petitions and Writs of Error and the House ordered that:
it is a breach of the privilege of this House, for any person whatsoever to print, or publish in print, any thing relating to the proceedings of this House, without the leave of this House; and that the said Order be added to the Standing Orders, and set on the doors of this House.
The entry in the Journal implies that this was merely a protection of the privileges of the House but other sources indicate that at least part of the reason was the claim that the printed cases were ‘imperfectly taken’.76 Given that the assembled peers voted without giving reasons for their decisions, the value of such a publication for jurists must have been limited.
As the Junto weakened, so the political attacks on its members intensified. Somers was now accused of unjustly enriching himself by means of the fee-farm rents granted to him. He was clearly not above using his position to reward his supporters. In March 1699 he wrote to John Lowther, Viscount Lonsdale, thanking him for his ‘repeated favours in respect to the clamours very unjustly endeavoured to be raised upon the account of the fee farm rents’ and telling him that the House had agreed to extend the time for Lonsdale to put in an answer to an appeal, although ‘it seemed not to be very well taken that the first time was not complied with’.77 That same month he presided over the trials of Charles Mohun, 4th Baron Mohun, and Edward Rich, 6th earl of Warwick, both of whom were charged with murder.
The political situation was now such that Somers could scarcely afford to be absent from his duties or from assiduous attendance on the king but illness kept him from the woolsack on 1 Apr. 1699; apart from a brief reappearance on 18 and 19 Apr. – almost certainly motivated by the need to deal with further developments in the case of Ulster Society v. Derry – he was away from the House until the penultimate day of the session (3 May). Over the next month gossip and rumours about the future of the Junto and of the structure of the ministry abounded but Somers seems to have been most worried about the continuing political fallout over Irish appeals caused by the refusal of Bishop King to obey the orders of the English House of Lords. King’s actions had led to an order of the House for his arrest. Somers claimed that, but for his absence through illness, he might have been able to mitigate the effect of the order and told Galway that ‘the House of Lords here take that business so high that I fear, unless what they have ordered be complied with, it will scarce be practicable to have a session’.
Matters were so serious that Somers involved Thomas Tenison, archbishop of Canterbury, and Narcissus Marsh, archbishop of Dublin, in an attempt to persuade King to give up his case and was personally involved in mediating the matter with the Ulster Society. Insisting that he was not issuing instructions to either Galway or Methuen, and recognizing that King was ‘a very difficult man to be persuaded’, he nevertheless made it clear that the matter had to be resolved outside Parliament for fear of the Lords’ ‘zeal for their judicature … and it is in the power of everybody to stir it’. 78 In the event, Methuen must have worked hard to find a solution behind the scenes for on 29 Nov. 1699 he reported that neither the bishop of Derry nor the earl of Meath had taken any action to pursue their claims and that the Ulster Society and Edward Ward were in possession of the disputed lands. The dispute was eventually settled not in court but by a piece of legislation that received the royal assent in December 1704 in the English rather than the Irish parliament. Somers’ role in encouraging such a solution is unknown but the act in question began in the upper House and it seems likely that he did have some role in promoting it.
Somers was again ill over the 1699 summer recess and missed the three prorogation days in July, August and September. In August, after a summer that had seen the resignation of Orford, Somers planned to visit Bath, where James Vernon tried to arrange a meeting between him and Shrewsbury, telling Portland that ‘[these] two meeting would be of more significancy than if half a dozen more were added to them’. In the event Somers and Montagu visited Orford at Chippenham instead, provoking much curiosity about their motives. Some thought that ‘the d[uke] of Shrewsbury may have been the subject of their conferences, as if they were in doubt whether he were sufficiently attached to them, and some fancy they might have it under consideration whether it were most advisable to have a new parliament’. Negotiations between senior politicians continued throughout the month. Although Somers left for Tunbridge Wells just as Shrewsbury and Montagu (who had spent some time together at Winchendon) came up to London, Vernon had no doubt that Shrewsbury and Somers would meet and that ‘so many meetings will produce resolutions and measures that may be of public benefit’.79 An unknown observer of the political scene told William Johnston, earl (later marquess) of Annandale [S], that Somers was not only ‘a great stay to the government … by his moderate and sober advices’ but was responsible for persuading the king not to dissolve parliament, telling him that a new one would be worse.80
The 1699–1700 session started badly for the ministry and especially for Somers. On 28 Nov. 1699, in a transparent attack on the chancellor, the Commons voted to examine all proceedings relating to charters issued during the reign and set up a committee to inspect commissions of the peace and commissions to deputy lieutenants for the previous seven years. The demand made the same day for a proclamation for the suppression of vice and immorality and for a bill against gaming and duelling also reflected Tory demands. The decision to discuss the country’s present trade in a committee of the whole was to prove even more threatening. Attempts to rally the Whigs behind the chancellor did little to prevent the Tory onslaught. On 2 Dec. 1699 the discussion of trade in a committee of the whole in the Commons centred on the depredations of Captain Kidd and resulted in a request for a copy of his commission and other papers, including the complaints of the merchants about his piracies.81 Somers, who had not only sealed the commission after the admiralty had proved reluctant to fund Kidd’s expedition but was also one of Kidd’s backers and thus stood to profit from his activities, was clearly one of the targets, alongside other high-profile members of the Junto.82
Somers’ health may still have been fragile, as he was absent from the House for three days in mid-January 1700. He was, however, able to return to Parliament for the hearings of 19–23 Jan. in the Bankers’ case (Williamson v. Regem in error), in which questions of parliamentary supremacy, fiscal policy and sovereign immunity collided with each other and which raised more than a suspicion of Somers’ willingness to manipulate the law for political purposes. The case arose from the crown’s default on payments to a group of bankers (repaying loans made in 1667) as a result of the stop of the exchequer in 1672. The bankers had made various attempts to recover their loans and arrears of interest since that time but in 1690 turned to the court of exchequer for redress. A judgment in their favour was issued in 1692. Matters of law and principle apart, this was a serious blow to the crown’s finances as by the 1690s the debt amounted to some £2 million. Sir George Treby, then attorney general, and Somers, then solicitor general, had opposed the claim on behalf of the crown but had been overruled. By the time the crown appealed the decision, Somers was lord chancellor and thus sat in judgment on the validity of a decree that he had personally opposed. He was assisted by the common law judges, who now also included Treby. Treby and Somers agreed that the decision should be overturned; almost all the remaining judges, including Sir John Holt‡, disagreed but Somers was not bound to take their advice. In 1696, using an elaborate and sophisticated argument to mask what might otherwise have been seen as a politically motivated decision, he overturned the verdict, releasing the crown from any obligation to repay the bankers. The decision of the House on 23 Jan. 1700 to follow the advice of the judges and reverse Somers’ decree was a severe blow to his prestige as chancellor and to his reputation as a lawyer, as well as to his usefulness to the king. ‘These things with other concomitants are observed to have provoked the king to more than a usual degree of expressing himself in angry manner.’83 Even in the short term, however, the financial disaster for the crown was averted by legislation passed in 1701.84
On 1 Feb. 1700 Somers voted against adjourning the House into a committee of the whole to discuss amendments to the East India Company bill. In February he was again the target of an attack during a debate on the state of the nation in the Commons, but the attempt failed when the Whigs and even a few Tories rallied to his support, extolling ‘his boundless merit’.85 In mid-February he called on the assistance and advice of Treby before deciding whether to permit a writ of error to be heard in the Lords in the case of the deprivation of Thomas Watson as bishop of St Davids, even though he recognized that Treby’s previous involvement in the case as one of the delegates meant that it would be improper for him to be involved in an official capacity.86 Attacks in the Commons continued. Somers was absent from the House from 2 to 9 Mar. and so was not present when the House refused to consider Watson’s case; he was again absent from 21 to 25 Mar. and then sat on the woolsack for just three days before a further lengthy absence from 1 Apr. until the close of the session on 11 April. He was described during this period as ‘very sick’.87
Somers had offered to resign at or near Christmas 1699 but when William III sent Edward Villiers, earl of Jersey, to take the seals from him he refused to comply without an express warrant from the king; he was formally dismissed on 27 Apr. 1700. The legal establishment was horrified, partly because, despite setbacks, Somers’ reputation as a lawyer and judge remained high but perhaps more significantly because his dismissal in the middle of the term created chaos in the courts. Finding a replacement proved to be extremely difficult. Sir Thomas Trevor and Chief Justice Holt both refused to take the seals, Holt doing so twice. Other candidates mentioned (and possibly even approached) included Methuen, Sir Thomas Powys, Sir William Trumbull‡ and Nottingham.88 There may even have been a plan to put the office into commission with a view to Somers resuming the place later in the year, though Vernon feared that Somers would not be amenable to returning to office. Nothing came of this, and it was nearly a month before Nathan Wright was finally appointed lord keeper.89
Somers’ sister Mary Cocks welcomed his loss of office, pointing out that his poor health was the result of ‘the constant fatigue’ of his post.90 For his part, Somers insisted that ‘I neither do nor ever will meddle with public affairs, nor have the least resentment imaginable against any persons who may be imagined to have been most active in getting me displaced’, although he admitted that ‘it is very hard to convince men that it is so’.91 Despite his protestations about leaving public life, he and his Junto colleagues had a private meeting in mid-June in order to plan their tactics for an attack on Sunderland in the next parliamentary session, and also held several follow-up meetings.92 Harley and his allies were similarly meeting in order to negotiate a ministerial reconstruction and were successful in persuading the king to dissolve Parliament.
