At the end of 1425, just three years into the reign of the infant Henry VI, the English polity, such as it was, was in turmoil. Although arrangements for the conduct of government during the King’s minority had been agreed shortly after Henry V’s death in 1422, these were now called into question by an acrimonious quarrel between the protector of England, the boy-king’s uncle, Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, and the chancellor of England, Henry Beaufort, bishop of Winchester.

Each man had his own ideas of how the king’s affairs should be managed in his name, although, it is fair to say with the benefit of hindsight, Duke Humphrey perhaps emerges from the affair with less credit. The decision of assembling Parliament at Leicester (very much in the heartland of Lancastrian power in England) was taken in view of the armed might that the two squabbling magnates brought to bear: Bishop Beaufort in his manor at Southwark, and Humphrey in the streets of London itself. In the autumn of 1425, their enmity had found an outlet in an actual armed fight on London bridge, and it was thus deemed necessary for Humphrey’s elder brother, John, duke of Bedford, to return from France, where he otherwise served as regent, and to preside over Parliament.

The Parliament was convened in something of a hurry: just 42 days were to elapse between its summons and assembly (the fourteenth-century tract, the Modus Tenendi Parliamentum stipulated a minimum of 40 days to allow the northern counties whose shire courts met in six-week intervals to conduct their elections). Conversely, the Commons rather dragged their feet in choosing their Speaker, at nine days taking rather longer than the two days this process normally demanded.

But what (according to a chronicler) gave the Parliament its name, were the armed retinues that the various lords brought to the assembly. The administration thus harked back to the fourteenth century, when it had been common practice for a proclamation to be made in Westminster Hall at the beginning of each Parliament, prohibiting the wearing of swords and other weapons. Also prohibited was the playing of silly games, as it had apparently become common practice to pull men’s hoods off their shoulders. Now, in 1426, the prohibition of bearing arms was reiterated. According to a London chronicler, ‘every man was warned and it was cried throughout the town that they should leave their weapons in their inns, that is to say their swords and shields, bows and arrows’.

Yet, the lords’ men were not cowed: ‘And then the people took great bats on their shoulders, and so they went. And the next day they were charged that they should leave their bats at their inns, and then they took great stones in their bosoms and their sleeves, and so went to the parliament with their lords.’ And so, the chronicler concluded, ‘some men called this Parliament the “Parliament of bats”.

In the event, it seems, it proved possible to get the session under way, and for Humphrey and Beaufort to plead their respective cases. The pleadings have come down to us in the form in which the clerk of the Parliament recorded them. There has to be some suspicion that he was a partisan of Beaufort’s, for much of what Duke Humphrey put forward sounds little short of petty to the modern observer. Among the stories he dredged up was one dating back to Henry V’s lifetime, when he had been accommodated in the palace of Westminster’s Green Chamber, and by virtue of the barking of a spaniel a man had been discovered hiding behind a wall hanging. This man had allegedly been induced by Bishop Beaufort to murder him, and for his pains was drowned in the Thames.

Beaufort for his part kept his statements dignified, and above all pointed to his ecclesiastical dignity in his defence. In the event, Bishop Beaufort was dismissed as chancellor, but at long last granted permission to accept the papal offer of a cardinal’s hat. He and duke Humphrey were made to seal their reconciliation with a formal handshake.

With that, the first session of a parliament was drawn to a close and the Lords and Commons were dispatched to their homes for Easter. The bulk of the assembly’s business was probably transacted in the month that followed their return on 29 April, a period during which the young king (still only four years old) was knighted by his uncle, the duke of Bedford.  

H.W.K.  

Further Reading:

R.A. Griffiths, The Reign of King Henry VI (London: Benn, 1981), 73-81

The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England (16 Vols., Woodbridge: Boydell, 2010), x. 276-317

In April 1784, George Nevill, 17th Baron Abergavenny, was approached to ask whether he would accept promotion to an earldom. In the wake of Pitt the Younger’s success in the general election, it was time for debts to be repaid and right at the front of the queue was John Robinson. Robinson had formerly worked for Lord North as a political agent but had chosen to switch his allegiance to Pitt and put all of his energy into securing Pitt a handsome victory. Robinson’s daughter was married to Abergavenny’s heir, Henry, so the new peerage would ensure that Robinson would ultimately be grandfather to an earl.

Abergavenny had also made a political journey. Married back in the 1750s to a member of the Pelham clan, he had naturally found himself within the orbit of the Old Corps Whigs and then of the Rockinghams. A consistent opponent of North and his handling of the American crisis, he had distanced himself from the former Rockinghamites who had entered the coalition with North and ultimately helped to bring the Fox-North administration down. So, the earldom was a double reward.

It might all have been very different, as exactly 37 years previously, while a student at Christ Church, Oxford, Abergavenny had narrowly avoided being tried for murder.

The story, as told in the press and in private correspondence, was that one of the Christ Church scouts (servants) named John or William Franklin (the papers could not agree which) had been found early in the morning of 4 April 1747 in one of the college quadrangles, badly bruised and with a fractured skull. His hair had been shaved and his eyebrows burnt off. There were also tell-tale indications of him having been very drunk.

What appeared to have happened was that a group of students, one of them Claudius Amyand, had been holding one of their regular shared suppers in their rooms, but had decided to entertain themselves by making Franklin, who seemed to have had a reputation as being somewhat eccentric, extremely drunk. The regular attendees had taken the prank (as they viewed it) so far, but things had become more extreme when they were joined by others, who had not been part of the original group. The newcomers were Abergavenny, Lord Charles Scott, a younger son of the duke of Buccleuch, Francis Blake Delaval and Sackville Spencer Bale (later a clergyman and domestic chaplain to the 2nd duke of Dorset). They appear to have handled Franklin very roughly – making fun of him by shaving his head – and to have left him so drunk that he was utterly incapable. According to Frederick Campbell, Abergavenny and Scott retreated to their own rooms at this point, leaving it to the remainder of the party to drag Franklin ‘out to snore upon the stair-case’. [Hothams, 42]

It was unclear what happened next, but it was assumed that after being abandoned on the stairs, Franklin had fallen down, fracturing his skull. On being discovered in the morning, Abergavenny’s valet took Franklin home, where he was examined by a surgeon, but nothing could be done for him. That there may have been a more sinister explanation for his injuries was, however, indicated early on by the news that most of those believed to have taken part in the drinking session had fled, and it was gossiped that the two most responsible for his injuries had been Abergavenny and Scott. [Ward, 169]

Certainly, the coroner’s jury considered that there had been foul play and brought in a verdict of ‘wilful murder by persons unknown’. Some observers took a different view. Frederick Campbell reckoned that it had been a joke that had been carried too far and he was certain that none of those in the frame would ever be convicted. He also added that ‘there was not three of the jury but was drunk’. [Hothams, 42] Horace Walpole’s sympathies, unsurprisingly, were also with the students, commenting: ‘One pities the poor boys, who undoubtedly did not foresee the melancholy event of their sport’. He had nothing to say about the unfortunate Franklin, who had lost his life. [Walpole Corresp, xix. 387] The only one of the group who seemed to have played no role in what had happened to Franklin was Amyand, who had quit the supper party early.

Had Abergavenny been charged with murder, he would have been able to apply to the House of Lords to be tried before them, in the same way that had happened to Lord Mohun in the 1690s and was to happen again soon afterwards to Lord Ferrers and Lord Byron.

