On 13 April 1646, a committee set up by the House of Commons to investigate an anonymously authored book ‘intituled, “Truth’s Manifest”’, reported on its findings. Passages of the book were read out by the committee’s chairperson, the political Independent and future regicide, John Lisle. He informed the House that the book was the work of ‘Mr. David Buchanon’, who ‘did avow it to be of his Writing’. It was resolved by the House that the book should be ‘forthwith burnt by the Hands of the common Hangman’ on account of the ‘many Matters false and scandalous’ contained within it. The serjeant-at-arms was instructed to locate Buchanan and summon him to the Bar of the House the following morning ‘as a Delinquent’. This was an extremely serious charge. It is little wonder that Buchanan’s response was to abscond before he could be apprehended. (CJ iv. 507).

The investigations into Truth its Manifest did more than reveal a ‘scandalous’ book. They exposed to public view a clandestine network of individuals who were using print to mobilise opinion within and beyond Parliament for partisan purposes. By the mid-1640s, Parliament was deeply divided over the conduct of the war, the terms on which peace negotiations should be pursued with the King, and perhaps most contentiously of all, the settlement of the Church of England. Although opinion on these issues remained fluid, two distinct parliamentary parties, referred to by contemporaries as the Presbyterians and the Independents, had come into existence. We can detect by this time the same people working together with a high degree of consistency, and across both Houses, in pursuit of relatively clearly defined objectives.

What had contributed much to the crystallisation of these parties was the signing of the Solemn League and Covenant in the early autumn of 1643. The Scottish government, led by the Covenanters (so called after the 1638 National Covenant), agreed to send an army to aid Parliament, supported at England’s expense once it was over the border. In return, the Scots were promised reform of the English and Irish churches along Scottish lines, meaning principally the establishment of Presbyterianism, and the strengthening of the union between England and Scotland. Some form of Presbyterian church was broadly acceptable to many parliamentarians, whether they identified with the Presbyterian or Independent parties, but the question of recognition for ‘liberty of conscience’ was far more problematic. The formal commitment of the Scottish government and its Kirk to religious unity and uniformity, as expressed in the Solemn League, caused bitter disagreements with those Independents for whom religious toleration was fundamental to any peace settlement worth the name.

Like other Presbyterian polemicists, Buchanan was outraged at the heresies and errors that he believed Independency promoted. The Independents claimed they wanted ‘to seek the Truth of God more than others’ but, opined Buchanan, ‘God knows, they seek themselves and to set up their Fancies’. Buchanan went further, by portraying the Independent party in Parliament as a corrupt faction whose leading individuals were manipulating its procedures to satisfy their own ‘ambition and avarice’. Their enthusiasm for pulling down tyranny, and their friendliness towards the Scots in the early days of the alliance, had been a ruse to bring in ‘confusion’ in religion and ‘Anarchy’ in the state. All was done to enrich and empower themselves. (Truth its Manifest (1645), pp. 81, 127).

What made these imputations so ‘scandalous’ was that they had the ring of truth about them. This conspiratorialist analysis appealed to people resentful of a tax burden far greater than that imposed by Charles I, and tired of the exactions of the war committees set up all over the country to coordinate the raising of men and supplies. To those in the know, the Independents really were masters of the committees now proliferating in Parliament, adept as they were at getting their friends appointed to them and managing votes in their favour. A particular sensitivity for the Scots and their Presbyterian allies was the way in which the Independents had first manipulated, and then sidelined, the committee that had been created to manage the Anglo-Scottish war effort, known as the Committee of Both Kingdoms. It seemed entirely plausible that certain individuals were benefiting directly from Parliament’s formidable machinery for extracting the nation’s resources on an unprecedented scale. Why else had a war that many thought would be over in months, dragged on from one year to the next, seemingly without end?

What Buchanan had written was controversial enough, but his offenses were compounded by how he had come by his information and transmitted it into the public domain. Investigations spearheaded by the Independents in the House of Commons soon truffled out Buchanan’s relationship to other publications revealing of his connections. Buchanan was a Scot by birth and a scholar. He had travelled on the Continent and his contacts there were useful to advocates of the Solemn League seeking international support. At some point, Buchanan came to the attention of Robert Baillie (1602-62), a politically active Scottish cleric. After the signing of the Solemn League, Baillie was posted to London to represent Scottish interests at the Westminster Assembly, set up by Parliament to reform the Church of England. Baillie and Buchanan both operated in Presbyterian circles that included George Thomason, bookseller and magpie collector of printed works, James Cranford, a London minister and licenser of the press, and Robert Bostock, a London stationer known for publishing Covenanter material. By early 1645, Buchanan was sufficiently trusted to be given papers for publication from the Scottish commissioners who sat on the Committee of Both Kingdoms. Over the course of about a year, it seems Buchanan moved from facilitating the publication of the commissioners’ papers, to adding in his own polemical material alongside them, to moulding them into the original composition that became Truth its Manifest. While the relationship between Buchanan and the commissioners remains shadowy, the polemicist was no mere mouthpiece simply parroting the views of more powerful men. 

