BOOTH, Henry (1652-94)

BOOTH, Henry (1652–94)

suc. fa. 8 Aug. 1684 as 2nd Bar. DELAMER (DELAMERE); cr. 17 Apr. 1690 earl of WARRINGTON

First sat 19 May 1685; last sat 18 Dec. 1693

MP Cheshire 4 Mar. 1678, 1679 (Mar.), 1679 (Oct.), 1681

b. 13 Jan. 1652, 2nd but 1st surv. s. of Sir George Booth, 2nd bt. (later Bar. Delamer) and Elizabeth (d. 4 Jan. 1691), da. of Henry Grey, earl of Stamford; bro. of George Booth‡. educ. unknown. m. 7 July 1670 (with £20,000), Mary (d. 23 Mar. 1691), da. and h. of Sir James Langham‡, 2nd bt. of Cottesbrooke, Northants. 4s. (1 d.v.p.), 2da. d. 2 Jan. 1694; will 16 Oct. 1688, admon. 1 Mar. 1694 (revoked), pr. 15 July 1698.1

PC 14 Feb. 1689-d.; chan. and under-treas., exch.1689-90; commr. treasury 1689-90.

Commr. recusants, Lancs. 1675, wharves, London 1690; custos rot. Cheshire 1673-80, 1681-2, 1689-d.; ld. lt. Cheshire 1689-d.; alderman, Chester 1689-d., mayor 1691-2; master forester, Quernmore, Mirescough, Amounderness, Bleasdale and Wyersdale, Lancs. (‘the five forests’) 1690-d.; steward, Quernmore, Myerscough, hundred of Amounderness, Lancs. 1690-d.

Col. regt. of horse 1688-90.

Associated with: Dunham Massey, Cheshire and Suffolk Street, Mdx.2

Likenesses: oil on canvas by Sir G. Kneller, c.1690, Government Art Collection.

Overview and assessment

Throughout his career Henry Booth, 2nd Baron Delamer and earl of Warrington, showed a strong puritanical streak both in his personal life and his politics, where he distinguished himself as an uncompromising (and self-righteous) Presbyterian of entrenched country views unfalteringly opposed to the catholicizing and absolutist policies of Charles II and James II. He has strong claims to be considered the most intransigent opponent of James II among the peerage. Suspected throughout the 1680s of conspiracy against the crown, he was the first to declare openly for William of Orange as the country’s new ruler (as opposed to calling merely for a free Parliament or condemning James II’s ‘evil counsellors’) and to raise a substantial number of troops in his support. His statements in the campaign to place William on the throne in the turbulent weeks of late 1688 and early 1689 were blunt and harsh against the deposed king, and he hardly bothered to consider the legal complexities of the situation which exercised the minds of Tory loyalists. When William III turned increasingly towards the Tories in the early days of his reign and discarded many of his Whig adherents, Delamer turned violently against the new king as well, almost to the point of considering a Jacobite restoration. He divided contemporary opinion fiercely. Roger Morrice, writing of his exploits at the Revolution, praised his ‘prudence, courage and forwardness in this design together with his exemplary carriage’, which gained him ‘such a great interest about Derbyshire’ (not even his principal county) that ‘every sixth man round about would follow him’. He thought him among the three people in England who were ‘the most serious in religion, and give most countenance to it, and are most entire to the prince for the promoting of the reformed religion universally’, and wrote that in the Convention he ‘always spoke with great vigour and strength in all debates in the Lords’ House, on the Protestants’ side’.3 On the other hand, Delamer’s own cousin Thomas Bruce, 2nd earl of Ailesbury, was ‘on the worst terms imaginable’ with him and thought he was ‘a person of an implacable spirit against the king and the crown, and of a most sour temper of mind’, while the poet and wit Arthur Maynwaring, who started his writing career as a Tory, wrote a scurrilous mock-heroic poem about him in 1690, The King of Hearts, in which he portrays him as a treasonous, but ultimately buffoonish, populist and rebel: ‘Of a dark spirit, turbulent and proud /Rude to superiors, fawning to the crowd;/Prompt to revenge, and treacherously base/ Plotting when in private, blustering when in place … Stiff for religion, which he ne’re profest / A modish zealot, with bad morals blest / Lewdly profane, and wicked like the rest’, and so on in a similar vein for close to 150 couplets.4

Exclusionist Member for Cheshire, 1678-85

Maynwaring, despite his obvious hyperbole, was right to emphasize that Delamer (the title by which he was best known) was a ‘zealot’, for he was born into a strongly and sternly Presbyterian, if not Puritan, family. In 1659, when he raised the abortive royalist rising which is still known by his name, his father George Booth, Baron Delamer, had been ‘a person of the best fortune and interest in Cheshire, and … of absolute power with the Presbyterians’ there.5 His mother was the daughter of the Presbyterian and parliamentarian leader Henry Grey, earl of Stamford, and sister of the regicide Thomas Grey, Baron Grey of Groby‡.