Impeachment, 1701
The new Parliament met early in 1701; during its only session Somers was present on 86 per cent of sitting days. His weakened position was immediately apparent when Sir Richard Onslow‡, regarded by some as his candidate for the speakership, was overwhelmingly defeated in favour of Harley.93 On 27 Feb. Somers was one of four peers named by James Annesley, 3rd earl of Anglesey, to attempt a reconciliation between him and his wife, and in March he was named as one of three referees to mediate in the dispute between Nathaniel Fiennes, 4th Viscount Saye and Sele, and his stepmother.94 That same month a debate in the Commons that resulted in a vote in favour of the legality of Kidd’s patent was said to have ‘set my Lords Somers and Oxford [Orford] pretty high again’.95 The respite was short-lived. In the course of its investigations into the conduct of Portland the Commons voted by a narrow majority (189 to 182) that Somers was guilty for fixing the seal to the partition treaty.96 In April he was named as one of the managers of all three conferences on the subject of the partition treaties.97 On 15 Apr. he appeared before the Commons in order to defend himself. He was reported to have made ‘a noble defence of himself’ and to have ‘spoke very finely’, even producing a copy of his own letter to the king advising him against the treaty; but he did not, it seems, speak finely enough.98 A motion to impeach him was passed by a majority of either 10 or 11 votes and was followed by similar motions against Orford and Halifax (as Montagu had since become). The decisions were communicated to the Lords on 15 April.99
If a letter to Somers from his brother-in-law Sir Joseph Jekyll can be taken at face value, the impeachment was greeted with popular indignation.100 It also created considerable scope for argument over procedural niceties. The Commons’ bias against Somers and the Whig peers was self-evident in the actions of Speaker Harley, who prevented an attempt to consider the possibility of impeaching the Tory Jersey, proving, as Sir Richard Cocks‡ put it, that ‘malice knows no rules nor seasons’.101 The articles of impeachment were delivered to the House on 19 May 1701. The first six concentrated on procedural and other errors involved in the sealing of the partition treaties, accusing Somers of having failed in his duty to obstruct the partition treaty and to advise the king against it, of having sealed a blank commission without a lawful warrant and of having failed to consult with the Privy Council or to enrol the treaty in chancery. He was accused of passing exorbitant grants of lands in Ireland and of using his position to amass grants of lands and fee-farm rents to himself. He was also charged with misconduct in the issuing of Captain Kidd’s patent and of corruption in office.
Somers denied all charges and after much wrangling was acquitted on 17 June, when the Commons, rushed by the Lords, failed to present any evidence against him. Bonfires in the City suggested popular support for Somers.102 The political nation, or rather that part of it that shared country and/or Tory allegiances, considered it to be a major constitutional issue: ‘the cause of my Lord Somers against all the gentlemen of England’, said Henry St John, the future Viscount Bolingbroke. He went on to complain:
that never man behaved himself with that insolence this little fellow has done upon this occasion He was the chief manager of the debate concerning himself and not content to have penned with the assistance of Jekyll and Clarke all the messages and answers which have been sent down to our House ’twas he that framed the question of his own acquittal, and be pleased to observe what an odd sort of question it was. That John Ld Somers be acquitted of the charge exhibited against him, and all the crimes therein contained, and that this impeachment be dismissed, and then content or not content, so that if the first carried he was acquitted, if the last he was but in statu quo, he might be discharged, he could not be condemned. And all this done without hearing any evidence to those facts he denies in his answer or judging whether those he has confessed be crimes or not. I believe no age can parallel such proceedings as these are.103
Harley was equally appalled, considering that Somers’ replication amounted to a confession, that the acquittal was unparliamentary and that it laid the basis for future oppression ‘by rendering all impeachments impracticable’.104 Somers’ enemies in the Commons were convinced that the peers had ‘refused justice … by proceeding to a pretended trial’.105 The verdict even worried John Evelyn, who recorded in his diary that ‘it was very unseasonable in this perilous conjuncture’ and noted that all the holders of great offices had joined the protest against the result.106
The strain of the trial evidently affected Somers’ health but this did not prevent his involvement in electioneering over the summer. His experiences at the hands of the Commons proved to be an electoral asset. George Martin told Somers that ‘the whole country are your friends’, while Jekyll reported that William Lloyd, bishop of Worcester, had specifically mentioned ‘the hardship of your lordship’s case at a meeting of his clergy’.107
Somers’ attendance during the second 1701 Parliament fell to 71 per cent of all sitting days. Nearly half of his absences were concentrated in January 1702; his response to a call of the House on 5 Jan. indicates that he was again ill. On 6 and 11 Feb. he acted as one of the managers of the conferences on the bill for the attainder of the pretended Prince of Wales. On 26 Feb. he also reported from the committee considering the bill for Job Marston’s charity. Despite his fall from power, his influence with the king still seems to have been high, for that same month he acted as intermediary for John Manners, 9th earl (later duke) of Rutland, in his quest for a dukedom.108 The dukedom was eventually granted by Anne in 1703 but within a week of the king’s death in March 1702 it was noted that Somers and the other impeached lords were no longer summoned to the Council.109 During February and March he chaired several meetings of the committee considering the bill for the creation of Worcester College, Oxford, which he reported on 2 April.110 After the second reading he was instrumental in advising one of the opponents of the bill how to go about securing its failure at the third reading.111 Objections from another opponent imply that Somers’ conduct in relation to the bill had been either careless or partial, and in the event it was not until 1714 that the college was re-founded on the site of the dissolved Gloucester Hall.112
The early years of Anne, 1702–7
Despite the Tory renaissance that followed Anne’s accession, Somers was still a leading member of the House. On 7 May he was named as one of the managers of the conference on the bill for the oath of abjuration, as well as that arising from the Lords’ amendments to the bill for privateers. He held the proxy of Charles Cornwallis, 4th Baron Cornwallis, from 16 May. Later that month he was approached to assist the passage of a bill through the Irish Parliament to restore John Bourke, Baron Bourke of Bophin [I] (later 9th earl of Clanricarde [I]), in blood and estate. Contrary to normal practice, ‘a complicated necessity’ had required the bill to be introduced in the Commons rather than the Lords and it was feared that this might prejudice its chances of passing the Upper House.113 Together with Halifax, Somers was also involved in an attempt to accuse the Tory propagandist and long-time Junto enemy, Charles Davenant‡, of corruption for his part in the management of the bill for the relief of Jane Lavallin; the attempt failed by only seven votes.114
Somers was again active in the elections of the summer of 1702 and was once more noted as meeting with fellow members of the Junto.115 He was present for 81 per cent of sitting days during the 1702–3 session, with the vast majority of his absences concentrated in January and February 1703. The opening of Parliament saw renewed demands from the Commons for the impeachment of Somers and Orford but these seem to have been more a matter of form than a real threat. On 3 Dec. 1702, during debates over the bill to prevent occasional conformity, Somers proposed an instruction to the committee to the effect that the bill extend only to those individuals holding offices subject to the Test Act. The proposition provoked ‘many long and warm debates’ and was defeated only by the use of proxies.116 Consistently listed as an opponent of the bill, Somers was named on 17 Dec. 1702 and 9 Jan. 1703 as one of the managers of the conferences with the Commons. He was also named to the committee to search for precedents for bills with penalty clauses that had been begun in the Lords, and is known to have done so. He was an active member of the Lords’ committee on the public records.117 On 19 Jan. 1703 he entered a dissent at the inclusion of a clause authorizing Prince George of Denmark, duke of Cumberland, to be a member of the Privy Council and of the House of Lords and to continue to enjoy offices and grants should he survive the queen. Together with several other peers, Somers contended that the clause was unparliamentary since the main bill was a money one, that it was unnecessary and that it might prejudice other foreign-born peers. This was his last attendance before his prolonged absence from the House, an absence once again caused by illness. He was reported to be so ill that he was in danger of death. Towards the end of February he was described as ‘on the mending hand’ but he did not recover until early March.118
Over the summer Somers was in correspondence with Shrewsbury about affairs in Scotland, where ‘Presbytery and Revolution principles have the ascendant … and there is reason to apprehend things may be carried too far, though it be pretended to be done only in order to force England to think of coming to a Union with them in good earnest.’ He wondered whether events in Scotland were responsible for the postponement of the Irish parliament.119
During the 1703–4 session Somers was present on 66 per cent of sitting days. His absences were concentrated in blocks (November 1703 and late February/March 1704), in a way that again suggests periods of illness. Poor health notwithstanding, he was required to mediate between his colleagues Halifax and Orford over the parliamentary investigation of the latter’s accounts at the Admiralty. Orford was acquitted but Halifax risked his ire by pointing out that Orford’s accounting left much to be desired.120 On 18 Dec. 1703 Somers was elected by balloting glass as one of the committee to examine prisoners about a possible plot. In January and February 1704 he reported from four committees. Two were for bills in which he almost certainly had a personal interest, one for Ralph Grey, 4th Baron Grey of Warke, younger brother of the former 3rd Baron, Ford Grey, and one for the Worcester workhouse. The others were the Gresham College bill and the bill to ensure the title of Giles Frampton to lands in Dorset that he had purchased from his cousin, the royal horse trainer and ‘father of the turf’, Tregonwell Frampton. On 19 and 22 Feb., as part of the Whig attack on the ministry, Somers was named to committees to investigate allegations relating to the Scotch Plot. He was not present on 23 Feb. when he was named as one of those to whom the key to the gibberish letters should be delivered.
