The finalized ‘Articles of Union’ were signed at Whitehall on 22 July 1706 and formally presented to Queen Anne the following day. They were considered by the Scottish Parliament during October 1706-January 1707, and an Act was then passed declaring Scotland’s assent. The Articles were then debated at Westminster, first by the Commons, then the Lords, during February 1707. A bill was passed for ratifying the Articles to which the Queen gave her assent in person at the House of Lords on 6 March.

After the Scottish Parliament had passed its ratifying Act it had turned to the question of Scotland’s future parliamentary representation. Article 22 of the Treaty had decreed that 16 peers and 45 commoners were to represent Scotland at Westminster, leaving it to Scotland’s Parliament to settle the detail. The Edinburgh parliament was a unicameral body which, by the eve of the Union, had grown to consist of a ‘theoretical’ total of 302, made up of some 143 hereditary peers, 92 ‘shire’ or county commissioners, and 67 burgh commissioners. Inevitably, Scotland’s loss of its representative body – symbolizing the loss of national sovereignty – in favour of a much reduced representation at Westminster produced deep resentment among the Scottish populace.

At the end of January 1707, following a series of ill-attended sittings, the Scottish Parliament passed legislation setting out the procedures for electing the 16 peers and 45 commoners. The 16 representative peers were to be chosen by the entire body of Scottish peers through ‘open election’ rather than by ballot. Each elected peer was to serve for the duration of one Parliament. Upon the dissolution of Parliament all Scottish peers would be summoned by royal proclamation to the Palace of Holyroodhouse, where the names of peers were called over and each peer would then read out his list of 16 nominees. It became standard practice for governments to canvass their preferred choices, thus ensuring a controllable bloc of support in the Upper House. The practice of electing ‘representative peers’ of Scotland was to continue until it was abolished by the Peerage Act of 1963.

Far more contentious was the process of allocating the 45 commoner representatives between the shires and burghs. It was eventually fixed at 30 for the shires and 15 for the burghs, but it entailed a substantial redrawing of the electoral map of Scotland. Most of the 33 Scottish counties acquired a single Member of Parliament, but with the six smallest counties being required to alternate in pairs from one election to the next. The county franchise, however, remained unchanged. The 66 royal burghs were now grouped together into 14 ‘burgh districts’, each containing four or five burghs. Each district returned a single MP while Edinburgh retained the right to elect its own Member, making the total of 15. Within each district the place of election rotated from one election to the next according to the order of precedence used in the rolls of the Scottish parliament and as laid down in the Scottish elections act.

Since the Union was to take effect from 1 May 1707, the Treaty declared that the first Parliament of Great Britain was to last for the duration of the current parliament at Westminster. Members of the Scottish parliament who had opposed the Union pressed for a general election in Scotland to elect the 45 Scots MPs. But it was agreed instead that the first Scots MPs should be chosen from, and elected by, the existing parliament in Edinburgh rather than run the risk of allowing Scotland’s small electorate an early opportunity to elect an anti-Union majority. Virtually all the peers and commoners selected had supported the Union and most could be counted on to support the Court in the new Parliament.

The Scottish parliament gathered for the last time on 25 Mar. 1707 and was formally closed by the Queen’s lord high commissioner, the duke of Queensberry. At Westminster the current session ended on 24 Apr. when Parliament was prorogued until 30 April. On that day, a small number of peers gathered in the Upper House (to which the handful of MPs attending in the Commons was also summoned), to hear a proclamation read declaring that the new Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain had now replaced the separate English and Scottish parliaments. A further proclamation of 5 June declared that it would assemble at Westminster on 23 October.

When the new Parliament duly convened on that day the first business in the Commons was to choose a new Speaker. What was usually a political trial of strength was on this occasion a good-natured formality, with the preceding Speaker, John Smith, being unanimously called again to the Chair. In a neatly orchestrated move, the nomination was seconded by the Scots MP, Francis Montgomerie, who, having served with Smith as a Union commissioner, commended Smith’s contribution to the negotiations.

Scots MPs accustomed to the ponderous formality of proceedings in Edinburgh found it necessary to adapt to the cut and thrust style of debate at Westminster. The general election in 1708 gave Scottish voters their first chance of electing representatives to the united Parliament. But the years immediately ahead saw Scottish MPs frequently at odds with British ministers over failure to honour vital aspects of the Treaty.