In the event, there was no need for Abergavenny to face the prospect of a trial in Westminster Hall. While the coroner’s jury had concluded that Franklin’s death had been murder, the grand jury that sat on the case during the summer assizes refused to bring in the bill triggering a trial. The grand jury was said to have been made up of some of the principal gentlemen of the county and to have deliberated for several hours before reaching their decision. No doubt they were reluctant to agree to a trial of students from gentry (or noble) backgrounds, but they may also have been swayed by the convenient death of Lord Charles Scott just a few weeks before the assizes, which left the proceedings lacking a key witness (or a likely defendant).

Whatever his role had been, Abergavenny walked away unscathed. In 1761 he applied to be recognized as Chief Larderer at the coronation of George III and Queen Charlotte, and in 1784 he had his status enhanced with promotion to the earldom. Blake Delaval was also able to cast off whatever opprobrium had attached to him, and just two years after Franklin’s death stood for Parliament for the first time (unsuccessfully). He later represented Hindon and Andover and in 1761 was made a knight of the Bath. What happened, truly, on that night in April 1747 was never discovered and justice for Franklin – or at least a full explanation of what had happened to him – was never achieved.

RDEE

Further reading:

The Hothams: being the chronicles of the Hothams of Scorborough and South Dalton…, ed. A.M.W. Stirling (2 vols, 1918)

Horace Walpole’s Correspondence (Yale edition)

W.R. Ward, Georgian Oxford: University Politics in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1958)

General Advertiser

Whitehall Evening Post

In July 1739, the General Evening Post reported the death of a Mr Kent at his house near Seven Dials. According to the paper, Kent occupied the post of chimney sweeper of the king’s palaces ‘a place of considerable profit’. Replacing him was one Mr Fatt and both men were described as ‘Blackmoors’ [an outdated term indicating Black heritage]. The role would have involved ensuring the upkeep of the chimneys at royal residences in London, such as St James’s Palace. Intriguingly, Treasury accounts from 1714 suggest that the holder of the post at that time was Anne Fatt, suggesting that the family had held the role before, under Queen Anne, and had now regained it, under George II.

Eighteenth and nineteenth-century commentators were often snide about chimney sweeps. The nature of their profession meant that they were frequently derided for being ‘unclean’, and this sometimes led to them being described as black, or depicted in prints with black skin. Consequently, some caution needs to be used when identifying a sweep’s heritage. However, the fact that the paper used the specific term ‘Blackmoor’ seems indicative of the fact that this was not a case of people being dealt with slightingly because of perceived uncleanliness.

One of the weekly essays in the Scots Magazine for February 1740 noted the ‘Promotion of Mr Fat [sic] the Chimney-Sweeper’, and also employed terminology describing his heritage directly, which appears to confirm the identification. Making reference to a vacancy in one of the Cornish boroughs, the author suggested that he hoped to see Fatt promoted to Parliament, before remarking that the presence of a Black Member of the Commons might give rise to racist abuse. [Scots Magazine, ii. 56] A later essay, in the Oxford Magazine for 1770, also referred to Fatt as the only ‘Black-a-moor’ ever to have held a place at Court. [The Oxford Magazine or Universal Museum, v. 59]

The commentary surrounding Fatt’s appointment offers valuable insights into attitudes to the Black population of Britain in the period. It is interesting that a potentially lucrative contract was held in succession by Black British businessmen; also, that Fatt’s good fortune was the subject of comment in major periodicals. The reports help to add layers to our understanding of the composition of London society at the time. They show that members of the Black population were able to develop affluent careers, but also that their success was remarked upon, and not always favourably.

Fatt’s striking, if not wholly unusual, surname has also led to the likely identification of new voters. A decade after Fatt took over as sweep to the royal palaces, a by-election was held in Westminster after one of the constituency’s Members, Granville Leveson Gower, Viscount Trentham (later marquess of Stafford) accepted a place in government. Under the rules of the day, he was obliged to seek re-election, on this occasion triggering a contest after Sir George Vandeput, bt. chose to challenge for the seat. The initial result saw Trentham returned with 4,811 votes to Vandeput’s 4,654. Following a scrutiny, the numbers were revised down but Trentham still emerged with 4,103 votes, comfortably ahead of Vandeput, who was left with 3,933 votes.

According to the poll book, one of those voting for Trentham was William Fatt, who was identified as a ‘chimneysweeper’ from Pye Street in the parish of St Margaret and St John. As such, he was one of five men involved in the trade (one of them noted as a Chimney Doctor, rather than sweep), voting in the election. Although more work is needed to confirm the finding without doubt, it seems highly credible that this was the same man who, ten years earlier, had taken on the role of sweeper of the royal palaces. Assuming this to be the case, he thus joined John London as a second Black voter participating in the election.

Fatt’s name is not unique and unravelling the details of the family is complex. Two individuals, both named William Fatt, wrote wills in the 1770s, which were proved within three years of each other. It seems most likely that the first William Fatt, by then described as being of Castle Street, in St Giles in the Fields, whose will was proved in 1773 [TNA, PROB 11/984], was the man appointed to sweep the royal palaces in 1739 and who voted in the 1749 poll, even though the document makes no mention of a trade. This William Fatt referred to a daughter, Mary Knotgrass, which calls to mind the appearance in legal records from 1760 of William (a soot merchant from Swallow Street) and George Fatt (a victualler from Great Earl Street, Seven Dials), who stood bail of £40 each for Peter and Mary Nodgrass [sic]: possibly they were her brothers as William’s will mentioned four sons: William, George, Henry and Thomas.

The second William, almost certainly son of the elder William, died on 9 April 1776. He was buried in St Martin in the Fields, where a memorial was erected to him, his wife (Martha) and to sons-in-law, Thomas Angell (d. 1780) and another named Freeman. His will gave his trade as a chimney sweep, indicating a continuation of the family business. [TNA, PROB 11/1022] It referred to a house in Hampton, Middlesex, which he left to his daughter Mary, along with property at Sharrett (Sarratt) in Hertfordshire, which he left to another daughter, Anne. Both places also featured in the will of William the elder. Execution of the will was deputed jointly to Mary and to a carpenter from Piccadilly, named James Filewood, who received £10 for his trouble. By coincidence, Filewood also featured in the 1749 Westminster poll book.

The Hertfordshire property seems to have offered both William (the younger) and George Fatt further opportunities to vote. Both names appear in the 1774 poll book for the county. William, noted again as resident of Swallow Street, but also a householder in Sarratt, voted for William Plumer and Viscount Grimston. George Fatt, noted of London, but claiming rights as a householder at Great Gaddesden, also voted for Grimston but, unlike William, gave his other vote to Thomas Halsey. George Fatt then featured in the subsequent poll for the county in 1790. This time, he plumped for William Hale, who failed to be returned.