Over the next week his attendance was irregular and was followed by a prolonged absence. He was back in the House on 17 Mar. to report from the committee to which he had been named as early as 20 Jan. and over which he had presided since the beginning of the second of week of February to consider the address from the Irish House of Commons regarding linen manufacture. There was also a gap in his appearances at the head of this committee between 22 Feb. and 23 Mar. but on the latter day he both chaired and reported from the committee with the address that the committee had drawn up.121 On 21 Mar. he entered a dissent at the failure to include a rider requiring the consent of churchwardens and overseers in the bill for raising recruits. Three days later he protested at the resolution not to put the question of whether the information contained in the examination of Sir John MacLean was imperfect. Towards the close of the month he was used as an example during debates over the address to the queen concerning the composition of the commissions of the peace. Somers, it was pointed out, had been omitted from the commission of the peace for Worcestershire, a decision that was considered particularly scandalous in view of his former position as lord chancellor.122 In September 1704, when the queen made a solemn procession to St Paul’s Cathedral, Somers and Halifax upset the aldermen of London by sitting in the lord mayor’s stall.123
The 1704–5 session saw Somers present in the House on only 62 per cent of sitting days. Once again his absences were heavily concentrated in a block: his last attendance of the session was on 3 Feb. 1705 (Parliament was not prorogued until 14 March). He held the proxy of Cornwallis from the beginning of the session to 27 Jan. 1705 and that of Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd earl of Shaftesbury, for the whole of the session. Early in the session John Thompson, Baron Haversham, moved for a day ‘that he might be heard as to many things he has to complain of and are amiss and seems very full and hot to bring out some thing’. To Haversham’s fury, Somers was instrumental in delaying the day assigned for over a week.124 Haversham, who had once been firmly in the Whig camp, had recently formed a somewhat unlikely alliance that brought his former political enemies Nottingham and Laurence Hyde, earl of Rochester, together with the disgruntled Whigs Peterborough and Grey of Warke. He made his speech, the first of what was to become an annual series castigating the ministry, on 23 Nov. 1704. When the debate resumed on 29 Nov. Somers and Wharton weakened the Tory case by preventing the reading of the Scottish Act of Security. They again took a leading role in the debate the following week (6 Dec.) when Nottingham initially scored a hit with a reference to sacrificing the Protestant interest in order to secure acknowledgement of William III’s title ‘as done at the Treaty of Ryswick’ forcing Somers onto the defensive, only to have the matter rebound on him and to be forced to declare ‘that he did not intend any reflection upon those noble lords’ when Thomas Herbert, 8th earl of Pembroke, and Jersey both rose to vindicate themselves and their king.125
In mid-December 1704 Somers opposed the Occasional Conformity bill, using Shaftesbury’s proxy in the vote against it. In January 1705 he was in correspondence with Sir Patrick Hume, earl of Marchmont [S], on the subject of a union of England and Scotland, something he claimed always to have wanted. The immediate impetus to his actions was the need to soothe and to hope for ‘temper and moderation’.126 Somers’ absence from the House after 3 Feb., apparently because he had hurt his leg getting out of a coach, meant that he was not present for the contentious debates over the place bill or the fate of the Aylesbury men. The queen was reported to have been pleased with him and to have been grateful to the Whig leaders in general for their services over the session, and Somers was rewarded by being paid the arrears of his pension ‘since King W[illiam]’s time’. 127 Sidney Godolphin, Baron (later earl of) Godolphin, who was wrestling with the difficulties of a ministerial reconstruction and needed Whig support, was less impressed by Somers and his allies. In April 1705 he complained to John Churchill, duke of Marlborough, that ‘they are not all so reasonable as is certainly very necessary, for their own sakes as well as for everybody else. I will do all I can to content them in what is reasonable, but even that is not an easy matter.’128 In August Somers was organizing meetings of his Whig colleagues so that they could prepare for the ensuing session.129
The question of union with Scotland continued to occupy the political agenda but whether Somers and the rest of the ‘managing Whigs’ were or were not in favour remained unclear to some observers who believed that it was in the Whigs’ interest to prolong Anglo-Scots quarrels ‘because it is by the present confusions and difference that they make themselves necessary to a court that in their heart hates them’.130 Although it had earlier been said that Somers would object to the appointment of the Junto Whig acolyte William Cowper as lord keeper, when the appointment was finally made it seems that it was Somers who dispensed the patronage associated with the office.131
The ministerial reconstruction was complete by the time that Parliament resumed on 25 Oct. 1705, although Godolphin was still uneasy about the rapaciousness of Whig demands for favour. During this, the 1705–6 session, Somers was present on just over 89 per cent of sitting days. He held Shaftesbury’s proxy from 10 Nov. for the rest of the session and that of Cornwallis from 1 to 13 November. On 15 Nov. he opposed the Tory motion that the Electress Sophia be invited to England.132 On 23 Nov. he responded to the Tory demand that Parliament comply with the Scots’ demand that the clause in the Alien Act (1705) which provided for the Scots being treated as aliens should be repealed by suggesting that it was:
more becoming the dignity of the parliament of England to repeal all the clauses which tended to distress Scotland, rather than that one only … [to do which] would look like an act of compliance and submission to them: whereas to do more than they required would appear to proceed purely from a friendly and generous disposition towards the Scotch nation; and would take away all colour of opposition from those who found pretences to hinder the treaty, because they did not like the Union itself.133
The only part of the measure that Somers proposed should be retained was that giving authority to the queen to nominate commissioners for negotiating the Union.134
At the end of the Church of England in danger debate on 6 Dec. 1705, Somers summed up the arguments and insisted that ‘the nation was happy under a most wise and just administration, wherein the public money was justly applied … and the success of her majesty’s arms gave the nation greater honour and reputation that had been known’.135 On 7, 11 and 14 Dec. he was one of the managers of the conferences on the same subject. In January 1706 he was one of the members of the committee on public records who summoned the trustees of the Cotton Library and the officers of the rolls before them and gave orders for the better keeping of the records and public libraries throughout the kingdom.136 On 17 Jan. he reported from the committee to consider defects in the law. The committee had been meeting since early December and Somers, as chairman, had already ensured that Lord Keeper Cowper lend his assistance to their deliberations. Somers reported the committee’s detailed proposals for reform on 17 January. They were agreed and the judges were authorized to draw up a bill to implement them. The resultant bill was introduced by Somers into the House on 25 Jan. and, after a last minute conference over amendments proposed by the Commons, received the royal assent on 19 Mar., the last day of the session. The Commons’ amendments had reduced the bill’s scope but the statute, known as Lord Somers’ Act, nevertheless introduced major procedural reforms in the administration of the courts of equity and common law at Westminster.
Somers also worked with Cowper to amend procedures for private bills. On 16 Jan. 1706 Charles Spencer, 3rd earl of Sunderland, remarked on the ‘suspicious contents’ of a private bill that had been introduced into the House. Cowper commented similarly on another. Then on 12 Feb., when a bill for the sale of the estates of John Barnes deceased was introduced to the House, Cowper ‘laid such an emphasis on the peccant parts of the breviat, that the Lords took notice of the roguery; and threw it out with indignation’. Somers then took advantage of the opportunity thus presented to make a speech against the ‘perfunctory and careless passing of such bills’ and it was agreed that a committee of the whole should ‘consider of the best means to prevent the increase of private bills in parliament, and the surprising the House in their proceeding thereupon’.137 As a result, the House agreed to a new and comprehensive series of standing orders to govern the passage of private bills.
On 2, 11 and 19 Feb. Somers was one of the managers for the conferences on the bill for the security of the queen’s person and the Protestant succession. On 28 Feb. he was named to the committee to draw up reasons for the Lords’ amendment to the Commons amendment to Lord Conway’s bill (Francis Seymour Conway, Baron Conway) and on 2 Mar. he was one of the managers of the conference on the subject. He was also named to manage the conferences on 6 and 11 Mar. over the pamphlet A Letter from Sir Rowland Gwyn to the Right Honourable the Earl of Stamford, which was deemed to be a scandalous and seditious libel. He was again a manager for the conference on the militia bill on 13 March. Over the course of the session he had reported from two committees on issues relating to clothing contracts for the armed forces: the bill for making clothes with cloth buttons for export to the allied armies and that for the relief of Sir Stephen Evance‡ and Henry Cornish‡; and from four other committees on bills with no obvious political connection: one for settling the impropriate tithes of St Bride’s, London, and three estate bills (for John Williams, Thomas Deane and Henry Hare, 2nd Baron Coleraine [I]).
During the recess, in April 1706, Somers was appointed as one of the commissioners for union with Scotland.138 He also took advantage of Halifax’s embassy to Hanover to open a correspondence with the Electress Sophia, partly to ingratiate himself and partly to explain why he had opposed the invitation to her the previous autumn and why the Whigs had considered it necessary to pass an act to naturalize her family. He sought to assure her that the:
Act is attended with all possible marks of honour and respect from the queen and nation. It extends to all the posterity of her royal highness the Princess Sophia, born, or hereafter to be born, and wheresoever they are born, which is a privilege that was never yet granted in any case till in this instance.139
Somers was now regularly briefed on foreign policy issues by Godolphin, even to the extent of being considered as a potential plenipotentiary in the forthcoming peace negotiations, although, as Marlborough pointed out, Somers’ French was so poor that it was unlikely he would be up to the task.140 He was also deeply involved in facilitating negotiations over the Union, assuring Godolphin in August that the presence in Scotland of John Campbell, 2nd duke of Argyll [S] (who sat in the House as earl of Greenwich and who was then with the troops in what is modern-day Belgium), was so vital that the crown should pay the expense of his journey there.141 Winning the support of English Dissenters and Scots Presbyterians almost certainly resulted in promises to support the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts.142 His determination to make himself and the Junto indispensable to the duumvirs was matched by his determination to secure office for Sunderland. In September Sunderland informed Lady Marlborough that the failure to satisfy his demands would force Somers and Halifax to abandon the ministry.143
During the 1706–7 session Somers was present on 80 per cent of sitting days and once again held Shaftesbury’s proxy. Nearly half his absences were concentrated in the second half of January 1707. A central figure in the ministry, he corresponded with the somewhat prickly Richard Savage, 4th Earl Rivers, on aspects of military strategy and foreign affairs, including Rivers’ quarrel with his rival, Galway.144 He was believed to have orchestrated opposition in the Commons to the election of Edward Southwell‡, possibly as an oblique attack on James Butler, 2nd duke of Ormond.145 The Union was now the major political issue. On 14 Jan. 1707 Somers spoke in support of Godolphin against the Tory motion that the articles for the union with Scotland be laid before the House.146 He also acted as go-between for John Hall, bishop of Bristol, who was anxious to excuse himself from attendance but equally wanted to make sure that Somers was aware of his having arranged a proxy; Hall asked Somers to transmit his proxy to Archbishop Tenison. The Union, or perhaps more specifically the safeguards that some thought were needed to protect the Church of England, may have been the issue for which Hall thought his proxy was needed. Tenison was certainly looking to Somers for assistance and on 23 and 27 Jan. sent him drafts of the bill for the security of the Church of England that he had drawn up in consultation with several of his fellow bishops and which they wished to have inserted in the Act of Union.147 Although he had been at the centre of negotiations, Somers was absent from the House on 28 Jan. when the queen commended the Union to Parliament and Sunderland laid the articles of union before the House. He returned to the House on 1 Feb. and thereafter was active in securing the passage of the Union, speaking in its favour in the crucial debate on 24 February.148 It was, he told Marchmont, ‘not without a considerable struggle in both Houses here’ that it had been possible to avoid amendments that ‘might have been very disagreeable in Scotland’.149
Somers’ importance meant that he was approached by those seeking to influence all aspects of policy, including fiscal initiatives.150 His reputation was such that he was also approached for advice about pending legislation. In February 1707 plans for a bill for the Droitwich salt works involved lobbying Somers and Wharton in its favour, as well as showing Somers the draft bill so that he could ‘correct’ it.151 On 7 Mar. a letter from John Hough, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, indicates that Somers had told him that a proposal for a new church in Birmingham was unlikely to pass. Hough’s response suggests that Somers had made detailed comments. He remarked that:
I wish I could remove your lordship’s scruples, but indeed I am not able, for I never so much as heard of that gentlewoman whose consent your lordship thinks is not sufficiently obtained nor do I know where to look after her: and whereas you would have me send a catalogue of such as may be commissioners by virtue of the Act, I protest solemnly I have not yet thought of half their number.152
Despite his protest, Hough sent a list of commissioners the very next day and the bill received its first reading on 19 Mar. 1707.153 Presumably there was still a problem with it for, although the bill received a second reading, it was then dropped. A statute authorizing the creation of the new church and parish was not passed for another two years; on that occasion it originated in the Commons.154
Hough was not the only person to try to influence Somers. So too did Colonel John Rice, who faced a punitive act obliging him to account for debentures granted him in the previous session. On 7 Apr. the bill, which had already passed the Commons, was referred to a committee of the whole; that same day Rice wrote to Somers, attacking the character of the witnesses against him as ‘a crowd of Irish evidence’ and beseeching Somers ‘to save me and my family from ruin by delaying the bill’ so that he could get his own rebuttal witnesses together.155 In this case Somers was either unable or unwilling to help. The act received its third reading and the royal assent on 8 April. Somers’ involvement in other legislation led him to chair two committees on bills, one for the repair of highways in Wiltshire and another for Thomas Clarke’s bill. He also acted as one of the managers of conferences on the bills for Fornhill and Stony Stratford highways and for vagrants.