Further Reading

P.W.J. Riley, The Union of England and Scotland (Manchester 1978).

M. Brown and A.J. Mann, The History of the Scottish Parliament, 1567-1707 (Edinburgh, 2005)

This is a revised version of the article ‘England, Scotland and the Treaty of Union, 1706-08′ by Andrew Hanham, originally posted on historyofparliamentonline.org.

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

Every 30 January, the rhythm of the parliamentary session in the 17th and 18th centuries was adjusted to make way for the annual commemoration sermon, marking the death of Charles I in 1649. It usually fell to the most junior of the bishops to preach to the Lords in Westminster Abbey, while a senior member of the clergy would perform the same service for the Commons in St Margaret’s. Themed as they were around the subject of expiation for the sins of the nation, the sermons became steadily less well attended as the years went by and by the second half of the 18th century some, like John Wilkes, thought that they should be scrapped and replaced with a day of national rejoicing. Wilkes always made a point of staying away from the chamber on 30 January.

In a similar (though more celebratory) way, the date of the current monarch’s accession was also the occasion for the Members decamping from their chambers and heading across the way to listen to a sermon. For those living under George I, this took place on 1 August and the very first anniversary of his accession in 1715 was marked with an address by the newly minted bishop of Oxford, John Potter (1673/4-1747).

Potter’s background was unusual, though not entirely unique, for an 18th-century bishop. His father had been a linen draper in Wakefield and, more to the point, had been a nonconformist. Potter had been raised as such and educated at the local grammar school (now one of the constituent parts of the Wakefield Grammar School Foundation). From there he proceeded to Oxford, where he transformed himself into a high church Anglican, much to his father’s disgust. Although high church, and with a particular interest in patristics (the study of the early church), Potter remained a confirmed Whig and quickly attracted patronage from some extremely influential people.

From University College, where he had been an undergraduate, Potter proceeded to Lincoln College as a fellow and in 1699, the year of his ordination to the priesthood, he was appointed one of the chaplains to Bishop Hough of Lichfield and Coventry. In 1704, he traded up becoming one of Archbishop Tenison’s chaplains and was thought so closely tied to Tenison that he was known as his ‘darling scribbler’. Two years later, he achieved the key promotion to royal chaplain.

As a clergyman at Court and with close connexions to Oxford, it is perhaps not surprising that he came to the notice of the duke and duchess of Marlborough, and when the regius professorship of divinity became vacant at Oxford, he was their candidate for the place. In his way was the rival claim of George Smalridge, backed by Robert Harley and others, but in the end the Marlboroughs won out (as was so often the case) and in 1708 Potter became Professor Potter.

For the next few years, Potter focused his attentions on his role at the university, never apparently being considered seriously for any of the vacant bishoprics that came up. Indeed, in 1714 it was Smalridge who was promoted first, taking on the poverty-stricken bishopric of Bristol. However, soon after the accession of George I another opportunity arose following the death of Gilbert Burnet, bishop of Salisbury. Thus, when Bishop Talbot of Oxford was translated to Burnet’s vacant see, Potter was appointed to replace him at Oxford.

Potter’s 1 August sermon was his first major opportunity to make his mark in his new role. Unsurprisingly, he attracted criticism from Jacobite Tory opponents like Thomas Hearne, at that point still in post as one of the librarians at the Bodleian, but soon to be forced out as he was unwilling to take the oaths to George I. Recording the sermon a few weeks later, Hearne noted that it had been preached by ‘our present sneaking, poor-spirited, cringing, whiggish bishop’. The content, he thought, was ‘vile, silly, injudicious, illiterate, & roguish stuff, sufficiently showing what the author is’. [Hearne, v. 122] Hearne never lost an opportunity of deriding Potter using terms like ‘snivelling’ or ‘white-livered’ to describe him. [Hearne, vi. 123; ix. 360]

Potter’s chosen text was Psalm 20, verse 5: ‘We will rejoice in thy salvation, and in the name of our God we will set up our banners’. His theme, obviously enough, was the blessings the nation had received by the peaceful succession of the House of Hanover, and how narrowly they had avoided the prospect of civil war. Not only was the nation peaceful, he urged but he may also have had half a mind on his own significant progress when he argued:

Neither can there be any just complaint, that arts and industry, virtue and public services want suitable encouragement; where the way lies open for ever man to advance himself to the highest honours and preferments and after he hath enjoyed the fruits of all his labour in his own person, there is as great certainty… that he shall transmit them entire to his posterity…

As well as lauding the prospect before them under the house of Hanover, Potter also allowed himself some predictable venting against the horrors of life under a Catholic sovereign. Even other religions, he suggested, might be ‘kind and merciful’. He also trotted out the familiar theme of the importance of divine providence in settling King George among them.