Henry Booth started his political career young. In 1672-3, when barely of age, he was made a justice of the peace and commissioner of assessment for both Cheshire and Lancashire, and in May 1673 his father resigned his local office of custos rotulorum of Cheshire in favour of his heir. Booth was appointed a commissioner to examine the activities of recusants in Cheshire in 1675, and in a by-election of March 1678 the young man was returned to Parliament as a knight of the shire for the county. He sat for Cheshire in the following three Parliaments as well and the journal he kept of his own activity in the Commons between March 1678 until 28 March 1681 shows that he was a vocal partisan for the impeachment of Thomas Osborne, earl of Danby (later duke of Leeds), for the exclusion of James Stuart, duke of York, from the succession, and for the disbandment of the standing army.6 Some of his speeches from this period and later were collected and published shortly after his death. They show that already by 1678-81 he was expressing the political and religious views that were to guide him throughout his career.7 To him ‘popery’ was the unquestioned fount of evil, and the persecution of Dissenters by the bishops of the Church of England a sure way by which popery would be introduced in England; indeed, it was part of the Catholic master plan to weaken England by fomenting disagreements between the country’s Protestants.8 His views on the monarchy were radical; in a number of works he denied that monarchy was a divine institution but was instead created by humans to provide a fit governor for themselves. In 1679 and thereafter he denied that the crown of England was hereditary, advocating an elective monarchy and popular control of the succession through Parliament: ‘If Kings were good men an absolute monarchy were the best government, but we see they are subject to the same infirmities with other men, and therefore it is necessary to bind their power’.9

Such views expressed in Parliament did not endear him to the court. Booth had been removed from the commission of the peace in both Lancashire and Cheshire and as custos rotulorum for the latter county by November 1680, although he was briefly reinstated in all these about the time of the election of March 1681.10 He was divested of these local offices and responsibilities yet again in 1682 following his activities that September in support of James Scott, duke of Monmouth, and his claim to the throne, when he was one of the leaders of the enthusiastic reception the duke received during his progress through Cheshire.11 He was committed to the Tower in July 1683 following revelations of the Rye House Plot, but was released on bail of £6,000 in November 1683 and then discharged owing to lack of evidence in February of the following year.12

Trial, acquittal and opposition to James II, 1685-9

On 8 Aug. 1684 Booth became the 2nd Baron Delamer upon the death of his father, and this Whig and exclusionist firebrand first sat in the House at the opening of James II’s Parliament. He only sat for 13 meetings in May and June 1685 before he was committed to the Tower again under suspicion of involvement in Monmouth’s Rebellion.13 Delamer’s petition for his release was presented to the House when it reconvened on 9 November. He had a champion in his former Whig colleague from the Commons, William Cavendish, 4th earl (later duke) of Devonshire. Devonshire laid the petition before the House and then in the ‘considerable’ debate that followed was ‘very hot’ against George Savile, marquess of Halifax, and argued, aided by Arthur Annesley, earl of Anglesey, that the Lords themselves should answer the petition without consulting the king. In the end the lords with positions in the royal household were delegated to enquire of the king why Delamer was detained from sitting in the House and the following day, after the lord treasurer Lawrence Hyde, earl of Rochester, had reported that the king had explained that Delamer was imprisoned on suspicion of treason, another debate arose ‘whether his Majesty’s answer were to be acquiesced in’, but the debate was quickly adjourned to the following week. When the debate was taken up again on 16 Nov., the lord chancellor George Jeffreys, Baron Jeffreys, reported that, in order to show the lords his seriousness in prosecuting Delamer, and because of the jurisdictional problems posed by Cheshire’s status as a county palatine, the king had sent a commission of oyer and terminer into Cheshire, where Delamer had committed his offence, to indict him for treason.

Delamer was bailed on 28 Nov. but when the indictment against him was finally returned from Chester on 14 Dec. he was taken from his house early in the morning and again committed to the Tower.14 His trial was set for 14 Jan. 1686, and James II’s decision to prorogue Parliament on 20 Nov. 1685 may have been influenced in part by his dissatisfaction with the Lords’ obvious disgruntlement with the concurrent arrest and prosecution of two peers, Delamer and his cousin Thomas Grey, 2nd earl of Stamford. With Parliament out of session James would be able to select those peers who were to try Delamer in a specially convened court of the lord high steward. The king issued writs to a total of 30 peers, nearly half of whom were prominent court supporters. Twenty-seven appeared when the trial convened in Westminster Hall on 14 Jan. 1686 and Ailesbury noted that this body ‘consisted of all the officers of [the king’s] household, and army, and lord lieutenants’.15 In addition the lord high steward appointed to preside over the trial was the lord chancellor, Jeffreys, who was a long-standing enemy of Delamer. Whilst serving as chief justice of the palatine court of Chester in 1680-3, Delamer had denounced Jeffreys in Parliament as behaving ‘more like a jack-pudding than a judge’.16

