CAVENDISH, William (1672-1729)

CAVENDISH, William (1672–1729)

styled 1684-94 Ld. Cavendish; styled 1694-1707 mq. of Hartington; suc. fa. 18 Aug. 1707 as 2nd duke of DEVONSHIRE.

First sat 23 Oct. 1707; last sat 6 May 1729

MP, Derbys. 1695, 1698, 1701 (Jan.); Castle Rising 2 Feb. 1702; Yorks. 1702, 1705-18 Aug. 1707.

b. 1672, 2nd but 1st surv. s. of William Cavendish, styled Lord Cavendish (later duke of Devonshire) and Mary, da. of James Butler, duke of Ormond [I] (and earl of Brecknock); bro. of Lord Henry Cavendish‡ and Lord James Cavendish‡. educ. privately; travelled abroad (Austria, Germany, Low Countries, Italy) 1690-1; Camb. LL.D 16 Apr. 1705. m. 21 June 1688 (with £25,000), Rachel (1674-1725), da. of William Russell‡, styled Lord Russell, 4s. (1 d.v.p.), 5da. (2 d.v.p.).1 KG 22 Mar. 1710. d. 4 June 1729; will 8 Jan. 1726-5 Sept. 1727, pr. 12 June 1729.2

Capt., yeomen of gd. 1702-7; commr. union with Scotland 1706; ld. steward 1707-10, 1714-16; PC 8 Sept. 1707-d.; ld. pres. 1716-17, 1725-d.; ld. justice 1714, 1720-5, 1727.

Freeman, Beverley 1703, Winchester by 1701; ld. lt. and custos rot., Derbys. 1707-11, 1714-d.; c. j. in eyre, north of Trent 1707-11; steward, honour of Tutbury 1707-d., High Peak 1708-d., Derby by 1712.

Col. regt. of horse (10th Horse) 1688-90.

Gov. Charterhouse 1727-d.

Associated with: Chatsworth, Derbys.; Devonshire House (formerly Berkeley House), Piccadilly, Westminster and 3 St James’s Square, Westminster (to July 1710).3

Likeness: oil on canvas by G. Kneller, c.1710-16, NPG 3202.

Member of the Commons, 1695-1707

William Cavendish, styled Lord Cavendish from 1684, appeared destined from an early age to take his place among the firmament of Whig grandees. He was the eldest surviving son of William Cavendish, 4th earl (later duke) of Devonshire, one of the ‘Immortal Seven’ who formally invited William of Orange to intervene in English affairs to save Protestantism. About a week before signing this invitation the earl of Devonshire had more publicly nailed his Whig political colours to the mast in another manner by overseeing the marriage, on 21 June 1688 at Southampton House, of his son Lord Cavendish to Rachel Russell, a daughter of the Whig hero and martyr (and Devonshire’s close friend) Lord Russell, who had been executed in 1683 for his alleged complicity in the Rye House Plot.4 Almost immediately after this marriage laden with political significance, Lord Cavendish was sent out of the country. His movements over the next few years are difficult to trace, although he nominally commanded his father’s troop of cavalry from late 1688 and was serving as a volunteer in Flanders by May 1692.5 It was probably during this extended residence on the continent that he developed his love of art and began collecting the drawings and pictures which later became renowned at the family’s residence of Chatsworth in Derbyshire.

After an abortive attempt to secure a seat in the Commons at a by-election in 1691, Hartington (as he was styled after his father’s elevation to a dukedom) began his long parliamentary career in 1695, when he was returned for the county of Derbyshire, where his father was lord lieutenant. From the spring of 1698 Hartington increasingly acted in Parliament as a Whig, but in the subsequent Parliament of 1698, for which he was again returned for Derbyshire, he also espoused country measures, such as the disbandment bill in 1699, which often put him directly in opposition to the court.6 He supported the ‘tack’ of a place clause to the land tax and Irish grant resumption bill in spring 1700 but also defended the Junto leader John Somers, Baron Somers, from the attacks levelled against him during these proceedings.7

Returned again for Derbyshire in the election of January1701, with his brother-in-law John Manners, styled Lord Roos (later 2nd duke of Rutland), Hartington was closely involved in some of the key issues of the session, concerned to ensure the Protestant Succession and to defend the Whig members of William’s previous ministry, particularly Somers and his own wife’s uncle Edward Russell, earl of Orford, from the impeachment proceedings against them. He and Roos lost in Derbyshire at the following election, but he was recompensed by a court anxious to draw him closer with the captaincy of the yeomen of the guard in late January 1702 and he even managed to be returned for Castle Rising at a by-election in February 1702, where he partnered the rising Whig politician Robert Walpole† (later earl of Orford), and quickly became his close and trusted friend.