Buchanan’s publications show us something of the way in which new political practices, necessitated by the expansion of the state’s infrastructure, were being subjected to intensified public scrutiny. Many contemporaries were horrified by these developments, as ideals of consensus and unity, and social deference and order, were tested to breaking point by partisan writings and publication strategies. The interrogations by the parliamentary committee chaired by Lisle revealed public men using secret means and private associates to publish opinions they could not express themselves. Buchanan the self-professed truth-teller had asserted that the only way of cleansing Parliament from its corruption by the Independents was to prevent them hiding behind ‘mysteries of state’: what concerned the public must be known to the public. (Truth its Manifest (1645), p. 9).Yet here was evidence of the Scottish commissioners and their Presbyterian friends using devious methods to blacken their rivals and, ultimately, put pressure on Parliament. Who needed enemies like the royalist newsbook, Mercurius Aulicus, when a self-proclaimed friend was printing slanderous accusations against people who were meant to be his brothers-in-arms?

It could be argued that Buchanan’s activities did most damage, not to the Independents, but to the Scottish Covenanters, by reinforcing existing hostility towards them, further alienating their Presbyterian allies in Parliament, and exposing their own weakened ability to achieve the ends of the Solemn League through legitimate channels. Arguably, too, the reputation of Parliament itself was undermined by these partisan rivalries, as revelations about murky doings on both sides raised the question of whether anybody could be trusted to put the public good ahead of the rewards of worldly power. Buchanan was amongst those writers who had opened the way to far more radical critiques of the proper relationship between ‘the people’ and the Parliament of England, one with profound consequences for all the peoples of the British union.

L.S.

Professor Laura Stewart of the University of York, is the Editorial Board member for the 1640-1660 House of Lords section.

Laura’s blog surveys her forthcoming chapter in Parliament and Politics in Revolutionary Britain and Ireland, edited by Dr Alex Beeton, Research Fellow for the House of Lords 1640-1660 section. This exciting collection of the latest research on parliamentary politics in the revolutionary period will be published by Manchester University Press in 2026.

Further Reading:

John Adamson, ‘The Triumph of Oligarchy: The Management of War and the Committee of Both Kingdoms, 1644-1645’, in Chris R. Kyle and Jason Peacey (eds), Parliament at Work: Parliamentary Committees, Political Power and Public Access in Early Modern England (Woodbridge, 2002), 104-7.

Jason Peacey, ‘Print Culture, State Formation, and an Anglo-Scottish Public, 1640-1648’, Journal of British Studies 56:4 (2017), 816-35.

Valerie Pearl, ‘London Puritans and Scotch Fifth Columnists’, in A. E. J. Hollaender and William Kellaway (eds), Studies in London History: Presented to Philip Edmund Jones (London, 1969).

David Scott, ‘Party Politics in the Long Parliament, 1640-8’, in George Southcombe and Grant Tapsell (eds), Revolutionary England, c.1630-c.1660: Essays for Clive Holmes (Abingdon, 2017).

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

The seminar takes place on 3 February 2026, between 5:30 and 6:30 p.m. It is fully ‘hybrid’, which means you can attend either in-person in London at the IHR, or online via Zoom. Details of how to join the discussion are available here.

Political discourse is rooted in speech, and students of modern parliamentary politics have a wealth of material to draw on – Hansard, TV broadcasts of debates, newspaper reports, even WhatsApp messages. The picture for the House of Lords in the reign of Elizabeth I is very different. The principal source, the Lords’ Journal, was conceived by the Tudor clerks quite narrowly as a record of business transacted and decisions reached, but with a veil drawn over the accompanying discussions, which were, after all, meant to be confidential.

A typical page in the manuscript Journal has the date of the current sitting at the top, the date of the next sitting at the bottom, and three columns down the rest of the page; of these, two are used for recording which bishops and lay peers attended that day, while the third column, on the right-hand side, is reserved for any actual proceedings. (Not until 1597 was it thought necessary to allocate more than one page per sitting, to allow for a more detailed account of events.)

The final column might list bills read, and the verdicts agreed on them, reports of conferences with the Commons or audiences with the queen, or such mundane matters as apologies for absence. Or it might not – for some sittings no business is listed at all, creating the impression that the peers were twiddling their thumbs or perhaps nodding off to sleep.

By comparison, the Commons’ Journal, augmented in the latter years of Elizabeth’s reign by several private diaries, is full of summarised speeches, disputes and other incidents which give a good sense of the moods, initiatives and objectives of the lower House. Unsurprisingly, historians have tended to rely on these sources to reconstruct the political narrative of the Elizabethan parliaments, in the process exaggerating the importance of the Commons at the expense of the poorly reported Lords.

In recent decades some effort has been made to correct this imbalance, utilising a variety of different approaches. During the 1980s and 1990s the Lords’ management of legislation was examined in great detail by Sir Geoffrey Elton and David Dean. In conjunction with their research, T. E. Hartley published three volumes of material supplementing the Lords’ and Commons’ Journals, including a few actual speeches made by bishops or lay peers. Around the same time, a ground-breaking study of the 1559 Parliament by Norman Jones demonstrated how manoeuvrings in the Lords could be illuminated through reports from outside Parliament, close reading of the chronology of events at Westminster, and careful examination of the wider political context.