Despite these careful preparations, the trial went badly for the government. Charged with high treason ‘for levying war against the king this last summer’ – various conspiratorial activities in Chester in April and June 1685 – Delamer delayed the proceedings by raising several questions concerning his privilege as a peer. Then the attorney general was able to produce only one positive witness, ‘a person of a very infamous life’, whose testimony Delamer was easily able to refute. The other witnesses against him, the Whig turncoats William Howard, 3rd Baron Howard of Escrick, and Ford Grey, 3rd Baron Grey of Warke, could only give general evidence about the Whig conspiracies against Charles II in late 1682. Howard even ended his testimony by stating that he had nothing at all to say about either Delamer or a rising in Cheshire. Even hostile commentators had to admit that Delamer was ‘well skilled in our laws and withal a good spokesman [who] gave all the advantage to his cause and good entertainment to his auditors’. In the end the peers in attendance unanimously acquitted Delamer of the charges against him. Ailesbury, who in his memoirs presented the trial and Delamer’s escape from judgment as an example of James II’s mercy and observance of the rule of law, was convinced of his cousin’s guilt and ‘the whole number of lords was of the same sentiment … [but] men of honour and conscience could proceed no otherwise by the strict rules of the law’. The trial and its surprising outcome captured the attention of the nation and was seen as a victory for the Whigs while the embarrassed court investigated ‘who advised the trial of this peer when the evidence was so incompetent’. Much of the blame was placed at the door of Jeffreys, especially as he had annoyed the peers by his manner and had had to be pulled up short by Nottingham on a point of law and privilege.17

A few days after his acquittal Delamer was permitted to kiss the king’s hand and the king ‘was pleased to give him warning as to his future behaviour’, advice which the baron ignored. Over the next two and a half years he was consistently included in lists of the king’s enemies and showed his solidarity with his beleaguered colleagues Stamford and Devonshire by posting bail for them in their own confrontations with James’s courts.18 He was closely linked with those two peers in the preparations in September 1688 for William of Orange’s invasion, and Stamford even assured Henry Compton, bishop of London, that regarding the invasion he would ‘do as the Lord Delamer did’.19

Williamite leader in Cheshire, 1688-9

On 15 Nov., having exacted a promise from the lord lieutenant of Cheshire, William George Richard Stanley, 9th earl of Derby, that he would not interfere, Delamer mustered his tenants and followers on Bowden Down in support of William of Orange, assuring them in a printed address that ‘I see all lies at stake, I am to choose whether I am to be a slave and a Papist, or a Protestant and a freeman, and therefore the case being thus, I shall think myself false to my country, if I sit still at this time’.20 Delamer was later to complain that ‘the nation had been rid so long, that little of the old English spirit was left, and most who declared for the Prince of Orange proceeded with so much caution, that they showed more cunning than courage’ in their calls merely for a free Parliament or the punishment of James’s evil counsellors. He and his men ‘did not mince the matter, but spoke plain English of King James and of our condition, and thereby animated the country as they marched’.21

Delamer and his forces, numbering 300-400 men, joined Devonshire at Nottingham on 21 Nov., but he quickly became dissatisfied with Devonshire’s caution and left Nottingham on 24 Nov. with Stamford to engage on a long march south to join William, the course of which was closely monitored by contemporaries.22 These forces on the move alarmed James II and his advisers and gained a reputation, probably inflated by fear and hearsay, both for their religious zeal and rebellious disorder. A correspondent of John Ellis in Ireland informed him on 24 Nov. that

of all the men that have appeared in arms and declared for the Prince none have done more zealously than those who began the dance in Cheshire who gather weight like a snow ball, and as many affirm, do plunder as they go … The chief officers of the body are affirmed to be old Oliverians that have long lain lurking about Chester and Cheshire, in expectation of a day of plunder.23

Morrice at first heard that they numbered ‘several thousands’ (later corrected to 300). Arthur Maynwaring described Delamer’s men as ‘a shirtless band of Northern rabble’, while Halifax was later regaled with stories of the ‘multitudes’ who had followed Delamer and how in their leisure they would amuse themselves by taking target practice at pictures of the Pope, Father Petre, and of two of James II’s appointees to the episcopate, Thomas Cartwright, bishop of Chester, and Thomas Watson, bishop of St Davids.24 Delamer, Stamford and their troops finally joined William at Hungerford on 7 December. Henry Hyde, 2nd earl of Clarendon, recorded that it was reputed that the peers came with 400 horse, but he had heard from his agent that ‘they were not above half that number [and that] they were very shabby fellows, pitifully mounted, and worse armed’.25 Delamer naturally was of a different view and in an essay, Reasons why King James ran away from Salisbury, portrayed himself and his march to William’s army as the primary cause of James’s flight, for the sight of a mass armed uprising of the English people (in contrast to mealy-mouthed declarations and the defections of solitary peers and military officers) struck fear in James’s cowardly heart and tipped him over the edge into despair.26

At Hungerford and then during the march on London, Delamer openly argued for the overthrow of James II. At the meeting held at Windsor on 17 Dec. 1688 to determine what action to take after James’s return from Faversham he opened the debate by moving that the king be incarcerated in the Tower, arguing that his abortive attempt at flight amounted to a dissolution of his government. When this decision was challenged by Clarendon, Delamer angrily (‘a little thing puts him into a passion’ Clarendon observed) remonstrated that ‘he did not look upon him as his king, and would never more pay him obedience; and that he ought not to be like a king in one of his own houses, and earnestly pressed that he might be directed to go to Ham’. William more diplomatically wanted James to be ‘advised’ to go to Ham, but still chose Delamer, with Halifax and Charles Talbot, 12th earl (later duke) of Shrewsbury, as the delegates to attend James II at Whitehall with this message. Delamer later gloated that, without ‘the least grain of courage’, the defeated king ‘meanly’ accepted this order to vacate the capital, which action led to his permanent exile.27 William rewarded Delamer for his services in his cause by commissioning him colonel of a troop of horse based in Cheshire which, under its former colonel Robert Werden‡, had begun to march on London in support of James II before the disbandment of the army.28