The accession of Queen Anne brought important changes for Hartington. His position at court was enhanced when his wife was made a lady of the new queen’s bedchamber, a position she kept, despite Hartington’s own changes in political fortunes, until Anne’s death.8 Hartington for his part switched his electoral interest to Yorkshire and sat for that county in the queen’s first two Parliaments. Macky described him in the early years of Anne’s reign as a man who

hath for many years made a considerable figure in the House of Commons: A gentlemen of very good sense, a bold orator, and zealous abettor of the liberty of the people. … He is one of the best beloved gentlemen, by the Country Party, in England; … one who makes a great figure in his person.9

A Whig moderate, 1707-8

On 18 Aug. 1707, shortly after the formation of the Union, Hartington inherited not only his father’s title and lucrative estates, but also most of his offices, such as lord lieutenant of Derbyshire and chief justice in eyre north of the Trent. Most prominently, less than three weeks after his father’s death, he was made lord steward of the household and a member of the Privy Council, and shortly after was admitted into the inner ‘cabinet council’. He first appears in the minutes of cabinet meetings kept by the secretary of state Charles Spencer, 3rd earl of Sunderland, on 17 Oct. 1707, and appears fairly consistently thereafter until Sunderland’s own dismissal in June 1710.10 John Churchill, duke of Marlborough wrote to his wife Sarah, that he was pleased with Devonshire’s new role in the councils of government, ‘for I think him a very honest man, and that he will prove a useful man’.11

The new duke of Devonshire took his seat on 23 Oct. 1707. However, after the third day of the session on 6 Nov., he was absent for the entirety of the following month until he resumed his seat on 10 Dec. 1707, only to depart again nine days later. In total he came to just under half of the meetings of this session. He thus missed the early stages of the contentious examinations conducted in the committee of the whole into the mismanagement of the naval war effort and of the land war in Spain. These examinations saw the emergence of a temporary alliance between the ‘hotter’ Whigs of the Junto and the Tories in both Houses against ministry’s policies that would have threatened to ruin the government but for the refusal of Whigs like Devonshire, John Holles, duke of Newcastle, Charles Seymour, 6th duke of Somerset and John Poulett, earl of Poulett, to be drawn into such partisan measures, declaring ‘that they would never come in to press the queen and the ministry to measures so unreasonable in themselves’.12 For the brief period of nine days in December 1707 when Devonshire was in the House he was involved in these controversial proceedings. On 16 Dec. 1707 he reported to the House that the queen would give the necessary orders to comply with the committee of the whole’s request for copies on the orders which had been sent to the generals leading the Spanish campaign. Devonshire was also part of a move by some of the Junto leaders in the House, such as Somers, to recede from some of the more damaging consequences of these obstructionist tactics and over the two days of 18 and 19 Dec. 1707 he was named to two small committees assigned to draw up the addresses to the queen thanking her for her speech to the House in support of further funds for the Spanish campaign and insisting that there could be ‘No Peace without Spain’, a motion pushed through by Somers himself.

He returned to the House on 7 Jan. 1708 and attended fairly consistently from then until leaving the House again on 13 Mar., a month before the session was prorogued. At the time of his return the investigations into naval matters and their management by Marlborough’s brother George Churchill‡ and the council of the prince consort George, duke of Cumberland, were in full swing, and Devonshire as lord steward was kept busy throughout the remainder of the session attending the queen with the addresses from the House. Between 8 Jan. and 13 Mar. he was ordered to attend the queen, as one of the lords with white staves, on 11 occasions with addresses or requests of the House and he reported her response to seven of these delegations, mostly concerned with the House’s investigations into the navy.

Devonshire may have been included in the ‘scheme’ drawn up between the secretary of state Robert Harley, later earl of Oxford, and Marlborough and Godolphin for a reconstituted ministry of moderates to exclude the Junto, but when relations between the duumvirs and Harley broke down irretrievably in early February 1708, Devonshire sided with the ministers and joined them in asserting that he would not serve in a ministry that included Harley.13 He was thus indirectly responsible for Harley’s fall from office. On 9 Feb. 1708, the same day that the queen agreed to dismiss Harley in order to keep Marlborough in the government, Devonshire was appointed to the committee of ten members assigned to count the number of ballots cast to determine the seven peers who were to constitute a committee to examine the treasonous activities of Harley’s clerk William Gregg. Upon opening up the balloting glass Devonshire discovered that he himself had been chosen one of those peers. This group of Whigs – himself, Somerset, Somers, Charles Powlett, 2nd duke of Bolton, Charles Montagu, Baron (later earl of) Halifax, Thomas Wharton, earl (later marquess) of Wharton and Charles Townshend, 2nd Viscount Townshend – later became known in Harleyite propaganda as ‘the Seven Lords’ who, according to Jonathan Swift amongst others, used undue pressure and methods akin to torture to persuade Gregg to implicate his employer Harley in his conspiracy.14

This committee occupied Devonshire for the next several weeks and he appears to have been a major figure in it, as he reported its request to examine a prisoner in Newgate to the House on 13 Feb. 1708, and it was Devonshire himself who presented the committee’s final report on 10 March. During the month when he was working in this committee he was appointed to five committees on private legislation, and on 11 Feb. he reported from one with a bill ready to be passed. On 1 Mar. he reported to the House the queen’s agreement to hear that day the final report from Bolton’s select committee on the failings of the convoy system, which was highly critical of her husband the prince consort’s council.