Over the next few years, Potter developed his role in the Church, becoming a close associate of William Wake, archbishop of Canterbury, and co-operating with him closely in opposing two pieces of government-backed legislation. He attracted attention for wading into the ‘Bangorian controversy’, criticizing the apparent Arianism of Benjamin Hoadly, bishop of Bangor. Even Hearne had to acknowledge that he did so ‘very deservedly’. [Hearne, vii. 82] He also became close to the Princess of Wales, the future Queen Caroline.

When George I died it was widely rumoured that Potter would be promoted to Bath and Wells. Although that proved not to be the case (he seems to have turned the promotion down) he was the person selected to preach the new king and queen’s coronation sermon in October 1727. Controversially, for a Whig, he used high church terminology to justify George’s claim to the throne by hereditary right. [Smith, 37] More controversially, for a Whig, he also emphasized the need for the new king’s subjects to give their ‘entire submission to his authority’.

It was to be another decade before Potter was finally rewarded with a richer diocese. On Wake’s death in 1737, it was Potter who became Archbishop of Canterbury, rather than Bishop Hare of Chichester, backed by Sir Robert Walpole. The translation was widely attributed to the queen’s personal intervention and came just a few months before her death later that year.

Potter may not be the best-remembered of 18th-century bishops, or indeed a particularly memorable Archbishop of Canterbury. Much more attention is paid to his younger son, Thomas, a Member of Parliament, associate of the so-called Hellfire Club and a generally archetypal Georgian rake. But Potter was important in showing that the Church of England was able to adapt in the period, adopt language used by the Jacobites to justify the Hanoverian monarchy and was open to advancing the son of a Yorkshire linen draper, and a nonconformist one at that, to the highest place in the Church.

RDEE

Further reading:
J.C.D. Clark, English Society 1688-1832
Remarks and Collections of Thomas Hearne, ed. C.E. Doble
Hannah Smith, Georgian Monarchy: Politics and Culture, 1714-1760
The Theological Works of the most reverend Dr John Potter, late Archbishop of Canterbury

The duke of Cambridge was the English title bestowed in 1706 on George Augustus, the electoral prince of Hanover (and future British king, George II), and it was by this title that the prince was often publicly known in Britain before his father, the elector, succeeded Queen Anne as George I in August 1714. Although the prince did not actually set foot on British soil until his arrival with his father in September 1714, his name was frequently at the centre of political manoeuvring to have a member of the Hanoverian royal family installed in England while Queen Anne was still alive.

In June 1706 Lord Halifax, one of the Whig Junto leaders, headed a mission to Hanover to convey formally to the Dowager Electress Sophia, as heiress presumptive to the English throne, the texts of the Regency and Naturalisation Acts passed during the 1705-6 session. Appropriately, the event coincided with the coming-of-age of the Pretender the same month. On behalf of the queen, Halifax also bestowed the order of the Garter on the prince as a further mark of her commitment to the Hanoverian succession, but soon found that the prince eyed the prospect of the British succession with greater apparent interest than his father and was keen to become an English duke.

In accordance with the queen’s orders a patent was issued on 9 December, though she was apprehensive that it would provoke a renewal of earlier attempts to establish a Hanoverian presence in Britain which at all costs she wished to avoid. Previous initiatives had focussed on the Electress Sophia herself, but the prince’s entitlement to a seat in the Upper House from 1706 provided a specific excuse for inviting him to England in addition to (or instead of) the aging electress. It was understood that for the time being the war would prevent the prince’s coming to England, though the question of procuring a writ for his summons to the Lords was nevertheless exploited by both Whigs and Tories for their own political ends. In 1708, for example, it was used by the Junto ministers to put pressure on the queen to admit more Whigs to the ministry.