Somers was present on all but two days of the short April 1707 session. Rumours that he was to be appointed president of the Council abounded and some thought that the delay in announcing it was caused by the need to assuage Wharton’s resentments, not realizing the depth of the queen’s opposition.156 His centrality to the ministry was such that, as in previous years, approaches for his assistance in patronage requests continued to be commonplace.157 So, too, were requests for his support in elections.158
The duumvirs under siege, 1707–10
Over the summer, Tenison was in touch with Somers about the latest developments in the bishoprics crisis that had been unfolding since the death of Peter Mews, bishop of Winchester, in November 1706. 159 The Whigs had demanded the see for one of their supporters but Godolphin was under an obligation to promote his west country ally, Jonathan Trelawny, bishop of Exeter, and the queen wanted neither. The death of Nicholas Stratford, bishop of Chester, in March 1707 created a second vacancy but the queen, influenced by Harley and John Sharp, archbishop of York, insisted on her own candidates, the Tories Offspring Blackall, later bishop of Exeter, and William Dawes, later bishop of Chester and archbishop of York. The death of a third bishop, Simon Patrick of Ely, in May 1707 brought no respite. The Whigs now demanded all three bishoprics as the price of their continued support for the ministry. In June 1707 Somers pushed Tenison to act quickly and decisively in the Whig interest, for:
if time be lost, or if modesty prevails, it will (as in all other cases) be wrong disposed of & the Church and state will be undone. The Archbishop of Canterbury cannot be used ill always, unless he will be party to it in some measure himself … I have been not a little vexed, when I have remonstrated pretty strongly upon occasion of the talk of supplying late vacancies, to have been told that the archbishop is principally in fault who does not speak plainly and fully to the Queen, when the archbishop of York never suffers her to rest.160
Whig insistence on the appointment of Whig bishops caused something of a nightmare for the ministry, caught between Junto demands and Harley’s antipathy to them, and desperately afraid that the Whigs were prepared ‘to tear everything in pieces if they can’t have their own terms’.161 Meanwhile, Somers was also still involved in foreign affairs. Together with Halifax, he opposed the recall of Galway; together with Halifax and Godolphin he was the recipient of Marlborough’s private thoughts on the international situation.162 As far as Marlborough at least was concerned, the Junto may have been rapacious but they were more to be trusted than Harley, who was prone to playing ‘tricks’.163
In August 1707 the Junto lords met at Sunderland’s seat, Althorp, to plan for the approaching session. Later that month Somers was caught up in discussions over the calling of a convocation, when he was lobbied by the Whig bishops to state that there was no legal necessity to do so.164 When Parliament reconvened in October 1707 as the Parliament of Great Britain, Somers attended the first, 1707–8, session for 75 per cent of sitting days. His absences (apart from a week in March) were, for once, scattered ones. On 12 Nov. the extent of the trouble that the Junto could cause the ministry was amply demonstrated when Wharton, backed by Somers and Halifax, ‘made an elaborate harangue’ in the course of moving for a day to consider the state of the nation in relation to the fleet and trade. In so doing they managed to prevent the House from considering an address of thanks for the queen’s speech.165 The debate itself took place, in the presence of the queen, on 19 Nov., when the Junto lords, including Somers, all took a leading part.166
Somers was again prominent in the debates of 19 Dec. concerning the prosecution of the war in Spain, when he put a question, ‘that he thought all would agree in, viz., that no peace could be safe or honourable, till Spain and the West Indies were recovered from the House of Bourbon’. His proposition elicited no opposition and was then followed up by a request from Wharton for an address to the queen.167 On 7 Feb. when the House debated the abolition of the Scottish Privy Council, Somers was ‘vigorously’ in favour – as were the Whigs’ Scots allies, the Squadrone Volante.168 Two days later he was elected by ballot to the committee to examine William Greg. In the course of the session he underlined his importance to the management of the House by chairing several committees for significant public bills. A committee to draw up a bill for establishing a court of exchequer in Scotland was set up on 20 Dec. 1707; Somers chaired it and was thus instrumental in instructing Sir Edward Ward, chief baron of the English exchequer, and James Ogilvy, earl of Seafield [S], to prepare ‘a scheme of constitution’ of each country’s exchequer. Somers reported to the House on 10 Mar. and the resulting bill received the royal assent on 1 April.169 He also reported on 17 Mar. and 1 Apr. respectively the bill for building two flyboats for trading to Russia and that for the Bank of England. In addition he reported on three private bills, in at least two of which he had a clear personal and political interest (bills for settling the Worcestershire estates of the Whig John Bromley‡, son-in-law of his old friend William Bromley, and for the Tone navigation – the pet project of the Whig Edward Clarke‡, both reported on 28 Feb.); for the third (Sir John Wentworth’s estate bill reported on 1 Apr.) it is more difficult to discern an obvious personal interest. Behind the scenes Somers was involved in drafting the Carlisle Cathedrals bill, which arose from the quarrel between Bishop Nicolson and Francis Atterbury, then dean of Carlisle and later bishop of Rochester, and which confirmed episcopal control over cathedral personnel. The bill was introduced by Somers on 3 Feb. and received the royal assent on 20 March.170 On 31 Mar. he was also named as one of the managers of two conferences – on the bill for the encouragement of trade with America and on the waggoners bill.
Despite Harley’s resignation and continuing difficulties in Parliament, the queen was still set against bringing Somers into the cabinet council, even without a specific portfolio. To those concerned to shore up the tottering position of Marlborough it seemed likely that only by bringing in Somers would there be any chance of inoculating the queen against what they perceived as the pernicious influence of Abigail Masham.171 The queen remained obdurate in the face of the duumvirs’ pleading, possibly for personal as well as political reasons, as she regarded the Junto peers as ‘tyrannizing lords’. She informed Marlborough that she considered the idea of bringing in Somers as tending to her ‘utter destruction’.172 She also believed that Somers had ‘disobliged’ her husband by his attack on the conduct of the admiralty the previous year.173 Matters were further muddied by suspicions that the duumvirs were trying to split the Whig leadership.
With the dissolution of Parliament on 15 Apr. Somers was again involved in electioneering, not only for membership of the Commons but also for Scots representative peers.174 The Whig victories in the summer’s elections, coupled with the allied victory at Oudenarde on 11 July 1708, prompted hopes of further placatory offers from the duumvirs in order to gain Junto support when Parliament resumed for an address on the war.175 Failure to offer douceurs led to continuing dissension, misunderstandings and distrust. Arthur Maynwaring‡ commented that Somers in particular, ‘who … sets a just value upon his own merit, will never forgive the refusal of his own service when he offered it in so handsome a manner’.176 It was not until October 1708 that the queen, overcome with grief at the death of Prince George, finally gave in and agreed to admit Somers and Wharton to the cabinet. Somers stood on his dignity and initially refused the offer, but with flattering assurances from the duumvirs and the persuasive efforts of Halifax he finally agreed – on condition that there would be changes in the commissions for customs and excise.177 He was appointed president of the council on 25 Nov. 1708 but not before he had attempted to remove John Grobham Howe‡ from the Privy Council.178 According to Sarah, duchess of Marlborough, Somers seemed inclined initially to credit her with securing him his new position but when she injudiciously explained to him how poor her standing was with the queen, he was quick to abandon her and pay court to her rival Abigail Masham instead.179
In the meantime, the new Parliament had met on 16 Nov. 1708. During the 1708–9 session Somers was present on 70 per cent of sitting days. Early in the session he complained of the lord register’s delay in sending the papers concerning the election of Scots peers. He was also involved with assisting Godolphin and Marlborough over peace negotiations.180 Yet, despite this apparent closeness, the relationship between the Junto and Godolphin remained shaky. In December Somers was left out of the commission to pass the land tax – an omission that he strongly resented – and, although the cabinet council met, the full Privy Council did not, probably because Howe was still a member.181 Relationships within the Junto were also soured by Somers’ and Wharton’s acceptance of office ahead of Orford and Halifax.