Shortly after that report another crisis engulfed the nation, as the queen informed her Parliament of the intelligence regarding the planned invasion of Scotland by the Pretender and the French. Devonshire was heavily involved in taking measures against this danger. On 4 Mar. 1708 he was appointed to a drafting committee for an address thanking the queen for laying before Parliament the information on the invasion, and on 10 Mar. he chaired and reported from a committee of the whole which rapidly went through a bill ‘for the better security of her majesty’s person’. The following day he was placed on another drafting committee for an address thanking the queen for keeping the Houses informed of Admiral Sir George Byng’s‡ movements against the French fleet, and he reported from the committee on 12 Mar. with an address which not only condemned the French and Jacobites, but also all those who were trying to cause disunity in the nation by casting aspersions on the queen’s true supporters, meaning the Whigs, and the measures they had taken to secure the realm. He last sat in the House for that session on 13 Mar., and was thus absent for the presentation of the committee’s reports on Gregg’s treason in an address to the queen on 18 March. His absence from this time can almost certainly be attributed to an attack of gout, as in early April Arthur Maynwaring‡ reported that ‘the duke of Devonshire could not go up stairs, one of his legs was so very weak, and therefore he went for some days to Newmarket, which he thinks will do him good. It is a great deal of pity that he has such ill health, for there are but very few such honest men’.15

He appears to have recovered sufficiently to have attended the queen on the evening of 21 Apr. 1708 when, with the duke of Newcastle, he pressed her to make Somers lord president of the council and, failing that, suggested that Somers be admitted into the cabinet without being given any office at all. Even Marlborough and Godolphin, now seeing an alliance with the Whigs as a necessity, strongly supported the two dukes in their arguments, but the queen refused to admit any more of the Junto into government at this point.16 Marlborough wrote to the duchess after the failure of the dukes’ embassy, that Devonshire ‘is a very honest man, and has had opportunities to know the pains Godolphin and Marlborough have often taken with the queen, to no purpose, so that I dare say he will do justice to them upon all occasion, for as much as I can observe, he governs himself by reason. I wish I could say so of all our acquaintance’.17

Devonshire’s closest involvement in the elections of May 1708 was not in his own county of Derbyshire (where the Tories kept the two county seats), but in Scotland, in whose affairs he had taken an interest since his appointment as a commissioner for the Union. After the election of the 16 Scots representative peers in June 1708, members of the defeated Squadrone sought to contest the eligibility of several of the electors and their votes, and enlisted their English allies among the Whigs in this cause. As early as 30 June 1708 one of the defeated Squadrone peers, Patrick Hume, earl of Marchmont [S], wrote to Devonshire with a memorial setting out his case against the right of those Scots peers with English titles or with British titles created after the Union to vote for the representative peers. Marchmont pursued his campaign and by mid July had had copies of his memorial and ‘scheme’ for a challenge to the election of the court peers distributed to Devonshire, Sunderland, Wharton, Somers, Halifax and the leader of the Squadrone, John Ker, duke of Roxburghe [S].18

Moving towards the Junto, 1708-10

By the summer of 1708 Devonshire seems to have allied himself to the Junto further than he had the previous winter. It was clear to Marlborough that in the forthcoming Parliament his brother George Churchill, the principal target in the attack on the prince’s council the previous winter, could not expect to escape through splits among the Whigs, ‘for there is so little likelihood of their being divided again in your favour, that even the duke of Devonshire and some others that used to be the most moderate, are now entirely for sticking to their party’, which would call for Churchill’s dismissal.19 Even the possible resignation of Churchill was dismissed by Wharton as insufficient. He insisted, on behalf of the Junto, that they would settle for nothing less than Prince George’s own resignation and ‘that unless they can be satisfied in this point they will not come into the measures of the court, not so much as in the first step of choosing a Speaker, [and], that the duke of Devonshire and Lord Townshend have given them fresh assurances that they will not divide from them, even in that point of a Speaker’.20

This political crisis about the composition of the prince’s council was unexpectedly resolved by the death of the prince himself on 28 Oct. 1708, slightly over a week after Wharton had been discussing the possibility of his dismissal. The prince’s death dealt a blow to the queen’s long resistance to the importunities of Devonshire and the Junto and she soon after gave in and appointed Somers lord president of the council and Wharton lord lieutenant of Ireland. The prince’s death also delayed the opening of the Parliament and on its first three days, 16-19 Nov. 1708, Devonshire was one of her principal officers who acted in commission to conduct proceedings in her name. After that Devonshire did not attend the House again for many weeks.

Devonshire was probably impelled to resume his seat when the issue of the validity of the elections of the Scots representative peers came to a head. On 11 Dec. 1708 Devonshire hosted a political conference to plot strategy between the Junto peers (except Halifax), with a number of their closest lieutenants (such as Townshend and Bolton), and five representatives of the Squadrone, plus the Tory and Jacobite James Hamilton, 4th duke of Hamilton [S].21 Another meeting was held at Devonshire’s house on 11 Jan. 1709, with a larger array of Whigs, including Charles Bennet, 2nd Baron Ossulston (later earl of Tankerville), Newcastle ‘and several other lords’ ‘to consult about the Scotch election’.22 It may have been at this meeting that plans were laid for the attack on the alliance between Godolphin and James Douglas, 2nd duke of Queensberry [S], for Devonshire returned to the House after his long absence only six days after this meeting, on 17 Jan. 1709, and four days later joined the Junto and Squadrone in voting that Queensberry, created duke of Dover in the new British peerage, had no right to vote in the elections of the Scots representative peers. After this vote, Devonshire continued to attend the House sporadically throughout the session and only attended 29 per cent of its sittings in total. Nor is there much sign of any further significant activity in the House beyond chairing and reporting on 30 Mar. 1709 from a committee of the whole on a bill for regulating the wool trade in Yorkshire.