That the family business endured beyond the lives of the two Williams is indicated by the existence of a trade card from 1780 describing George Fatt as son of William and continuing the sweeping business from Sweeper’s Alley, Castle Street, Long Acre. It also noted that he had retained the role as sweeper to the king. George Fatt’s success in doing so appears to have been in spite of the efforts of ‘a great officer’, who had attempted to install his own porter in the role on William’s death. According to the press, ‘P.D.’ complained of the appointment of the man, who had been chosen in spite of knowing nothing of the business of chimney sweeping. [Morning Chronicle, 19 Apr. 1776]

This brief snapshot into the successful establishment of a family business, by people of Black heritage, is just a minor glimpse into the lives of Londoners in the eighteenth century. More work needs to be done to determine beyond doubt the family’s story. However, the findings suggest that there were many more people like them (and John London): successful business operators, who took the trouble to lodge their votes in eighteenth-century parliamentary elections.

RDEE

Further Reading:

Benita Cullingford, British Chimney Sweeps: Five Centuries of Chimney Sweeping (2001)

https://www.londonlives.org

ECPPEC

Peter starts with the received wisdom that, in the late 1450s, Coventry was militantly Lancastrian. Such a view had the endorsement of the greatest authority on the reign of Henry VI, Ralph Griffiths (who, incidentally, supervised Peter’s thesis on the Kentish gentry), who described its citizens as ‘fiercely loyal to the Lancastrians’ (R.A. Griffiths, The Reign of Henry VI, pp. 777-8). This conclusion has a persuasive context, which Peter sets out.  The city had close and historic ties with the Crown. The royal earldom of Chester, part of the endowment of the heir to the throne, was overlord of its southern half; and, when Crown and duchy of Lancaster were united on Henry IV’s accession in 1399, its proximity to the great duchy castle of Kenilworth brought it closer to the centre of the political nation.  In the late 1450s the increasing power of Queen Margaret, who held Kenilworth as part of her dower, brought these connexions into the most intense political focus. The court spent extended periods there, and the notorious Parliament of November 1459, which confiscated the lands of the Yorkist lords, was convened in the city’s Benedictine priory.  

This was the well-established picture Peter set out to re-examine. A small doubt had already been raised by Michael Hicks, who, in 2010, pointed out that the court’s residence in the city in the late 1450s was more intermittent than is generally supposed (M. Hicks, The Wars of the Roses, 126).  Peter took this doubt very much further.  Indeed, he entirely subverted the argument.  In his formulation the court’s periodic sojourns there, even if less prolonged than was once thought, eroded rather than strengthened the city’s ties with the house of Lancaster. He describes the tensions evident from the outset.  On 11 October 1456, during a great council in the city, there was ‘a gret affray’ between the followers of Henry Beaufort, duke of Somerset, and the city’s watchmen in which two or three of the citizens were killed. By 1460 there are clear signs that the court had become an unwelcome visitor. Royal signet letters to the city authorities on 8 February of that year, cited reports that ‘diuers of thinhabitantes of oure Cite of Couentre haue …. vsed and had right vnfittyng langage ayenst oure estate and personne’ and in favour of the recently-attainted Yorkist lords, a curious circumstance in a city of unquestioned loyalty.  

The next evidence Peter cites is yet starker. On 17 February 1461, in signet letters in the name of the young prince of Wales and dated at St. Albans, where the Lancastrians had just defeated the  leading Yorkist lord, Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, the mayor and aldermen were peremptorily ordered to be ‘assystent, helping and faverable’ to three local Lancastrian loyalists, the King’s carver, Sir Edmund Mountfort, Sir Henry Everingham of Withybrook, only a few miles from the city, and William Elton, MP for the city in 1453. This reads, Peter suggests, as a desperate attempt to recall the city to its earlier Lancastrian allegiance. If so, it failed. When it was read before the ‘Comyns’ in St. Mary’s Hall, they were so ‘meved’ against its bearer, a priest in Everingham’s service, that they would, but for the mayor’s intervention, ‘A smytt of the prestes hed’.  Soon after, according to one chronicle, its erstwhile resident, Queen Margaret, singled out the city for punishment.  In this context, it is not surprising that the city authorities soon came to share the Yorkist sympathies of the ‘Comyns’. They provided £100 for soldiers to accompany Edward, earl of March, to London in the wake of Neville’s defeat at St. Albans, and a further £80 for 100 men to go with him to what proved to be the decisive battle of Towton.

To explain this support for the Yorkist cause in a city with long-standing Lancastrian connexions, Peter pointed not only to the tensions inherent in the court’s presence but also to influence of the earl of Warwick, whose castle of Warwick lay only ten miles away. It is instructive here that, in the crisis of 1469-71, the city appears to have sided, albeit rather equivocally, with the earl when he rose against Edward IV. Peter shows that, in the campaign of the spring of 1471 during which the earl met his death at the battle of Barnet, Coventry provided him with at least 40 soldiers and was fined by the restored Edward IV for its temerity in doing so. He might also have cited other evidence for the city’s support for the earl. Two of its leading citizens, Richard Braytoft, a former MP, and Robert Onley, were accused of complicity in the execution at Gosford Green, just outside the city, of the King’s father-in-law Earl Rivers, one of the principal victims of Warwick’s rising against Edward IV (TNA, KB27/836, rot. 61d). The reception accorded to Everingham’s priest may, therefore, have been an expression of the city’s support not for the Yorkist cause in general but for the earl of Warwick in particular. Even so, one thing is clear: Peter has shown that Coventry was not a Lancastrian stronghold, even in the late 1450s when its ties with the Lancastrian ruling house were, at least to outward appearances, at their closest.

S.J.P.

Further reading

P. Fleming, Coventry and the Wars of the Roses (Dugdale Society Occasional Papers, 2011)

and Late-Medieval Bristol: Time, Space and Power (2024).

The Commons,1422-61, ed. L. Clark, iii. 497-9 (for Braytoft), iv. 235-8 (for Elton), 281-3 (for Everingham), v. 547-56 (for Mountfort).

On Monday 20 July 1789, Henry Beaufoy, MP for Great Yarmouth, moved the third reading of a bill he had sponsored through the House of Commons for instituting a perpetual commemoration of the 1688 Revolution. The bill was a relatively simple one, seeking merely to insist that in December every year, clergy in the Church of England would read out the Bill of Rights, thereby reminding their congregations of the events that had seen James II expelled and William III and Mary II installed as monarchs.

Beaufoy’s bill had to compete with other rather more urgent measures. These included one for continuing an Act passed in the previous session for regulating the shipping of enslaved people in British ships from the coast of Africa; and another for granting over £20,000 towards defraying the costs of the Warren Hastings trial, which had commenced the previous year and would continue to annoy the House until 1795. Consequently, it was late in the day when Beaufoy got to his feet and, although his motion carried by 23 votes to 14, it was determined that as the House now lacked the requisite 40 members present to make a quorum, the Commons should adjourn.

