STANLEY, James (1664-1736)

STANLEY, James (1664–1736)

suc. bro. 5 Nov. 1702 as 10th earl of DERBY.

First sat 26 Nov. 1702; last sat 28 Jan. 1720

MP Clitheroe 1685, Preston 1689, Lancs. 1690, 1695, 1698, 1701 (Jan.), 1701 (Dec.), 1702-5 Nov. 1702.

b. 3 July 1664, 8th but 3rd surv. s. of Charles Stanley, 8th earl of Derby, and Dorothea Helena (d. 6 Apr. 1703), da. of Jan van den Kerckhove, Ld. of Heenvliet [Dutch]; bro. of Charles Zedenno‡ and William George Richard Stanley, 9th earl of Derby. educ. St Paul's Sch.1 m. Feb. 1705 (with £50,000-60,000)2 Mary (1667-1752), da. and h. of Sir William Morley‡, of Halnaker, Suss., 1s. d.v.p. 3 suc. bro. 5 Nov. 1702 as Ld. of Man; gt.-niece 8 Aug. 1732 as Bar. Strange. d. 1 Feb. 1736; will 20 Dec. 1735, pr. 19 Feb. 1736.4

Groom of bedchamber 1689-1702; chan., duchy of Lancaster 1706-10; PC 10 June 1706-d.; capt., yeomen of gd. 1715-23.

Ranger, Quernmore, Mierscough, Amounderness, Bleasdale, Wyersdale (the ‘five forests’), Lancs. 1694-1710, Furness, Lancs. 1702-d.;5 ld. lt., Lancs. 1702-10, 1714-d.; custos rot., Lancs. 1702-10, 1714-d.;6 v.-adm., Lancs. and Cheshire 1702-12; chamb., cty palatine of Chester 1702-d.; mayor, Liverpool 1707-8, 1734-5.

Capt., earl of Pembroke's regt. of ft. (Dutch establishment) 1686-9, 1st Ft. Gds. 1689-92; col., 16th regt. of ft. 1692-1705; brig.-gen. 1702-4; maj.-gen. 1704-5.

Associated with: Knowsley Hall, Lancs.; Castle Rushen, Isle of Man; No. 28 Queen Anne’s Gate, Westminster.

Likenesses: etching by P. Pelham, aft. Hamlet Winstanley, 1725-6, NPG D20121.

Member for Lancashire, 1689-1702

James Stanley was the penultimate son of the large brood of 14 children born to the 8th earl of Derby and his Dutch wife. He was elected to the Commons underage in 1685 but soon turned to a military career and from 1686 relied on his mother’s Dutch connections to find service in one of the British regiments fighting on behalf of the Dutch Republic. He thus began his connection with the Prince of Orange, whom he accompanied on his invasion of England, and rose quickly in William’s favour once they had settled in England. Stanley was appointed a groom of the bedchamber in William’s new court and continued his progress in army circles with a commission as captain in the 1st Foot Guards. In 1692 he was promoted to a colonelcy. He was wounded and wrongly reported killed, commanding his regiment at the battle of Landen the following year. In 1695 he took part in the siege of Namur.7 Although a family retainer felt that Stanley’s ‘shy and reserved humour sticks so close to him that I believe he will befriend but few’, he was to retain high favour at court throughout the 1690s. His reputation even survived the fire that started in his chambers in January 1698, which eventually burnt down Whitehall palace. Presumably he was the Colonel Stanley who was dispatched by William III to England in August 1700 to express his condolences to Princess Anne for the loss of the duke of Gloucester.8 Stanley thus stood in stark contrast to his elder brother, the 9th earl of Derby, whose hesitation in joining William in November 1688 was to cost him much influence at court.