By early February 1709 Marlborough’s previously positive opinion of Devonshire was slowly shifting, as he commented to his wife that ‘Devonshire is certainly a very honest man, but Orford has too much power with him. His ill nature and pride will make him troublesome. Walpole who I agree is a very honest man, may be of use in the keeping of Devonshire and Townshend in good humour’.23 Devonshire’s closeness to both Orford, his wife’s uncle, and Walpole, his old friend from Castle Rising, was revealed during the summer of 1709, when he was involved in the continuing agitation to make Orford, the last of the inner core of the Junto without office, lord high admiral in the place of Thomas Herbert, 8th earl of Pembroke. Maynwaring feared that if Orford was left out of office it would disquiet his relations, ‘some of which are very considerable, such as the duke of Devonshire’.24 Devonshire and Walpole represented Orford in negotiations with Godolphin over Orford’s demands for the office and, after Orford formally entered into the office on 8 Nov., Devonshire went on to campaign that his uncle be given the garter after the death in late November of Hans Willem Bentinck, earl of Portland.25

Devonshire attended 59 per cent of the sittings of the 1709-10 session – his highest attendance to that point – and sat consistently for its first few days in late November 1709 before absenting himself for the entire month of December, only returning to the House on 9 Jan. 1710. His increased attention may be attributed to a number of crises the Whigs and the ministry faced from January 1710 as their relations with the queen deteriorated. Devonshire was closely involved in managing the crisis of 14-23 Jan. 1710 when Marlborough removed himself from court and cabinet and threatened to resign from his military command in protest at the queen’s wish to gratify the pretensions of John (‘Jack’) Hill‡, brother of her Tory favourite at court, Abigail Masham. On 16 Jan. 1710 Devonshire, Sunderland and Orford held a meeting with the Marlboroughs’ agent Arthur Maynwaring at Devonshire’s house on Piccadilly at which they ‘unanimously agreed that they would support Marlborough to the utmost’; at a later meeting there that same day the more moderate Whig Newcastle was also brought in, who ‘did declare himself very zealously for supporting Marlborough’. During these frantic days of mid January Devonshire’s house continued to be used as the central meeting place for conferences between the Junto, Godolphin and Maynwaring and through these intense meetings hosted, and perhaps presided over, by Devonshire, the crisis was defused and Marlborough returned to the queen’s service, at her own request.26

Devonshire was also present at a meeting on 24 Jan. 1710 at Sunderland’s house, where he and the Junto peers (except for the absent Halifax) met with four Whig members of the episcopate to confer on tactics for the following day when Dr. Henry Sacheverell was to answer the articles of impeachment laid against him.27 Devonshire was involved throughout February in the trial of Sacheverell as lord steward delivering addresses to the queen and reporting her answers (on 6-7, 17 and 25 February). He made his own views clear on 10 Mar. 1710 when, as the House was debating the questions to be addressed to the judges in Westminster Hall, ‘words passed’ between Devonshire and the Tory supporter of Sacheverell, Peregrine Osborne, the future 2nd duke of Leeds, who then sat in the House as Baron Osborne. Both men were reprimanded. On 20 Mar. 1710 Devonshire voted in favour of Sacheverell’s impeachment. A few days after that vote, on 25 Mar., Devonshire was named to the committee to draft reasons why the House could not agree to the Commons’ amendment which would make Edward Southwell’s private bill a public act, and he was a manager of the conference on that matter held two days later, a week before the session was suddenly prorogued on 5 April.

By June 1710 when the Godolphin-Marlborough-Whig ministry was in turmoil over the queen’s threat to remove Sunderland from office, Devonshire was one of the few Whigs who tried desperately to convince her to retain him. A delegation from the City, led by Sir Gilbert Heathcote‡, attended Devonshire and Newcastle asking them to assist the delegation in representing to the queen the financial damage Sunderland’s removal would do, but Devonshire fell ill on the crucial day when he was to introduce the representatives from the City to the queen and they did not get to meet with her until 15 June, the day after Sunderland had been removed from office.28 Godolphin for his part had fruitlessly tried to impress upon the queen that Marlborough, then on the continent, would be humiliated abroad if his son-in-law were sacked in England. On the same day that the seals were finally taken from Sunderland (14 June), Devonshire, with the five Junto peers, Godolphin, Newcastle and William Cowper, Baron (later earl of) Cowper, addressed a letter to Marlborough begging him to stay on in government and in his military command despite this insult to his family.29

Out of office and in opposition, 1710-12

In early September Maynwaring assured the duchess of Marlborough that having dined with Devonshire and the disgraced Sunderland, he found them ‘the honestest men I know, according to my apprehension’. Harley on the contrary felt that ‘the duke of Devonshire’s behaviour is so peevish and so very distasteful to the queen that she will bear him no longer’.30 With such friends, and such enemies, his fate was certain and on 20 Sept. 1710 both Devonshire and Somers were dismissed from their posts, while at a Privy Council hurriedly scheduled for that afternoon the dissolution was announced.31 Sunderland’s replacement as secretary of state, William Legge, 2nd Baron (later earl of) Dartmouth, was assigned to visit Devonshire to take his staff of office from him, ‘which he [Devonshire], parted with in more passion than became him, but I was too much his friend to represent it to the queen’; Harley also reported that he had heard ‘that when Lord Dartmouth brought the message to the duke of Devonshire he was in the greatest rage imaginable’.32

