TUFTON, Thomas (1644-1729)

TUFTON, Thomas (1644–1729)

suc. bro. 8 Mar. 1684 as 6th earl of THANET and also de jure 18th Bar. Clifford (claim allowed 12 Dec. 1691)

First sat 19 May 1685; last sat 31 July 1721

MP Appleby 2 Mar. 1668

b. 30 Aug. 1644, 4th s. of John Tufton, 2nd earl of Thanet, and Margaret (1614-76), da. and coh. of Richard Sackville†, 3rd earl of Dorset; bro. of Nicholas Tufton, 3rd earl of Thanet, John Tufton, 4th earl of Thanet, Richard Tufton, 5th earl of Thanet and Hon. Sackville Tufton‡; educ. travelled abroad (France, Low Countries) 1660-3; m. 14 Aug. 1684 (with £12,000)1 Catherine (1665-1712), da. and coh. of Henry Cavendish, 2nd duke of Newcastle, 3s. d.v.p., 5da. d. 30 July 1729; will 31 July 1721-4 Feb. 1729, pr. 24 Jan. 1730.2

Groom of the bedchamber, James* [1665], duke of York 1675-84; commr. Greenwich Hosptial 1695; PC 20 Mar. 1703-May 1707, 13 Dec. 1711-Sept. 1714.

Dep. lt., Suss. 1670-?84; sheriff (hered.), Westmld. 1684-­d.; recorder, Canterbury 1684-7, Appleby 1685-8; ld. lt. Cumb. and Westmld. 1685-7; custos rot., Cumb. 1685-7, 1714-15, Westmld. 1702-6, May-Nov. 1714.

Capt., tp. of horse 20 June-27 July 1685; col., 27 July 1685-24 Oct. 1686.

Mbr. SPG 1701.

Associated with: Hothfield House, Kent; Bolebroke House, Hartfield, Suss.; Appleby Castle, Westmld.; Skipton Castle, Yorks. (W. Riding); Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury.3

Likenesses: oil on canvas by S. Pietersz. Verelst, c.1685, Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal, Cumbria; oil on panel by J. Richardson the elder, 1719, Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal, Cumbria.

James II, Revolution and Convention, 1684-90

Thomas Tufton was the fourth son in the large family of John Tufton, 2nd earl of Thanet. In his youth he had relied on the patronage of his formidable and doting grandmother Lady Anne Clifford, dowager countess of Dorset and Pembroke and in her own right (although not recognized by the House as such in her lifetime) Lady Clifford, to be elected to the Commons for the Clifford borough of Appleby in Westmorland at a by-election in 1668, even over the under-secretary of state Joseph Williamson‡.4 By the end of 1675 he had been made a groom of the bedchamber of James Stuart, duke of York, and from this time he also was involved in a long-running contest with Thomas Colepeper, 2nd Baron Colepeper, for the right to appoint a deputy to fill any vacancies among the six clerks of chancery.5 Thomas stood down in favour of his elder brother Richard Tufton, later 5th earl of Thanet, for the first two Exclusion Parliaments and when Richard succeeded to the earldom of Thanet in August 1680 the Appleby seat was successfully passed to the youngest surviving Tufton brother, the Hon. Sackville Tufton.

On his elder brother’s death on 8 Mar. 1684 Thomas succeeded to the earldom of Thanet, and with it to Tufton estates in Kent (centred on Hothfield House) and Sussex (Bolebroke House in Hartfield), the Clifford properties in Yorkshire (Skipton and its castle) and Westmorland (Appleby, Brough and Brougham and their castles). He also succeeded as hereditary sheriff of Westmorland, another inheritance from the Cliffords. By May Thanet was negotiating with Henry Cavendish, 2nd duke of Newcastle, to marry Newcastle’s fourth daughter Lady Catherine Cavendish. Although Newcastle expressed his ‘great esteem’ for Thanet and that he found a marital alliance with him ‘pleasing’, he wished Thanet would consider his third daughter Margaret to whom he intended to leave the larger portion of his estate, rather than insist on Catherine. Years later, however, when there was acrimony over the sisters’ inheritance, it was claimed that Newcastle had always been dissatisfied with Thanet’s estate.6 Thanet married Catherine, who was 21 years his junior but enjoyed a portion of £12,000, on 14 Aug. 1684 and departed with her to spend several months on his Yorkshire and Westmorland estates.7 Thanet had initially intended his visit to be brief, but on 9 Nov. wrote to his brother-in-law Christopher Hatton, Viscount Hatton, explaining that he intended to stay at Skipton Castle until the spring as not only was business more complicated than he had anticipated, but ‘this country [was] better than many believe it’ and Skipton Castle itself was more comfortable than he had expected. He had also begun the repair and remodelling of the dilapidated Appleby Castle.8 In the event Thanet’s principal country residence remained Hothfield in Kent, but his attachment to his Westmorland and Yorkshire estates remained strong, despite their being geographically remote.

James II saw Thanet as a new and friendly power in the north and appointed him lord lieutenant of Cumberland and Westmorland and custos rotulorum of Cumberland in early March 1685. This was a dynastic shift: Edward Howard, 2nd earl of Carlisle, the son and heir of the recently deceased holder of those offices, Charles Howard, earl of Carlisle, had effectively been deputizing for his father in those roles from at least 1678 and could reasonably have expected the appointment.9 Thomas Bruce, 2nd earl of Ailesbury, commented that ‘there was ever country enmities’ between the two families.10 Many of the other regional rivalries and alliances that were to mark the remainder of Thanet’s long political career were already in evidence during his electioneering for James II’s first Parliament. Thanet deployed his electoral influence in Appleby alongside that of Sir Christopher Musgrave‡, 4th bt. to bring in Musgrave’s son Philip Musgrave‡ for the borough, returning his own brother Sackville for the other seat. As sheriff and thus returning officer Thanet, usually acting through his under-sheriff, could exercise a great deal of control over the Westmorland county election and in 1685 he tried unsuccessfully to persuade Daniel Fleming‡ to stand in opposition to the sitting member John Lowther, later Viscount Lonsdale, whose family had a long and intense rivalry with the Musgraves.11 Lowther claimed that the origin of his feud with Musgrave and Thanet lay in their successful undermining of a project in 1684 whereby Lowther would exchange some lands in Leicestershire and Hampshire for crown lands in Westmorland, and they ‘continued ever since to do me [Lowther] all manner of ill offices, only because, as I suppose, they could not forgive me the injury they had done me’.12