Next day, Beaufoy tried again. Once more, there was opposition. During the two days when the bill was debated objections were raised by Sir William Dolben and Sir Joseph Mawbey, the latter arguing that Beaufoy was merely mimicking the Whig Club in seeking popularity, while Henry James Pye considered the measure ridiculous as it would result in two commemorative events each year. Others were warmly in favour, though and, when it came to a division, the motion to give the bill a third reading was carried. Following a failed effort by Mawbey to introduce an amendment granting to each clergyman required to read the declaration 20 shillings, the bill was passed and sent up to the Lords. [Commons Journal, xliv. 543-7]

Beaufoy’s bill had its origins in the centenary celebrations of the Revolution, which had been marked across the country the previous autumn. Like his bill, not everything had proceeded smoothly. Not least, there were obvious rivalries between the clubs and societies heading up the various events. There was even disagreement on precisely when to mark the day. The Revolution Society had chosen 4 November, on the basis that this was both William III’s birthday (and wedding anniversary) and the day that he had made landfall. The Constitution Club, on the other hand, chose to hold its entertainment on 5 November, which chimed with the date chosen by John Tillotson (soon to be Archbishop of Canterbury), when preaching his 1689 commemorative sermon. It also echoed celebrations of the thwarting of the Gunpowder Plot and this dinner was rounded off with toasts to the ‘three eights’: 1588 (Armada), 1688 and 1788. [Gazetteer and Daily Advertiser, 6 November 1788]

Aside from somewhat petty disagreements about whether 4 or 5 November was most apt, several of the societies also had strikingly different political outlooks and exhibited fierce rivalry. Speaking at the Whig Club, Richard Sheridan concluded his remarks with proposing a subscription for erecting a monument to the Revolution, which appeared to get off to a fine start with £500 being pledged almost at once. The plan was for the edifice to be located at Runnymede, emphasizing the links between the safeguarding of English liberty with Magna Carta, and the completion of the process with William of Orange’s successful invasion.

Not everyone liked the idea of a physical monument, though, and when the proposal was read out at other clubs, it received either muted or downright hostile responses. Speaking at the Constitution Club’s dinner at Willis’ Rooms, presided over by Lord Hood and featuring around 700 diners, John Horne Tooke made no secret of his contempt for the Whig Club’s plan. It was at this meeting that Beaufoy first raised his idea for a day of commemoration to be legislated for by Parliament, though at least one paper reported that his speech had been drowned out by the noise around him.

Elsewhere, there was more harmony. One of the grandest celebrations of 1688 took part at Holkham Hall in Norfolk, where Thomas Coke (future Earl of Leicester) laid on a spectacular firework display as well as mounting a recreation of William’s landing at Brixham having brought in squadrons of horses and loaded them onto miniature ships, which were launched on a canal. Perhaps the most evocative event, though, was one of many held in London taverns, where an unidentified man, said to be 112 years old, was reported to have been in attendance and chaired by the company. According to the paper he was one of ten centurions residing in the French hospital on Old Street, but at 112 he was likely the only one of them who actually remembered the Revolution taking place. [E. Johnson’s British Gazette and Sunday Monitor, 9 November 1788]

All of this was cast thoroughly into the shade by the very unhelpful timing of the king’s illness, which had commenced that summer but become steadily more acute through October and finally reached a crisis on the symbolic date of 5 November. The Prince of Wales had been on his way to Holkham to take part in Coke’s celebrations, but was forced to turn back after being alerted to the king’s deteriorating condition. At a time when the stalwarts of the Revolution Settlement were trying to make the case for the stability it had provided in settling the throne on the House of Brunswick, the prospect of a king no longer able to fulfil his constitutional functions was a disaster.

By the time Beaufoy finally made his motion in the Commons, the king had recovered but that did not ease the progress of what always seems to have been a rather unwanted bill. Having made its way through the Commons, the measure was presented to a thinly attended House of Lords on Thursday 23 July 1789, and a motion for the bill to be given a first reading was moved by Earl Stanhope – a leading member of the Revolution Society.

Stanhope’s motion was objected to by the Bishop of Bangor, who insisted that a prayer was already said for the Revolution in church each year. Stanhope attempted to argue in favour of the ‘pious and political expediency’ of the bill, insisting that the event was not commemorated satisfactorily in church. [Oracle, 24 July] The Lord Chancellor left the wool sack to enable him to offer his own opinions on the matter, backing up Bangor’s view and arguing the bill to be absurd, before a final contribution was made in favour of the proposed measure by the Earl of Hopetoun. The motion for the first reading was then negatived by six votes to 13, after which the Lords resolved without more ado to throw the unwanted bill out. [Diary or Woodfall’s Register, 24 July; The World, 24 July] Sheridan’s wish for a grand monument met with a similar fate, though an obelisk celebrating the centenary was raised at Kirkley Hall near Ponteland in Northumberland, by Newton Ogle, Dean of Winchester, and another at Castle Howe near Kendal in Cumbria.

As far as commemoration of 1688 was concerned this was far from the end of the story. Two centuries on, the tercentenary witnessed an unusual expression of unity from the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, and the Leader of the Opposition, Neil Kinnock. Moving a humble address to the Queen, expressing the House’s ‘great pleasure in celebrating the tercentenary of these historic events of 1688 and 1689 that established those constitutional freedoms under the law which Your Majesty’s Parliament and people have continued to enjoy for three hundred years’, Thatcher was answered by Kinnock, agreeing that it was: ‘a worthy act, not only because it celebrates a significant advance, as the Prime Minister just said, but because it requires us all to consider the character of our democracy…’

Father of the House, Sir Bernard Braine, was next to speak. He welcomed the rare moment of political harmony and underlined the key principal about what 1688 meant to everyone in the chamber:

‘It is the knowledge that the parliamentary system which we jointly serve is greater than the sum total of all who are here at any one time.’

RDEE

Further Reading:

John Brooke, King George III (1972)

Journals of the House of Commons

Journals of the House of Lords

In 1760 Thomas Worsley of Hovingham, a close friend of George III’s favourite, the earl of Bute, penned a letter to his friend and patron insisting on his family’s antiquity. In their possession, he claimed, were ‘authentic documents of coming over with William the Conquerer’. Worsley’s concern to prove that he was no johnny-come-lately had originally been seen when he was appointed to the privy chamber back in the 1730s, but he was still clearly concerned to emphasise his suitability at the time of his appointment as surveyor general of the king’s works (thanks to Bute).

He had nothing to worry about. The Worsleys were an old family, who could trace their ownership of estates in Lancashire to at least the 14th century. Another branch of the family, ultimately settled in Hampshire (and on the Isle of Wight), produced a parliamentary dynasty of their own.

Supporting Thomas Worsley’s assertion of descent from a companion of William the Conqueror were accounts in ‘ancient chronicles’ recording the family’s progenitor as the giant Sir Elias de Workesley, who had followed Robert Curthose, duke of Normandy, on ‘crusade’. The 1533 Visitation of Lancashire referred to this character as Elias, surnamed Gigas on account of his massive proportions, and suggested he was a contemporary of William I.

It took some time for the northern Worsleys to establish themselves but by the 15th century a number of distinguished figures had already emerged. The marriage of Seth Worsley to Margaret Booth linked the family to two archbishops of York, Margaret’s uncles, William Booth (archbishop 1452-64) and Lawrence Booth (1476-80). Their son, William, later became dean of St Paul’s Cathedral and towards the end of his life became caught up in the Perkin Warbeck conspiracy, for which he was sent to the Tower.

William Worsley may have conspired against Henry VII, but by the 16th century other members of the family had managed to establish themselves on the fringes of the Tudor court in the retinue of the earl of Derby and it seems to have been thanks to the 3rd earl (Edward Stanley) that Sir Robert Worsley was returned to Parliament in 1553 as knight of the shire for Lancashire. Nine years earlier, he had been knighted at Leith in recognition of his services in the English army. Worsley’s return in 1553 seems to have been somewhat accidental, only occurring as a result of a by-election after one of the other recently elected members had declared himself too ill to serve. By becoming one of the Lancashire knights of the shire, Worsley was following in the footsteps of his father-in-law, Thurstan Tyldesley, who had been elected to the same seat in 1547.