The prospect of a dissolution had been in the air throughout the summer and already in August Devonshire had been making efforts to affect the forthcoming elections, both for English constituencies and for the Scots representative peers.33 On 14 Sept. 1710, one week before Parliament was dissolved, Maynwaring told the duchess of Marlborough, that ‘Devonshire is almost as sanguine as Sunderland upon the next elections, which I was glad to find, because naturally he is not so much of that temper’.34 This calculation turned out to be disastrously wrong; the elections returned a strongly Tory House of Commons

From the time the new Parliament met Devonshire was in opposition to Robert Harley’s ministry. He was there from the first day of the session, 25 Nov. 1710, and on 27 Nov. helped to introduce into the House Henry Grey, recently created duke of Kent. He came to 45 per cent of the session’s meetings, sitting in the House throughout the winter months, and it was not until the spring of 1711 that he began to absent himself for extended periods of time. Furthermore, the 1710-11 session is the first during Devonshire’s career in the House for which the proxy registers survive, through which the proxy networks of which he was a part may be traced.

His busiest period was in the first half of January 1711 when he took part in debates to defend the previous ministry’s war policy in Spain from attacks by the Tories as directly responsible for the disastrous battle of Almanza in 1707. On 11 Jan. 1711 he defended the right of two of the generals of the Spanish campaign, Henri de Massue de Ruvigny, earl of Galway [I] (his wife’s first cousin once removed) and Charles O’Hara, Baron Tyrawley [I], to submit petitions to be heard in their defence before the House and he signed the protests against the rejection of these petitions and against the resolution that the defeat of Almanza had been occasioned by their advocacy of an offensive war. The following day it was Devonshire who first raised objections to the motion proposed in the committee of the whole that blamed ‘the ministers’ for ‘contributing to all our misfortunes in Spain’, pointing out that the motion as first proposed the previous day put the blame on the ‘cabinet council’ rather than the imprecise, and more personal, term ‘ministers’. He reminded the committee that many of the peers who were now so vociferous against an offensive war in Spain had been in favour of it only a few years previously, and he singled out Daniel Finch, 2nd earl of Nottingham, who had advocated sending twenty battalions from Flanders to Spain. He signed the protest, and his name appears at the head of the list of signatures, against the resolution condemning the ‘ministers’ for the defeats in Spain and he continued to sign all the remaining protests against the Tories’ attack on the war policy of the former ministry: against the resolutions on 3 Feb. that regiments in Spain were not adequately supplied and that this failure of provisioning was a sign of the ministers’ neglect; against some of the wording in the address of 8 Feb. on the Spanish campaign and against the decision to present it to the queen; and against the three resolutions of 9 Feb. which expunged the final two paragraphs of the reasons given for the protest of 3 February.35

On 24 Jan. 1711, in the midst of these proceedings, Devonshire was given the proxy of his kinsman Baptist Noel, 3rd earl of Gainsborough, a distant cousin, through many removes of marriage, of Devonshire’s Russell wife. Devonshire held this proxy until the end of the session, and on 5 Feb. 1711 he was able to add to it that of his brother-in-law Wriothesley Russell, 2nd duke of Bedford, thus holding his full complement of two proxies until Bedford vacated his proxy only a week later by his return to the House. On 5 Mar. 1711 Devonshire and Bedford together introduced to the House their mutual brother-in-law, John Manners, 2nd duke of Rutland. These three brothers-in-law exchanged proxies with each other throughout the latter months of the 1710-11 session: Devonshire’s to Bedford from 26 Mar. to 3 May; Rutland’s to Bedford from 28 Mar. to 3 May; and Devonshire’s to Rutland from 6 June to the prorogation six days later. He no longer had the option of Bedford as a proxy recipient by this time as the young man of 31 years had unexpectedly died on 25 May 1711, to be followed at the end of October by Rutland’s wife Catherine Russell, which left Devonshire’s wife Rachel the only surviving child of the Whig martyr William, Lord Russell.

In the three weeks following his return to the House on 3 May 1711 Devonshire was made a manager for the conferences on the amendments to the bill for the preservation of pine trees in the American colonies, and on the procedural difficulties over the Commons’ amendment to the bill for making perpetual the bill for preservation of game. Following the first conference on this latter matter Devonshire was named to the committee to draw up reasons to be presented to the lower House in another conference, and he was involved in a further committee meeting and two more conferences on this disagreement on 17 May and would have been named for another conference scheduled for 31 May, except that he had already left the House for that session by that time, last sitting on 22 May.