What was missing from these endeavours was a detailed understanding of the individuals who sat in the upper House, a gap in our knowledge which is now close to being filled by the History of Parliament’s project on the Elizabethan Lords. Since 2020 nearly 250 new biographies have been researched and written, reconstructing the lives of the bishops and lay peers who participated in Elizabeth’s 13 parliamentary sessions, identifying their political networks and personal objectives at Westminster, and pondering the place that Parliament occupied in their wider careers.

In following these men’s careers in the Lords over several decades, it has become possible to develop a sense of what ‘normal’ business may have involved and the routine patterns by which things got done. That in turn allows us to observe anomalies in those patterns, and to consider the political forces which operated in those grey areas for which we have only patchy documentation.

However, it is still enormously helpful to pursue these questions in a scenario where we have enough contextual data to speculate with some confidence on how individual peers may have behaved. Accordingly, the focus of this seminar is the Parliament of 1584-5, and specifically the struggles over religion that gave this session much of its flavour.

A quarter of a century after the Elizabethan church settlement of 1559, English Protestantism had reached another crossroads. The first generation of Elizabethan bishops, many notable for their evangelical fervour, were mostly dead, their hopes of continuing reformation disappointed. Their successors, headed by the recently appointed archbishop of Canterbury, John Whitgift, were mostly content to defend what was now the ecclesiastical status quo, despite the poor quality of many clergy, and numerous abuses in appointments and funding.

Indeed, upon becoming archbishop, Whitgift had attempted to clamp down on Protestant clergy who refused to conform to those aspects of the Elizabethan settlement that seemed to hark back to Catholicism. In the process, Whitgift incurred the wrath of Elizabeth’s two most powerful advisers, Lord Burghley and the earl of Leicester, who believed that the primate’s tactics would weaken the Protestant cause at a time when English Catholic numbers were rising again and the threat of war with Catholic Spain was also increasing. Despite enjoying the continuing support of the queen, Whitgift was forced to scrap his plans. Even so, when Parliament met in November 1584, the archbishop came under attack again, this time from the fervently Protestant House of Commons, which petitioned for major reform of the Church, and introduced numerous bills to the same end.

But what of the Lords? When this Parliament opened, only 11 out of a possible 25 other bishops were present to offer the primate their support. On the face of things Whitgift was isolated and on the back foot. He continued to face hostility from Burghley and Leicester, and three of the Commons’ provocative bills were passed by the peers, before being vetoed by Elizabeth.

The bare facts look bad – but they are not the full picture. By exploring the group dynamics of the bishops in 1584-5, and drawing on contextual documentation both from the Commons and from outside Parliament, this paper will argue that Whitgift stood his ground, gathering his closest allies around him, and in the process consolidating the Church hierarchy’s revised priorities. Moreover, although Burghley and Leicester were broadly sympathetic to the demands of the Commons, they also knew that they could not afford to oppose the queen’s own views on the Church too strongly, and were therefore obliged to moderate their attacks on the archbishop. That sense of royal protection for the bishops in turn sheds light on their status within the Lords during Elizabeth’s reign.

The seminar takes place on 3 February 2026, between 5:30 and 6:30 p.m. It is fully ‘hybrid’, which means you can attend either in-person in London at the IHR, or online via Zoom. Details of how to join the discussion are available here.

PMH

Further reading:

G.R. Elton, The Parliament of England 1559-1581 (1986)

David Dean, Law-making and Society in Late Elizabethan England (1996)

T. E. Hartley (ed.), Proceedings in the Parliaments of Elizabeth I (3 volumes, 1981-95)

Norman L. Jones, Faith by Statute (1982)

The History of Parliament has a vacancy for a research fellow on its 1660-1832 House of Lords project. The successful candidate will have a PhD in British political or cultural history in the eighteenth century. They will join a small team of professional historians researching and writing the biographies of peers and bishops who sat in the Lords in the 1715-1790 period. They will also contribute to the project’s academic and public engagement activities and the development of new digital resources. It is expected that the successful applicant will start in summer 2026.

Full vacancy information, person specification and application details can be found here:

About the 1660-1832 House of Lords project

The 1660-1832 House of Lords project was founded in 1999 in response to a recognition that the History, which had previously covered only the Commons, needed to produce comparable work on the upper chamber. Given the long sweep of the project, it was conceived from the outset that it would be divided into three parts, and part one of the project, covering 1660-1715, was published in 2016.

The project team is now mid-way through covering the second phase, covering the period 1715-1790. This is an exciting project that offers an opportunity to reappraise a key period in British history and the dynamic role the Lords played within it. In writing the lives of the 927 British peers, bishops and Scots representative peers who sat during the period the section explores the changing status of the upper chamber in an era dominated by significant figures in the Commons, such as Sir Robert Walpole, Charles James Fox and William Pitt (elder and younger – the former subsequently equally important in the Lords), but also seeing the ongoing influence of major aristocratic characters, such as the 3rd earl of Sunderland, duke of Newcastle and 2nd marquess of Rockingham. Many members of the Lords held significant office in the period and several major set pieces happened there. The project will explore the composition of political parties, relations between Parliament and the Court, including the opposition courts at Leicester House and Carlton House, the impact of war with America and relations with the colonies more broadly. A survey volume is also being prepared and the work will provide a key resource for political, cultural and local historians interested in politics and society in the eighteenth century.