Sir Robert’s son, another Robert, continued the family tradition of following the Derbys by attaching himself to the retinue of the 4th earl (Henry Stanley). A passionate Protestant, as keeper of the gaol at Salford he had numerous recusant (Catholic) prisoners in his care, whom he tried to persuade away from their faith by organising time dedicated to reading from the Bible. How successful that policy was is uncertain, but he found the burden of his role intolerable and by the end of his life he had lost all of his principal estates in Lancashire. Like his father, he seems to have owed his election to Parliament to his patron, Derby, though in his case he was returned for the Cornish borough of Callington.

The best part of a century passed before another Worsley was returned to the Commons. In the interim, having lost their original estates, the family had relocated to Hovingham, near Malton in North Yorkshire. The manor had been acquired by Sir Robert Worsley in 1563 from Sir Thomas Gerard, and the connection was reinforced by the subsequent marriage of the younger Robert to Gerard’s daughter, Elizabeth. In 1685, it was one of the Hovingham Worsleys, Thomas (great-great-grandson of Robert and Elizabeth), who succeeded in being returned for Parliament, where he proved to be ‘totally inactive’.

Inactive he may have been, but this did not prevent him from making his views clear to the lord lieutenant when he was faced with the ‘Three Questions’, framed to tease out opposition to James II’s policies. In response to them he insisted that he would ‘go free into the House, and give my vote as my judgment and reason shall direct when I hear the debates’. This was not at all the response required by the king’s officials, and he was removed from his local offices. He regained them shortly after at the Revolution but it was not until 1698 that he was re-elected to Parliament, again for Malton. In 1712 he was removed from local office again, this time probably on account of his Whiggery.

The older Thomas lived to see the Hanoverian accession, which he doubtless welcomed. Three years before that his son (another Thomas) had been returned to Parliament as one of the Members for Thirsk, after failed attempts in 1708 and 1710. This Thomas Worsley also seems to have played little or no role in the Commons. This was perhaps ironic, given that his marriage to Mary Frankland linked him directly to Oliver Cromwell. Efforts by his father to secure him a government post through the patronage of the earl of Carlisle came to nothing.

The trio of Thomas Worsleys in Parliament was completed by the election for Orford of the second Thomas’s son in 1761. It was this Thomas Worsley, the friend of Bute, who had been so concerned to prove his family’s antiquity. Although he was to sit first for Orford and then (like his forebear, Robert) for Callington, Parliament was not Thomas’s passion. Rather, his interests lay in equestrianism, collecting and architecture. His true claim to fame was rebuilding the family seat at Hovingham, creating the elegant Georgian house that endures to this day, but his dedication to horseflesh was equally strong and he seems to have looked out for suitable mounts for his contacts, the king among them. Writing to Sir James Lowther, 5th bt. (future earl of Lonsdale) in 1763, he mentioned trying out one of Lowther’s horses in front of the king and queen. They liked the animal, but concluded it was not ‘strong enough to carry [the king’s] weight’. [HMC Lonsdale, 132]

Thomas Worsley died in December 1778 at his London residence in Scotland Yard. [Morning Chronicle, 15 Dec. 1778] Just a few months before, he had been contacted by the duke of Ancaster, the lord great chamberlain, requiring him to see to the repair of the House of Lords, which was reported to be ‘in bad condition’. [PA, LGC/5/1, f. 279] By then, he was probably in no fit state to oversee the work.

This Thomas seems to have been the last member of his family to show much interest in national politics until the 20th century. His eldest son, another Thomas, had died four years before him, leaving the inheritance to a younger son, Edward. In 1838 Edward’s nephew, Sir William Worsley, was created a baronet but his interests appear to have been largely confined to his immediate surroundings in North Yorkshire. The 4th baronet was a talented cricketer, serving as captain of Yorkshire, as well as president of the MCC. It was his son, Sir Marcus Worsley, 5th bt., who finally broke the family duck and returned to Parliament, first as MP for Keighley and latterly for Chelsea. In November 1969 he presented a bill to encourage the preservation of collections of manuscripts by controlling and regulating their export. His other chief preoccupation was as one of the church commissioners.

The late duchess of Kent was Sir Marcus’s younger sister. She continued the family’s long tradition of interest in sport (in her case tennis) and quiet dedication to their locality.

RDEE

Further reading
Estate and Household Accounts of William Worsley, Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral 1479-1497 (Richard III & Yorkist Trust and London Record Society, 2004), ed. H. Kleineke and S. Hovland
VCH Yorkshire North Riding, volume one
Visitation of Lancashire and a part of Cheshire, 1533, ed. William Langton (Chetham Soc. 1876)

The troubled politics of the mid-fifteenth century are illuminated by the histories of leading gentry families just as much as they are by those of Neville, Stafford and other great aristocratic families. In one sense, lesser families offer a more subtle perspective in that, while great families were so central to politics that they could hardly avoid active involvement in the struggle between York and Lancaster, the leading gentry had the third option of neutrality. Those families that did commit themselves thus have a particular interest. Some, like the Yorkist Devereuxs or the Lancastrian Treshams, were consistent in their loyalty.  Others, however, transferred allegiance, whether through perceived self-interest, as a reaction (even a principled one) to political events or as a calculated gamble.  The story of the Blounts, one of a small coterie of gentry families that dominated Derbyshire politics, is particularly revealing in this regard. Their two changes of allegiance – in 1454 and 1484 – were examples of anticipating, rather than swimming with, the political tide. 

They were a family to whom commitment came naturally. In the early fifteenth-century they served the house of Lancaster with great distinction. Sir Walter Blount was killed at the battle of Shrewsbury in 1403 (according to some reports, acting as a decoy Henry IV); his son, Sir John Blount, a soldier notable enough to be promoted to the Order of the Garter, fell at the siege of Rouen in 1418; and Sir John’s brother and successor Sir Thomas, spent his best years in the service of Lancastrian arms in France. Sir Thomas’s eldest son, Walter, looked set to continue this tradition, entering the household of Henry VI in about 1440.

Soon, however, Walter, was to commit himself to the house of York with the same enthusiasm as his predecessors had supported Lancaster. The decisive moment came on 28 May 1454 with the famous sack of his manor of Elvaston.  This was a particularly acute example of the damaging interaction of local rivalries among the leading gentry with the crisis in national affairs. Sir Nicholas Longford of Longford, head of another family long connected with the house of Lancaster, led an armed band of 1,000 men to a raid on Elvaston. There they allegedly quartered tapestries charged with the Blount arms, justifying their action on the grounds that Blount ‘was gone to serve Traytours’.  They clearly believed that Blount had come to identify himself with the duke of York, who, the King mentally incapacitated, had become protector two months earlier.            

Whatever Blount’s prior connexion with the duke, the sack of Elvaston drove him further into the Yorkist camp. In the late 1450s he was serving both York and his ally, Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, who, as captain of Calais, appointed him as his marshal there.  The outbreak of civil war in 1459 thus presented him with opportunities. Just as his grandfather, Sir Walter, had actively supported the Lancastrian usurpation of 1399, he fought for its end. He was in the Yorkist ranks in March 1461 at the decisive battle of Towton, where he was knighted.