By 1713-14 the ‘writ issue’ had become a complex and significant bargaining point in the fluctuating relationship between the courts of Hanover and St James’s and in Lord Treasurer Oxford’s efforts to prop up his weakening ministry. While assuring the queen that her own wishes would be met, the dissension from within the ministry led by Viscount Bolingbroke left him no option but to use the promise of an invitation to the prince to entice support from the Whigs. Oxford had so far been able to control this policy, believing the elector would in fact hold firm to his determination never to allow his mother or his son to take up residence in England. Thus when the elector unexpectedly issued a memorial in May 1714 requesting that the queen invite his son to Great Britain, it dealt a severe blow to Oxford’s ministerial credibility and his professed ability to manage Hanover. Oxford was obliged to inform the Hanoverian royal family that none of its members would be welcome during the queen’s lifetime.

This is a revised version of the article ‘The Duke of Cambridge and the Hanoverian Succession, 1706-14’ by Andrew A. Hanham, originally posted on historyofparliamentonline.org.

‘Privileges’ is an important term that appears throughout parliamentary history, though its meaning and scope change over time. At its creation in 1995 the remit of the Commons Committee of Standards and Privileges was widened to include investigation of potential ‘contempts’ of Parliament from its own members. Previous conceptions of parliamentary privilege have not always concerned what Members did, but rather what was done to them, and to the institution, by those outside Parliament.

While the full chamber of the Commons often considered perceived threats to the House’s privilege such as the reporting of its proceedings (until they effectively gave up the fight after 1771), from the early 17th century a separate Committee of Privileges and Elections was established at the beginning of each session to deal with individual complaints of breaches of privilege. As its name suggests, this Committee was concerned primarily with the numerous petitions regarding controverted elections that usually took up a significant amount of the House’s attention. The Committee also heard complaints of breaches of privilege when Members found themselves sued, or in some cases arrested, in civil legal suits. The original privilege of freedom from arrest during time of Parliament had by the late 18th century been expanded to include a right to evade all adversarial civil suits while sitting as an MP.

Each session in the House of Lords also began with the nomination of a Committee of Privileges, which generally included the entire membership of the House. Its scope was larger than that of the Commons, as it was to consider ‘the Privileges of Parliament, and of the Peers of Great Britain and Lords of Parliament’: that is, both privilege of Parliament and the separate privilege of the peerage. It was primarily concerned with commoners taking members of the Lords to law, which was seen as infringing both types of privilege. Members of the peerage also had the right to exempt their personal servants from legal proceedings through signed ‘protections’. The Committee occasionally reported abuses of this system, as valuable forged protections were sometimes traded like currency.

Under its assignment to deal with privilege of peerage, the Lords’ Committee also considered controverted title claims and, occasionally, cases of scandalum magnatum, libellous words derogatory to individual peers. The Lords guarded their privileges jealously, perhaps more so than the lower house did. When the Commons expelled John Wilkes in 1764, after resolving that the privilege of freedom from arrest did not extend to charges of seditious libel [How to expel an MP from Parliament: The ejection of John Wilkes in 1764], members of the House of Lords objected to this extenuation of their vaunted privilege. Seventeen peers submitted a strongly worded protest against the Commons’ resolution, which portrayed this diminution of parliamentary privilege as heralding the eventual destruction of Parliament:

We cannot hear, without the utmost Concern and Astonishment, a Doctrine advanced now for the First Time in this House, which we apprehend to be new, dangerous, and unwarrantable… [and] by which, all the Records of Parliament, all History, all the Authorities of the gravest and soberest Judges, are entirely rescinded; and the fundamental Principles of the Constitution, with regard to the Independence of Parliament, torn up, and buried under the Ruins of our most established Rights

Lords Journal, 29 November 1763

Worse was to come, for in 1770 an Act was pushed through Parliament which put an end to the privilege of immunity from civil suits during time of Parliament, for both commoners and lords… and their servants.

The Committee of Privileges in the 18th century was primarily concerned with protecting Parliament and its members from external opposition. Both Houses, however, could establish a ‘Committee of Secrecy’, whose proceedings remained closed, to investigate allegations of malfeasance and ‘contempts’ by its own members. In 1715 the Commons established such a body to investigate the previous Tory administration of 1710-14 and the Commons subsequently impeached some of the principal former ministers. The principal target, Robert Harley, earl of Oxford, languished in the Tower for two years until he was ultimately acquitted in 1717. [Acquitted with three huzzas: the impeachment of Robert Harley, earl of Oxford.]

