cr. 20 Jan. 1686 Bar. WALDEGRAVE
Never sat.
b. 1661, 1st s. of Sir Charles Waldegrave, 3rd bt. and Helen, da. of Sir Francis Englefield, 2nd bt. educ. unknown. m. 29 Nov. 1683, Henrietta Fitzjames (d. 3 Apr. 1730), illegit. da. of James Stuart, duke of York, and Arabella Churchill, 1s. 1da. suc. fa. 1684. d. 14 Jan. 1690; will 29 Dec. 1689; pr. 2 Dec. 1691.1
Comptroller of household, 1687–Dec. 1688 (Whitehall), Dec. 1688-d. (court of St Germain); envoy extraordinary (court of St Germain) to France Nov. 1688–d.
Ld. lt. Som. July 1687–Nov. 1688; recorder, Taunton Sept.-Dec. 1688; high steward, Bath Aug.-Dec. 1688.2
The Waldegraves, a devout Catholic royalist family, had landed interests stretching over three counties, Essex, Somerset and Norfolk. Waldegrave’s early life is obscure but his marriage to Henrietta Fitzjames brought him into the centre of the Stuart court at a time when her father was becoming increasingly dominant, shortly before his accession as James II. Waldegrave’s elevation to a peerage in 1686, after James II’s Parliament had been prorogued, meant that he had no opportunity to take his seat in the House of Lords. As a ‘good and zealous Catholic’ he would in any case have been unable to do so.3
Not surprisingly, the various assessments of attitudes to James II’s religious policies and the repeal of the Test Act classified Waldegrave as a Roman Catholic. As such, he remained faithful to James II throughout the crisis of 1688. Waldegrave was appointed envoy extraordinary to France in November 1688 at the height of the emergency. He left on 20 Nov. and remained abroad after the Revolution, serving the exiled king as comptroller of the household at the Stuart court in St Germain-en-Laye until his death at the Châteauvieux on 14/24 Jan. 1690. In his will Waldegrave referred to ‘the deeds of settlement of my estate, which I cannot now come at’, making his provisions somewhat vague and conditional. He was concerned to provide for his debts and for his younger children but the terms of the will necessitated a private bill to enable his son’s trustees to make leases and to grant copyhold estates for the payment of the arrears of annuities to his father. The bill received the royal assent on 24 Feb. 1692.
A.C./S.N.H.