Thanet was present on the first day of James II’s Parliament on 19 May 1685 and came to 56 per cent of the sittings, during which he was named to two committees on legislation. He raised a troop of horse to help suppress the rebellion of James Scott, duke of Monmouth, but in October 1685 he resigned his commission, ‘on the account of the ill state of his health’.13 This illness, and shoring up his position with his mercurial father-in-law Newcastle, appears to have preoccupied him for most of James II’s reign, and Sir John Reresby‡, 2nd bt, noted his ‘jealousy’ towards Newcastle’s plans in 1686-7 to marry his favourite daughter Margaret to the king’s companion Louis de Duras, 2nd earl of Feversham.14 Reresby also noted that in August 1686 Thanet was disgruntled, complaining ‘of the king’s proceedings in point of religion’.15 Thanet, marked as an opponent of the king’s religious policies in all contemporary lists, was divested of the lieutenancy of the north-western counties in 1687, replaced by the more reliably Catholic Richard Graham‡, Viscount Preston [S].16 Thanet signed the Guildhall Declaration on 11 Dec. 1688 and became a regular member of the peers’ provisional government. He did so out of concern for the Church of England rather than enthusiasm for William of Orange. On 12 Dec. he argued against allowing the Quaker leader William Penn, then detained by the peers, to exercise any influence on events, although Roger Morrice thought the lords ‘knew very well that noble lord understood [Penn] not’.17 The ambivalence of his position was caught both by the proposal at about this time that he become an officer of Princess Mary’s household, and by the erroneous statement in a newsletter of 15 Jan. 1689 that he had fled to France.18

Thanet was diligent in his attendance during the important first few weeks of the Convention. He was present on its first day, 22 Jan. 1689, and quickly made known his opposition to William of Orange’s accession. On 29 Jan. he voted in favour or establishing a regency and two days later voted against the motion to insert words declaring William and Mary king and queen in the draft text of the vote on the disposition of the crown. On 4 Feb. he was a teller, almost certainly for the not contents (especially considering that William Cavendish, 4th earl (later duke) of Devonshire, told for the opposite side of the question), in the division on whether to agree with the Commons that James II had ‘abdicated’ the throne.19 However at the crucial vote two days later, on 6 Feb., he ‘went off’ from his previous attitude and voted with the Williamites that James had abdicated and that the throne was vacant. After the division Henry Hyde, 2nd earl of Clarendon, queried Thanet, who ‘had gone all along with us in every vote’, why he ‘came to leave us in this last vote’. Thanet explained his actions by saying ‘he was of our mind, and thought we had done ill in admitting the monarchy to be elective; for so this vote had made it: but he thought there was an absolute necessity of having a government; and he did not see it likely to be any other way than this’.20

Having helped to bring, however reluctantly, William and Mary to the throne, Thanet remained engaged in the proceedings of the House throughout the remainder of the spring of 1689. During this time he was named to six committees on legislation, including those on the bills for the trial of peers, for reversing the attainder of William Russell‡, styled Lord Russell, for ‘uniting Protestants’ (the comprehension bill), for reviving proceedings at law, and for establishing commissioners of the Great Seal. He was a teller on 27 Mar. 1689 in the division whether to give judgment in the case of Roper v Roper and on 4 Apr. was again a teller on the question whether to use the word ‘approve’ in one of the clauses in the toleration bill. His soon-to-be brother-in-law, John Holles, 4th earl of Clare, later duke of Newcastle, was teller for the opposite side in this latter division.21 On 8 Apr. he was appointed manager for a conference on the bill for removing papists from the capital, after which he was further placed on the committee assigned to draw up reasons why the House insisted on its proviso exempting servants of Charles II’s queen dowager from the bill’s strictures. He received formal permission from the House on 13 Apr. ‘to go into the country for his health’, and registered his proxy with Thomas Herbert, 8th earl of Pembroke, on 16 Apr., his last day in the House for that session, on which he also helped to manage a further conference on the disagreement over the queen dowager’s Catholic servants. Owing to this early departure he was present at only 30 per cent of the sittings of the first session of the Convention. Thomas Osborne, marquess of Carmarthen (and later duke of Leeds), classed him as an opponent of the court on a list compiled between October 1689 and February 1690, adding that he was to be spoken to by the duchess of Albemarle, his sister-in-law.

Thanet returned to the House on 15 Nov. 1689, almost three weeks into its proceedings. On his first day he was added to the ‘Committee of Inspections’, which had been assigned to investigate the judicial murders of Lord Russell, Algernon Sydney‡ and others as well as the quo warranto proceedings against corporations. Four days after this he was added to ‘all the committees’ then acting, but was named to only an additional three committees of legislation after this, including that on the bill for restraining the export of arms. On 23 Nov. 1689 he was a teller in a division whether the proposed rider which would prohibit the use of royal pardons to bypass impeachments brought by the Commons should be incorporated into the Bill of Rights; the virulent Whig Henry Booth, 2nd Baron Delamer, later earl of Warrington, was the opposite teller. He was a teller again on 21 Dec. 1689, this time in the division on the motion to hear the report from the committee dealing with the suborning of witnesses against a number of Whig peers following Monmouth’s rising. This time the opposite teller was Charles Montagu, 4th earl (later duke) of Manchester. In total Thanet came to just over half of the sittings of this second session of the Convention.

William III’s first Parliament, 1690-5

Thanet first sat in William III’s first Parliament in its second session of 1690-1, of which he came to almost three-quarters of the sittings, the best attendance of any session in his career. He was named to seven committees on legislation. On 7 Oct. 1690, his second day in the House, he stood bail for £5,000 for the Catholic peer James Cecil, 4th earl of Salisbury, from which charge he was later discharged on the penultimate day of that month. 22 He was a teller on 9 Dec. in the division on the motion to proceed with debate on the bill to reverse the conviction of John Arnold by the court of king’s bench, and on 26 Dec. he was placed on the committee assigned to draft the bill concerning the regulation of alnage (the statutorily prescribed measures of woollen cloth) and collection of alnage duties. On 5 Jan. 1691 he helped to manage four last-ditch conferences in order to reach agreement on the bill to suspend provisions of the Navigation Acts before the prorogation scheduled for that day.23

Most significantly for Thanet, this and the following session saw the culmination in the House of a long-simmering dispute between his family and the Boyles, whose head was Richard Boyle, earl of Burlington and 2nd earl of Cork [I], over the barony of Clifford created by a writ of summons to Robert de Clifford in 1299. Thanet’s grandmother Lady Anne Clifford had claimed the barony in 1628 on the basis that the title descended through the heir general and that she had inherited it from her father George Clifford†, 12th Baron Clifford and 3rd earl of Cumberland. Elizabeth Clifford, countess of Burlington and Cork, claimed it by descent through the heir male and her father, the 3rd earl of Cumberland’s nephew Henry Clifford†, 5th earl of Cumberland, who had been summoned to Parliament in 1628 as ‘Lord Clifford’ on the assumption that the barony of 1299 was a junior title of his father Francis Clifford†, 4th earl of Cumberland. Charles I had confused matters more when in 1643 he created Elizabeth Clifford’s husband Richard Boyle, Baron Clifford of Lanesborough by letters patent. The competing Ladies Clifford, Anne and Elizabeth, had effected something of a reconciliation in 1664 through the marriage of Lady Elizabeth Clifford’s daughter, Elizabeth Boyle, to Lady Anne Clifford’s grandson Nicholas Tufton, styled Lord Tufton, who succeeded as 3rd earl of Thanet soon after.