Blount’s support for York brought him substantial rewards, not least a great marriage. In the aftermath of the earlier Yorkist victory at Northampton in the previous July, he had tried to win the hand of Elizabeth Butler, widow of one of the Lancastrian victims of that battle, John Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury, but she repudiated him on the incontestable grounds that he ‘unequal and inferior to her in nobility and wealth’.  Fortunately for Blount, a widow of yet greater rank did not share her scruples. He soon married another of those widowed at Northampton, namely the King’s maternal aunt, Anne Neville (who was also Warwick’s aunt), dowager-duchess of Buckingham, the wealthiest widow in England.  It is hard to believe that Blount did not owe the match to royal patronage. With this marriage came a greater status: he served in the great office of treasurer and, in June 1465. was elevated to the peerage as Lord Mountjoy.

In the great crisis of Edward’s reign from 1469 to 1471, provoked by the King’s alienation from the earl of Warwick, Blount, after a brief period of equivocation, firmly committed himself to Edward. He fought for him in the victorious campaign of the spring of 1471, during which his son and heir, William, was killed at the battle of Barnet. In April 1472 he followed his uncle, Sir John, in having the honour of installation to the Order of the Garter.

On Blount’s death in 1474, effective headship on the family devolved on his son, James. Although land and title passed to James’s elder brother, John, it was James who was the most politically active, and it was James who took the lead in the next major event in the family’s history. At the beginning of his rule, Richard III confidently placed his trust in the Blounts, giving them a central role in the defence of Calais (with which the family had long been associated), In James’s case this trust proved spectacularly misplaced, for he soon dealt the new King a major blow. Among the captives at Hammes castle, of which James was lieutenant, was the militant Lancastrian, John de Vere, the attainted earl of Oxford, who had been imprisoned there since 1474. The two men must have known each other well, and, at some date shortly before 28 October 1484, Oxford persuaded James not only to release him but to join him in fleeing to join Henry of Richmond at the French court. The probability is that Blount, alienated by the deposition of Edward V, needed little persuasion to revert to the family’s Lancastrian loyalties. He was now wholly committed to Richmond. He landed with him at Milford Haven on 7 August. 1485 and fought at the battle of Bosworth two weeks later. Unsurprisingly, albeit not as mightily as his father had done after the change of regime in 1461, James prospered in the early years of Henry VII’s rule. Sadly, he died childless in 1492 at the height of his career.

Whether Lord Mountjoy shared James’s dramatic change of allegiance cannot be known.  It may be that James, as a younger brother, took the active role because his forfeiture, should Richmond have failed, would not endanger the family’s future. John may also have been restrained by a natural caution.  The striking and well-known provision of his will is suggestive: he advised his sons (the eldest of whom, William, was only seven) , ‘never to take the state of Baron upon them if they may leye it from them nor to desire to be grete about princes for it is daungeros’.  Given that between 1403 and 1471 three of his family, including his eldest brother, had met violent deaths serving ‘princes’, such caution is understandable. Yet this was to be balanced by the positives: the family had been advanced to the peerage by their service to the Yorkists, and, when he drew up his will, his brother’s support for Henry VII promised further promotion.  In any event, the new Lord Mountjoy disregarded his father’s well-meaning advice.  Most famous as a friend and patron of Erasmus, he made a very successful career at the court of the most dangerous of princes, Henry VIII.

S.J.P.

Further reading

H. Castor, ‘Sack of Elvaston’, Midland History, xix. 21-39.

For biographies of Sir Walter Blount (d.1403), Sir Thomas Blount (d.1456) and Walter Blount, Lord Mountjoy: The Commons, 1386-1421, ii. 258-60, 262-5; 1422-61, iii.  382-91.  A biography of Sir James Blount will appear in The Commons, 1461-1504.

In defeating the rebellion of the Percys at the battle of Shrewsbury, Henry IV overcame an existential threat to the infant Lancastrian regime. It was a threat that came upon him suddenly and undeservedly. The rebellion had but one cause, the overweening ambition of the Percys, and no justification, or at least no meaningful one. The best the Percys could offer was Henry’s alleged duplicity in the deposition of Richard II in 1399: they claimed that they had supported him because he had sworn to claim only his great Lancastrian patrimony and not the Crown.  Given their readiness to accept the rewards the new King bestowed upon them (and their belief that even these were not enough), this justification must have been widely perceived as hollow as it was. 

It was these rewards that made the rising so dangerous to Henry IV. Not only did they give the Percys a virtual monopoly of the local exercise of royal authority in their northern heartland, the east march towards Scotland, but also in north Wales, where the earl of Northumberland’s son, Henry Hotspur, was made justiciar.  Hotspur, a renowned soldier with a military career extending back to the late 1370s, repaid the King’s trust by fighting against Glyn Dŵr in the early stages of the Welsh rebellion, and, much more significantly, by defeating an invading Scottish force at Homildon Hill on 14 September 1402.  This victory, however, was to drive a wedge between the Percys and the King, or, perhaps to put it more accurately, to give the aggressively acquisitive Percys expectations of reward beyond anything a prudent monarch could give. The Scottish commander, Archibald Douglas, earl of Douglas, was among those captured, and the King exercised his legitimate right to deny the Percys permission to ransom a soldier whose reputation was almost as elevated as Hotspur’s.  This rebuff was added to another unjustified grievance over a ransom. At the battle of Pilleth on the previous 22 June Hotspur’s brother-in-law, Sir Edmund Mortimer, had been captured by Glyn Dŵr, and the King refused to assent to his ransom, taking the view, correctly as it transpired, that Mortimer (who subsequently married one of the Welsh rebel’s daughters) was a traitor. 

This was the immediate background of a rising that took the King entirely by surprise.  On 9 July Hotspur raised rebellion in Cheshire, as the King, with a small force, was advancing north from London, ironically with the aim of supporting the Percys against the Scots on the northern border, ‘to the last unaware of the yawning danger that was opening at his very feet’ (as the great Victorian scholar, James Hamilton Wylie, elegantly put it).  He was at Nottingham when, on 12 July, he heard that Hotspur had rebelled. Perhaps acting on the advice of the experienced Scottish soldier, George Dunbar, earl of Dunbar, whose feud with the earl of Douglas had brought him into Henry’s ranks, he determined to risk the hazard of an immediate battle rather than return to London.  Here he had one advantage. The great Lancastrian retinue was particularly strong in the Midlands, and many of its leading gentry rallied to his cause, as they had done in 1399.

The King was also aided by what appears to have been a miscalculation of the rebel side.  No one could dispute Hotspur’s choice of Cheshire as the locus of rebellion, for not only had it been a Ricardian stronghold but its geographical position offered the prospect of joining the Welsh rising with his own.  If, however, the location of the rising was logical, its timing was not.  Hotspur’s plan appears to have been to seize Shrewsbury, the headquarters of the heir to the throne, Henry, prince of Wales, who, despite his youth, had been appointed royal lieutenant in Wales in the previous March, and there to await reinforcements from his father in the north and from the Welsh rebel leader.  This plan, however, was thwarted by the King’s swift and decisive action.  Had Hotspur delayed making plain his intentions until the King had reached the north, he would have had time to seize Shrewsbury and the prince. The King would then have been faced a long march back to intercept Hotspur, who would probably have made for London. The timing of the rebellion was also unfortunate in another sense, although one that was not apparent at its beginning. On 12 July Glyn Dŵr was defeated near Carmarthen by the Pembrokeshire levies, headed by Sir Thomas Carew, constable of Narberth, so diminishing any aid he might have been able to offer Hotspur in a future campaign. Carew, something of an unsung hero of the campaign, was later fittingly rewarded by a grant of Sir Edmund Mortimer’s forfeited estates.