Stanley was consistently placed on the Lancashire commission of the peace from 1689, and elected as knight of the shire for the county in every Parliament of William III’s reign.9 In the Commons he consistently sided with the Whigs, which increasingly put him at odds with his brother Derby, who in the 1690s became the leader of the beleaguered Tories in the county as a result of his own exclusion from local office and government. By the late 1690s Derby was embittered by his continual political ostracism. He blamed his Whiggish brother in part for his continual lack of success, especially as he felt that Stanley had not exerted himself sufficiently in pressing the earl's case at court to be restored to the lord lieutenancy of Lancashire and Cheshire.10 Matters turned worse for Derby in October 1699 when his heir apparent James Stanley, styled Lord Strange, died of smallpox while travelling on a tour of Europe. Derby’s next younger brother having also predeceased him in 1686, he was faced with the unpalatable prospect of his Whig brother James as his successor. He bitterly opposed Stanley’s standing again in the two elections of 1701 and unsuccessfully campaigned both times to have him unseated.11

Stanley was made brigadier-general in March 1702 in preparation for the inevitable renewed war with France and was once again returned as knight of the shire in August for Anne’s first Parliament. After the death of the lord lieutenant of Lancashire, Charles Gerard, 2nd earl of Macclesfield, in November 1701 and of his younger, and more ineffectual, brother Fitton Gerard, 3rd earl of Macclesfield, in December 1702 Stanley became the leader of the Whig interest in Lancashire. He was thought far more moderate and acceptable than the controversial earls of Macclesfield. His brother Derby’s fortunes also initially changed for the better under Anne’s new Tory government as he was reinstated in his posts as lord lieutenant and custos rotulorum of Lancashire in June 1702 and quickly also sued to replace his brother as ranger of the five forests.12 The fluid situation of 1702 changed again with Derby’s own death on 5 Nov. whereupon Stanley succeeded as 10th earl of Derby.

Anne’s first Parliament, 1702-5

The new earl first took his seat in the House on 26 Nov. 1702, one month into the session, and continued to sit in another 31 meetings. Daniel Finch, 2nd earl of Nottingham, expected Derby to side with the Whigs against the occasional conformity bill, but he appears to have absented himself from the divisions on the ‘wrecking’ amendments on 16 Jan. 1703, although he is marked as present in the House on that day. When the bill came before the House again in the following session Charles Spencer, 3rd earl of Sunderland, included Derby among those peers 'good to be depended upon … that were absent' and this time Derby did vote against it on 14 December. He was present for 56 per cent of meetings in the session of 1703-4. Late in the session, on 24 Mar. 1704, he joined the Whigs in the campaign against Nottingham by protesting against the House’s resolution not to examine more thoroughly the inconsistencies in the testimony of Sir John Maclean, as recorded by the secretary of state. He came to a little over two-fifths of the meetings of 1704-5 but his activities, as recorded in the Journal, appear to have been limited to being nominated to select committees.

Macky noted that, ‘On his brother’s death [Derby] came to the House of Peers where he never will make any figure, the sword being more his profession’. His alignment with the Whigs caused Jonathan Swift later to annotate Macky’s character sketch with the comment, ‘As arrant a scoundrel as his brother’.13 Macky was right for the first years of Anne's reign, during which he was principally seen as a military man. John Churchill, duke of Marlborough, appears to have thought highly of him and was eager to promote him to be a major-general of infantry, which commission was signed in June 1704, though backdated to the first of that year. In February 1705 Derby contracted an extremely lucrative marriage to Mary, the sole daughter and heiress of Sir William Morley. She brought with her to the marriage a substantial portion as well as the Halnaker estate in Sussex.14 This marriage, and the fortune it brought with it, gave Derby more financial security in the midst of a long-running and acrimonious dispute with his sister-in-law Elizabeth, countess dowager of Derby, sister of James Butler, 2nd duke of Ormond, and his nieces, Elizabeth and Henrietta Stanley, over the division of the 9th earl’s estate. The late earl’s daughters claimed various parts of the estate as heirs general to their father. The Stanley barony of Strange had also fallen into abeyance between them. Derby meanwhile claimed much of the property as heir in tail male. Both sides employed an army of lawyers to weigh the validity of the various claims and the dispute went on for several years. It was frequently complicated whenever Henrietta’s two husbands in succession, John Annesley, 4th earl of Anglesey, (from 1706 to 1710) and John Ashburnham, 3rd Baron Ashburnham, (from 1714 to Henrietta’s death in 1718) became involved and tried to resuscitate her claims.15 At the same time Derby had to fight frequent legal battles with Richard Savage, 4th Earl Rivers, over lands in Essex settled in trust on the 9th earl and his successors to raise a portion of £10,000 for Charlotte Savage, the late daughter of Derby’s elder sister Charlotte and River’s elder brother Thomas Savage, styled Viscount Colchester) who had died in 1680.16 Secure in his new wife’s wealth, preoccupied with his legal battles, and perhaps bolstered by rumours circulating that he was about to be made either chancellor of the exchequer or chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, in March 1705 Derby resigned his military commissions. He retired to a comfortable civilian life divided between his wife’s Sussex estates and his house at Knowsley in Lancashire, which he had been able to wrest away from his nieces.17