Burlington’s son and heir, the late 3rd earl of Thanet’s brother-in-law, Charles Boyle, Baron Clifford of Lanesborough, first sat in the House on 18 July 1689 under a writ of acceleration; he was first erroneously called Lord Boyle, but on 10 Aug. this was amended to Lord Clifford.24 In the elections of February 1690 for the new Parliament Thanet ensured the election for Appleby of Clifford of Lanesborough’s son and heir Charles Boyle, later 2nd earl of Burlington, perhaps to help smooth relations with the Boyles and thus help to ensure the passage of the petition which he submitted to the House on 27 Nov. 1690, claiming the barony of Clifford by descent through the heir general, his grandmother Lady Anne Clifford. The countess of Burlington put in her own counter-petition on 2 Dec. claiming the barony as daughter and sole heir general of Henry Clifford, summoned as Lord Clifford in 1628, but Parliament was prorogued on 5 Jan. 1691 before it could hear counsel for either side, and Lady Burlington died on the following day.25 The matter was left to rest for much of 1691.

Thanet was apparently in London by 24 Oct. 1691, two days after the opening of the new session, when he was reportedly one of the lords who dined with George Legge, Baron Dartmouth, then imprisoned in the Tower of London on suspicion of Jacobite conspiracy; but if so he did not take his seat until 31 October.26 Thanet’s favour to the young Charles Boyle appears to have brought the expected dividends, as Clifford of Lanesborough assured the House on 8 Dec. 1691 that he did ‘not obstruct the said claim’ of Thanet to the Clifford barony. Four days later the committee of privileges resolved and reported that the ‘title and barony of Lord Clifford’ did of right belong to Thanet, which was agreed upon by the House. Thanet was soon after confronted by another problem arising from his north-western inheritance. On 15 Dec. 1691 George Wilson, one of his officials in his role as hereditary sheriff of Westmorland, was committed by order of the House for arresting a reputed menial servant of Thomas Parker, 15th Baron Morley. Upon Wilson’s petition the House resolved on 4 Jan. 1692 that Morley had never registered this protection and ordered him to the Tower for abusing his privilege as a peer. On 27 Jan. Thanet’s under-sheriff John Hall prayed for the protection of the House from any suits brought against him for discharging persons claiming Morley’s protections, now deemed by the House itself to be invalid, and on 1 Feb. the House ordered that both Thanet and his under-sheriff were to be granted indemnity for any wrongful releases.27

In other matters during this session, Thanet was appointed on 31 Dec. 1691 to a committee to draw up heads for a conference on the Commons’ resolution, as stated in a printed vote, to address the king regarding the incorporation of the East India Company without the concurrence of the House. On 27 Jan. 1692 he told in the division whether the Speaker should be required to stand with his hat off when addressing the duchess of Norfolk in the hearings surrounding the divorce bill of Henry Howard, 7th duke of Norfolk.28 On 1 Feb. 1692 he was made a reporter on a conference concerning amendments to the bill for commissioners of public accounts. He was a teller on 22 Feb. 1692 in the division on the question whether to agree with the committee of the whole House’s report rejecting a proviso for the judges bill.29 Overall, Thanet came to 56 per cent of the sittings of this session and was named to 18 committees on legislation.

From early 1692, Thanet began a long series of challenges to the will of his father-in-law Newcastle, who shortly before his death on 26 July 1691 had amended it to leave the entirety of his estate to his third daughter Margaret, excluding Thanet’s wife Catherine. Thanet insisted that Newcastle had not been in compos mentis when he revised his will.30 On 13 May 1692 this suit spilled over into a duel between Thanet and Margaret’s husband the earl of Clare ‘upon some words arising at a hearing’. Thanet was wounded in the shoulder and Clare in the hand.31 Thanet’s suits against Clare, in which he was later joined by another disgruntled and excluded Cavendish son-in-law, Ralph Montagu, earl (later duke) of Montagu, rumbled on for the next two years.32

Estate and inheritance matters continued to preoccupy Thanet in the following sessions of William III’s first Parliament, where he sat in a little over two-thirds of the sittings of the 1692-3 session. He brought to the attention of the House on 2 Dec. 1692 a breach of his privilege wherein one of his stewards in Silsden manor in the Craven district of west Yorkshire, a part of the Clifford inheritance long in dispute between the family’s different branches, had been arrested at the suit of various inhabitants who refused to recognize Thanet’s right to the property. The perpetrators of the breach of privilege all made their submission and were discharged by the House by 4 Jan. 1693.33

In the winter of 1692-3 Thanet was also involved in the debates in the committee of the whole House considering the ‘advice’ the House should give the king concerning the recent military reverses, at both sea and land, the English forces had suffered the previous summer. On 10 Dec. he was placed on the committee to consider the papers regarding the failure to launch a ‘descent’ on France after the naval victories at Barfleur and La Hogue. Four days later the committee of the whole House placed him on a sub-committee to draw up a clause to state that English officers were to have precedence over any similarly ranked officer of another nation, regardless of the date of commission. On 2 Jan. 1693 he voted against the second reading of the Norfolk divorce bill while the following day he voted for the place bill and signed the protest when that bill was rejected. He supported the proposed amendment to the land tax bill which provided that peers would be assessed by a commission of their own, and on 19 Jan. he dissented, first, from the House’s refusal to refer this amendment to the committee for privileges and then from the resolution to abandon it entirely. The following day he was placed on the committee to consider methods for the trial of Charles Mohun, 4th Baron Mohun, and on 4 Feb. he voted the young nobleman not guilty of murder. On 11 Feb. Thanet was placed on the drafting committee for an address to the king concerning the number of foreign officers employed in the Board of Ordnance. In the first days of March 1693 he was assigned to be a reporter for two conferences on the bill to prevent malicious prosecutions, one scheduled for 1 Mar. which was aborted, the other taking place two days later. Throughout the session he was named to 13 committees on legislation.