Meanwhile, relationships between the Junto and their Scots allies the Squadrone were unsettled too, particularly after the controversy over the role of James Douglas, 2nd duke of Queensberry [S] and duke of Dover, in the election of the Scots representative peers. At a meeting in mid-December the Whig leaders and prominent Scots members of the Squadrone tried to thrash out their difficulties. Over the course of four hours, Somers and the Junto tried to reassure their Scots allies that they had ‘a great inclination to do all they can for Scotland and to make union easy’.182 In another account of the meeting, George Baillie‡ lamented that the Whigs were ‘not so warm’ for the Squadrone or new party as they had once been. Baillie suspected that for the Whigs numerical strength was more important than a shared ideology, so that they were ‘to be favoured or not, only as it could advance Whig Lords and purposes and that the new party were … to follow without asking question’. Fearful that the Whigs planned to desert the Squadrone for their rivals, the old party, Baillie tried to convince Somers that the Squadrone ‘were men of principle’ who ‘were upon the same bottom’ with the Whigs. In the aftermath of what Baillie thought of as a polite but frank discussion but which one suspects that Somers regarded as a harangue, Baillie found himself isolated from fellow members of the Squadrone as well as from Somers, whom he could never find at home when he called.183 Somers’ political path was clear. As James Johnston wrote, ‘Somers uses the Queen with all the softness and insinuation imaginable and she’s sensible, they say, that she was never used with so much good breeding. He courts too by himself or others … the Mashams male and female.’ He was so successful at ingratiating himself at court that Godolphin became increasingly uneasy.184 Junto loyalty to the Squadrone was demonstrated by their decision to vote, on 21 Jan. 1709, against the right of a Scots peer who also held a British title to participate in the election of Scottish representative peers; in so doing they made their opposition to Godolphin public. High politics apart, Somers’ expertise in drafting legislation meant that in January he was present with ‘some gentlemen of the House of Commons’ to hear a draft recruiting bill read over before its presentation to the lower House.185 On 27 Jan. he seconded the successful motion to support the House of Commons’ address to the queen requesting her to remarry.186
The duumvirs still hoped that Somers would follow ‘good sense’ and allow himself to be separated from his Junto allies.187 The Junto and the Squadrone had hoped to secure the appointment of James Graham, duke of Montrose [S], rather than Queensberry as secretary of state for Scotland.188 Early in February it was reported that Godolphin was ‘cock a hoop’ about the results of the appeals against the election of Scots representatives, believing that his behind-the-scenes negotiations had won the support of the Squadrone as well as the Argathelians. Queensberry was to be appointed as the third secretary of state but John Ker, duke of Roxburghe [S], and Argyll were to join the council and Montrose was to be mollified by becoming privy seal in Scotland with a salary of £2,000 a year but ‘no power at all’.189 Godolphin’s troubles were far from over, however. On 1 Mar. Somers successfully moved for an address requesting the queen to take care on concluding a peace that France recognize her title and expel the Pretender.190 The House then went into a committee of the whole to discuss the issue and in the course of its deliberations Somers voted against an attempt to resume the House. The manoeuvre had been concerted by the Junto without Godolphin’s knowledge and reflected the continuing ‘heart hatred’ between them.191 In April 1709 the passage of the treason bill imposed further strains on political relationships, so much so:
that it has quite broke all the Scotch from Lord Somers and his English friends. They say he finds himself sinking so fast he will go out of court and turn in opposition so as to make a Hanover party… All parties are separated in division among themselves and everything is in such perfect confusion that scarcely three men have confidence in one another.192
The Junto was divided too, with Somers and Sunderland suspicious of Wharton’s activities in Ireland.193 In the meantime peace negotiations rumbled on and it was reported that Somers had indicated that he would refuse the position of plenipotentiary.194 Just who was to be appointed was a political problem in itself, one on which Somers had to be ‘made easy’, especially as the queen was still resisting the appointment of Orford.195 Somers was also finding it difficult to obtain the patronage rewards that his Scots allies such as Marchmont expected.196 In a letter to Marlborough at the end of May he revealed his concerns about the terms of the peace. While expressing his pleasure at the prospect of Marlborough’s triumphant return, he hoped that ‘the circumstances of France are such at present, that it will be her interest to make an end of the whole and to avoid all those chicanes and prevarications which are so natural to the French genius’. It may have been such concerns about French insincerity that caused Somers to favour a barrier treaty and he returned to the theme later in the year when he fretted that it was ‘plain the French will not agree to a reasonable peace till downright necessity compels them’.197As well as the peace, Somers took a close interest in the question of the poor Palatines, an issue that divided political opinion. He advised on the most suitable places to direct charitable gifts and was also engaged in efforts to found a permanent home for the settlers. It may be significant that when, in early October 1709, John Chamberlayne was accused of neglecting his duty in relation to the Palatines it was to Somers that he appealed for protection.198
At the beginning of September 1709 Somers was again ill but he was well enough to be paying calls towards the end of the first week and at the end of the month he visited the queen in another attempt to persuade her to appoint Orford to the admiralty. Arthur Maynwaring had speculated earlier that if the question of the admiralty could not be settled to his satisfaction Somers was likely to resign. Negotiations about the make-up of the admiralty commission that Orford was to head persisted into the autumn, with Somers continuing to take a leading role in the discussions. By the beginning of November the awkward pace of the discussions and difficulties raised were said to have put him ‘out of all patience’. In the interests of ensuring a working majority in the House of Lords, Somers and Sunderland attempted to build an alliance with Charles Seymour, 6th duke of Somerset; Marlborough and Godolphin continued to hope that the Junto could be broken up and that relationships between its members, especially between Halifax and Somers, were deteriorating. Certainly by the middle of November Halifax was displaying open irritation with Somers. The same month Somers and Wharton made a point of apologizing to Charles Hay, Lord Yester [S] (later 3rd marquess of Tweeddale [S]), for the ‘ill usage honest men had met with’.199
Harley in the ascendant, 1710–14
During the 1709–10 session Somers attended for 70 per cent of sitting days. Half of his absences were concentrated in January and February 1710 and another quarter in the closing weeks of March and are again suggestive of periods of illness. On 5 Dec. 1709 he reported from the committee investigating the petition of Robert Hitch concerning his action against Sir Nicholas Shireburne. By this time Henry Sacheverell’s inflammatory sermons, particularly that delivered at St Paul’s Cathedral on 5 Nov., had created yet another political dilemma for the beleaguered ministry, who regarded his opinions as subversive and seditious. Prosecuting Sacheverell in the ordinary courts was considered to be problematic but the ministry was determined to punish him. Jonathan Swift related how Somers told him a few months after it was all over that he had attempted ‘earnestly and in vain’ to dissuade the ministry from pressing on with the trial.200 According to Alexander Cunningham, Somers supported the idea of a prosecution but, perhaps remembering the problems created by the diminishing attendances in the House of Lords at the time of the Fenwick attainder, told his cabinet colleagues that:
I said many years ago that the government is to be taken care of, and that good laws ought to be provided, lest such men as this should sometime or other kindle a flame to the destruction of our country, our religion, our property, our allies: and this evil, I said, was of such a nature that unless ye provided against it, it would be in vain to have recourse to prosecutions. At that time it behoved us to look to ourselves: but now the dangerous situation of affairs admonishes us rather to take care that such offenders do not hurt us, than to consult how to proceed against them. Ye trusted before in the royal favour and your own fortune; but where are these now? And as to the great number of noble lords, if they should absent themselves, or the members of parliament should revolt to the other party, ye will certainly find it too late, and to no purpose now to have recourse to judiciary proceedings: for when your adversaries perceive you to grow feeble, they will become the more daring … for my own part, indeed, I look upon those which Dr Sacheverell has done to the ministry, to be very great; but in the punishment thereof let no hatred, revenge, anger, or passion interpose; for where these take place, the mind does not easily discern the truth … and that which would pass among others as anger only, our people would call cruelty in the government, which is odious to all men. If however, a condign punishment can be found out for this man’s offence, and suitable to the greatness of the danger, I approve of the extraordinary method of proceeding; but if the greatness of the offence exceeds the constitutions of our ancestors, and the conceptions of men, I think it best to make use of that method of process which our laws have provided.201
His views were not shared by Sunderland or Marlborough and on 13 Dec. 1709 Godolphin’s ally John Dolben‡ secured a motion of censure in the Commons. Sacheverell was impeached the next day. Harley’s allies were delighted, believing that ‘So solemn a prosecution for such a scribble’ would make the affair even more notorious than it was already and that Dolben was acting as an agent for Somers and Halifax.202
In January 1710 Godolphin persuaded Somers to intercede with the queen in an attempt to repair the damage resulting from Marlborough’s quarrel with her over the appointment of Rivers as constable of the Tower. Somers saw the queen on 16 Jan., when he claimed to find her ‘very reserved’ and unreceptive to his arguments. He waited on her again three days later and, as he informed Marlborough, ‘represented the fatal consequence of any unkindness appearing on her part towards’ the duke. This time she appeared more conciliatory and willing to assure Marlborough of her continuing friendship.203 Somers, together with Cowper and Godolphin, was also said to have dissuaded his allies from promoting an address to the queen to remove Abigail Masham from her presence.204 Lady Marlborough did not believe him, suspecting that he had done her husband ‘ill offices in order to serve himself’ and become chief minister in his own right.205 Less intemperate enemies denigrated Somers’ political abilities. He and his ally Cowper ‘know nothing of Courts, their education has been narrow & they are both cautious, which makes them thought wise. But there is more wisdom in doing a bold, resolute action, when rightly timed, than there is in trimming & finding out expedients.’206 It was symptomatic of the general distrust within the ministry that even Godolphin suspected that Somers and the Whigs might be in league with Harley.207 Harley’s own list of supporters and opponents composed in January 1710, however, placed Somers with his enemies.
During Sacheverell’s trial Somers took a prominent part in arguing for Sacheverell’s conviction. He was also one of those to speak in favour of sending one of those taken during the riots at the beginning of March to the Tower. He joined several of his colleagues in defending the Revolution and on 18 Mar. batted down a motion proposed by Heneage Finch, Baron Guernsey (later earl of Aylesford), that the peers should be permitted to offer their judgment article by article.208 He also reiterated the position he had adopted during the Fenwick attainder, that the House of Lords was not bound by the processes and procedures of the lower courts, telling the House that:
we have always followed the example of the wisest judges; considering chiefly what is equity, and what the public good, the common safety, and the constitution of the kingdom necessarily require. We know that the judgments as well as the pleadings, must be according to law: but it does not thence follow that we are tied up to the forms of the inferior courts, or bound to proceed according to those laws which we prescribe to others; for every court has it particular custom, and we have ours.209
Not surprisingly, on 20 Mar. 1710 Somers voted Sacheverell guilty; he was then absent from the House, probably through ill health, for the whole of the following week and so was not present to vote on the question of Sacheverell’s punishment, though he had participated in a meeting held in the Prince’s Chamber on the day of the conviction, when the terms of Sacheverell’s censure had been agreed. During the ensuing storm of support for Sacheverell, Somers judged it safest to ‘wait with patience till the humour of abetting and applauding Sacheverell should cool of itself’.210 Even so, he was one of several people suspected of being responsible for writing a response to the decision to publish the proceedings of the Sacheverell trial.211 On 30 Mar. he was one of the managers of the conference concerning amendments to the bill under which Colonel John Lovett (son-in-law of the Tory John Verney‡, Viscount Fermanagh [I]) proposed to rebuild Eddystone lighthouse and on 4 Apr. he reported from the committee considering the printed books bill.