It is ironic that Sir Robert Walpole, the driving force of the 1715 Committee, was himself the subject of a later secret investigation. In February 1742 Walpole resigned from the premiership after narrowly losing a vote of confidence involving the contested election for Chippenham. Within days he was conveyed to the safety of the Lords through creation as earl of Orford. His many enemies in the Commons were nevertheless determined to expose his alleged crimes of corruption and misuse of patronage, and extract punishment. A Committee of Secrecy was established to investigate his activities, but its remit was limited to the last ten years of his premiership. Furthermore, the House of Lords rejected a bill to indemnify witnesses who could provide evidence of Orford’s malfeasance in office. Without this protection important witnesses such as Nicholas Paxton, solicitor of the Treasury, were unwilling to testify.

When the Committee submitted its reports, the Commons, engaged in a war with Spain and one with France looming, were not inclined to embark on a time-consuming vindictive impeachment. Orford remained unscathed and was able to live his remaining few years in the Lords under privilege of peerage, untroubled by the Committee of Secrecy’s censures.

CGDL

Further readings:
Erskine May, Treatise on the Law, Privileges, Proceedings and Usage of Parliament (25th ed., 2019), Part 2, ‘Powers and Privileges of Parliament’
J. H. Plumb, Sir Robert Walpole: The King’s Minister (1960)
Paul Seaward, ‘Parliamentary Privilege and Libel, Part II: from Wilkes to 1835‘
A.S. Turberville, ‘The Protection of Servants of Members of Parliament’, English Historical Review, 42 (1927), 590-600

As its name suggests, the direction of the ‘Plot’ was attributed to the notoriously aggressive Francis Atterbury, bishop of Rochester. From 1716 he was the Pretender’s principal agent in England (not that he was necessarily entirely happy with the role). He was joined in its direction by a number of Jacobite peers sitting in the House of Lords. Thomas Wentworth, earl of Strafford, William North, 6th Baron North (and 2nd Baron Grey), and the Irish peers Charles Butler, earl of Arran, and Charles Boyle, 4th earl of Orrery, had all been military officers, diplomats or statesmen during the reign of Queen Anne, but by 1720 were dedicated servants of the Pretender.

In the last days of 1721 Atterbury, Strafford, North, Arran and Sir Henry Goring pledged themselves to proceed with plans for a Stuart restoration formulated at the Jacobite court at St Germain-en-Laye. They would raise domestic uprisings in England during the general election scheduled for spring 1722, while St Germain would send over a small band of troops from Spain in support. The conspirators quickly became disunited, though. Orrery (who did not sign the letter to St Germain) insisted on the need for a more sizeable foreign invasion force, while North, Strafford and Arran were confident they could personally lead a domestic popular revolt. The plot, or what soon became separate individual plots, began to unravel and its timing had to be postponed to the late summer.

The situation grew worse for the plotters from 19 April 1722, after the death of Charles Spencer, 3rd earl of Sunderland. As first lord of the Treasury in 1720-21, Sunderland had been deeply implicated in the bribery that allowed the South Sea Company to inflate its ‘Bubble’ and, after it had burst, he had negotiated with Atterbury and the Tories for their support during the parliamentary investigations.

As long as Sunderland had influence Atterbury could be relatively confident of being ‘screened’ from government interference. With him gone, though, Robert Walpole was likely to take the reins of government. Virulently anti-Jacobite, Walpole took action quickly when he learned from the French court, then in alliance with Britain, that the Jacobites were making military preparations on the continent. The correspondence between the English Jacobites and St Germain was intercepted, opened and read. One of the decipherers working on these coded letters was a clerical colleague of Atterbury, Edward Willes, who, after his codebreaking days were over, served as bishop of Bath and Wells. Couriers were taken up and interrogated. One suspect inadvertently revealed Atterbury as the principal addressee of the letters when she blithely chatted away about a little ‘spotted dog’ named Harlequin, which had been sent to Atterbury as a present for the bishop’s dying wife [HMC Portland, vii. 326].