Halifax recorded, in his sketchy notes of the meeting held on 24 Dec. 1688 to discuss methods to summon a new Parliament, that Delamer said that ‘nothing can be done but by the body of the people in their representatives’, by which he was probably arguing that sovereignty resided in ‘the people’ and that a Convention could be summoned in their name without the formality of issuing royal writs, a view he was to repeat later in 1690.29 He was highly active in the Convention throughout its first few months. In the first two days, 22 and 23 Jan. 1689, he was placed on committees to draw up the response to William’s letter to Parliament and to examine the death of Arthur Capel, earl of Essex (later on 5 Feb. he was placed on a secret committee of four peers to deal with this case) and he opposed the motion that Henry Mordaunt, 2nd earl of Peterborough, be released from the Tower on bail.30 Clarendon recorded that Delamer was ‘most violent’ in opposing the admission of Edward Griffin, Baron Griffin, on 25 January. Griffin’s patent was dated as recently as 3 Dec. 1688. Then, in a surprising volte-face, Delamer and John Lovelace, 3rd Baron Lovelace, relented and these two peers themselves formally introduced Griffin to the House. Clarendon ascribed this change to the realization by ‘the violent party’ that if they refused to introduce Griffin, the right to sit of other new peers such as George Carteret, Baron Carteret, ‘of whom they were sure’, could also be questioned. Five days later Delamer did indeed help to introduce the more reliable Carteret to the House.31 By the summer Griffin had deserted the House and was in communication with James’s court at St Germain, and on 27 July Delamer took part in framing the House’s proclamation summoning him to the House so that he could face the wrath of his peers.

Delamer’s principal concern during these first days and weeks after the Revolution was to ensure the transfer of the crown to William and Mary. When the House first took up the debate on the vote of the Commons that James had ‘abdicated’ and that the throne was ‘vacant’ on 29 Jan. 1689, Delamer, according to Danby’s notes, was the foremost speaker against James’s claims and responded to Clarendon’s doubts with the blunt dismissal that the king had fled ‘because he dared not to stay the justice of the nation’ and asserted that the king was merely a ‘trustee’ of the people’ and may therefore be ‘called to an account’.32 During the debate two days later on whether to declare the prince and princess of Orange monarchs, Delamer said that ‘it was long since he thought himself absolved from his allegiance to King James; that he owed him none, and never would pay him any; and if King James came again, he was resolved to fight against him, and would die single, with his sword in his hand, rather than pay him any obedience’.33 In the first week of February Delamer vigorously supported the Commons in the wording of their vote that James II had ‘abdicated’ and had rendered the throne ‘vacant’. After that wording had been adopted on 6 Feb. Delamer seconded a motion to declare William and Mary king and queen and the next day was appointed to a subcommittee of the committee of the whole assigned to draw up oaths to the new monarchs.34 In the period 8-12 Feb. he was involved in a series of conferences to frame the proclamation of the new monarchs and on 12 Feb. he reported from the meeting in which the Commons agreed to the House’s amendments. For his efforts in securing the throne for William, Delamer was made a privy councillor on 14 Feb. 1689.35

He remained involved in the Convention’s busy schedule during the spring of 1689. He registered his protest against the passage of the treason trials bill on 6 Mar. (legislation which must have had a personal relevance to him), on the grounds that it infringed the privilege of peers and ‘nothing ever was, or may be, put into an act of Parliament, that can reflect so much upon the honour of the peerage as this will’. The previous day he had been a reporter for the conference on the Convention’s address to the king pledging their lives and fortunes to his cause, while on 8 Mar. he was made part of the delegation to present the king with the thanks of the House for his reply to this loyal address. From March to early May he was named to 14 select committees on legislation, and on 9 Mar. he reported from the committee on the bill for reversing the attainder of William Russell‡, Lord Russell. He had already made clear his view that the bill should pass by publishing at about this time a brief examination of the case, with an exoneration of Lord Russell.36 He was heavily involved in proceedings surrounding the bill for abrogating the oaths of supremacy and allegiance and on 21 Mar. entered his protest against the rejection of the clause that would repeal the sacramental test. The following day he submitted his own clause, which later became part of the final act, which removed from the new oaths that part of the declaration in the Act of Uniformity which stated that under no circumstances was it legal to take up arms against the king.37 Throughout late March and early April Delamer was the principal chairman of the committee considering the bill for the commissioners of the Great Seal, reporting from it on 25 Mar., when the bill was recommitted with further instructions from the House, and reporting again on 4 Apr. with a version of the bill which was accepted.38