He continued active in Lancashire affairs, however, for in late December 1702 he had been appointed lord lieutenant and custos rotulorum of Lancashire and vice-admiral of the coasts of Lancashire and Cheshire. Unlike his two predecessors in the earldom he was not given the joint lieutenancy of Lancashire and Cheshire, but did take over the Stanleys' traditional office of chamberlain of the county palatine of Chester. He was closely concerned with the politics of Liverpool, located near the heart of the Stanley estates, throughout his career. In the first years of Anne’s reign, Thomas Johnson‡ (member for Liverpool) tried to recruit Derby's help in his campaign to persuade the crown to lease Liverpool Castle and its surrounding grounds to the corporation, but found the earl insufficiently energetic, 'for he often talks of things, but is a long time before he does it'. By January 1703, however, Johnson was writing 'truly we are much obliged to him [the earl]' concerning the castle and its lease.18 As lord lieutenant, Derby tried to exercise his interest in the elections for the county of Lancashire, but he received an early rude shock revealing the limits of his power in the elections of 1705. The Tory Richard Shuttleworth‡ set himself up as an independent opposed to Derby's candidates, Sir Roger Bradshaigh‡, 3rd bt. and the earl's younger brother Charles Zedenno Stanley, the sitting member for Preston. While Bradshaigh wrote confidently that 'I find most gentlemen will be determined as my Lord Derby recommends', the Tory gentry resented Derby's attempt to choose both members for the county. Before the election it was asserted that there would be 'a strong poll betwixt Sir Roger Bradshaigh and Mr Shuttleworth' and that 'all the gentlemen' were for Shuttleworth. Derby and his followers in desperation resorted to underhand means to get the result they wished. Stanley and Bradshaigh tried to deceive Shuttleworth and his followers about the date on which the election was to be held and almost succeeded in having the sheriff at Lancaster declare him and Bradshaigh elected before a supporter of Shuttleworth heard of this ruse and demanded a poll. A Tory, Sir John Bland‡, 4th bt., condemned Stanley's 'ungentlemanlike' behaviour and felt that the election, in which Shuttleworth came well at the head, followed by Stanley and then Bradshaigh a distant third, proved that 'Lord Derby has not that interest as is represented above and his haughty treatment of all the gentlemen will never be forgot'.19