He was present on the first day of the 1693-4 session and proceeded to sit in just under half of its meetings, during which he was named to seven committees on legislation and, on 16 Jan. 1694, was a manager for a conference dealing with the dispatching of intelligence regarding the sailing of the Brest fleet prior to its mauling of the Smyrna convoy the previous summer. He introduced on 15 Feb. 1694 a bill which would allow him and his younger brother Sackville Tufton to lease out their family’s former town residence, Thanet House in Aldersgate, for a further 60 years. The bill was committed the following day and John Egerton, 3rd earl of Bridgwater, reported it as fit to pass without amendment on 19 February. (Bridgwater shared interests with Thanet in lead smelting in Yorkshire.)34 It received the royal assent on 16 Mar., only four days after it had been brought back up from the Commons without any amendment. At the same time as his own bill was being discussed Thanet, on 17 and 24 Feb. 1694, protested against the rejection in turn of two petitions brought in by his brother-in-law the earl of Montagu in his testamentary dispute with John Granville, earl of Bath. Thanet was even a teller on 22 Feb. on the question whether to dismiss Montagu’s petition.35 Thanet’s active support of the Whig Montagu in this case can be attributed to the alliance that had grown up between them in their mutual legal action against Clare; in the same period Clare voted against Montagu’s petitions.36 The two cases came together, disastrously for Montagu, at the same time, as Thanet’s and Montagu’s action against Clare was dismissed by chancery on 19 Feb. 1694, in the midst of the hearings in the House of Montagu v Bath. As Luttrell reported that immediately after the dismissal of his bill Thanet was considering launching an appeal in the House, it is likely that Thanet considered it prudent to support his fellow plaintiff Montagu in his other legal proceedings before the House.37

Thanet first came to the House for the 1694-5 session on 4 Feb. 1695, almost three months into its proceedings, and came perhaps for a specific personal reason, for a week after his arrival he introduced a private bill to confirm the deed and indentures he had entered into with his brother Sackville for dividing the southern Tufton properties more equitably. The bill was committed the following day and on 13 Feb., only two days after its introduction, the bill was reported as fit to pass without amendment. It received the royal assent on 22 Apr. without any further obstructions.38 More troublesome was another matter which claimed Thanet’s attention in that part of the session. On 10 Jan. 1695 the House had rejected the claim of Sir Richard Verney, bt, subsequently recognized as 11th Baron Willoughby de Broke, to be styled ‘Lord Broke’ on the basis of a writ of summons of 1491. The rejection was based in part on the disputed point whether writs of summons issued without reference to a creation by letters patent conferred a hereditary barony on its recipients’ heirs general, even when the barony passed through a female line, precisely the line of descent Thanet claimed for his own title of Lord Clifford. On 13 Feb. 1695 Thanet was added to the large committee considering Verney’s claim. A week later he himself demanded that the House declare upon what basis they rejected Verney’s claim and that a date should be set for him and some of his colleagues to offer their reasons to the House for the validity of baronies by writ passing through the female line.39 Counsel for Thanet was finally heard on 12 Mar. 1695 and a week later the House passed a resolution that male heirs to baronies by writ through a single female ancestor did have the right to demand a writ of summons and sit in the House, a decision which prompted a lengthy protest signed by ten peers.40 He was involved in the hearings on corruption in the East India Company which closed this session. On 16 Apr. he was placed on the drafting committee for a bill to indemnify Sir Thomas Cooke‡ for any evidence he might provide about bribes given by the Company. Six days later Thanet was chosen by ballot to be one of the 12 peers to serve on the joint commission with the Commons to hear Cooke’s testimony, while on 24 Apr. he was part of a delegation to a conference on this evidence and was placed on another joint committee to examine other officials of the Company such as Sir Basil Firebrace‡. On 2 May 1695 he was manager of a conference concerning the House’s objections to the Commons’ amendments to the bill for the imprisonment of Cooke and Firebrace.41 With his late arrival, Thanet came to only 43 per cent of the sittings in this session, the last of William III’s first Parliament, and was nominated to nine committees on legislation.

Under William III, 1695-1702

The general election of 1695 went smoothly for Thanet, where he convinced the two sitting members for Appleby to stand down in favour of two Tories favoured by the leadership at Westminster: the Kentish gentleman Sir William Twisden‡, 3rd bt, and Sir Christopher Musgrave‡, 4th bt. Electoral management aside, Thanet was never again quite as involved in the business of the House as he had been before 1695. He had been teller on eight occasions in the period 1689-95, but last told for a division on 27 Jan. 1696, on the question whether to re-commit the small tithes bill, and never again acted in this role in the House.42 Nor did he maintain a high attendance level in the House and for the remainder of the reign of William III and during all of Anne’s Thanet usually came to about half of the sittings of any one session, and in some sessions noticeably fewer. He was generally named to about half of the select committees established during the days of his attendance in the House, and almost all of his committee nominations were for private bills. He was described in the early years of Anne’s reign as ‘a good country gentleman, a great assertor of the prerogatives of the monarchy and the Church’. 43 He certainly distinguished himself as a stalwart and consistent High Church Tory, with definite country attitudes, throughout all the parliaments of the next 20 years.

Thanet was closely allied socially and politically throughout this time to Daniel Finch, 2nd earl of Nottingham, who was his nephew by his marriage in 1685 to Thanet’s niece Anne Hatton, daughter of Christopher Hatton, Viscount Hatton, and Thanet’s late sister Cicely. 44 Thanet attended 47 per cent of sittings in the 1695-6 session. Arriving in the House for the new Parliament on 5 Dec., when it was embroiled in a series of contentious meetings of the committee of the whole House, Thanet quickly wrote to his brother-in-law Hatton encouraging him to attend, ‘for besides the great sums of money expected, the calling in the coin and the settling of the East India Company in Scotland will prove I fear great difficulties to alter’. Thanet was also anxious for Nottingham’s arrival, ‘for he is already very much wanted by us’.45 Thanet later joined Nottingham in refusing to sign the Association pledging allegiance to William III as ‘rightful and loyal king’, even though on 24 Feb. 1696 he had been placed on the committee to draft it and present it to the Commons in conference.46 On 17 Mar. the Kentish Tory Charles Finch, 4th earl of Winchilsea, a kinsman of Nottingham, registered his proxy with Thanet, who maintained it for the remainder of the session. In the weeks following this Thanet registered his dissent from two bills: one (on 27 Mar.) for the recruitment of seamen, in which he was joined only by Nottingham and Laurence Hyde, earl of Rochester, and the other (on 31 Mar.), to encourage bringing in plate to the Mint for the recoinage, in which he was among 15 Tory peers, including Nottingham. On 14 Apr. he was also named to the committee assigned to draw up heads for a conference on the bill for prohibiting trade with France.

Thanet attended 51 per cent of the 1696-7 session. He was among the Tory opposition to the bill to attaint Sir John Fenwick‡, 3rd bt. He signed the dissents from the decision of 15 Dec. 1696 to hear the written evidence of the absent and disreputable Cardell Goodman and from the resolution of three days later to give the bill a second reading. Winchilsea once again entrusted him with his proxy, registered on 23 Dec. 1696, when Thanet would thus have been able to bring two votes against the Fenwick attainder bill; he later entered his own protest against the bill’s passage.47 Exactly a month later he protested against the resolution that the place bill be denied a second reading. On 12 Feb. 1697 he stood bail for the earl of Ailesbury upon his release from prison.48

Thanet was present for most of the first four months of the session of 1697-8. From 23 Feb. 1698 he once again held the proxy of Winchilsea, which he may have used when voting on 15 Mar. against the commitment of the Whig-inspired bill to punish the Exchequer official Charles Duncombe‡ Thanet last attended the House on 1 Apr. 1698, and 11 days later registered his proxy with William Savile, 2nd marquess of Halifax, for the remainder of the session. In total he had come to just over a third of the sittings of that session.