Alongside research and writing, staff are expected to support the Trust’s engagement work. This could include giving academic papers; attending and helping to organise academic conferences and seminars; collaborating on related research programmes and exhibitions; supporting the Trust’s events in Parliament; and responding to public and media inquiries. The successful candidate will also be expected to contribute to the section’s social media accounts under the guise of ‘The Georgian Lords’, as well as posting shorter articles on our blogpost, The Georgian Lords.

Job description: research fellow

The History of Parliament is seeking a research fellow to work on the House of Lords 1660-1832 section (currently working on 1715-1790). Working in the section with the editor, Dr Robin Eagles, the postholder will be responsible for:

Researching, writing and revising biographies for the 1715-1790 volumes to a high academic standard, using online resources supplemented by work in libraries and archives using both printed and manuscript sources

Delivering biographies to an agreed timeframe, making changes required by the editor

Actively assisting the History of Parliament’s blogging, social media and engagement activities, preparing and delivering public talks, conference/seminar papers on themes related to the project, supporting the Trust’s wider academic engagement activities, and assisting with inquiries from the public, Parliament and the media

Contributing to the History of Parliament’s development of new digital resources and helping to maintain existing databases and websites

Full vacancy information and person specification can be found here.

A History of Parliament Application Form can be downloaded here:

Note: your application must include:

• Completed application form
• A recent CV
• A letter outlining your suitability for the role. Please refer to the person specification as a guide. Your letter should also include a brief 250 word statement highlighting a particular aspect of 18^th-century history that you believe is ripe for re-appraisal.
• A sample piece of work of c. 10,000 words.

Please send the above to the office manager, Adam Tucker, at atucker@histparl.ac.uk  by 16th February 2026. You must ensure that the job title is included in the email subject line.

If you would like to discuss any aspect of the appointment please contact the History of Parliament’s director Dr Jennifer Davey at jdavey@histparl.ac.uk or the project’s editor, Dr Robin Eagles at reagles@histparl.ac.uk.

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

Here’s Connie Jeffery, our Public Engagement Manager, with a recap of 2025 at the HPT…

2025 has been another busy year for the History of Parliament team, and eagle-eyed followers of our project might have noticed a few changes in recent months…

The most obvious being a new logo for the organisation!

Throughout 2025 our Public Engagement team undertook a wide scale rebranding project, resulting in a new visual identity for the HPT. And it isn’t just a new logo. In November we debuted new banners, leaflets and other new promotional material at the IHR’s History Day in Senate House. Keep an eye out at future History of Parliament events and on social media as we continue to phase in our new look into 2026!

This rebrand is just one part of the History of Parliament’s wider website redevelopment project, which has seen brilliant progress in the past twelve months. Earlier in the year Dr Martin Spychal, Senior Research Fellow in the 1832-1945 House of Commons project, was appointed Digital Humanities Lead, tasked with continuing to redevelop our online database and public facing website, as well as thinking about how the organisation can move forward into a more digital world. We’re excited to see where this development leads in the coming months.

The organisation’s other major change in 2025 was a move into a new office! HPT staff spent the summer organising and packing up our former home in Bloomsbury Square in preparation for our move to Old Street, where we now reside. This was a major task for all of our research sections, many of whom had over twenty years of research notes, books and resources to sort through. Our new office marks a new era for the organisation, as we embrace a more collaborative approach to working and explore a new part of the city.

Amidst all of this change, work on our publications continued throughout the year. In 2025 over 300 biographies were written, totalling nearly 1 million words! In addition, our contemporary history section completed 18 new oral history interviews with former MPs and deposited 26 interviews at the British Library, where they will be archived and made available to the public.

Our staff also contributed to the more than 100 articles published on our website this year. Our most read post from 2025 was Dr Andrew Thrush’s look at how Elizabethan England reacted to an earthquake in 1580. But it is an earlier article from Andrew that takes the crown as our most read post in 2025! Originally published in 2022, read his study of ‘The Execution of Thomas Howard’ here: 

Colleagues continued to represent the History of Parliament and spread their knowledge across various media outlets this year. Dr Robin Eagles was a frequent voice across local radio stations and published an article in History Today, Dr Kathryn Rix was interviewed on BBC Radio 4 to discuss how women in the 19^th century viewed Parliamentary debates, and Dr Alex Beeton also recently featured on Today in Parliament to talk about Christmas in Parliament.

Our Head of Contemporary History, Dr Emma Peplow, was a recurring voice on BBC Radio 5 Live’s Matt Chorley show. Across the year Emma joined Matt to talk about the statues in and around Parliament, providing information about the figures depicted and how these works were commissioned. Emma wrote about some of the statues she profiled in this article.

Dr Martin Spychal also featured on national radio; in November BBC Radio 4 broadcast ‘Materials of State’, a series hosted by David Cannadine examining the history of the British constitution through the objects, for which Martin acted as series researcher. I was personally excited to be involved in this project too, including attending an interview with the new Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod, Ed Davis, himself and seeing Black Rod- the object! – in person.