A moderate with the resurgent Whigs, 1705-10

Derby attended 56 per cent of the meetings of the first session of 1705-6. An analysis of the peerage drawn up before the elections marked him as a supporter of the Hanoverian succession and he was involved in discussions on the Whigs' regency bill, which sought to secure that succession at the queen's death. He was named a manager and committee member between 7 and 19 Feb. 1706 for handling the dispute with the Commons over the 'place clause' to exclude office-holders from Parliament which they had inserted in the bill. Throughout 1706 the Junto Whigs became increasingly clamorous for entry into government. Marlborough appears to have put forward Derby as a candidate who it was thought would both placate the Junto and be acceptable to himself and Sidney Godolphin, Baron (later earl of) Godolphin. In April, though, Godolphin informed Marlborough that the Junto leaders had only reluctantly agreed 'for the earl of Derby to have what you desired for him', the chancellorship of the duchy of Lancaster in place of the Tory John Leveson Gower, Baron Gower.20 On 1 June Derby was formally appointed chancellor of the duchy, and a few days later, as an adjunct to his new position, was sworn a privy councillor. Perhaps as confirmation of the Junto's suspicion of his lack of partisan zeal, his first commission of the peace for Lancashire, sealed on 30 July 1706, contained a few prominent local Whigs, but by no means consisted of a purge of the sitting Tory bench.21 This was complained of in a paper written up in 1708-9 concerning 'the present neglect and mismanagement in the duchy of Lancaster' under Derby's administration, which appears to have been written from a Whig point of view. It stated that:

The present chancellor before he was so appointed, complained that though he was lord lieutenant and custos rotulorum of Lancashire, he had not the power of recommending any one person to be put in the commission of the peace. Since he hath had the power he desired, he hath made little alteration, and some added by him are of the meanest characters and fortunes.

The paper went on to criticize Derby for failing to make a clean sweep of Gower's officials when he took office. The Tory Henry Somerset, 2nd duke of Beaufort, was retained as steward of Monmouthshire, despite the appeals of the country Whig John Morgan‡ for that position usually reserved to his family.22 Derby also risked the ire of Whig firebrands by appointing as his vice-chancellor the able Tory George Kenyon‡, son of the late clerk of the peace for Lancashire Roger Kenyon‡, who had been such a close ally and help to the previous earl in the 1690s.23 Both Derby and Kenyon compromised their standing with more zealous members of their own parties by this working relationship.

Derby also had to face hostility from the duchy officials themselves, who resented the appointment of one of Lancashire's largest landowners as their chancellor. The chancellor had traditionally been a courtier with no personal connection with the county and the appointment of the lord lieutenant of Lancashire, and a prominent political force therein, was unprecedented.24 This concentration of regional power in one person, who also had pending legal suits involving land in Lancashire, was one of the principal points raised in the memorandum of 1708-9.25 Furthermore, Derby had sat for Preston, the administrative centre of the duchy, in the Convention. His brother Charles had also been returned there in 1702. He had thus already built up an independent electoral interest there which he intended to exercise for partisan ends. But as in the county in 1705, his interest had its limits, perhaps weakened by the controversy surrounding his appointment. This was made clear in the by-election of winter 1706 held to find a replacement for the borough’s late member Edward Rigby‡. An observer confidently assured Robert Harley, later earl of Oxford, ‘my Lord [Derby] may recommend whom he pleases to serve for that place’, and hoped that the queen’s managers would speak to him to nominate a suitable person. ‘My Lord will obey, and perhaps will be glad to show his interest to the Court’. All these plans were complicated by Rigby’s untimely death in the period between Gower’s deprivation of office and Derby’s appointment. In the intervening time most of the burgesses who had the franchise – including the duchy’s attorney general and the clerks of the chancery court – had already expressed their support for the outgoing Gower’s candidate Henry Fleetwood‡. Derby in turn nominated a fellow Whig Arthur Maynwaring‡, a close associate of the Junto and confidant of the duchess of Marlborough, but as early as September he was writing to Kenyon about ‘the opposition we are like to meet with at Preston, which I believe you think, as well as myself, very unaccountable’. ‘No stone must be unturned in order to bring it to a good effect’, he later ordered Kenyon, ‘otherwise, I am sure, we shall be scoffed at, which must be prevented, if possible’, and he expressed his complete reliance on Kenyon’s electoral management. He further threatened harsh punishment on his insubordinate underlings, warning Kenyon, ‘I should be glad to hear that the chancery clerks have repented, for their sakes as well as my own’. The poll was close run and saw scenes of violence and intimidation. At the final count, after the qualifications of the voters had been put under careful scrutiny, Maynwaring scraped past Fleetwood with a majority of only seven votes. After this bruising election, Derby forbore to effect his promised purge of duchy officials, and they in turn promised the new chancellor that ‘their votes will be at his lordship’s service at the next election’.26