Soon after the conclusion of the proceedings against Sacheverell the Junto were faced with a new threat to their position with the appointment of Shrewsbury as lord chamberlain. The news was of sufficient moment to cause Somers to re-open a letter that he had just finished to Marlborough to insert the information. Over the coming weeks the ministry was once more plagued by in-fighting. Somers and Sunderland quarrelled towards the end of May and during the summer recess Somers was again ill: on 6 June 1710 he told Marlborough that he had been confined to his chamber for nearly a month.212 By then it was common knowledge within the ministry that, despite all their attempts to dissuade her, the queen was about to dismiss Sunderland. The queen told Somers of her intention in a private audience, telling him ‘at the same time that she was entirely for moderation; that she did not intend to make any other alterations’. She was also careful to ask Somers whether replacing Sunderland with William Legge, 2nd Baron (later earl of) Dartmouth, would be acceptable to the Whigs.213
Sunderland was dismissed on 14 June. Somers and the Junto then assured Marlborough of their determination to keep him in office.214 Marlborough, who knew that Harley was trying to negotiate with them, remained suspicious of their intentions, warning his wife that she was ‘in a country amongst tigers and wolves’.215 He had every reason to be doubtful of Somers’ intentions as, sometime between the middle of June and the first week of July, Harley (perhaps over-optimistically) included Somers’ name in a list of his projected new ministry.216 Yet even as it became apparent that the ministry’s fate would be sealed with a dissolution, Marlborough continued to hope that Somers, Godolphin and Cowper would help him to fend it off.217 By the end of July Somers seems to have resolved not to co-operate with Harley. Instead he lambasted Shrewsbury and Somerset in council for betraying their Whig roots and preached the importance of continuing the war until the question of Spain and the Indies had been settled.218
In August, the dismissal of Godolphin followed by the long-anticipated dissolution left Somers and the Whigs with ‘no greater usefulness than that of taking care of elections’. Harley’s hopes of winning Somers over had by then all but evaporated. Harley described Somers as ‘grown extremely angry’ with the Tories but also as pretending to be angry with Godolphin, Cowper and Halifax. In a letter of 12 Sept. Harley laid the blame for Somers’ anger on Cowper’s influence but he also thought that ‘the rage of not being chief minister seems to be the cause of it’.219 Nearly 30 years later Thomas Carte’s notes of an interview with the under-secretary of state Erasmus Lewis‡ indicated that Somers had indeed expected to be made first minister. Quite what credence is to be given to this account is difficult to decide. According to Lewis, Somers told the queen that Marlborough ‘was the worst man that God almighty had ever made’, which seems unlikely for a man whose political reputation was built on a propensity for careful and statesmanlike utterances.220 It was symptomatic of the volatility of the situation that just two days later Harley wrote that Wharton and Somers had ‘made mad work’ in preventing Cowper from joining the new ministry.221 Somers was replaced as lord president by Rochester on 21 Sept 1710.
During the 1710–11 session Somers’ attendance fell to 56 per cent of sitting days. The pattern was yet again suggestive of bouts of illness, with over two-thirds of his absences taking place between 6 Mar. and 29 May 1711. He held the proxy of Charles Powlett, 2nd duke of Bolton, from 23 Dec. 1710, vacated by Bolton’s attendance on 12 Jan. 1711 and a second proxy from Bolton dated 25 Apr. 1711 and vacated on 7 May. He also held that of James Stanley, 10th earl of Derby, from 22 Dec. to 2 Feb. 1712. Late in December 1710 or early in January 1711 Somers was included in a list drawn up by Nottingham, probably concerning the imminent debates on the ministry’s peace policy. Not surprisingly, given the Whig commitment to the war, he was also listed as one of those who intended to vote in favour of presenting the address containing the ‘No Peace without Spain’ motion in the abandoned division of 8 Dec. 1710. During January 1711 he took a leading role in the various debates on the war in Spain.222 On 11 Jan. he protested against the resolution to reject the petitions of Galway and Charles O’Hara, Baron Tyrawley [I], and the following day he protested against the passage of the resolution censuring the conduct of the ministers for approving an offensive war in Spain. He again protested on 3 Feb. against the resolutions to agree with the committee that the two regiments on the Spanish establishment at the time of Alamanza were not properly supplied and to agree with the committee that the failure of ministers to supply the deficiencies of men voted by Parliament for the war in Spain amounted to a neglect of that service. On 8 Feb. he entered two dissents, one to the content of the address to the queen concerning the state of the war in Spain and the other to the presentation of the address itself. The following day he dissented to the decision of the House to expunge two of the reasons for the second protest of 3 February.
Somers was clearly still regarded as possessing useful influence for on 13 Feb. he was approached by William Wake, bishop of Lincoln (later archbishop of Canterbury), and Charles Trimnell, bishop of Norwich, about the affairs of convocation.223 On 3 Mar. he reported from the committee for the bill for the sale of the Devon farm belonging to the late Sebastian Isaack, and on 20 Apr. he was named to the committee to draw the address of thanks to the queen for her message concerning the death of the emperor. Somers was entrusted with the proxy of Charles Townshend, 2nd Viscount Townshend, on 2 May but his opportunity to make use of it was limited as Townshend resumed his place the following day. On 1 June he joined with an alliance of Tories and Whigs in an attack on clauses concerning the export of raw linen yarn in the Scotch linen bill. He argued successfully that the House had an obligation to support the Irish linen industry as a result of disadvantages imposed on Ireland by statutes governing woollen manufactures.224
During the recess rumours of the forthcoming peace abounded, as did gossip about Harley’s success in splitting the Whigs, Somers’ possible return to government (reports of which had been current since at least the latter part of April) and fresh parliamentary elections.225 Some sort of rapprochement between Somers and Oxford, as Harley had become, was certainly being encouraged by Halifax, and in April 1712 Prince Eugene told the court of Vienna that Somers, Halifax and Cowper were ‘for winning over the Treasurer [Oxford] to their interest and reducing all things again into the right channel’.226
Over the 1711–12 session Somers was present on only 35 per cent of sitting days. On 25 Nov., shortly before the session began, Halifax referred to Somers having been so ill that he had been housebound for a week and in December he described Somers as ‘really very much out of order and in pain’.227 In spite of this, Somers held the proxy of Thomas Grey, 2nd earl of Stamford, from 30 November. He covered his own absence from the House between 13 Feb. and 12 Apr. 1712 with a proxy to Orford (thereby presumably vacating Stamford’s proxy). Orford in turn registered a proxy dated 15 Apr. with Somers, although the opportunities for its use were limited since Somers was present for only one day between 12 Apr. and 5 May. Somers did attend the House on 8 Dec. for the ‘No Peace without Spain’ debate but, perhaps as a result of the shadowy negotiations that had been carried on during the recess between the Whigs and Oxford, he neither spoke nor voted.228 In December 1711 it was predicted that Somers would vote against the right of a Scottish peer at the time of the Union to sit in the House of Lords as a British peer. He is listed as having so voted on 20 Dec. 1711, although according to the presence list he was actually absent from the House that day and there is no record of his having registered a proxy. The ensuing discussions over an expedient to satisfy the Scots involved suggestions akin to those that would form the basis of the 1719 peerage bill but it was noted that Somers was one of those leading peers whose views were as yet unknown, they having ‘held their peace’.229 Somers was in the House on 2 Jan. 1712 when the queen’s message instructing the House to adjourn for a week was read by the lord keeper, Simon Harcourt, later Viscount Harcourt. Somers rose to demand a committee to examine precedents for such a message, declaring, with studied false modesty, that:
there were many Lords had more experience in the law of parliament than he, but that for a great part of his life he had made it his study to be versed in the records of both houses, and in all his reading he could never find that any such command ever came single to either house from the crown. He confessed that such a command had been often sent to both houses at the same time and complied with. He said it was a matter of such consequence that he hoped lords would come to some resolution that their books might be searched … and if there was no such precedent found he did believe her majesty would thank them for doing their duty to her and themselves in endeavouring to be rightly informed and did not doubt but they would find her majesty would readily recall her command.
The ensuing debate turned into a transparent attack on the ministry in which leading Whigs were joined by Nottingham and a disgruntled Godolphin, but the motion to adjourn was carried by a comfortable majority.230
In April 1712 Somers was one of several prominent Whigs to speak out against William Carstares’s patronage bill, though it was carried thanks to the court’s support for the measure.231 He was, however, still a figure of major political importance, and his influence also stretched into the realms of theology. In May 1712 he was said to have written the declaration on lay baptism which the bishops intended to subscribe and send down to the lower house of convocation and to be ‘the supreme governor at Lambeth’.232 The advice of Somers and other leading Whig peers was clearly sought after and valued by whiggish bishops.233 Over the summer it seems that Somers’ health underwent a further decline. Whereas previous illnesses do not seem to have affected his mental capacity he was now said to have undergone ‘a great decay in his understanding’.234 The diagnosis was perhaps overstated, for in January 1713 he was as usual meeting with ‘a great number of Whig lords’ in London, presumably to plan tactics for the forthcoming session.235
The third and final session of the 1710 Parliament convened on 9 Apr. 1713. Somers was present on 52 per cent of sitting days, his absences being concentrated in April, May and July. Although he did not take his seat until 4 May he was clearly deeply involved in discussions of opposition strategy because, on 15 Apr., ‘a great crew’ of peers, including Nottingham as well as leading Whigs, was seen to arrive at Somers’ house in Leicester Fields, where they stayed for nearly two hours.236 During Somers’ absence from the House the report of the commissioners of accounts appears to have confirmed some of the allegations about fee-farm rents that had been made in the attempted impeachment but nevertheless seem to have gone almost unnoticed.237 In June Oxford assumed that Somers would vote against the confirmation of the eighth and ninth articles of the French commercial treaty. Somers reported on 2 June from the committee for the bill of James Cecil, 5th earl of Salisbury, and also that of William Booth.