Local matters occupied Devonshire in the summer months of 1711. Devonshire’s colleague, but local rival, the duke of Newcastle had been the only Whig to remain in the new ministry, as lord privy seal. This was in part owing to his long personal friendship with Harley and it was Newcastle who urged the queen to create Harley earl of Oxford and Mortimer in late May 1711. In return for this support Newcastle demanded from the earl of Oxford the grant of the office of chief justice in eyre north of Trent, held at that time by Devonshire, but which Newcastle had long coveted, arguing that it properly belonged to the Cavendish dukes of Newcastle (from whom he derived his title) rather than the Devonshire Cavendishes. In May 1711 the office was revoked from the more resolutely Whig Devonshire and given to Newcastle.36 Having suffered this indignity, Devonshire was further divested of his last remaining major office later that summer, when in early September he was removed as lord lieutenant of Derbyshire and replaced by Nicholas Leke, 4th earl of Scarsdale. In late May and early June he was also drawn into an acrimonious dispute provoked by the efforts of John Robinson, bishop of Bristol (later bishop of London), to transfer the presentation of the living of Cleasby in Yorkshire, where Devonshire was lord of the manor and a principal landowner, away from its patron and into the hands of the dean and chapter of Ripon.37

Five days before the next session convened on 7 Dec. 1711, Gainsborough once again registered his proxy with Devonshire for the session, three-fifths of whose sittings Devonshire attended. From the outset Devonshire sided with the increasingly strong and well-organized Whig opposition in the House. He almost certainly took part in the negotiations with Nottingham in which the Whigs secured the earl’s opposition to the peace terms proposed by Oxford in exchange for an agreement to support Nottingham’s bill against occasional conformity. Thus on the first day of the session Devonshire spoke and voted in favour of the ‘No Peace without Spain’ clause moved by Nottingham to be added to the address to the queen.38 The duke also attended a dinner at the Queen’s Arms, perhaps to plan further strategy on this motion, with Wharton, Bolton, Evelyn Pierrepont, marquess of Dorchester (later duke of Kingston) and John Vaughan, 2nd Baron Vaughan (and 3rd earl of Carbery [I]).39 On 12 Dec. John Ashburnham, 3rd Baron (later earl of) Ashburnham registered his proxy with Devonshire (vacated on 4 Jan. 1712), and Devonshire may have used it when he voted on 20 Dec. that the duke of Hamilton [S], was unable to sit in the House under his British title as duke of Brandon. On 22 Dec. 1711 Devonshire reported from the committee assigned to investigate into a libellous pamphlet mocking Nottingham’s oration arguing for ‘No Peace without Spain’, and he was also named to the drafting committee for an address based on Nottingham’s motion requesting that the queen’s agents negotiating the peace work with the ministers of the Allies to ensure that there would be no separate peace with France. On that day as well Devonshire made a stir by moving to bring in a bill which would make George Augustus, the heir to Hanover and future George II, who had been created, duke of Cambridge in December 1706, the first peer of Britain, with precedence over all other dukes. This was an attempt by the Whigs to show their zeal for the Hanoverian Succession, which they aimed to contrast with the ministry’s apparent ambivalence towards Hanover. However, at the third meeting of the House after the Christmas recess on 17 Jan. 1712, Oxford, having already tipped the balance in the House towards the ministry by creating 12 new peers, pulled another coup against the Whigs by bringing in his own bill to forestall and trump Devonshire’s. Oxford’s bill would settle the precedence of the entire house of Hanover over all British peers and even over the archbishop of Canterbury. The bill, now presented as a government measure with the explicit backing of the queen, went through both Houses and was passed in only two days, with the backing of Devonshire and the Whigs, who could hardly do otherwise.40

In February 1712 Devonshire’s most noticeable involvement was as one of the foremost actors in the bill to enable trustees to manage the Russell estate during the minority of Wriothesley Russell, 3rd duke of Bedford, following his father’s death the previous May. Devonshire appears to have led the select committee on this bill, in which he was named one of the trustees, and on which he reported to the House on 27 Feb. 1712.41 He remained involved in Scots matters and moved that a petition of William Carstares against the bill to confirm and extend the rights of the Episcopalian Church in Scotland might be read; in this he was seconded by his colleagues Somers and Cowper.42 Marchmont implored Devonshire, Somers and Cowper to be present when the case of John Hamilton’s appeal against a decree obtained against him in the Scottish Lords of Session by Lady Cardross, mother of David Erskine, 9th earl of Buchan [S], came before the House and to enlist as many of ‘our friends’ as possible, such as Rutland, Sunderland, Godolphin, Wharton and Halifax, in this cause.43 Devonshire was also part of a network of Whig proxy exchanges. He held the proxy of: Vaughan (14 Feb.-21 June); Ashburnham (10-20 Mar. and 24-30 May); and Sunderland (9-21 June). His closest proxy partner was Townshend and throughout April and May the two peers, in a complicated series of proxy exchanges, evidently tried to ensure that at no point were both of them absent from the House. That this system was intended to provide a lookout to forestall any unpleasant surprises in the House is suggested by Townshend’s letter of 1 May 1712, written only a few days after he had returned to the House and vacated his proxy with Devonshire, in which he alerted Devonshire, having left the House to go to the races at Newmarket with their Whig colleagues, that there was a prospect that the answers of the French ministers at Utrecht to the peace proposals would be imminently presented before the House. ‘I am persuaded your grace and our friends at Newmarket have the affair of the peace too much at heart to be absent at this critical juncture and that we shall have the happiness of your company here on Sunday next at farthest’, he wrote in a panic. Devonshire, and five other of the Whigs at Newmarket, obeyed this summons and in another extraordinary piece of Whig organization, were back in their seats in the House by the following Monday, 5 May, although Townshend’s anxiety turned out to be a false alarm.44 Later that month, Devonshire voted in favour of the addresses against the ‘restraining orders’ sent to his first cousin James Butler, 2nd duke of Ormond, and for a ‘mutual guaranty’ with the Allies in peace negotiations, and entered his protest against the rejection of both of these addresses.