Derby managed the Preston by-election through his agent Kenyon and brother, Charles, whom he instructed from the capital, where he was attending Parliament throughout December 1706. He came to 40 per cent of the meetings of 1706-7 and in this session he was also confronted with a number of petitions asking him to waive his privilege of Parliament in suits concerning the division of the Derby estate. On 7 Feb. 1707 his sister-in-law, Elizabeth, countess dowager of Derby, complained that Derby was claiming as his land by right of entail various estates which had been settled on her as her jointure. Three days later Derby agreed that he would voluntarily waive his privilege in all suits concerning the countess of Derby. On 8 Mar., three days after a petition was read in the House from his nieces Elizabeth and Henrietta and Henrietta's husband Anglesey, Derby further agreed to waive his privilege in all future suits concerning the contested Stanley estate.27 Derby did not attend any meetings of the short session in April, perhaps preoccupied by these continuing suits with his kin, which had shifted from Westminster to Lancashire after the end of the session.28 He did come to 62 per cent of the session of 1707-8, his highest level of attendance of any parliamentary session, but his recorded activity was confined to nominations to select committees.

His main preoccupation, however, remained with local Lancashire affairs. In October 1707 he was elected mayor of Liverpool, even though he was still in London and had to be sworn into his office there by specially appointed commissioners. Indeed the memorandum on his lax administration of the duchy later complained of Derby's 'absence from town [Preston, or Lancashire in general] for generally three parts of the year', which caused serious delays to proceedings in the duchy court.29 Thomas Johnson also lamented the earl’s lassitude in not quickly presenting a candidate for the vacant office of collector of customs for the port, for ‘It were no difficult move for the Lord Derby to get his friend in, if his Lordship pleases; but alas! he is not active as some men are'. Even when Derby managed to have Johnson knighted by the queen on 20 Mar. 1708, after he and the earl had presented Liverpool’s address of thanksgiving for the delivery from the abortive French invasion of Scotland, Johnson did not feel he could thank him, for he knew the honour would open him up to criticism and ‘the surprise has put me more out of order than I have been since I came to London’.30 Some members of the Liverpool corporation feared that in the elections of spring 1708 their new mayor ‘will force members upon the corporation and that he recommends Mr [Arthur] Maynwaring’, but this apprehension was unfounded and Johnson was once again returned. Derby was instead able to see Maynwaring returned unopposed for Preston, but only at the cost of having him share the representation with his old rival Fleetwood. Similarly Derby’s defeat at the 1705 county election, compounded by that at Preston in 1706, cooled his partisan ardour in the 1708 Lancashire elections, where the sitting members, his Whig brother Charles and the Tory Richard Shuttleworth, were now returned unopposed and without a poll.31

Derby was present at a little over half of the sittings of the session of 1708-9 and, perhaps because of his party affiliation, was given increased responsibilities in the House. In the period 15-25 Mar. 1709 he reported from six select committees, most of them concerning private estate bills; one of them, the Manchester Church bill, of local interest to him. He also told in the division of 1 Apr. whether to reverse the decree in the cause of Hedges v. Hedges, where his opposite teller was Nottingham. He voted with the Whigs against the motion on 21 Jan. for allowing Scots peers with British titles to vote for the Scottish representative peers. He came to barely over two-fifths of the session of 1709-10, where on 27 Mar. 1710 he reported on the bill to bring clean water to Liverpool and on 5 Apr. told in the question whether to insist on an amendment to the copyright bill. He found Dr Sacheverell guilty on 20 Mar. and a week later was appointed a manager to argue in conference against the Commons' amendments to the bill concerning the marriage settlement of Edward Southwell.