The HPT continued the success of our own podcast series, Tales from the Green Benches: an Oral History of Parliament, too. In June we hosted a special ‘live’ episode of the series, featuring reflections from some of the project’s recent interviewees, Anne Milton former Conservative MP for Guildford, and Gisela, Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston, former Labour MP for Birmingham Edgbaston, as well as project founder Dr Priscila Pivatto. The event was recorded and the live episode is still available to listen to wherever you get your podcasts:

Elsewhere within Parliament, in March we held an event titled ‘London and Parliament: From Medieval to Modern’, which included representatives from all HPT research sections and from UCL’s MA Public History course, who worked with us over a term-long placement. In April we then hosted a panel event, which tracked the topic of reform in the House of Lords from the 18^th century through to the current day.

In November members of the HPT team headed to No.11 Downing Street to co-sponsor an event on the history of female cabinet ministers. Our director Dr Jennifer Davey chaired a panel featuring historians of women in Parliament and a selection of former female cabinet ministers- as well as an introduction from Chancellor Rachel Reeves.

And finally, two weeks ago we welcomed Rt Hon. Nick Thomas-Symonds, Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Minister for the Constitution and European Union Relations), who gave our Annual Lecture for 2025. The lecture, ‘Clement Attlee’s Labour Governments of 1945-51’, was presented to a sold-out audience, who stayed to enjoy a mince pie and glass of wine to see out the HPT’s year!

Many of our colleagues co-hosted events outside of Westminster too, including two workshops at the British Library: one on Warren Hastings, and another discussing Peter McLagan, Scotland’s first Black MP. Dr Alex Beeton organised a conference on ‘Parliament and the Church, c.1530-1630’, and members of all research sections spoke at an online event on Midlands history.

In staffing news, with Dr Martin Spychal taking on the role of Digital Humanities Lead, Dr Alex Beeton has stepped into the post of Academic Engagement Lead, with support from Dr Naomi-Lloyd Jones, who joined the HPT in late 2024.

Finally, in the summer the team said goodbye and good luck to Dr Stuart Handley, who retired from the HPT after many years of work across our Commons 1690-1715, Lords 1660-1715 and the Lords 1715-1790 projects. His presence in the office is sorely missed, but friends know that he’s never too far away- just head to the IHR!

Thank you to all of our friends, followers and contributors for another brilliant year for the History of Parliament. We’re looking forward to seeing what 2026 brings for us!

CJ

In the study of medieval landholding, it is a common theme that an aristocratic marriage might have the most unpredictable of material consequences. A bride, with scant prospects of inheritance at her marriage, might, in her descendants, bring an unlooked-for windfall to the groom’s family. It was, famously, such a match, made in the late 1410s, that brought the great Mowbray dukedom of Norfolk to their social inferiors, the Howards, some sixty years later. Of more general interest, however, are those matches that had profound political consequences, largely unanticipated or entirely disregarded when they were made.

Of these one of the most consequential is that of Edward III’s grandson, Richard of Conisbrough, younger brother of Edward, duke of York, to that King’s great-granddaughter, Anne, sister of Edmund Mortimer, earl of March. Even when it was completed in 1408, some at least must have been aware of its potential implications. If the cards of birth and death were to fall in a certain way, it would bring about two profound political changes. First, it would unite the lands of York and Mortimer and so create the largest aristocratic inheritance in the realm. Second, the beneficiary of that union would be the representative of two claims to the throne, the one in the male line from Edward III’s fourth son, Richard’s father, Edmund of Langley (d.1402), duke of York, and the other, much more importantly, from his second, Lionel of Antwerp (d.1368), duke of Clarence. 

Even in 1408, this convergence of lands and titles was a distinct possibility. Only one life, that of his brother, stood between the groom and the duchy of York, and, significantly, that life was unlikely to be perpetuated in issue. The duke had no issue by his wife, the twice-widowed Philippa Mohun, who was several years his senior, and it was clear that, unless she died and the duke remarried, his younger brother only needed to survive him to be his heir. The bride’s prospects were less clear, but hardly remote. Only two lives, those of her unmarried brothers, Edmund and Roger, lay between her and a half share (with her sister) of the earldom of March. With the birth of a son, Richard, to the couple on 22 September 1411, there was a potential long-term beneficiary should the male line of the Mortimers fail, and, as seemed highly probable, the duke died childless. 

In these circumstances, a supporter of the house of Lancaster would not have been unduly pessimistic in predicting that the greatest aristocratic inheritance in the land would come into the hands of the representative of the Mortimer claimant. In 1399 the political nation had adjudged the seniority of that claim to that of the Lancastrian line of Edward III’s third son, John of Gaunt, negated by a female descent (through Clarence’s only child, Philippa, wife of an earlier Edmund Mortimer (d.1381), earl of March).  That judgment, however, was not beyond revocation.

The marriage thus posed obvious, albeit contingent, dangers to the house of Lancaster. The Mortimer claim had served as a rallying point for rebels against Henry IV’s rule, most notably the Percy rising of 1403. Further, in February 1405, the hazard of a hostile alliance between the houses of York and Mortimer had been made evident when Richard’s sister, Constance, Lady Despenser, abducted the two Mortimer boys from Windsor castle.  Her aim was to take them to their uncle, Sir Edmund Mortimer, an adherent of the Welsh rebel, Owain Glyn Dŵr. It was fortunate for Henry, that the boys were quickly recaptured.  