The Peace and the Hanoverian Succession, 1713-29

Perhaps owing to his frustration at the nature of the treaty that was finally negotiated, Devonshire barely attended any of the sittings of the session of spring 1713 at which the Peace of Utrecht was presented to the House. He came to only 12 sittings, a scant 15 per cent of the total, and his only sustained attendance came at the very end of the session, during the first two weeks of July. His opposition to the peace in all its aspects was clear to all, and Oxford forecast in early June, when Devonshire was not even in the House, that he would oppose the French commerce treaty if and when it came to the House. He may have returned to the House on 30 June for a specific purpose, for on that day Wharton moved that the duke of Lorraine be requested to expel the Pretender from his territories and Devonshire was named to the resulting drafting committee for the address to the queen.

Devonshire was much more diligent in the session of spring 1714, the first of the Parliament elected in autumn 1713, and came to just over two-thirds of the sittings. After the opening day he was absent until 2 Mar. 1714, and may have been summoned to appear that day to lend his support to a Whig cause, for in the House he seconded Wharton’s motion to condemn Jonathan Swift’s pamphlet The Publick Spirit of the Whigs. A week later Devonshire was placed on the drafting committee for the address requesting a proclamation offering a reward for information on the author of this libel and on 11 Mar. he signed the protest against the House’s rejection of an additional clause to the address.45 Devonshire was named to many other drafting committees during the session, most regarding addresses putting forth Whig arguments and demands against the peace: exhorting the queen to defend the Catalans and their rights in any peace settlement (2 Apr.); and requesting her to issue a proclamation promising a reward for any information on the Pretender if he should land in England and expressing regret that the duke of Lorraine had not expelled him from his territories (5 April). On 16 Apr. he was also placed on the drafting committee for the address thanking the queen for ‘delivering England by a safe, honourable and advantageous peace with France and Spain, from the heavy burden of a consuming land war, unequally carried on, and become at least impracticable’ (16 April) – this being an inflammatory Tory address which Devonshire most likely opposed in its many debates and divisions through the House.

This offensive (to him) address went through, upon which Devonshire left the House for two weeks until 30 Apr., after having first registered his proxy with his uncle Orford. In late May Nottingham forecast that Devonshire would oppose the schism bill and indeed, following the commitment of the bill on 4 June, Devonshire presented a petition on behalf of some Dissenting ministers for counsel to be heard against the bill, which was rejected ‘by three votes and three proxies’. Devonshire voted and protested against the passage of the bill on 15 June.46 In the final week of June, following this vote, Devonshire was entrusted with the proxies of two fellow opponents of the bill: Meinhard Schomberg, 3rd duke of Schomberg, from 23 June until the end of the session; and Henry Bentinck, 2nd earl (later duke) of Portland, for a brief period between 28 and 30 June. During these final weeks of the session he was nominated to the select committees assigned to draft the addresses calling for a reward for the apprehension of the Pretender and seeking the support of the allies for the Hanoverian Succession. He was also placed on the committee for the address representing to the queen the problems of the new Assiento contract and treaty of commerce with Spain. Following Anne’s answer to this representation, a motion to address the queen again to emphasize that the benefit of the Assiento contract had been ‘obstructed’ by individuals seeking their own profit – an allegation aimed at Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke – was rejected by the House, and Devonshire joined many of his fellow Whigs in protesting against this decision..

When the queen died on 1 Aug. 1714 the Privy Council met to open the letters from George Ludwig, the Elector of Hanover, in which he, according to the terms of the 1706 Regency Act, was able to name his own choice of regents to govern the realm while he made his way to Britain to claim the crown as King George. Among the 18 named, largely Whigs or Tory supporters of the Hanoverian Succession, was Devonshire, but not his Junto associates Wharton, Sunderland or Somers.47 A sparsely attended emergency meeting of Parliament convened on that same day, but Devonshire himself did not appear in the House until 5 Aug., on which day he was seated among others of the lords justices, on a bench before the throne, from which the Members of the Commons were summoned to hear the formal proclamation of George I as king and the order to draw up an address of congratulations. On only three more occasions in this short session, on 13 and 25 Aug. and 23 Sept., did Devonshire attend the house, and on each of those he served as a lord justice and oversaw the summoning of the Commons to the bar of the House to hear the king’s initial response to the address of congratulations and the prorogations of Parliament, first to 23 Sept. and then to 21 October.

Devonshire, not surprisingly benefitted from the Hanoverian Succession he had long promoted, being restored to the two principal offices he had lost in 1710 – lord steward of the household and lord lieutenant of Derbyshire – in the autumn of 1714. As a principal member of the Walpole-Townshend circle of Whigs he was moved on 6 July 1716 from the office of lord steward to that of lord president of the council, but he joined his colleagues Walpole and Townshend in resigning from his office and from the ministry in June 1717. During the ensuing Whig schism he acted as the nominal leader in the House of the opposition ‘Walpolian Whigs’ as well as a supporter and friend of the prince of Wales. A fuller and far more detailed account of his activities in the House and in central politics after the accession of George I will appear in the 1715-90 volumes of this work.