At the election of 1698 Thanet returned two Tory kinsmen in Appleby, his nephew Sir John Walter‡, 4th bt, and his wife’s maternal uncle Gervase Pierrepont, later Baron Pierrepont. He came to only 41 per cent of the first session of the new Parliament, in 1698-9, and was present at 53 percent of the following session of 1699-1700. On 23 Feb. 1700 he supported the Tory bill to maintain the old East India Company as a corporation, while on 8 Mar. he protested against the second reading of the bill for the divorce of the duke of Norfolk. As the session reached a rancorous end, he was, on 2 Apr., made a reporter for the conference on the bill that would remove duties from woollen manufactures and on 9-10 Apr. was delegated to represent the House in three contentious conferences on the disagreements on the bill to resume the forfeited Irish lands granted by the king to his followers.

At the election of winter 1700 Thanet was only able to retain one of his candidates at Appleby: Pierrepont easily headed the poll, but Walter was defeated by one vote by Wharton Dunch‡, nephew of Thomas Wharton, 5th Baron (later marquess of) Wharton. Thomas Sprat, bishop of Rochester, emphasized to Sir Christopher Musgrave’s friends at Oxford that the leaders of the Tory party, disturbed by the narrowness of Musgrave’s victory in his own county, had decided that he should sit for Westmorland and not Oxford University. Otherwise, Sprat warned, ‘my Lord Thanet and all the true Church of England men will never be able to hold up their heads again in any elections for town or counties’.49

Thanet came to 46 per cent (48 meetings) of the House in the Parliament which convened on 6 Feb. 1701 but he was busy in putting his names to dissents and protests during those few days, such as against the resolution of 8 Mar. to request the king to lift the suspension of the disgraced naval officer Captain James Norris. Most of his dissents, though, concerned the second Partition Treaty and the impeachment of the Junto lords in the spring of 1701. On 15 Mar. he subscribed to the protests against the decision to reject two heads of the report on the Partition Treaty which caused offence among the Whigs and five days later he further objected to the House’s refusal to seek the Commons’ concurrence to its address to the king regarding the treaty. Through his dissents and protests he showed his opposition to all of the House’s measures which tried to avoid the impeachment and punishment of the Junto lords. He dissented from the decision to address the king asking that the impeached lords not be dismissed pending the hearings (on 16 Apr.), from the refusal to establish a joint committee with the Commons to discuss the procedures for the trial (14 June) and from the resolutions to proceed to Westminster Hall to try John Somers, Baron Somers, and to acquit him (both 17 June). At the general election of late 1701, Thanet’s principal agent in Appleby, the town clerk Thomas Carleton, saw disaster looming because of Thanet’s delay in naming his candidates and laxness in purchasing those burgages which became available and conveying them to ‘faggot voters’, a practice that was being pursued vigorously by Wharton’s agents. Pierrepont and Dunch were again returned for Appleby in December 1701, while for the county elections Thanet supported Musgrave, who was defeated (he was later returned for Totnes), and Henry Grahme‡, who won the second seat, though an informant told Henry’s father James Grahme‡ that ‘we should have lost it entirely but for Lord Thanet’s interest’.50

Thanet first appeared in William III’s last parliament on 19 Jan. 1702 and came to only 27 sittings, 27 per cent of the whole. He dissented from the passage of the abjuration bill on 24 Feb. 1702 (although he did sign the House’s address condemning Louis XIV for recognizing the Pretender) and on 8 Mar. was made, along with the rest of the House present, a manager of a conference on arrangements for the accession of Anne.

The reign of Anne to 1710

Thanet was reportedly offered the position of lord chamberlain by Anne, but refused, supposedly on the grounds that ‘on coming to the title and estate I took a resolution to retire and to live a private life’ and because he was widely suspected of Jacobitism and would thereby bring the queen into disrepute. 51 He was offered the place of lord lieutenant of Westmorland and Cumberland, which after some indecision he refused, and custos rotulorum of Westmorland, which he took up in June 1702.52 Bolstered by Thanet’s new prominence as custos, the Tories swept Westmorland in the elections of 1702, Musgrave and Henry Grahme being returned for the county and Pierrepont and James Grahme for Appleby. Thanet was absent for the first two months of the new Parliament’s first session, and only attended 29 per cent of sittings. He first sat on 14 Dec. 1702, five days after the occasional conformity bill had been sent back to the Commons with its controversial amendments, and it was conceivably his support for this bill that brought him back to the House. On 20 Mar. 1703 Thanet was sworn to the Privy Council. Ailesbury claimed he only accepted the appointment because it did not require his living in London. 53 Sidney Godolphin, Baron (later earl of) Godolphin, lord treasurer, wrote on 28 Mar. that despite Thanet’s uneasiness over accepting the lieutenancy of Cumberland and Westmorland, he believed Thanet could be brought to accept the appointment, but on 8 May he thought that Thanet’s acceptance seemed remote. Godolphin professed himself ‘indifferent’ to Thanet’s appointment but intimated that it was the queen’s intention he pursue it.54

Thanet attended 43 per cent of sittings in the 1703-4 session, and again seems to have been spurred into attendance by the fortunes of the occasional conformity bill. He was present on 14 Dec. 1703, voting with the minority for the bill and registering his dissent from its rejection. Further dissents followed in March 1704, when he opposed the decision to remove Robert Byerley‡ from the list of commissioners of public accounts (on 16 Mar.), dissented from the passage of the bill for raising recruits (21 Mar.) and objected to the resolution, part of the attack on Nottingham in the Scotch Plot affair, that the failure to take Robert Ferguson into custody for further questioning was an encouragement to the crown’s enemies (25 Mar.). Thanet was included in a list of members of both Houses drawn up by Nottingham in 1704 which may indicate support for him over the Plot.

Thanet first sat in the 1704-5 session on 2 Dec. 1704, almost two months into proceedings, and attended 44 per cent of the whole session. On 15 Dec. 1704 he again voted for the occasional conformity bill and again dissented from the House’s continued rejection of it. He was opposed to the union with Scotland from the first and on 20 Dec. 1704 voted against the passage of the bill to establish commissioners to treat with the Scots about a union.55 Part of his opposition to the Scots and the Union may have come from his distaste for the Presbyterian Scottish Kirk and his support of the beleaguered Episcopalians in Scotland. In January 1705 William Nicolson, bishop of Carlisle, reported that on a visit to the earl he found him &lsquoin the same generous temper, as heretofore, towards the Episcopal clergy in Scotland’, and a year later Nicolson on another visit found Thanet ‘resolved to continue his charity in Scotland&rsquo.56 On 22 Jan. 1705 Thanet protested against the rejection of the petition of Thomas Watson, bishop of St Davids, to be given further time to assign errors in his writ of error, while on 2 Mar. he entered his dissent from the act for recruiting soldiers and sailors. On 27 Feb. 1705 he was nominated to a committee to draw up heads for a conference with the Commons on their denial of a writ of habeas corpus to the ‘Aylesbury men’.