This raises an obvious question: how did a marriage so apparently pregnant with danger to the house of Lancaster come about?  It is likely that Richard met his future bride in 1404 when he was campaigning against Glyn Dŵr, and she was at the Welsh castle of Powis in the custody of her mother, Eleanor, and stepfather, Edward, Lord Cherleton, one of the leading English commanders in Wales. When they married, they did so secretly, without the papal licence necessary to dispense them from the disability of consanguinity and without the reading of banns. As a result, they were excommunicated, but, on 23 May 1408, they secured papal absolution, and their marriage was confirmed. This secrecy may reflect the couple’s awareness of the political sensitivity of their union, yet, secret or not, the need for a papal licence offered the opportunity for external intervention. If Henry IV had wished to intervene, that was the moment he might have lobbied at the papal curia against the granting of the licence.  

If this lack of apparent intervention suggests that Henry IV did not view the marriage as threatening, his son and successor, had a livelier appreciation of the dangers posed by the Mortimer claim. When Henry V acceded to the throne in 1413, the earl of March, the sole male representative of the main Mortimer line after the death of his younger brother, Roger, remained unmarried. Soon, however, he found himself a bride in Anne Stafford. She had the prospect of a great inheritance, for she was heiress-presumptive to her unmarried brother, Humphrey, later duke of Buckingham. The marriage, like that of Anne Mortimer, thus raised the possibility that two great aristocratic inheritances would be united in the hands of the Mortimer claimant. Henry V reacted with characteristic ruthlessness. On grounds of doubtful legality, he imposed a massive fine of 10,000 marks on the earl. The mystery is why the young earl was free to choose his own bride. He had been in royal wardship since 1398 and over the canonical age of consent since 1405. The Lancastrian regime may have calculated that the longer he remained unmarried, the greater the probability that he would die childless. The great fine may reflect the King’s anger at the frustration of that hope.

In this context, Richard of Conisbrough’s marriage is yet more surprising. If the extinction of the Mortimer line was the calculation, it was folly not to have prevented the marriage of his sister into the ducal house of York. What Henry V feared in the earl of March’s marriage, namely an expanded landed inheritance in the hands of the Mortimer claimant, was already in prospect because of this earlier match. Indeed, it was this marriage that later turned this fear into reality, for the dynastic cards played out horribly unfavourably for the house of Lancaster. The childless deaths of the duke of York at the battle of Agincourt in 1415 and the earl of March in Ireland in 1425 brought about the union of lands and titles in the hands of son of the marriage between York and Mortimer.  From the dynastic viewpoint, another childless death was equally important.  Anne’s sister, Eleanor, had, at about the time of her sister’s marriage, married Sir Edward Courtenay, son and heir-apparent of the blind earl of Devon, but she died childless at some unknown date between 1414 and 1418.  Had she had male issue, that issue would have been coheir to the Mortimer inheritance with her infant nephew, the duke of York. The claim to the Crown would then have become divided and, as long as both these male lines survived, beyond realization. As this did not happen, the marriage of 1408, and the series of childless deaths that followed it, brought the grandson of that marriage, Edward IV, the claim to the throne he vindicated in 1461. 

Further reading

T.B. Pugh, Henry V and the Southampton Plot of 1415 (Southampton Record Series, 1988)

J. Evans, ‘Edmund of Langley and his Tomb’, Archaeologia, xlvi. 297-328. For more information on the tomb of Edmund duke of York and Isabella of Castile.

Peter McLagan senior was born in 1774 in Moulin, Perthshire. He was the son of a tenant farmer, John McLagan, and Girzel ‘Grace’ McLagan, née McInroy. McLagan senior had travelled to Demerara (modern-day Guyana) by around 1797, where his uncle, James McInroy, was an enslaver, merchant trader and plantation owner. McInroy was a founding partner of McInroy, Sandbach & Co., part of the ‘mercantile conglomerate’ that later became Sandbach Tinné & Co.

McLagan senior managed the enslaved labour forces on several plantations on the Essequibo coast during the first two decades of the nineteenth century, most of which were owned by (or financially connected to) McInroy, Sandbach & Co. Two of these plantations were the Coffee Grove and Caledonia estates. In 1820 467 enslaved persons were recorded on both estates, where a mixture of coffee, sugar and cotton were grown. The slave-produced coffee, sugar and cotton (and rum) was exported primarily to the UK, where it was distributed by the Liverpool and Glasgow partner branches of McInroy, Sandbach and Co.

McLagan senior managed Coffee Grove and Caledonia as a joint enterprise from at least 1804. By 1815 he had made sufficient income to become a co-owner of the estates and a partner (with a 5% stake) in McInroy, Sandbach & Co. He sold out of McInroy, Sandbach & Co. in 1821, when his 5% share was worth at least £12,500, but continued to own Coffee Grove & Caledonia until at least the late 1830s. In 1829 his 50% stake in these plantations (his co-owner was Samuel Sandbach) was valued at £31,200 (for more on calculating wealth in modern terms see below).

Outside of plantation management on the Essequibo coast, McLagan senior lived in the elite Kingstown district of Georgetown from at least 1814, probably at a property he owned on Water Street. A Presbyterian, in 1815 he was a founding committee member and benefactor of St Andrew’s Kirk, Georgetown. Two years later he purchased a second Georgetown property in the Cummingsburg district.