Following the dissolution, Somers joined Cowper in standing godfathers to the son of Bishop Trimnell.238 The first session of 1714 saw him managing to attend for only 30 per cent of sitting days. His proxy was held by Halifax from 5 Mar. until his return to the House on 5 Apr. and again from 14 Apr. to his return on 30 Apr., when it was noted that ‘Lord Somers does come to the H. but his figure now is reduced to a monosyllable. Lord Wharton is the prime manager on that side.’239 Halifax held his proxy again from 13 to 28 May. Somers was present in the House on 2 June when the schism bill was brought up from the Commons and for the subsequent debates on 4, 7 and 9 June. He was then absent until 15 June, with his absence covered by a proxy to Townshend. Oxford had predicted that he would oppose the bill and on 15 June he signed the protest against its passage. On 17 June he reported Ambrose Brown’s bill. He was then absent again between 25 June and 2 July, during which his proxy was again held by Townshend. Somers’ reputation still enabled him to command a considerable following; it was said that if he were to open the debate on commerce with Spain on 30 June rather than Nottingham it would be ‘looked upon as matter of more weight’.240
Final years, 1714–16
The death of Anne on 1 Aug. 1714 ushered in a brief session of which Somers attended only 3 of 15 possible days. He was reputedly offered a place in the new ministry but declined it.241 In gratitude for their ‘signal services’ both he and Nottingham were granted annuities for life of £3,500.242 When the first Parliament of the new reign met in March 1715 Somers attended some 38 per cent of sittings. He was apparently taken ill during the debates in July on the impeachment of Oxford, after which he was said to be ‘in that condition as to be little minded’.243 In September, however, he was sufficiently well to present the king with the loyal address from the county of Worcester.244 Somers’ final appearance in the House was on 27 Jan. 1716. In mid-February his illness was named for the first time as gout.245 He registered a proxy in favour of Richard Temple, Baron Cobham, dated 22 Feb., which was vacated by his death ‘of an apoplexy’ at his London residence in Leicester Fields on 26 Apr. (one letter recorded his death as having occurred on the morning of 27 April).246 According to one correspondent, he had ‘been civilly dead almost this year past’. He died intestate, allegedly possessed of real estate worth only about £2,000 a year.247 As he had no children his peerage died with him.
Whig propagandists portrayed Somers as something of a hero. Gilbert Burnet, bishop of Salisbury, declared that as lord chancellor he was ‘in all respects the greatest man I had ever known in that post’, while Joseph Addison‡ praised him as ‘one of the most distinguished figures in the history of the present age’.248 Tories vilified him instead as debauched and, if not an atheist, certainly a deist. James Vernon‡ noted that ‘Lord Somers is more particularly glanced at in all their pamphlets, for adultery, Socianism, and I know not what besides’. Swift also alluded to Socinianism when considering Somers’ beliefs.249 Both views reflected his long domination of political and parliamentary life; perhaps they also reflected the extent to which even his contemporaries found it difficult to penetrate beneath the surface of urbane aloofness that he cultivated so well.
R.P./R.D.E.E.- 1 TNA, PROB 6/92, f. 50v.
- 2 London Gazette, 6–9 Aug. 1715.
- 3 Dasent, Hist. St. James’s Sq. App. A.
- 4 Add. 70316, H. Speke to W. Thomas, 15 Apr. 1713.
- 5 Swift, Works, ed. Davis et al, v. 258; E.L. Ellis, ‘The Whig Junto, in Relation to the Development of Party Politics and Party Organization, from its Inception, to 1714’ (Oxf. Univ. D.Phil. thesis, 1961), i. 58; Add. 36116, f. 170.
- 6 W. Sachse, Lord Somers: A Political Portrait, vii.
- 7 Ibid. 68.
- 8 R. Cooksey, Essay on the Life and Character of John, Lord Somers (1791), 27–28.
- 9 Sachse, Lord Somers, 2.
- 10 Nicolson, London Diaries, 138, 259, 277, 316, 445.
- 11 Sachse, Lord Somers, 15–19.
- 12 HMC 14th Rep. IX, 448.
- 13 Swift, Works, ed. Davis et al, vii. 5, viii. 119.
- 14 HMC Portland, ix. 407.
- 15 Sachse, Lord Somers, 70.
- 16 Luttrell, Brief Relation, iii. 58, 59–60; TNA, SP 105/58, f. 158.
- 17 Bodl. Tanner 25, f. 27; Sainty, Judges, 97.
- 18 Surr. Hist. Cent. 371/14/E/1, R. Wolseley to Somers, 16/26 Apr. 1693.
- 19 CSP Dom. 1693, p. 84.
- 20 UNL, PwA 1173.
- 21 EHR, lxxi, 585.
- 22 Verney ms mic. M636/48, J. to Sir R. Verney, 28 Nov. 1694.
- 23 Sachse, Lord Somers, 115.
- 24 Add. 72486, ff. 23–24.
- 25 Ibid. f. 22.
- 26 Verney ms mic. M636/48, Sir R. to J. Verney, 2 Dec. 1694.
- 27 Surr. Hist. Cent. 371/14/E/3.
- 28 Pols. in Age of Anne, 14.
- 29 HMC Downshire, i. 587.
- 30 Surr. Hist. Cent. 371/14/E/9.
- 31 UNL, PwA 1176; Luttrell, Brief Relation, iii. 376.
- 32 UNL, PwA 1171.
- 33 UNL, PwA 1172; CSP Dom. 1693, p. 272.
- 34 UNL, PwA 1177, 1179.
- 35 Surr. Hist. Cent. 371/14/A2, R. Harley to Somers, 3 Sept. 1693.
- 36 Surr. Hist. Cent. 371/14/F7–14.
- 37 Sachse, Lord Somers, 107–8; Surr. Hist. Cent. 371/14/J6, [J. Rushout to Somers] 28 Oct. 1695; 371/14/A3, R. Harley to Somers, 29 Oct. 1695; UNL, PwA 1212/1–2.
- 38 HMC 13th Rep. VI. 36.
- 39 UNL, PwA 1180.
- 40 HP Commons, 1690–1715, iii. 916.
- 41 Surr. Hist. Cent. 371/14/E8, E10, E11.
- 42 Verney ms mic. M636/47, J. to Sir R. Verney, 8 Nov. 1693; Luttrell, Brief Relation, iii. 223–4.
- 43 Add. 17677 NN, ff. 346–8.
- 44 CSP Dom. 1695, p. 329.
- 45 HMC Hastings, ii. 270; Add. 72536, f. 36.
- 46 Sachse, Lord Somers, 121; Shrewsbury Corresp. 431–3.
- 47 C. Jones, ‘Robert Harley, Christmas and the House of Lords Protest’, eBLJ article 4 (2007).
- 48 King’s Law Jnl. xix. 507-24.
- 49 Ailesbury Mems. ii. 419, 426, 432.
- 50 UNL, PwA 1181–4; Surr. Hist. Cent. 371/14/E13.
- 51 Sachse, Lord Somers, 127–8.
- 52 HMC Buccleuch, ii. 585; Add. 61653, ff. 30–31; Verney ms mic. M636/50, A. Nicholas to Sir J. Verney, 2 Dec. 1697.
- 53 Add. 61653, ff. 21–23, 48–50, 56–59.
- 54 Northants. RO, Montagu (Boughton) 47, no. 21.
- 55 Ibid.
- 56 Add. 61653, ff. 70–71.
- 57 Shrewsbury Corresp. 535–6.
- 58 Add. 61653, ff. 75–77.
- 59 Ibid.
- 60 Ibid. ff. 80–82.
- 61 Bodl. Carte 233, f. 54.
- 62 Ibid. ff. 65, 70; Bodl. Rawl. Letters 51, no. 160.
- 63 Luttrell, Brief Relation, iv. 549.
- 64 Add. 61653, ff. 6–7.
- 65 Surr. Hist Cent. 371/14/A/7–9, Bath to Somers, 9 and 13 July with enclosure, 29 Oct., 11 Nov. 1698.
- 66 UNL, PwA 1477.
- 67 Horwitz, Parl. Pol. 240–1.
- 68 UNL, PwA 1479, 1481–3, 1487–9.
- 69 Vernon–Shrewsbury Letters, ii. 221–2, 225.
- 70 Sachse, Lord Somers, 151.
- 71 Add. 61653, ff. 4, 5–6.
- 72 Shrewsbury Corresp. 572–3; Sachse, Lord Somers, 152; Carte 228, f. 272.
- 73 A letter ballancing the necessity of keeping a land force in times of peace: with the dangers that may follow on it (1697).
- 74 Add. 17677 TT, f. 83.
- 75 Add. 61653, f. 1.
- 76 Add. 70081, Newsletter, 28 Feb. 1698–9.
- 77 HMC Lonsdale, 112.
- 78 Add. 61653, ff. 1–4.
- 79 UNL, Portland mss, PwA 1498, 1499, 1500.
- 80 HMC Johnstone, 110.
- 81 CJ, xiii. 8, 10.
- 82 R.C. Ritchie, Captain Kidd and the War against the Pirates, 53, 189–90.
- 83 HMC Johnstone, 116.
- 84 12&13 Will. III, c.12.
- 85 Add. 70118, E. to Sir E. Harley, n.d. (c.15 Feb. 1700); Beinecke Lib. Manchester pprs. [R. Yard to Manchester], 18 Feb. 1700.
- 86 HMC 13th Rep. VI. 48.
- 87 Beinecke Lib. Manchester pprs. [M. Prior to Manchester], 4 Apr. 1700.
- 88 HMC Downshire, i. 796; Bodl. Ballard 11, f. 155; Ballard 10, f. 40.
- 89 Vernon–Shrewsbury Letters, iii. 39–40.
- 90 Surr. Hist Cent. 371/14/O/1/20.
- 91 HMC Buccleuch, ii. 652.
- 92 Add. 72517, ff. 57–58; Add. 72539, f. 71; Luttrell, Brief Relation, iv. 685.
- 93 NAS, GD406/1/4791.
- 94 HMC Lords, n.s. iv. 212–14.
- 95 HMC Cowper, iii. 161.
- 96 Luttrell, Brief Relation, v. 33.
- 97 LJ, xvi. 22–23, 641.
- 98 Ballard 6, f. 55; NAS, GD406/1/6509.
- 99 Luttrell, Brief Relation, v. 39; Ballard 6, f. 55.
- 100 Surr. Hist. Cent. 371/14/01/10.
- 101 Cocks Diary, 129–30.
- 102 Luttrell, Brief Relation, v. 62.
- 103 HMC Downshire, i. 803.
- 104 Add. 70264, Harley’s notes, 19 June 1701.
- 105 Longleat, Bath mss, Thynne pprs. 44, f. 144.
- 106 Evelyn Diary, v. 466–7.
- 107 Surr. Hist. Cent. 371/14/E/17, 371/14/01/12.
- 108 HMC Rutland, ii. 168.
- 109 Add. 70073–4, newsletter, 17 Mar. 1702.
- 110 HMC Lords, n.s. v. 16–20.
- 111 HMC Lonsdale, 116.
- 112 Add. 70276, R. Mander to Speaker Harley, 16 Apr. 1702.
- 113 Surr. Hist. Cent. 371/14/E/21.