As custos Thanet was able to place members of Appleby corporation on tax commissions, and could also influence appointments in the army.57 Such patronage set the stage for another resounding Tory victory in Appleby in 1705, as James Grahme was returned with another Tory, William Harvey‡, without opposition. In the first session of Anne’s second Parliament, in 1705-6, Thanet attended 50 per cent of sittings. He supported the Tories’ ‘Hanoverian motion’ calling for the dowager electress of Hanover to reside in England during the lifetime of the queen and opposed the Whig’s counter-measure, the regency bill. In the last-gasp Tory attempt to stop or alter the bill on 3 Dec. 1705, Thanet put his name to three protests against the House’s refusal to consider proposed riders to the bill which would ensure that the lord justices charged with the government of the realm in the interim between the queen’s death and the arrival of the Hanoverian monarch could not repeal or alter a number of acts of the previous 30 years concerning religious tests and toleration, the duration of parliaments, treason and the succession. Those attempts having failed, Thanet also subscribed his name to the long protest against the passage of the regency bill which ended that day’s sitting. Three days later he further voted and protested against the resolution made in the committee of the whole House that ‘the Church was not in danger under the queen’s administration’.58

The regency bill was returned to the House early in the new year, with the addition of the Commons’ ‘whimsical’ place clause. In the debate on 31 Jan. 1706, Thanet joined in three dissents against the attempts of the court interest in the House to amend out of recognition the country clause. Thanet and his fellow Tory dissenters may have seen the place clause as a ‘wrecking amendment’ which would be sure to prompt a royal veto of the bill in its entirety if included. This attempt once again to derail the bill was ultimately unsuccessful and the regency bill, without the place clause, received the royal assent on the last day of the session on 19 Mar. 1706. In the days running up to this prorogation Thanet, on 6 Mar., dissented from another act for recruiting the armed forces and five days later he, along with the rest of the House present, was made a manager for two conferences on the printed letter from Sir Rowland Gwyn‡ to Thomas Grey, 2nd earl of Stamford, which was deemed a seditious libel.

During the session of 1706-7, of which he attended 42 per cent of sittings, Thanet was most clearly concerned by the Union bill and its implications for the Church of England – and for himself. On 3 Feb. 1707 he dissented from the resolution not to insert a clause reaffirming the inviolability of the 1673 Test Act into the bill to secure the Church of England. In a debate on the Union bill on 24 Feb. he requested from the judges the full import of the 20th article, which affected him personally as it placed restrictions on heritable offices, such as Thanet’s own office as sheriff of Westmorland. Nicolson recorded that Thanet was ‘for [his] rights, which Lord Wharton calls tyranny and oppression’, but in practice Thanet’s position as hereditary sheriff of Westmorland was never threatened.59 On 4 Mar. 1707 he voted in a favour of a rider declaring that nothing in the Union bill should be construed to be an acknowledgement of the validity of the Church of Scotland and dissented both from the rejection of that motion and from the passage of the Act of Union. Wharton and the Junto, who had already had Thanet ousted from the office of custos rotulorum in Westmorland and had tried to undermine his position as sheriff, used Thanet’s opposition to the Union to have him removed from the Privy Council in May 1707.60

Thanet only attended 40 per cent of sittings in the 1707-8 session, chiefly in February and March 1708. On 31 Mar. 1708 he dissented from the House’s decision that the arrest of the Catholic Marmaduke Langdale, 3rd Baron Langdale, was not a breach of privilege, because he felt that the statement agreed on by the House did not go far enough in explaining that Langdale was ineligible for privilege because he had never taken the oaths and test.

At the 1708 election, Thanet secured one seat for Edward Duncombe‡ in Appleby, but Wharton’s candidate, Nicholas Lechmere†, later Baron Lechmere, won the second seat by seven votes. The first session of 1708-9 in the following Parliament saw Thanet’s highest attendance rate, 57 per cent, for the entire period 1695-1715. He was involved in the petition of the Squadrone peers against the right of James Douglas, 2nd duke of Queensberry [S], and duke of Dover in the British peerage, to vote in the elections of the Scottish representative peers for the new Parliament. He was appointed to the committee to consider this petition on 10 Jan. 1709 and 11 days later, somewhat surprisingly, voted with the Junto and Squadrone peers against Queensberry and his ally the lord treasurer Godolphin. On the other hand Thanet joined many other Tories in protesting against the commitment of the general naturalization bill on 15 March. On 26 Mar. Thanet complained against a provision in the ‘attorneys’ bill’ against fraud in stamp duties which specifically required Thanet, as hereditary sheriff of Westmorland, to appoint a new under-sheriff every year. Four days later his counsel was heard at the bar and Nicolson recorded that Charles Montagu, Baron (later earl of) Halifax, ‘to make the work short’ of the matter, moved that the offending clause be rejected. In this he was seconded, surprisingly, by Wharton, who usually took any opportunity to undermine Thanet’s position as sheriff.61

Montagu’s death on 9 Mar. 1709 brought the complicated relations between the daughters of the 2nd duke of Newcastle and their spouses to the fore again. Montagu had married Newcastle’s eldest daughter, Elizabeth, who was widely considered a lunatic. Thanet and his brother-in-law the duke of Newcastle (as Clare had been created in May 1694), now lord privy seal, sought a commission to guard their sister-in-law and her estate, worth £8,000 p.a. ‘and upwards’. Whatever their own differences both these brothers-in-law had a common cause, along with their fellow commissioner Charles Spencer, 3rd earl of Sunderland, who had briefly been married to the fourth Cavendish daughter, to see that further inroads on the Cavendish-Newcastle estate were not made.62

The matter of the Newcastle inheritance perhaps distracted Thanet from taking his seat in the 1709-10 session until 10 Jan. 1710. He proceeded to sit for only a further 35 days, but those meetings, primarily in February and March, were some of the most contentious of his career. On 16 Feb. he dissented from the decision to proceed with the debate on the Commons’ address that John Churchill, duke of Marlborough, should be immediately sent to the Low Countries. On that same day Thanet also dissented from the House’s decision not to require the Scottish Episcopalian minister James Greenshields and the Edinburgh magistrates to attend the House before the minister’s appeal against the Kirk officials would be formally received. He was understandably even more agitated by the treatment of Dr Sacheverell and subscribed to eight dissents and protests in this matter in the period 14-21 Mar. 1710. In particular he protested against the decisions: that the ‘criminal’ words did not have to be included verbatim in the articles of impeachment (14 Mar.); that the Commons had proved the first four articles in the impeachment (16 and 17 Mar.); that peers were limited to a single vote of guilty or not guilty upon all the articles (18 Mar.); that Sacheverell was guilty of high crimes and misdemeanours (20 Mar.); and that he be imprisoned and barred from preaching for seven years (21 Mar.).63