These considerations aside, the rapid approach of the royal army forced Hotspur to abandon his plan of taking Shrewsbury, and draw up in battle array on its outskirts.  None the less, although much had run in the King’s favour in the lead up to the battle, when that battle was joined, it was still a close-run thing.  Although it appears to have lasted no more than two hours, it was, in the words of the later Gregory’s Chronicle, ‘one of the wyrste bataylys that ever came to Inglonde,, and unkyndyst’.  The casualty rate was very high, a product of the intense exchange of longbow fire with which it began, with, according to the St. Albans chronicler, Thomas Walsingham, men falling ‘as fast as leaves … in autumn’.  These casualties were heaviest on the royalist side, certainly in respect of the leading men (the most notable casualty on his side was the young Edmund, earl of Stafford), and it is probably fair to say that, if Hotspur had not fallen on the field, the result of the battle, if not that of the rebellion, might have been different. Indeed, if the accidents of battle had brought death to the King rather than to Hotspur, the civil war, the ‘Lancastrian’ title against the ‘Yorkist’, (represented in 1403 by the young Edmund Mortimer, earl of March, nephew of Hotspur’s wife) would have begun in 1403 rather than 1459.

SJP

Further reading

J.M.W. Bean, ‘Henry IV and the Percies’, History xliv (1959), pp. 212-27.

P. McNiven, ‘The Scottish Policy of the Percies and the Strategy of the Rebellion of 1403’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library lxii (1979-80), pp. 498-530.  

For biographies of some of the casualties on the royalist side: The Commons, 1386-1421, ed. Clark, Rawcliffe and Roskell, ii. 262-5 (Sir Walter Blount of Barton Blount, Derbyshire), 467-9 (Sir John Calverley of Stapleford, Leicestershire), 593-4 (Sir John Clifton of Clifton, Nottinghamshire); iv. 364-6  (Sir Hugh Shirley of Shirley, Derbyshire), 607-9 (Sir Thomas Wensley of Wensley, Derbyshire). For a probable casualty on the rebel side see ii. 384-6 (Sir Hugh Browe).

It had started so well. Francis Leak, the son of Sir Francis Leak, a prosperous landowner in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, was the first of his family to try to establish himself on the national stage. He had already taken the important first step of marrying the sister of a rising star at court, Sir Henry Carey (later Viscount Falkland in the Scottish peerage). Yet Leak’s ambitions were undermined by a fierce row with his father, who had resigned the patrimonial estate to him in return for a relatively high rent-charge. Once the documents were sealed, Leak refused point-blank to pay anything to his father, on the preposterous grounds of poverty. His true financial state was revealed in 1624, when he paid James I’s favourite, George Villiers, 1st duke of Buckingham, £8,000 to be made Baron Deincourt. The son’s ennoblement enraged the father, who was already engaged in a lengthy legal battle with his son. Even the death of Sir Francis in 1626 did not stop the wrangling, as Deincourt’s mother and half-brother disputed the will and won a chancery order for him to pay them rent arrears; this was upheld by the Lords in 1629. Deincourt’s parliamentary service in the later 1620s had been overshadowed by this constant rowing, and the dispute continued into the early 1630s, ending only with the intervention of the privy council, which ruled against the baron. His reputation at court and among the aristocracy never recovered.

Although Deincourt was treated with distain by the royal court during the 1630s, his son, also Francis, was able to succeed where the father had failed, joining the royal family for racing at Newmarket and being given minor ceremonial roles at court. His career was, however, spoiled by his father’s parsimony. Two potential marriages were ruined by Deincourt’s refusal to make realistic financial provision for his son, and by the end of the decade, Francis was languishing in debtors’ prison. Deincourt was equally mean when it came to public affairs. Although a supporter of the king, he was reluctant to give the king money to fight the bishops’ wars against the Scots in 1639-40, and he went on to play very little part in the Short and Long Parliaments. At the outbreak of civil war in 1642, he sided with the king. Francis, who had gone to France (possibly to avoid his creditors) died at about this time, leaving the second son, Nicholas, heir to the barony. Needless to say, Deincourt and Nicholas Leak immediately fell out, with Nicholas joining the parliamentarians.

Civil war did not improve Deincourt’s miserliness. In September 1642, the prominent courtier, John Ashburnham, was sent to Deincourt to secure £5,000 for the king, while Arthur Capell (later 1st Baron Capell), went on a parallel mission to the equally parsimonious Robert Pierrepont, 1st earl of Kingston-upon-Hull. The cunning Kingston deflected the request by suggesting the wealthy Deincourt – ‘who was good for nothing and lived like a hog, not allowing himself necessaries’ – could easily supply the money instead. Deincourt, who had ‘so little correspondence with the court that he had never heard his name’, did not accept Ashburnham’s credentials until he had consulted with his wife’s nephew, Lucius Carey, 2nd Viscount Falkland, but afterwards reacted ‘with so different a respect’ that the envoy became hopeful of receiving the money after all. He was soon ‘undeceived’:

The lord, with as cheerful a countenance as his could be (for he had a very unusual and unpleasant face), told him that though he had no money himself, but was in extreme want of it, he would tell him where he might have money enough … that he had a neighbour, who lived within four or five miles, the earl of Kingston, that never did good to anybody, and loved nobody but himself, who had a world of money, and could furnish the king with as much as he had need of. (Clarendon, History of the Rebellion, ed. Macray, ii. 332-4)

Despite being something of a joke at royalist Oxford, Deincourt did serve the king faithfully, not least in the defence of Newark, and in sending two of his younger sons to serve in the king’s army – both were killed in combat. He was made earl of Scarsdale at the end of 1645, probably in a deal in which he finally agreed to give material support to the king. At the end of the war, the new earl of Scarsdale refused to do a similar deal with Parliament. Unlike almost all peers who were given the option, he declined to compound for his estates, which continued to be sequestered. His heir, Nicholas Leak, who had managed to rent the Derbyshire properties from Parliament, now made a concerted effort to secure legal title to the whole estate, not least to ensure that his mother and the younger children were provided for. He finally succeeded in 1651.

Overriding Scarsdale’s wishes was easy to justify, as his mental health appears to have deteriorated in the immediate aftermath of the first civil war, reaching a low point after the execution of Charles I in 1649, when ‘he apparelled himself in sack-cloth, and causing his grave to be digged some years before his death, laid himself down in it every Friday, exercising himself frequently in divine meditations and prayers’. (W. Dugdale, Baronage of England, ii. 450). That this was not normal behaviour is underlined by the strangeness of earl’s will, written in 1651. He gave unusually detailed instructions about his burial at Sutton Scarsdale church: he was not to be disembowelled or embalmed, and he was to be buried without a coffin, covered only by a sere-cloth or winding sheet, and ‘a little round board of an inch think laid upon my face’. (TNA, PROB11/251, f. 139v). As if this was not odd enough, in the main body of the will the earl completely ignored the fact that the estate had effectively been taken out of his hands: his younger son, Henry, was provided with lands; his four unmarried daughters were given their full marriage portions of £4,000 each; and, in a highly unusual move, these younger daughters were appointed executors. Reality reappeared only after the old man’s death. When probate was passed in 1655, it was granted to Nicholas Leak, now 2nd Baron Deincourt and 2nd earl of Scarsdale, his sisters and widowed ‘having renounced the execution of the said will’. (PROB11/251, f. 140)

PL

Further reading

The biography of Francis Leak will appear in the forthcoming House of Lords 1640-60 volumes; for his earlier career, see House of Lords 1604-29.