Office under William III, 1689-94

On 9 Apr. 1689 Delamer was made chancellor and under-treasurer of the exchequer and a commissioner of the treasury board. 39 This new responsibility may help explain his involvement in a number of bills concerning supply. On 29 Apr. he reported from the committee of the whole considering the bill for preventing doubts concerning the public revenue, while on 9 May he reported from the select committee on the bill for an additional poll tax. Delamer apparently was not satisfied with this new responsibility and, according to Halifax’s recollections of his conversations with William III, Delamer told William that ‘he would not value all the king could give him’ unless he could also have the lord lieutenancy of Cheshire. The obvious candidate would have been Derby, whose family had held that position for generations, but Delamer had effectively poisoned William’s mind against his local rival, insisting that he had not showed enough enthusiasm for William at the time of his landing, a charge which Derby’s man of business Roger Kenyon‡ was at pains to refute. Although Halifax claimed that the king was reluctant to give Delamer such responsibilities, letters patent were issued on 12 Apr. making him lieutenant of Cheshire and in mid July, in a further snub to Derby, he was reinstated as custos rotulorum.40 Assigning his proxy to Devonshire on 10 May 1689, Delamer left London to take up his new duties in a tumultuous procession, accompanied by a body of 600 horse, which drew the mockery of Maynwaring.41 He entered Cheshire in triumph to an enthusiastic reception, whereupon he set about ordering the militia and preparing Chester for its role as mustering ground and embarkation point for the military expedition to Ireland.42 Over the following years he remained a major force in county politics – as lord lieutenant, custos rotulorum and an alderman and later mayor of Chester. He was the undisputed leader of the Cheshire country Whigs, undoubtedly influential in securing the selection of John Mainwaring‡, lieutenant colonel of Delamer’s troop of horse, and Sir Robert Cotton‡, Delamer’s old partner and fellow Exclusionist from the Parliaments of 1680 and 1681, as knights of the shire for both the Convention and William III’s first Parliament.43 At the same time he maintained some influence in Lancashire as a justice of the peace there from 1689.44

Delamer returned to the House on 20 July and immediately threw himself into the business of the House, attending conferences with the Commons and lending his support to the bill for reversing the punitive judgments against Titus Oates. On 30 July he voted and protested against the decision to adhere to the House’s amendments to the bill which deprived Oates of certain rights and liberties and which cast doubt, according to Delamer and the other protesters, on the veracity of the Popish Plot. He, Stamford and Charles North, Baron North and Grey, were the self-appointed tribunes for the disgruntled weavers who marched on Parliament on 14 Aug. 1689 to petition against the bill for wearing woollens. The sight of these peers, especially the rebels Stamford and Delamer, acting as populist and demagogic leaders of ‘the mobile’ provided endless material for Tory satirists such as Maynwaring.45

Delamer was present for all but five sittings of the second session of the Convention, during which he was named to 11 select committees, acted as a teller on 15 Nov. and reported from the committee of the whole House five days later. In a debate on the Bill of Rights on 23 Nov. 1689 he told, presumably for the contents, in a division whether to include a proviso that would invalidate all royal pardons upon impeachments which did not have the concurrence of both Houses of Parliament, and joined with 11 other peers to sign the protest when this amendment was rejected. He was named to the committee for inspections, established on 2 Nov. 1689 to search into the misdeeds of the Tory reaction. He was also personally concerned in the proceedings of the subcommittee (to which he was not named) established on 7 Dec. to hear the evidence of Robert Cragg, one of Monmouth’s agents in the spring of 1685, about the attempts of James II’s government to suborn him after his arrest into testifying against Delamer, Stamford, Devonshire and other associates of Monmouth.46 On 23 Jan. 1690 he dissented from the decision to remove from a clause in the bill to restore corporations the statement that the surrendering of charters to Charles II and James II had been illegal, for ‘the putting out those words seems to be the justifying of the most horrid action that King James was guilty of during his reign’. Carmarthen (as Danby had become) classed him as an opponent of the court in a list compiled between October 1689 and February 1690.

Neglect and disillusionment, 1690-4

By the time of William III’s first Parliament in the spring of 1690 Delamer’s extreme and unyielding Whig views, so important in helping to effect the Revolution and the transfer of the crown, were looking less attractive to a government increasingly bent on bringing moderate Tories into the ministry. Delamer’s ineffectiveness as a military leader and at the exchequer and treasury board (where his attendance stood at only 48 per cent), and his constant bickering with the first lord of the treasury, Charles Mordaunt, earl of Monmouth (later 3rd earl of Peterborough), all further harmed his reputation at court.47 Concerning his rabble-rousing appeals to the populace, Maynwaring warned him, ‘thy exploits make thee the public sport / scour’d by all parties, pissed upon at court’.48 Delamer was decisively edged out to the political sidelines during the spring of 1690, first having his military commission revoked sometime in late 1689 and then on 18 Mar. 1690 being replaced at the exchequer and treasury board by Richard Hampden‡.49 The court tried to compensate for this loss by raising him in the peerage to the earldom of Warrington and making him the steward of the five royal forests in Lancashire. His son George Booth, later 2nd earl of Warrington, was later to assert that his father, aware that his estate could not support the new dignity, had refused to accept his new title in the peerage until William had also promised him a pension of £2,000 p.a., ‘though afterwards ill paid’.50

Warrington was angered by the neglect shown him and expressed his resentment to the lord president of the council, Carmarthen, of ‘the small regard which the king has given to my advice and opinion’ when he had ventured so much for the king, especially when ‘preference is shown to those who justly rendered themselves suspected as the king’s opponents’.51 His objections to William’s increasing reliance on the Tories and the Church party were articulated in his essay Of the Interest of Whig and Tory; which may with most safety be depended on by the Government where he stated that

I was and am of opinion that the king made a very wrong step when he employed so many of that party [Tories], because it would unavoidably abate the zeal of many of his friends, and I fear it has had this further bad effect, to make those people believe that either he is afraid of them, or that they are necessary to him.