In July 1710 Thanet nominated as his two candidates for Appleby, the sitting Member Duncombe and the Tory lawyer, Thomas Lutwyche‡. Thanet’s confidence of victory in the elections of 1710 was borne out by Wharton’s choice of Joshua Blackwell, a man with sound Tory principles, a desperate attempt, ultimately unsuccessful, to prevent Thanet from controlling both seats for the borough.64 After the reversal of political fortunes following the Sacheverell trial, Robert Harley, later earl of Oxford and Mortimer, sought Thanet’s support for the new ministry of 1710. Thanet saw Harley’s rise as an opportunity too, and during the summer of 1710 had ended one of his letters to his steward Thomas Carleton – also now mayor of Appleby – with the injunction ‘as soon as the election is over send me up a list of such of the corporation as are qualified for the Excise or Salt or Stamp Office’, and sought to obtain these places for them or other dependents.65

The Oxford ministry

With a ministry more to his taste, Thanet became more active in the House. He came to 57 per cent of the meetings of the 1710-11 session in the new Tory-dominated Parliament, his highest attendance rate in any session (apart from 1708-9) in the 20 years from 1695 to 1715. He was more involved than in previous years as well, and even reported on 7 Mar. 1711, for the first time in his parliamentary career, from a select committee considering a private bill, that allowing the sale or settlement of the lands and herediments in Kent of William Henden. He was named to the large committee established on 22 Jan. 1711 to consider the unprepared state of the forces in Spain which had led to the debacle of Almanza and on 3 Feb. he was placed on another committee to draft an address to the queen regarding the insufficiency of the numbers and equipment of the forces in Spain – and the previous ministry’s responsibility in this.

The possibility was raised that Thanet be restored to his former positions of influence, to cement the Tory dominance in the north. Sir Simon Harcourt, later Viscount Harcourt, suggested in May 1711 that Thanet replace Wharton as custos of Westmorland.66 The appointment was not made at this time. Thanet was present at only a third of the meetings of the second session of 1711-12. He took part in the controversial votes on 7-8 Dec. 1711 about the clause to the address to the queen insisting that there could be ‘No Peace without Spain’. On 7 Dec. 1711 he was placed on the committee to prepare an address on the queen’s speech regarding the peace. He disagreed with the stance Nottingham took at this point that the address should contain a clause making it clear that there could be ‘No Peace without Spain’. His actions the next day, when there was a controversial and ultimately abortive division on whether to include this clause in the address, are difficult to interpret. One anonymous observer appears to have marked Thanet as supporting the clause, with Nottingham, Thomas Thynne, Viscount Weymouth and Nottingham’s brother Heneage Finch, Baron Guernsey, later earl of Aylesford. However, Thanet’s name appears clearly among those dissenting from the resolution to include the clause (a list which does not include Nottingham, Weymouth or Guernsey) recorded in the Journal. The rough division list for this day may be inaccurate in its assessment of Thanet’s voting or he may have changed his mind between the division on 8 Dec. and the deadline for subscribing to the protest (the end of the following day of sitting).67 Two days later Oxford (as Harley had since become) listed Thanet and other supporters of Nottingham among those for whom preferment should be found.68 On 13 Dec. Oxford had Thanet sworn to the Privy Council, in what should probably be seen as a move to reward him for his siding with the ministry by his protest and to detach him from Nottingham’s interest. This favour does not appear to have had the desired effect, and over the next few weeks Thanet slowly drifted back to Nottingham’s camp, and probably joined his band of ‘Hanoverian Tories’ in the last months of the reign. On 20 Dec. 1711, in the case of James Hamilton, 4th duke of Hamilton [S], Thanet sided with Nottingham and against the Oxford ministry by voting that no peer with a Scottish title created before the Union could sit in the House under a title created in the new Great British peerage after the Union.

Thanet, Nottingham and others attracted widespread comment on 2 Jan. 1712 by voting against Oxford’s motion to adjourn the House to 14 Jan. when the queen would give both Lords and Commons more details on the peace negotiations.69 On 3 Mar. 1712 Thanet received the proxy of George Compton, 4th earl of Northampton, who had consistently voted Tory in the preceding years of Anne’s reign. The first wife of Northampton’s father, James Compton, 3rd earl of Northampton, had been Thanet’s maternal aunt, but there was no blood relation between him and the 4th earl who was the child of the second wife. Thanet exercised this proxy until 14 Apr. when he left the House for the session and he in turn registered his proxy with Northampton, now returned to the House.

The ministry still sought some accommodatsion with Thanet, and on 1 May 1712 Sir John Lowther‡ anticipated that ‘the making my lord Thanet lord lieutenant I fear will occasion some alterations in the commission of peace purely to be vexatious.’70 In June Oxford considered appointing Thanet a commissioner of trade.71 In July 1712 James Grahme suggested to Oxford that if Thanet continued to refuse the lord lieutenancies of Cumberland and Westmorland, the lord treasurer should appoint Grahme’s son-in-law and presumptive heir, Henry Bowes Howard, 4th earl of Berkshire.72 Thanet appears to have been more solicitous that his chaplain be appointed to a prebend either at Westminster or Windsor.73 In October Grahme wrote that appointments of ‘worse men’ in Westmorland were being made in Thanet’s name, but without his knowledge.74 The lord-lieutenancies, however, remained with the Whig Charles Howard, 3rd earl of Carlisle, apparently pending a definitive refusal or acceptance from Thanet, Archdeacon Hugh Todd pressing Berkshire’s claim to the offices in July 1713.75

Excluding an appearance on a prorogation day on 17 Mar. 1713, Thanet only came to 5 sittings in the third session, eight per cent of the whole, all during April 1713. Oxford still forecast that Thanet would support the French commercial treaty of June 1713 that foundered in the Commons. At the 1713 election he secured the return of Thomas Lutwyche in one of the Appleby seats, but James Grahme had sold his burgages to Richard Lowther, 2nd Viscount Lonsdale, a Whig, whose candidate secured the second seat.76

Thanet came to only 29 per cent of the meetings of the first session of spring 1714. He left the House on 11 May 1714, but despite his absence Nottingham forecast that he would support the schism bill, which was voted on later that month. That month he was appointed custos rotulorum of Westmorland, replacing Wharton. On 2 June 1714 Thanet gave his proxy to Northampton for the remainder of the session, as he did again on 10 Aug. when he left the House after sitting for only three days in the 15-day session convened upon the queen’s death.

An account of his sparse activity in the House after the Hanoverian Succession will appear in the subsequent volumes of this project. Thanet died at Hothfield in Kent on 30 July 1729 and was succeeded in the earldom of Thanet and his entailed estates by his nephew Sackville Tufton†, although the barony of Clifford, whose descent through the female line Thanet had worked so hard to have recognized, fell into abeyance between his five daughters as heirs general. As well as leaving £20,000 to each of these daughters, his will appointed trustees to administer funds in the interest of several charitable projects intended to benefit the education of the poor and the clergy of the Church of England.