Biographies of Sir Henry Carey and Sir Francis Leak in House of Commons 1604-29; George Villiers in House of Lords 1604-29; John Ashburham, Arthur Capell and Lucius Carey in House of Commons 1640-60; Nicholas Leak in House of Lords 1660-1715.

Bloomsbury Square, and its immediate surroundings, have long been associated with prominent political figures. In 1706, several peers had residences in the square, notably the (2nd) duke of Bedford and the earls of Northampton and Chesterfield. Close neighbours residing in Great Russell Street, were the duke of Montagu (whose house later became the British Museum), the earl of Thanet and Lord Haversham, and John Hough, at that point bishop of Lichfield and Coventry. By 1727, things had changed somewhat. Montagu was still living in Great Russell Street, now joined by William Baker, bishop of Bangor, shortly after translated to Norwich. But Northampton’s heir had left Bloomsbury Square for Grosvenor Street, though another house had been taken by the earl of Nottingham. [Jones, ‘London Topography’]

Jump forward half a century, and Bloomsbury Square remained a place closely associated with the aristocracy. It was still home to the (5th) duke of Bedford and he had been joined by one of the foremost legal minds of the time: William Murray, earl of Mansfield, who had moved there from Lincoln’s Inn Fields a few years previously. According to Mansfield’s biographer, the square ‘conveyed a delightful atmosphere of leisure and repose, where often the only sounds came from the twittering and chirping of birds’. [Poser, 167] In June 1780, this ‘delightful’ haven was to be turned on its head and Mansfield’s residence was to become one of the principal targets of the Gordon rioters, who flocked to the square on the night of 6/7 June determined to torch the place.

Much has been written about the Gordon riots, which brought London (and other cities) to a virtual standstill for several days in June 1780. The immediate cause was the Protestant Association’s petition calling for the repeal of the 1778 Catholic Relief Act. Having gathered in St George’s Fields on Friday 2 June, members of the Association, led by their president, Lord George Gordon, processed to Parliament to present the petition. While things had begun calmly enough, in the course of the day more unruly elements flocked to Westminster and MPs and members of the Lords found themselves besieged within their chambers.

Thus, what began as a relatively focused cause was soon taken over by general lawlessness, and as Bob Shoemaker and Tim Hitchcock have argued persuasively, many of those involved in the later stages of the rioting had as their target the criminal justice system itself and were far less driven by concerns about religion. [Hitchcock and Shoemaker, 346, 349-50] Consequently, several prisons were attacked and the inmates released; lawyers in and around the inns of court went in fear of assault (or worse) and prominent judges, like Mansfield, became very obvious targets. The fact that Mansfield had also been vocal in his support of the Catholic Relief Act made him doubly susceptible.

Mansfield had been singled out for special treatment even on that first day. Arriving at Westminster, his carriage had been attacked and he had had to be rescued by the archbishop of York. After the day’s proceedings were adjourned, Mansfield was forced to make his way out of the Lords via a back door and travelled home by river as his coach had since been torn to pieces.

Over the next few days rioting gripped London. By Tuesday 6 June Mansfield’s nephew (and eventual heir) David, 7th Viscount Stormont, felt the need to advise the officer commanding the guards in London that he had received ‘reliable information’ that several houses were in need of additional protection, among them those of the marquess of Rockingham and Mansfield. [TNA, SP37/20/54, ff. 76-6] Despite Stormont’s efforts, Mansfield himself decided that too visible a military presence might only infuriate the crowd, so he requested the guards remain at a distance. It was a fatal mistake. When a band of rioters arrived outside Mansfield’s house on the night of 6/7 June, they found it undefended and set to work pulling down the railings before breaking into the house itself. There, they gave vent to all their destructive power, burning his library and gutting the building. Mansfield and Lady Mansfield only narrowly escaped, by using the back door onto Southampton Row.

Mansfield’s losses were significant. Consigned to the flames were his own legal notebooks, along with his library and pretty much the entire contents of the house. Efforts to save the building were stymied because when firefighters arrived on the scene, they refused to get involved until the soldiers (who had by then made themselves known) withdrew, in case they got caught in the middle of fighting between the crowd and the troops.

According to one paper, Mansfield’s losses amounted to £30,000, the library constituting a third of the total. [Morning Chronicle, 9 June 1780] Another paper attributed the destruction to Mansfield’s own ‘ill-judged lenity’, after he had ‘humanely requested [the troops] not fire upon the deluded wretches’. The same paper detailed some of the irreplaceable items that had been destroyed, including a portrait of Viscount Bolingbroke by the poet, Alexander Pope, ‘which, though not having the merit of a professed artist, was always esteemed a great likeness’. [Whitehall Evening Post, 10-13 June 1780]

The tragedy of the Gordon Riots and its impact on Bloomsbury Square did not end on 7 June. Precisely how many people were killed and injured in the rioting remains unclear, but among the rioters well over 300 were killed. Some troops were also among the dead, one of them a cavalrymen posted in Bloomsbury Square, who came off his horse and was finished off by the crowd. [Whitehall Evening Post, 8-10 June 1780] Retribution for some of those involved came quickly and within days there were numerous arrests. By the end of the month the first trials were underway.

As was so often the case, it was the very recognizable among the most marginalized who ended up being handed in. One such was John Gray, whose case has been written about extensively. A native of Taunton in Somerset, who had made his way to London, Gray was one of many on the fringes of society, eking out a living by feeding horses for hackney carriages. [London Courant, 24 July 1780] Although described as ‘a stout made man’, he appears to have had a clubfoot and to have needed a crutch to walk. He seems also to have had mental health issues. He stood out in the crowd taking part in pulling apart one of Mansfield’s outhouses and a few days later was arrested after being spotted trying to pick someone’s pocket.

Gray was convicted at the Old Bailey (https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/) and, in spite of a petition for mercy subscribed by several prominent Taunton residents, one of them the chaplain to Lord Bathurst, [TNA, [SP37/21/132, f. 250] and other recommendations that his case was one worthy of the king’s consideration, [TNA, SP37/21/91] the appeals for clemency were rejected. On Saturday 22 July, he was conveyed back to Bloomsbury Square with two others and hanged on a gallows positioned so that their last view was the remains of Mansfield’s burnt-out former residence.

RDEE

Further reading:
Clyve Jones, ‘The London Topography of the Parliamentary Elite: addresses for peers and bishops for 1706 and 1727-8’, London Topographical Record, xxix (2006)
Norman S. Poser, Lord Mansfield: Justice in the Age of Reason (2013)
Tim Hitchcock and Bob Shoemaker, London Lives: poverty, crime and the making of a modern city 1690-1800 (2015)