Out of favour, 1710-15

The Lancashire elections of the autumn of 1710 were played out against the backdrop of uncertainty over Derby’s fate in the sweeping ministerial changes envisaged. From late summer there were rumours that he would be replaced as both chancellor of the duchy and as lord lieutenant. Both changes came slowly and he was only formally removed as chancellor of the duchy on 21 Sept., replaced by the Tory moderate William Berkeley, 4th Baron Berkeley of Stratton. This was still too late for the new chancellor to build an interest for his candidate and in the weeks running up to the election Fleetwood and another candidate, Sir Henry Hoghton‡, bt., put themselves forward independently of either the out-going Derby or the new man Berkeley of Stratton. Throughout August James Hamilton, 4th duke of Hamilton [S], who had inherited by marriage (although not without much legal dispute) much of the Gerard property and interest in Lancashire, assumed that he would be made chancellor and tried to build an interest in Preston before Berkeley of Stratton's appointment.32 Hamilton, and even more urgently his mother, Anne, suo jure 3rd duchess of Hamilton [S], also pressed Harley to appoint him lord lieutenant in Derby’s place so that he could manage the elections in the new ministry’s interest.33 For good reason, as members of the Junto were relying on Derby’s electoral exertions in Lancashire. Charles Montagu, Baron (later earl of) Halifax, counted on Derby in August 1710 ‘for his advice and assistance in setting up somebody at Clitheroe to oppose Ned [Edward] Harvey‡’, the sitting Tory member for the borough.34 Arthur Maynwaring wrote to Derby in early September ‘to desire the continuance of his favour in the next election’, but his ambitions of being returned for a Lancashire seat were dashed when he heard rumours that Derby would be removed from the lord lieutenancy. The member for Lancaster Robert Heysham‡, anxious lest Derby’s interest for Dodding Bradyll prove decisive in that borough’s forthcoming elections, wrote to Harley in the first days of September that ‘by the prints I find Duke Hamilton our lord lieutenant … if so he is our friend’.35 Harley, though, hesitated in making the change official and Derby remained lord lieutenant throughout the autumn elections, though doubts surrounding his future seriously weakened his effectiveness. It was rumoured that his brother Charles was prepared to try to find refuge in a Preston seat if defeated for the county, as seemed possible, and at the August assizes, ‘there were many against Mr Stanley, which alarmed the earl his brother who was here with very small attendance of gentlemen’. Derby exerted himself and was able to persuade the freemen to return his brother, once again with the Tory Shuttleworth, for the county. This dedication to his brother came at a cost -- 'my Lord not concerning himself over other elections'.36 On 13 Dec. Hamilton was finally sworn in as Derby’s replacement as lord lieutenant and custos rotulorum of Lancashire, and as ranger of the five forests.

Derby took his seat at the opening of the new Parliament on 25 November. Overall, he came to 42 per cent of the meetings of the Parliament of 1710-13. Under the new Tory ministry, he participated in more protests and dissents than usual, showing his support for the war against France. On 12 Jan. 1711 he protested against the resolution censuring the Whig ministers for approving an offensive war in Spain, while on 8 Feb. he further dissented from the decision to present the queen with an address condemning the last ministry's conduct of the Spanish war. He was opposed to the peace envisaged by the Tory ministry and supported the motion of 'No Peace without Spain'. He may have been among those in favour of presenting the queen with an address including that controversial clause in an abortive division on 8 December. Certainly Oxford (as Harley now was) counted him as an opponent of the ministry in this division. He may also have been one of those Nottingham conferred with to strike a deal for his support of the Whigs in this motion. Not surprisingly Derby took advantage of the controversy surrounding Hamilton at this point to strike a blow against his local rival and on 20 Dec. voted against the Scottish peer's right to sit in the House under his recent British title of duke of Brandon. Derby assigned his proxy to John Somers, Baron Somers, on 22 Dec. in order to maintain the Junto pressure on the ministry over the issue of the peace during January. He did not return to the House until 2 Feb. 1712. On 28 May he voted in favour of the address to the queen condemning the 'restraining orders' issued to her military commanders forbidding them from engaging in an offensive war against France and subscribed to the protest when the address was rejected. In September, during the long prorogation as the ministry negotiated the Treaty of Utrecht, Oxford stripped Derby of his last local office, the vice-admiralty of the Lancashire and Cheshire coasts and replaced him with Hamilton. Barely two months after this appointment the duke was killed in a duel with Charles Mohun, 4th Baron Mohun. Derby, now out of office, was barely involved in the last session of the Parliament in 1713, when he came to only 23 sittings. John Elphinstone, 4th Baron Balmerino [S], lamented his absence on 6 June 1713 when the Scots peers and their Whig allies lost by one vote an important division to delay the second reading of the malt tax bill.37 Oxford at this time also forecast him as an opponent of the French commerce bill, which never even made it past the Commons.