Although he did not marry until his return to the UK, McLagan senior was the father of two sons born in Demerara, John (1821-1850) and Peter junior (1823-1900). The latter served as MP for Linlithgowshire between 1865 and 1893, and a number of contemporary sources indicate he was of African or Caribbean heritage. No formal record identifying either boy’s mother has yet been discovered. However, between 1820 and 1823, McLagan senior purchased a Barbadian-born enslaved woman named Filly and her three children (Henrietta, Joe and Robert) from another domestic residence in Georgetown.

Filly and her children were enslaved at McLagan’s senior’s Water Street residence between 1820 and 1823, where they continued to live until at least August 1834. Filly, whose story I’ll explore in the next article in this series, may have been John and Peter’s mother, or possibly their wet nurse. Alternatively, the timing of her sale to McLagan senior, and the birth of his two sons, may have been a coincidence.

McLagan senior left Demerara with his two sons John and Peter in June 1825 on board the Boode. The boat, which was owned by McInroy, Sandbach & Co., was loaded with an extensive cargo of sugar, rum, cotton, coffee and ‘one pipe’ of madeira wine. McLagan senior and his children arrived in Liverpool in August 1825, following which they lived between Perth and Edinburgh. In 1827 McLagan senior married Elizabeth Hagart Steuart. The family subsequently moved to 77 Great King Street, Edinburgh. Elizabeth died in November 1833.

Over the following three decades McLagan senior played a limited role in Scottish public life. Politically he was a Conservative: he was probably the Peter McLagan who signed the Edinburgh anti-reform petition in April 1831, and in the later 1830s he offered some financial assistance to Conservative electioneering efforts. He supported the authority of the Court of Session over rights of patronage in the Scottish church in the lead up to the Disruption, and remained a member of the Kirk following the establishment of the Free Church.

By January 1836 McLagan senior had been awarded extensive ‘compensation’ under the terms of the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act for formerly enslaved persons at his Water Street residence and Coffee Grove and Caledonia estates in British Guiana (formerly Demerara). On 14 December 1835 he received £189 0s. 3d. for Filly and her two surviving children (Joe and Robert), who continued to live at Water Street. On 18 January 1836 he was awarded a share (probably 50%) of £21,480 10s. 10d. for 407 formerly enslaved persons on the Coffee Grove and Caledonia plantations.

In 1842 McLagan senior purchased the Pumpherston and Calderbank estates in Linlithgowshire (modern West Lothian), which covered around 1,000 acres. Following this he referred to himself as a ‘landed proprietor’ in official documentation. That said, he continued to live primarily in Edinburgh, while entrusting the management of the estates to his son, Peter McLagan junior. McLagan senior died of a ‘disease of [the] heart’ in April 1860, aged 85, at his Great King Street residence.

An exact probate valuation for McLagan senior’s estates has not yet been discovered. However, in a subsequent interview, Peter McLagan junior claimed that his father had been ‘worth £100,000’ at his death. While this may have been a retrospective embellishment, it is in keeping with McLagan junior’s own place in Britain’s ‘Upper 10,000’ by the 1870s.

If McLagan senior had died with an estate worth around £100,000 in 1860 it would have comfortably made him one of the richest 10,000 people in the UK, and one of the 1,000 richest people in Scotland. Trying to make modern comparisons of estate values and personal wealth of historic figures is an imperfect science. However, the online historical financial tool MeasuringWorth does offer some comparative figures. It suggests that dying with an estate worth £100,000 in 1860 is equivalent to leaving assets with a ‘relative income’ value of around £128 million in 2025.

Check back for the next article in the series in early 2026. To read the first article in Martin’s series click here

This article reflects ongoing research into Peter McLagan (1865-1900). The author would like to thank Dr Alison Clark for sharing her research on McLagan senior and Sandbach Tinne & Co. and the participants of a workshop on Peter McLagan held at the National Archives in October 2025. If you would like to discuss this article and the sources used, please contact Martin at mspychal@histparl.ac.uk.

Suggested Reading

A. Clark, ‘Expanding the Boundaries of Empire, 1790-1838: Scottish Traders in the Southeast Caribbean: Slavery, Cotton and the Rise of Sandbach Tinné & Co.’, PhD Univ. Edinburgh (2024)

M. Al Nasir, Searching for My Slave Roots: From Guyana’s Sugar Plantations to Cambridge (2025)

M. Al Nasir (ed.), ‘Sandbach Tinne Collection’, Cambridge Digital Library

D. Alston, Slaves and Highlanders: Silenced Histories of Scotland and the Caribbean (2021)

N. Draper, The Price of Emancipation: Slave-Ownership, Compensation and British Society at the End of Slavery (2013)

C. Hall, N. Draper, K. McClelland, K. Donington & R. Lang, Legacies of British Slave-Ownership: Colonial Slavery and the Formation of Victorian Britain (2014)

‘Peter McLagan’, Centre for the Study of Legacies of British Slavery, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/41631

E. A. Cameron, ‘McLagan, Peter (1822/3-1900)’, Oxford DNB (2023), www.oxforddnb.com

Scotlands People, ‘Our records: Peter McLagan (1823–1900, British Liberal Party politician and Scotland’s first black MP’ (2022)

Following the prorogation of Parliament at the end of Mary 1775, the situation changed for the worse, as news of the armed confrontation at Lexington and Concord in April reached Britain. Following that, reports of Britain’s bloody pyrrhic victory in June at Bunker Hill (Charlestown) arrived in London on 25 July. Almost immediately the government of Lord North decided on sterner measures against the unruly colonists. The principal minister co-ordinating the deployment of troops was North’s step-brother, William Legge, 2nd earl of Dartmouth, secretary of state for America. The office had only existed since 1768 and Dartmouth, who came from a family that had long contributed officials, had held it since August 1772.