He further argued that country Whigs such as himself, who had the Protestant religion and the interests of the nation at heart, were the king’s true friends, as opposed to the Tories and to the growing band of court Whigs, whom he also distrusted.52 He went even further in his musings in an unpublished manuscript among his papers which lamented that

King William does now so much endeavour to depress the reputation of all men that are of that principle [the Whigs], and to baffle the doctrine that kings hold their crowns upon condition, that it looks more like a fault than merit to have been a sufferer in the late times, whilst at the same time he chiefly employs men of a contrary opinion.

Here he even put forth the previously unthinkable position that a reconciliation between the Whigs and James II might be possible, and even preferable, in the light of William III’s unwarranted betrayal of his most fervent and active supporters.53

In the session of spring 1690, where he came to all but two meetings and was named to 11 select committees, Warrington was still primarily concerned with the stability of the new regime in the face of the perceived Jacobite threat, regardless of what he may personally have thought of William’s actions. On 5 Apr. 1690 he entered his protest against the rejection of an amendment confirming the acts of the Convention in the bill for recognizing William and Mary as sovereigns. Throughout the first two weeks of May he was closely involved in the proceedings surrounding the bill for the oath of abjuration, which he saw as a means ‘that it might be known who [is] for King James and who not’. On 5 May he told in the division on the motion that there should be no penalty in the bill disabling any person refusing to take the oaths from sitting or voting in Parliament, and a week later he was named to a committee assigned to draw up a clause for the bill which would set out the terms by which the requirement that all civil and military officers take the oaths would be enforced.54 That same day, 12 May, he was appointed a manager for a conference to meet the following day on the bill to appoint Queen Mary regent during the king’s absence. After attending that conference he told in favour of the motion, both when originally proposed in a committee of the whole and then when put to the question before the House, that counsel for the City of London be given more time to present their case for restoring the City’s old charter, and he subscribed his name to the protest when this motion was defeated.

Warrington came to just over two-thirds of the meetings in 1690-1, when he was named to 24 select committees and continued to be involved in legislation designed to distinguish the Revolution’s friends from its enemies. On 6 Oct. 1690 he voted again against the discharge of Peterborough and James Cecil, 4th earl of Salisbury, from their imprisonment in the Tower, with Carmarthen adding the comment ‘he would not lose his lieutenancy which supports his popularity’.55 On 28 Nov. 1690 he reported from the committee of the whole discussing the bill for indemnity for those who acted for William and Mary, then on 1 Jan. 1691 he chaired another committee of the whole on the bill to attaint rebels against the crown. In December 1690 he was a teller three times, and on 5 Jan. 1691, the final day of the session, he was a manager for a series of four contentious conferences on the bill for the suspension of part of the Navigation and Corn Acts during the war with France. He reported on 23 Dec. 1690 from the select committee considering the private bill of his close colleague, the Cheshire Whig Sir Thomas Mainwaring‡. In the following session of 1691-2, where his attendance was down to 43 per cent and he was named to 20 select committees, he chaired and reported from other committees on private bills – the estate bills of Thomas Kennersley (which he also chaired and reported when it was debated in a committee of the whole on 29 Dec. 1691), of Charles Pelham and of John Keeble.56 In that session he was a reporter for a conference on the treason trials bill on 17 Dec. 1691 and was named to the committee assigned to draw up heads for insisting on the Lords’ amendments to the bill. When the public accounts were read before the House on 15 Dec. 1691, Warrington objected that his name was included among the recipients of secret service money when any payments he had received were part of his public pension of £2,000 which, he further complained, was in arrears. This interjection led Halifax to decide to allow each lord to stand up and justify to the House any monies received if his name appeared in the accounts.57 On 12 Jan. 1692 Warrington registered his proxy with his cousin Stamford for the remainder of the 1691-2 session.