Derby found himself on the back foot at the 1713 elections in Lancashire, and even the death of his principal Tory rival Hamilton was unable to resuscitate the Whig interest in the county. Derby's brother Charles stepped down in a county meeting in September and neither he nor his brother challenged the unopposed return of the Tories Shuttleworth and John Bland‡ for the county. Stanley was returned for Clitheroe instead, by a surprisingly wide margin, but his defeated opponent, the Tory sitting member Edward Harvey, petitioned in March 1714. When the Commons considered the election more closely in April it determined to seat neither of them on the grounds (it was reported) of 'manifest corruption' in the election. A particularly violent election occurred in Wigan where James Barry‡, 4th earl of Barrymore [I], who had married the only daughter of the late 4th Earl Rivers, unsuccessfully opposed Sir Roger Bradshaigh and Derby's old vice-chancellor George Kenyon.38

Derby was absent from the opening of the new Parliament, not taking his seat until 11 Mar. 1714. He came to most of the meetings of March and April but was absent for all of the following month before registering his proxy with James Berkeley, 3rd earl of Berkeley, on 2 June. However he was back in the House only five days later, perhaps summoned by the urgency of the House's proceedings on the schism bill. Nottingham forecast that Derby would oppose the bill and on 15 June he duly joined his name to the protest against its passage. He only attended three meetings in the last week of the short session of August 1714, hurriedly called upon the death of Anne.

Later years, 1715-36

A little over two weeks after Anne's death, Derby was reinstated as lord lieutenant and custos rotulorum of Lancashire, vacant since Hamilton's death in 1712. He was not reinstated as chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, which on 6 Nov. 1714 was instead bestowed on the Hanoverian Tory Heneage Finch, recently promoted earl of Aylesford. The ousted chancellor Berkeley of Stratton was surprised at this and at Derby's lack of other promotion in the new regime: 'I thought my Lord Derby would have come into the bedchamber, since he had not his old place again, but now it is filled. I do not know what method hath been taken to satisfy him or whether any'.39

By this time Derby was increasingly withdrawing from politics, both at the county and national level. He appears to have had little input in the 1715 elections for Lancashire and even turned against his former client George Kenyon at Wigan. He stopped attending the House entirely after 28 Jan. 1720 and even stopped assigning proxies after May 1721. A full account of his brief tenure in George I's first Parliament will be provided in the next part of this series.

To mark his final retirement from Westminster life, in May 1723 Derby resigned his captaincy of the yeomen of the guard. He retired to the country and spent increasing periods of time in his wife's estates at Halnaker in Sussex, far removed from his lieutenancy in Lancashire. By an agreement finally hammered out in 1716 between the contending parties his niece Henrietta, Lady Ashburnham (his other niece Elizabeth having died without heirs in 1714) gained control of the estates of Lathom, West Derby, Upholland, Wavertree and Everton while Derby kept possession of the lordship of the Isle of Man and of Knowsley in Lancashire, among other places.40 From the early 1720s he practically rebuilt Knowsley Hall, long the Stanleys' secondary residence after Lathom Hall. It was fashioned into a grand residence according to the latest architectural styles and became renowned as the Lancashire seat of later earls of Derby. It was there that Derby died on 1 Feb. 1736. He was succeeded by Sir Edward Stanley†, 5th bt., of Bickerstaffe as 11th earl of Derby. The new earl was a descendant of a younger brother of Thomas Stanley†, 2nd earl of Derby (d. 1521). He was the 10th earl's sixth cousin, but was still the principal legatee of his real and personal estate.41

C.G.D.L.