C.G.D.L./M.C.K.

  • 1 Add. 70503, f. 93.
  • 2 TNA, PROB 11/635.
  • 3 Chatsworth, Halifax Collection, B.52.
  • 4 CSP Dom. 1667-8, pp. 174, 191, 195, 212, 213, 217, 219, 228; Diaries of Lady Anne Clifford ed. Clifford, 188, 203-4, 222; Bulstrode Pprs, 314.
  • 5 CSP Dom. 1675-6, p. 224; 1676-7, p. 248; 1677-8, p. 99; 1682, p. 335.
  • 6 Reresby Mems. 344-5; HMC Portland, ii. 157; TNA, DEL 1/251, ff. 30-33.
  • 7 Add. 29560, f. 432; HMC Le Fleming, 402.
  • 8 Add. 29560, f. 432.
  • 9 CSP Dom. 1685, p. 51; CSP Dom. 1668-9, p. 88.
  • 10 Ailesbury Mems, 533, 568.
  • 11 HP Commons, 1660-90, i. 434-6; HMC Le Fleming, 197.
  • 12 Cumbria RO (Carlisle), D/Lons/L2/5; HMC Le Fleming, 193-4.
  • 13 HMC Le Fleming, 197; CSP Dom. 1685, pp. 361, 365; Add. 70013, ff. 277-8.
  • 14 Reresby Mems, 424-5 n3; Add. 75360, Sir J. Reresby to marquess of Halifax, 6 Sept. 1686.
  • 15 Reresby Mems, 432.
  • 16 CSP Dom. 1687-9, p. 47.
  • 17 Kingdom without a King, 67, 74, 79, 85, 105, 109, 115, 124, 153 158, 165; Timberland, i. 332; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk, iv. 378, 385.
  • 18 Add. MS 32681, f. 318; Beinecke Lib. OSB mss fb 210, f. 331-2.
  • 19 HMC Lords, ii. 17.
  • 20 Clarendon Corresp. ii. 261-2; BIHR, liii. 64-65.
  • 21 HMC Lords, ii. 46, 49.
  • 22 Luttrell, Brief Relation, ii. 113; Browning, Danby, iii. 179.
  • 23 HMC Lords, iii. 208.
  • 24 HMC Lords, ii. 227.
  • 25 CP iv. 712-15; xii. 694-5; HMC Lords, iii. 191-2; Kent HLC (CKS), U455/F4.
  • 26 Verney ms mic. 636/45, C. Gardiner to Sir R. Verney, 28 Oct. 1691.
  • 27 HMC Lords, iv. 8.
  • 28 Ibid. iv. 19.
  • 29 Ibid. iv. 79.
  • 30 PROB 36/6; DEL 1/251; Eg. 3357, ff. 141-50; Add. 61655, ff. 1-4.
  • 31 Add. 29565, f. 80; Add. 29574, ff. 45, 49; Hatton Corresp. ii (Cam. Soc. n.s. xxii), 178; Luttrell, Brief Relation, ii. 451.
  • 32 Add. 72482, ff. 139-40; HMC Downshire, i. 434; Verney ms mic. M636/47, J. to Sir R. Verney, 19 Oct. 1693.
  • 33 HMC Lords, iv. 246.
  • 34 HEHL, EL 8996, Bolton to Bridgwater, 6 Apr. 1693.
  • 35 Bodl. Carte 79, f. 497; HMC Lords, n.s. i. 320.
  • 36 BIHR, liii. 76.
  • 37 Luttrell, Brief Relation, iii. 272, 273; TNA, SP 105/60, f. 125.
  • 38 Kent HLC (CKS), U455/283/12.
  • 39 Add. 29565, ff.518, 528.
  • 40 HMC Lords n.s. i. 403-5.
  • 41 Ibid. n.s. i. 551.
  • 42 Ibid. n.s. ii. 153.
  • 43 Macky Mems. 80.
  • 44 Add. 75368, Nottingham to Halifax, 10 July 1697.
  • 45 Add. 29566, f. 118.
  • 46 HMC Lords, ii. 206-8; HMC Portland, iii. 574; Luttrell, Brief Relation, iv. 22.
  • 47 Add. 70251, J. Pack to R. Harley 23 Dec. 1696.
  • 48 Luttrell, Brief Relation, iv. 183; Ailesbury Mems, 424.
  • 49 Bodl. Ballard 9, ff. 38-40.
  • 50 HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 638-40, 643-5; HMC 10th Rep. IV, 332, 334, 335, 336; Add. 46541, ff. 56-57; Levens Hall, Bagot mss, T. Carleton to J. Grahme, 29 Nov. 1701.
  • 51 Ailesbury Mems, 532-3.
  • 52 Luttrell, Brief Relation, v. 279.
  • 53 Ailesbury Mems, 532-3.
  • 54 HMC Portland, iv. 59, 62.
  • 55 Nicolson, London Diaries, 256.
  • 56 Nicolson, London Diaries, 266, 346.
  • 57 Add. 61283, ff. 55, 57; Add. 61294, ff. 80, 82.
  • 58 PH, xxxii. 261.
  • 59 Timberland, ii. 174-6; Nicolson, London Diaries, 420.
  • 60 Luttrell, Brief Relation, vi. 174.
  • 61 Nicolson, London Diaries, 491; Luttrell, Brief Relation, vi. 424.
  • 62 Luttrell, Brief Relation, vi. 420; HMC Dartmouth, iii. 147; Add. 61619, ff. 45-46.
  • 63 State Trial of Dr Henry Sacheverell, ed. B. Cowan, 88, 90, 91, 96, 99, 100.
  • 64 Cumbria RO (Kendal), Hothfield mss, Thanet to T. Carleton, 17 Aug. 1710 (Speck transcripts); Leics. RO, Finch mss DG7, box 4950, bundle 23, J. Ward to Nottingham, 31 Aug. 1710, J. Blackwell to Nottingham 8, 10 Sept. 1710.
  • 65 Cumbria RO (Kendal), Hothfield mss, Thanet to T. Carleton, 17 Aug. 1710; Add. 70261, Thanet to R. Harley, n.d. but c. 22 Dec. 1710.
  • 66 HMC Portland, iv. 694.
  • 67 PH, ii. 195-7.
  • 68 Add. 70332, memorandum, 10 Dec. 1711.
  • 69 Ballard 20, f. 74.
  • 70 Cumbria RO, D/Lons/W2/1/45.
  • 71 Add. 70332, memorandum, 16 June 1712.
  • 72 Add. 70229, J. Grahme to Oxford, 27 July 1712.
  • 73 Add 70261, Thanet to Oxford, 21 June 1712; Add. 70261, Thanet to Oxford, 18 Sept. 1712.
  • 74 Add. 70229, J. Grahme to Oxford, 4 Oct.1712.
  • 75 HMC Portland, v. 305.
  • 76 HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 639-41, 644-6.