- 114 Add. 70073–4, newsletter, 23 May 1702; HP Commons, 1690–1715, iii. 855.
- 115 Surr. Hist. Cent. 371/14/E22, 371/14/01/9; Add. 70073–4, newsletter, 1 Oct. 1702.
- 116 Nicolson, London Diaries, 137–8.
- 117 Ibid. 40, 150.
- 118 Add. 70075, newsletter, 25 Feb. and 6 Mar. 1703; Post Boy, 25–27 Feb. 1703.
- 119 HMC Buccleuch, ii. 662.
- 120 Pols. in Age of Anne, 237.
- 121 PA, HL/PO/CO/1/6, 381, 383, 385, 387, 391, 445.
- 122 Vernon–Shrewsbury Letters, iii. 256–7.
- 123 HMC Downshire, i. 835.
- 124 Add. 61458, ff. 25–26.
- 125 Vernon–Shrewsbury Letters, iii, 276, 278–9; KSRL, Methuen–Simpson corresp. ms c163, J. Methuen to Sir W. Simpson, 12 Dec. 1704.
- 126 HMC 14th Rep. III, 156.
- 127 KSRL, Methuen–Simpson corresp. ms c163, J. Methuen to Sir W. Simpson, 13 Feb. and 27 Feb. 1705.
- 128 Marlborough–Godolphin Corresp. 519.
- 129 HMC Portland, ii. 190.
- 130 HMC Portland, iv. 250–1.
- 131 KSRL, Methuen–Simpson corresp. ms c163, J. Methuen to Sir W. Simpson, 3 July, 16 Oct. 1705.
- 132 KSRL, Methuen–Simpson corresp. ms c163, J. Methuen to Sir W. Simpson, 20 Nov. 1705.
- 133 Cowper, Diary, 18.
- 134 Nicolson, London Diaries, 309.
- 135 Timberland, ii. 160.
- 136 Luttrell, Brief Relation, vi. 2.
- 137 Nicolson, London Diaries, 376.
- 138 CSP Dom. 1705–6, p. 110.
- 139 Stowe 222, f. 386.
- 140 Marlborough–Godolphin Corresp. 582–3, 595.
- 141 Ibid. 651.
- 142 J.S. Barrington, Reflexions on the XIIth query (1733), 17–18.
- 143 Add. 61443, ff. 13–15.
- 144 HMC Bath, i. 132, 138–9, 155, 160–1.
- 145 HMC Portland, viii. 278–80.
- 146 Timberland, ii. 167; Luttrell, Brief Relation, vi. 127.
- 147 Surr. Hist. Cent. 371/14/D10, D12, D13.
- 148 Timberland, ii. 175.
- 149 HMC 14th Rep. III, 158–9.
- 150 Surr. Hist Cent. 371/14/E23.
- 151 Northants. RO, Montagu (Boughton) 77, nos 77, 80.
- 152 Surr. Hist. Cent. 371/14/D19.
- 153 Surr. Hist. Cent. 371/14/D16; LJ, xviii. 291.
- 154 LJ, xviii, 294, 670, 723.
- 155 Surr. Hist. Cent. 371/14/E/25.
- 156 Christ Church, Oxf. Wake mss 17, f. 165.
- 157 Surr. Hist. Cent. 371/14/01/14, 16, 371/14/D17.
- 158 Surr. Hist. Cent. Somers 371/14/L29.
- 159 Surr. Hist. Cent. Somers 371/14/D17.
- 160 Christ Church, Oxf. Wake mss 7, ff. 346–7.
- 161 Marlborough–Godolphin Corresp. 830–1.
- 162 Ibid. 818, 865; Add. 61494, ff. 71–72.
- 163 Marlborough–Godolphin Corresp. 888.
- 164 Christ Church, Oxf. Wake mss 17, f. 174.
- 165 Timberland, ii. 179–80; Luttrell, Brief Relation, vi. 233.
- 166 Luttrell, Brief Relation, vi. 236.
- 167 Vernon–Shrewsbury Letters, iii. 301.
- 168 Haddington mss, Mellerstain letters III, [Baillie to Rothes] 7 Feb. 1707.
- 169 HMC Lords, n.s. vii. 573–5; 6 Anne c53.
- 170 Sachse, Lord Somers, 253.
- 171 Add. 61459, ff. 20–23; Marlborough–Godolphin Corresp. 958–9, 969, 978.
- 172 Add. 61101, ff. 146–9; Gregg, Queen Anne, 264.
- 173 Add. 61459, f. 56; Pols. in Age of Anne, 238.
- 174 TNA, PRO 30/24/21/158; Add. 61628, ff. 135–7, 159–60.
- 175 Add. 61628, ff. 132–4.
- 176 Add. 61459 f. 121.
- 177 Ibid. ff. 133–6.
- 178 Add. 72488, ff. 35–36.
- 179 F. Harris, Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, 150, 153.
- 180 NLS, Yester mss 7021, ff. 136–7; Marlborough–Godolphin Corresp. 1173, 1180, 1184, 1190.
- 181 Add. 72488, ff. 40–41.
- 182 NLS, Yester mss 14415, ff. 168–9.
- 183 Haddington mss. Mellerstain letters III, [Baillie to his wife], 24 Jan. [1709].
- 184 Add. 72488, ff. 42–43.
- 185 Marlborough–Godolphin Corresp. 1192.
- 186 Add. 61129, f. 19.
- 187 Marlborough–Godolphin Corresp. 1217.
- 188 Add. 72488, ff. 42–43.
- 189 Ibid. ff. 49–50.
- 190 Timberland, ii. 260–1.
- 191 Add. 72488, ff. 52–53.
- 192 Add. 72540, ff. 159–60.
- 193 Marlborough–Godolphin Corresp. 1294–5.
- 194 Add. 72499, ff. 25–26.
- 195 Marlborough–Godolphin Corresp. 1263–4.
- 196 NAS, GD158/1174/119–21.
- 197 Add. 61134, ff. 217–18, 221; Marlborough–Godolphin Corresp. 1314–15.
- 198 EHR, lxxxii. 464; Surr. Hist. Cent. Somers 371/14/D18, 371/14/H2–5, 10; HMC Portland, ii. 207.
- 199 Herts. ALS, DE/P/F56, Somers to Ld. Cowper, n.d. [Sept 1709]; Surr. Hist. Cent. 371/14/K/26; Marlborough–Godolphin Corresp. 1395, 1396–7; Add. 61459, ff. 183–4; Add. 61460, ff. 101–4, 118–20; Add. 61443, ff. 34–35, 36–37; NLS, Yester pprs. ms 7021, ff. 191–2.
- 200 Swift, Works, ed. Davis et al, viii. 115.
- 201 A. Cunningham, The History of Great Britain (1787), ii. 277–8.
- 202 HMC Portland, iv. 531–2.
- 203 Add. 61134, ff. 223–4, 225; Marlborough–Godolphin Corresp. 1408, 1414.
- 204 Cunningham, History, ii. 279–80.
- 205 Add. 61134, ff. 225–9; HMC 8th rep. pt. 1 (1881), p. 38b.
- 206 Add. 61460, f. 160.
- 207 Marlborough–Godolphin Corresp. 1419, 1421.
- 208 HMC Portland, iv. 534–5; Wentworth Pprs. 114–16; The State Trial of Dr Henry Sacheverell, ed. B. Cowan, 72, 88, 93.
- 209 Cunningham, History, ii. 297.
- 210 LPL, ms 1770 (Wake’s diary), f. 93; Cunningham, History, ii. 301.
- 211 State Trial of Dr Henry Sacheverell, 278.
- 212 Add. 61134, ff. 230–2, 234; Add. 72495, f. 8.
- 213 Marlborough–Godolphin Corresp. 1527; Holmes, ‘Great Ministry‘, 38.
- 214 Add. 61134, ff. 202–3.
- 215 HMC Portland, ii. 217; Marlborough–Godolphin Corresp. 1541.
- 216 Holmes, ‘Great Ministry’, 38.
- 217 Marlborough–Godolphin Corresp. 1577.
- 218 Holmes, ‘Great Ministry’, 41.
- 219 HMC Portland, ii. 217, 218–19.
- 220 Carte 266, ff. 36–37.
- 221 HMC Portland, ii. 219.
- 222 Timberland, ii. 318–29.
- 223 LPL, ms 1770 (Wake’s diary), f. 104.
- 224 ‘Letters of Lord Balmerinoch to Harry Maule’, ed. C. Jones, Scots Hist. Soc. Misc. xii. 135.
- 225 NAS, Hamilton mss GD406/1/5729; NLS, Wodrow pprs. Wod. Lett. Qu. V. f. 192; HMC Portland, iv. 690–3; Add. 72491, ff. 37–38.
- 226 HMC Portland, v. 108, 156–8.
- 227 Ibid. v. 115–16, 120.
- 228 Verney ms mic. M636/54, R. Palmer to R. Verney, 11 Dec. 1711.
- 229 ‘Letters of Lord Balmerinoch to Harry Maule’, ed. C. Jones, Scots Hist. Soc. Misc. xii. 143.
- 230 Wentworth Pprs. 237–41.
- 231 NLS, Wodrow pprs. Wod. Lett. Qu. VI. f. 162.
- 232 Add. 72495, ff. 141–2.
- 233 LPL, ms 1770 (Wake’s diary), f. 120v.
- 234 Add. 72495, ff. 167–8.
- 235 Add. 70213, W. Bramston to Oxford, 26 Jan. 1713.
- 236 Add. 70316, H. Speke to W. Thomas, 15 Apr. 1713.
- 237 HMC Lords, n.s. x. 37–40.
- 238 Add. 38507, ff. 83–84.
- 239 Add. 72501, f. 119.
- 240 Wentworth Pprs. 394–5.
- 241 Verney ms mic. M636/55, W. Viccars to Fermanagh, 29 Sept. 1714.
- 242 Weekly Journal, 19 Feb. 1715.
- 243 Add. 72502, f. 76.
- 244 London Gazette, 20–24 Sept. 1715.
- 245 Christ Church, Oxf. Wake mss 15, f. 51.
- 246 HMC Portland, v. 522.
- 247 NMM, Vernon mss VER/1/1K, J. to E. Vernon, 28 Apr. [1716]; Flying Post, 28 Apr.–1 May 1716; Add. 72493, f. 79.
- 248 Burnet, iv. 445; Sachse, Lord Somers, 322.
- 249 Vernon–Shrewsbury Letters, iii. 156; Swift, Works, ed. Davis et al, iii. 79.