  • 1 Reg. of St Paul's School, 282.
  • 2 Add. 70022, ff. 44-45; HMC Kenyon, 434.
  • 3 Stanley, House of Stanley (1998), 203-4; Lancs. RO, DDK 15/28.
  • 4 TNA, PROB 11/675; Lancs. RO, DDK 20/17.
  • 5 Duchy of Lancaster Office-Holders, ed. Somerville, 135, 144.
  • 6 HMC Kenyon, 435-36.
  • 7 HMC Le Fleming, 336.
  • 8 HMC Kenyon, 218; CSP Dom. 1698, p. 11; Add. 72486, f. 205.
  • 9 Glassey, JPs, 284n.
  • 10 HMC Kenyon, 285-86.
  • 11 Lancs. RO, DDK 15/22.
  • 12 HP Commons 1690-1715, ii. 321.
  • 13 Macky, Mems. 63; Swift, Prose Works, ed. Davis, v. 258.
  • 14 Add. 61396, ff. 53-54, 120-21; Add. 61295, ff 126, 128-29; Add. 70022, ff. 44-45; HMC Kenyon, 434.
  • 15 Lancs. RO, DDK 1617/1-48, 15/26, 16/1-6; TNA, C 5/236/11-12, C 6/401/52.
  • 16 TNA, C 9/189/15, 9/307/85, 9/345/43; C 22/1000/18.
  • 17 HMC Kenyon, 434; Beinecke Lib. OSB MSS 1, box 3, folder 161, newsletter, 27 Mar. 1705.
  • 18 Norris Papers (Chetham Soc. 1st ser. ix), 104, 108-13, 116-17, 119-23.
  • 19 HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 321; HMC Portland, vi. 183.
  • 20 Marlborough-Godolphin Corr. 519-20.
  • 21 Glassey, JPs, 287-89.
  • 22 Add. 61649, ff. 196-97.
  • 23 HMC Kenyon, 438-39, 445.
  • 24 Glassey, JPs, 271; Norris Papers (Chetham Soc. ser. 1 ix), 173.
  • 25 Add. 61649, ff. 196-97.
  • 26 HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 339-40; HMC Kenyon, 438-40; HMC Portland, iv. 325-26.
  • 27 Nicolson London Diaries, 417, 423.
  • 28 Add. 61413, f. 94; Add. 70024, ff 151-52.
  • 29 Add. 61619, f. 42; Add. 61649, ff. 196-97.
  • 30 Norris Papers (Chetham Soc. 1st ser. ix), 161-63, 166, 170-71.
  • 31 HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 322, 332, 340.
  • 32 NLS, ms 8262, f. 42.
  • 33 HMC Portland, iv. 608; Add. 70223, duchess of Hamilton to R. Harley, 7, 15, 22 Oct. 1710.
  • 34 HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 326-27.
  • 35 Add. 61461, ff. 79-83; Add. 70200, R. Heysham to R. Harley, 11 Sept. 1710.
  • 36 HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 322; NLS, ms 8262, f. 42.
  • 37 NAS, GD45/14/352/22, Balmerino to H. Maule, 6 June 1713.
  • 38 HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 322, 327, 345-46.
  • 39 Wentworth Pprs, 435-36.
  • 40 Lancs. RO, DDK 16/27.
  • 41 TNA, PROB 11/675; Lancs. RO, DDK, 20/17; Draper, House of Stanley, 330-31.