Devonshire, having in 1725 resumed his office as lord president of the council, died at Devonshire House on 4 June 1729. Walpole was reported to be inconsolable at his old ally’s passing, as Devonshire had been ‘always steady to his party and constant to his friends’.48 During his lifetime Devonshire had established the Cavendish Devonshires as one of the premier Whig aristocratic houses, a position which it was to maintain throughout the remainder of the eighteenth century, and well into the nineteenth. To the political boldness of his father the first duke, who loved the grand dramatic gesture, whether in architecture or politics, the second duke added a more plodding, but more consistent and loyal, attachment to party. He may have been a courtier for many years, but he was above all a party man, and twice gave up office rather than compromise his loyalties to his Whig friends. His activities as an art collector, one of the greatest of the period, further added a lustre to Chatsworth and Devonshire House which only increased the cultural stock and standing of the family. The second duke of Devonshire was survived at his death by three sons and three daughters and the Devonshire title and estate passed to his eldest surviving son William Cavendish, 3rd duke of Devonshire, who followed his father in his position as a Whig grandee and in his friendship and closeness to Walpole in particular.

C.G.D.L.

  • 1 TNA, PROB 11/630; Collins, Peerage (1710 edn), 112.
  • 2 TNA, PROB 11/630.
  • 3 Survey of London, xxix. 84.
  • 4 Chatsworth, Letter Series 1, 18.1-18.13.
  • 5 Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. iv. 463-4.
  • 6 P. Grimblot, Letters of William III and Louis XIV and Their Ministers, ii. 321.
  • 7 Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, iii. 15, 22-23, 94.
  • 8 Luttrell, Brief Relation, v. 163.
  • 9 Macky, Characters of the Court of Great Britain, 47.
  • 10 Boyer, Annals of Anne, vi. 238-9; Luttrell, Brief Relation, vi. 209, 211; HMC Portland, ii. 200; Add. 61498-61500.
  • 11 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 895.
  • 12 HEHL, Stowe mss 57 (2), pp. 5-7.
  • 13 Beinecke Lib. OSB mss fc 37, vol. 13, no. xxxiii.
  • 14 Jonathan Swift, Some Remarks upon a Pamphlet entitl’d, a Letter to the Seven Lords of the Committee, appointed to examine Gregg (1711).
  • 15 HMC Portland, ii. 203; Add. 61459, ff. 12-13, 16-19; Letters of Duchess of Marlborough ed. Coxe, i. 100-103.
  • 16 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 958-9; Add. 61459, ff. 32-34, 36-37, 62-63; Add. 61101, ff. 111, 113-14.
  • 17 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1011.
  • 18 NAS, GD158/1174/6; GD 158/1097/6.
  • 19 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1083-4.
  • 20 Add. 61459, ff. 118-20.
  • 21 PH, xvi. 210-12; NLS, ms 14415, ff. 168-9.
  • 22 TNA, C104/113, pt. 2, Ossulston diary, 11 Jan. 1709.
  • 23 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1217-18.
  • 24 Letters. of Duchess of Marlborough, i. 205-6.
  • 25 HLQ, xxxv. 333, 339.
  • 26 Add. 61460, ff. 154-7, 165-6, 172-3, 176; Add. 61367, ff. 109-11; Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1415, 1417.
  • 27 LPL, ms 1770, f. 91.
  • 28 HMC Portland, ii. 210, iv. 545; Bodl. Ballard 31, f. 84; Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1527; Wentworth Pprs. 120-1.
  • 29 Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1528.
  • 30 Add. 61461, ff. 79-81; HMC Portland, ii. 218-19.
  • 31 Luttrell, vi. 632; Wentworth Pprs. 141.
  • 32 Burnet, vi. 12; HMC Portland, ii. 220.
  • 33 NAS, GD 158/1178; 158/967, p. 40; HMC Portland, ii. 215-18; iv. 572.
  • 34 Add. 61461, ff. 85-87.
  • 35 Timberland, ii. 283, 307, 309, 311-12, 318-12, 326; Nicolson, London Diaires, 530.
  • 36 Add. 70026, ff. 190-1.
  • 37 Add. 61612, f. 173; VCH North Yorks. i. 158-60.
  • 38 Horwitz, Rev. Pols. 232; BLJ, xix. 156.
  • 39 TNA, C104/113 pt 2, Ossulston diary, 7 Dec. 1711.
  • 40 Burnet, vi. 91, 98-99; Timberland, ii. 353; BLJ, xix. 158-9.
  • 41 HMC Lords, n.s. ix. 195.
  • 42 NLS, Wodrow Pprs. Wodrow Letters, qu. VI, f. 113.
  • 43 NAS, GD 158/1143/47.
  • 44 Chatsworth, Letters Series 1, 121.2.; Brit. Pols. 309.
  • 45 Wentworth Pprs. 359.
  • 46 Ibid. 386.
  • 47 Pol. State, 1714, pp. 114-15.
  • 48 Hervey, Mems. i. 24.