He was in the House for just over two-thirds of the sittings in the following session of 1692-3, where he was named to 22 select committees and 30 Nov. 1692 was appointed to a subcommittee appointed to draw up a clause for the Bill of Indemnity. He subscribed to the protest of 23 Dec. against the decision to reverse the decree in Leach v. Thompson and throughout December chaired committees on a number of private estate bills and on the bill to confirm the charters of Oxford University.58 During these months, however, Warrington was most preoccupied with the proceedings on the king’s request to Parliament to provide him with advice for the safety of the realm, following the invasion scare of the previous summer. This had already provided Warrington with material for one of his longer essays, A Persuasive to Union upon King James his design to invade England in the year 1692, in which he once again emphasized the threat of a Jacobite fifth column within the country; such men ‘cannot pretend to the name of Protestants and Englishmen’.59 When these matters came before Parliament in the winter Warrington on 7 Dec. protested against the House’s resolution not to establish a joint committee with the Commons to consider the perilous state of the nation. Three days later he was named to the House’s own committee assigned to provide advice to the king based on the papers regarding the state of the navy submitted to the House and on 20-21 Dec. he was a manager at conferences on this matter. On 21 Dec. the Commons’ representatives surprised Warrington and the other managers by using the conference to read a vote of their House praising the conduct of Admiral Edward Russell, later earl of Orford, quite extraneous to the matters formally under discussion and without providing reasons for their vote. Warrington was named to the committees established on 22 and 29 Dec. to determine whether this vote followed parliamentary procedure, and on 30 Dec. he reported to the House that the committee had found that the Commons’ action was unprecedented. He was then one of those appointed a manager to make this case to them in a free conference. He was a manager for all subsequent conferences on this matter, including that of 4 Jan. 1693 when the dispute appears to have been resolved.60 At the turn of the year Warrington defied the court to follow his country Whig proclivities and support the place bill. He was, according to the Brandenburg envoy, among those who most ‘harangued’ the House for the bill, and he voted both to commit and then pass it and subsequently entered his protest against its rejection.61 On 2 Jan. 1693 he also followed the general Whig line and voted for the second reading of the bill for the divorce of the Protestant Henry Howard, 7th duke of Norfolk, from his Catholic duchess. On 19 Jan. 1693 he entered dissents from the resolutions not to refer to the consideration of the committee for privileges the House’s amendments to the land tax bill and to recede from these amendments. On 24-25 Jan. 1693 he was involved in committees and conferences concerning the anti-Williamite libel King William and Queen Mary Conquerors and chaired and reported from the select committee on the bill for taking special bail for actions heard in Westminster Hall.62 He was appointed to the committee to consider methods for the forthcoming trial for murder of Charles Mohun, 4th Baron Mohun, on 20 Jan., and at the trial on 4 Feb. Warrington argued (judging by the sketchy notes made by Hans Willem Bentinck, earl of Portland) that Mohun’s ‘design’ to kill his victim Montfort was premeditated.63 He was then one of only 14 peers to vote Mohun guilty of murder.

Initially, Warrington showed the same enthusiasm and diligence in the House during the 1693-4 session. On 14 Dec. 1693 he chaired a long committee meeting which heard counsel for both sides debating the Gardiner estate bill, but he last sat in the House four days later, on 18 Dec. 1693, after only 24 days of attendance.64 He died on 2 Jan. 1694 having, by one account, caught a cold, which rapidly grew worse, while listening to legal debates in Middle Temple Hall concerning two peers. Another report suggested that Warrington fell ill from drinking bad wine at a tavern.65 A will signed by him and dated 16 Oct. 1688 was found a few weeks after his death. In it Warrington settled on his two daughters portions of £5,000 each and on his two younger sons annuities of £200 p.a. This was a burdensome legacy for his eldest son, heir and executor George Booth, 2nd earl of Warrington, who found the estate already overburdened with debts of £24,315 and annuity charges of £1,183.66 The new earl spent the next several years contesting this will with his siblings and kin, arguing that it could not be his father’s final considered wishes, as it was impractical considering the condition of the estate and had furthermore been found in suspicious circumstances among a mass of scrap paper in a corner of his father’s study.67 Warrington’s political legacy was equally contested. His many papers – speeches, letters, essays and other writings – were collected and published within a year of his death, and formed a potential rallying point for radical Whigs and Dissenters in the years to come. They still stand as a testament to the popularity and influence of this peer among the more Puritan and republican segments of the population.

C.G.D.L.