Dartmouth’s papers suggest that he was efficient in preparing for an increased military presence in America. As someone who had always sought conciliation, more troublesome to him were plans for a Royal Proclamation declaring the American colonies ‘in rebellion’ and thus that a state of war existed between Britain and America. On 1 February 1775, he had refused ‘to pronounce any certain opinion’ regarding the earl of Chatham’s conciliation bill, and even admitted he ‘had no objection to the bill being received’. [Almon, Parl. Reg., ii. 23] Similarly, in August, Dartmouth had feared that a formal declaration of war would jeopardize negotiations. He held off on agreeing to the Proclamation for as long as he could on the news that the Continental Congress was sending new proposals for a settlement: the so-called ‘Olive Branch Petition’. By late summer, however, the government was in belligerent mood, and on 23 August the Proclamation of Rebellion was promulgated.

Thus, when Parliament resumed on 26 October, Britain and the colonies were formally at war. Even Lord North ‘had changed his pacific language and was now for vigorous measures’. [H. Walpole, Last Journals, i. 490] One result was a ministerial reshuffle over 9-10 November. This gave the government a radically new complexion, and Dartmouth was moved from the American office, apparently unwillingly.

To soften the blow, the king offered Dartmouth his choice of being appointed groom of the stole, secretary of state for the southern department, or taking a pension. Dartmouth turned them all down and instead insisted on taking over as lord privy seal. The king had intended the place for Thomas Thynne, 3rd Viscount Weymouth, but made him secretary of state for the southern province instead. Dartmouth, George III complained, was not ‘in the least accommodating’ by ‘carrying obstinacy greatly too far’. [Fortescue, iii. 282-88]

The man who Replaced Dartmouth as secretary of state for America was Lord George Germain, a younger son of the duke of Dorset. Horace Walpole described him as ‘of very sound parts, of distinguished bravery, and of an honourable eloquence, but hot, haughty, ambitious, obstinate’. [Walpole, Mems. of George II (Yale), i. 190]

In 1758 Germain (at that point known as Sackville) had been sent to Germany as second-in-command of the British forces and was later promoted commander-in-chief. At the battle of Minden on 1 August 1759, though, he failed to obey orders given by his superior, Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, commander-in-chief of the Allied army, to lead the British cavalry against the shattered French forces. The prince charged him with disobedience, while Sackville held that he had received conflicting orders, often delivered in German, and had been stationed on difficult terrain. He was castigated as a coward, even a traitor, by the enemies he had gained by his high-handed behaviour. Ever self-confident, Sackville insisted on convening a court martial so he could justify himself. According to Walpole, ‘Nothing was timid, nothing humble, in his behaviour’ [Mems. of George II, iii. 101-105], but the court declared him ‘unfit to serve… in any military capacity whatsoever’.

The shame of Minden always hung over Sackville, and for the next decade and a half he worked to rehabilitate his reputation. His chances were improved by the death of George II, who had developed a violent personal dislike of him. Sackville looked forward to better treatment from George III, but even he was unwilling to take a disgraced soldier back into favour immediately. Sackville relied for his slow recovery on his service in the Commons, where he advocated a firm line against the colonists, arguing at one point that ‘The ministers… must perceive how ill they are requited for that extraordinary lenity and indulgence with which they treated… these undutiful children’.[HMC Stopford-Sackville, i. 119]

In 1769 Sackville took the surname Germain, after inheriting property from Lady Elizabeth Germain. He continued speaking against the colonists throughout the first half of the 1770s and on 7 February 1775 he was the Commons’ messenger to the Lords requesting a conference on the address declaring Massachusetts in rebellion. He seemed, thus, an obvious choice as North looked for a new direction in the morass of the American crisis. Walpole summarized the effect that the change had on the war and the ultimate loss in America: ‘Till Lord George came into place, there had been no spirit or sense in the conduct of the war… [He was] indefatigable in laying plans for raising and hiring troops’. [Walpole, Last Journals i. 511, ii. 49]  Some contemporaries went so far as to suggest that Germain’s belligerence towards the Americans was an attempt to put to rest the shame of Minden. As Edward Gibbon put it, Germain hoped to ‘reconquer Germany in America’.

CGDL

Further reading:

P.D.G. Thomas, Tea Party to Independence: The Third Phase of the American Revolution, 1773-1776 (Oxford, 1991)

Andrew O’Shaughnessy, The Men who Lost America (Yale, 2013), esp. ch. 5

Alan Valentine, Lord George Germain (Oxford, 1962)

HMC Dartmouth

HMC Stopford Sackville, vols. I and II

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