  • 1 JRL, Dunham Massey mss, EGR 3/6/2/1/10; TNA, PROB 11/446; PROB 6/70, f. 47.
  • 2 JRL, Dunham Massey mss, EGR 3/6/2/1/7/1, EGR 3/6/2/1/11.
  • 3 Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. iv. 402, 408-9.
  • 4 Ailesbury Mems. 133, 134; POAS, v. 83-94, also 177-92.
  • 5 Clarendon, Rebellion, vi. 112.
  • 6 Hargrave 149, ff. 20-74.
  • 7 Works of the Rt. Hon. Henry, Late Lord Delamer and Earl of Warrington (1694); Collection of Speeches of the Rt. Hon. Henry, late Earl of Warrington (1694).
  • 8 Warrington, Works, 88-93, 108-114.
  • 9 Ibid. 9-10, 94-99, 421-35, 541-62.
  • 10 HMC Lords, i. 175, 182; CSP Dom. 1682, pp. 302, 441.
  • 11 CSP Dom. 1682, pp. 383, 387-9, 396-8, 407, 408, 422, 503; Glassey, JPs, 273.
  • 12 CSP Dom. July-Sept. 1683, pp. 111, 123, 180, 189, 230; CSP Dom. 1684, p. 125; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. ii. 394, 412, 451.
  • 13 CSP Dom. 1685, pp. 225, 278; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. iii. 31.
  • 14 Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. iii. 70-71; CSP Dom. 1685, pp. 410, 426.
  • 15 State Trials, xi. 513-15; Ailesbury Mems. 134.
  • 16 Warrington, Works, 143.
  • 17 State Trials, xi. 509-600; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. iii. 80-82; Ailesbury Mems. i. 133-6; Add. 72481, ff. 102-3, 108-9; Add. 4194, ff. 5-12; Add. 28569, f. 58.
  • 18 Add. 4194, f. 14; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. iii. 104; Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 401.
  • 19 Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. iv. 412.
  • 20 HMC Ormonde, n.s. viii. 9-10.
  • 21 Warrington, Works, 57, 66-69.
  • 22 Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. iv. 343, 345, 346, 349-50, 356, 357, 364, 365, 371, 405, 406-7, 408-9, 410; HMC Kenyon, 199-202, 205-7.
  • 23 Original Letters ed. Ellis (ser. 2), 163.
  • 24 Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. iv. 345, 346, 471-2; POAS, v. 84.
  • 25 Clarendon Corresp. ii. 218-19.
  • 26 Warrington, Works, 56-69.
  • 27 Clarendon Corresp. ii. 229; Add. 75366, Halifax’s notes on proceedings of 17 Dec. 1688; Warrington, Works, 58-9.
  • 28 JRL, Dunham Massey mss, EGR 3/5/3, 4; HP Commons, 1660-90, iii. 690.
  • 29 Add. 75366, Halifax’s notes on the debate of 24 Dec. 1688; Warrington, Works, 511.
  • 30 Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. iv. 498.
  • 31 Clarendon Corresp. ii. 253-4.
  • 32 BIHR, xlvii. 50.
  • 33 Clarendon Corresp. ii. 257.
  • 34 HMC Lords, ii. 29.
  • 35 JRL, Dunham Massey mss, EGR 3/5/2/1/1, 3.
  • 36 Henry, Baron Delamer, Late Lord Russell’s Case, with Observations upon it (1689).
  • 37 HMC Lords, ii. 57.
  • 38 PA, HL/PO/CO/1/4, pp. 50, 52, 54, 56.
  • 39 JRL, Dunham Massey mss, EGR 3/5/1/5, 6; CSP Dom. 1689-90, pp. 45-46.
  • 40 Halifax Letters, ii. 209; HMC Kenyon, 205-7, 210; JRL, Dunham Massey mss, EGR 3/5/1/7, 8; 3/5/2/1/4.
  • 41 HMC Le Fleming, 240; POAS, v. 88-89.
  • 42 True Account of the Lord Delamer his Reception and Welcome at Cheshire and at the City of Chester (1689); Eg. 3337, ff. 12-13.
  • 43 HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 58-59; iii. 741-3; iv. 739-40; POAS, v. 177-92.
  • 44 Glassey, JPs, 278.
  • 45 POAS, v. 88-9; Hatton Corresp. (Cam. Soc. n.s. xxiii.)138-9.
  • 46 HMC Lords, ii. 392-408.
  • 47 CTB, ix. 26-78, 353-76; Burnet, iv. 6-7.
  • 48 POAS, v. 84-94.
  • 49 CSP Dom. 1689-90, p. 513.
  • 50 Ibid. 229; CTB, ix. 469-74, 572; JRL, Dunham Massey mss, EGR 3/5/1/9, 3/6/2/2/2; Duchy of Lancaster Office-Holders ed. R. Somerville, 144.
  • 51 CSP Dom. 1689-90, pp. 381-2.
  • 52 Warrington, Works, 82-87.
  • 53 Beinecke, Osborn mss, file W, folder 15756, printed in Brit. Pols in the Age of Holmes ed. C. Jones, 71-87.
  • 54 Eg. 3347, ff. 4-5; HMC Lords, iii. 41-42.
  • 55 Browning, Danby, iii. 181.
  • 56 PA, HL/PO/CO/1/4, 506; HL/PO/CO/1/5, 51, 52; HMC Lords, iii. 479.
  • 57 HMC Lords, iii. 401; Luttrell, Brief Relation, ii. 314; CTB, ix. 1412.
  • 58 PA, HL/PO/CO/1/5, 107, 111, 124, 129, 132, 133; HMC Lords, iv. 247.
  • 59 Warrington, Works, 399-411 (irregular pagination).
  • 60 PA, HL/PO/CO/1/5, 127; HMC Lords, iv. 185.
  • 61 Ranke, History of England, vi. 198-200.
  • 62 PA, HL/PO/CO/1/5, 144.
  • 63 UNL, PwA 2381-4.
  • 64 PA, HL/PO/CO/1/5, 181-3.
  • 65 R. Wroe, Sermon at the Funeral of the Rt. Hon. Henry, earl of Warrington (1694), 19; Verney ms mic. M636/47, C. Stewkeley to Sir R. Verney, 28 Jan. 1694.
  • 66 JRL, Dunham Massey mss, EGR 3/6/2/1/1, 3/6/2/1/14, 3/6/2/2/1.
  • 67 JRL, Dunham Massey mss, EGR 3/6/2/1/3-12; HMC Lords, n.s. ii. 541-5; TNA, PROB 6/70, f. 47.