The net was tightening on the Jacobite plotters, and after Goring successfully fled England on 23 August 1722, Atterbury was arrested the following day and sent to the Tower. There he proved ‘very boisterous’, and in one notorious incident scuffled with his gaoler, Colonel Williamson, ‘collared him, struck him, and threw him down’. A commentator thought it ‘pretty odd’ that Williamson would make public that he had been ‘beaten by a gouty bishop’ [HMC Portland, vii. 344].

Walpole’s government was selective in its targets when rounding up the Jacobites and investigating the conspiracy, owing in part to a lack of evidence to prove charges of treason. The principal victims were commoners, such as George Kelly and John Plunkett, both deprived of their estates. Christopher Layer, North’s lawyer and agent, was the only plotter executed, and even his sentence was continuously reprieved in the hope that he would turn king’s evidence. Orrery and North were arrested and imprisoned at about the same time as Atterbury, but proceedings against them were never commenced and they were both eventually discharged. Strafford was never even arrested and continued agitating against the government throughout 1722-23, while his colleagues languished in the Tower.

The government’s principal target was Atterbury, who already had a reputation as a disruptive troublemaker. Despite Atterbury’s forceful two-hour speech in his defence on 11 May, the House passed a bill of ‘pains and penalties’ against him four days later. While Layer, no longer useful as a potential witness, was executed shortly afterwards, Atterbury was allowed to go into exile. He died on the continent in 1732. Orrery, the nominal and ineffectual leader of a weakened Tory party, had died the previous year and North died in Spain in 1734, having converted to Catholicism and been commissioned an officer in the Spanish army. Strafford lasted until 1739, a Tory opponent to Walpole’s Whig ministry to the end. As he described himself in 1737, ‘he was bad with the last ministry, worse with this, and he did not doubt but he should be worse with the next’ [HMC Carlisle, 179]. By the end of the 1730s the Jacobite wing of the Tory party was hollowed out, and the party itself was left adrift until its next reshaping in the 1760s.

While the parliamentary proceedings of 1722-23 destroyed the Jacobites, and seriously damaged the larger Tory party by association, it only strengthened Walpole in his early years as prime minister. Arthur Onslow, the long-serving Speaker of the Commons, thought that the discovery and prosecution of the Jacobite plot was ‘the most fortunate and the greatest circumstance of Mr Walpole’s life. It fixed him with the King, and united for a time the whole body of Whigs to him, and gave him the universal credit of an able and vigilant Minister’ [HMC Onslow, 513].

CGDL

Further reading:

E. Cruickshanks and H. Erskine-Hill, The Atterbury Plot (2004)

G. V. Bennet, The Tory Crisis in Church and State, 1688-1730: The Career of Francis Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester (1976)

E. Cruickshanks, ‘Lord North, Christopher Layer and the Atterbury Plot, 1720-3’, in The Jacobite Challenge, ed. E. Cruickshanks and J. Black (1988)

The young John Churchill had had to make his own way in the world. Although his father, Sir Winston Churchill, was a landed gentleman, well-regarded by the Restoration regime, there was little money. Famed at first for his good-looks and exquisite manners, Churchill started his career at Court, where he attracted the attention of his distant cousin (and the king’s mistress), Barbara Villiers, duchess of Cleveland. Churchill’s grandmother, Eleanor, had been a sister of James I’s favourite, George Villiers, duke of Buckingham. They had a child together, but the scandal did not impede his progress. Having started out as a page to the duke of York (future James II) Churchill became increasingly associated with the York household and at some point in 1677 or 1678 he married another impoverished courtier, Sarah Jennings (or Jenyns). Like Churchill, Jennings was well-connected but strapped for cash. Together they would become one of the foremost power couples of the period.

Through the mid-1670s and into the 1680s Churchill steadily built a reputation as a courtier, diplomat and, increasingly, as a soldier. In 1682 he was made a Scottish baron and in May 1685 an English peer as Baron Churchill. However, despite owing so much to the newly crowned James II, Churchill was genuinely uneasy about the king’s religious policies and in 1688 he was one of the first of James’s inner circle to defect to William of Orange. He was rewarded with promotion as earl of Marlborough in 1689 but his relationship with William was never easy. In 1692 he was removed from his posts and almost certainly made his peace with the exiled court.

One reason for Marlborough’s difficult relations with William was both his and his countess’s close friendship with the family of Anne of Denmark (future Queen Anne). They became identified with Anne’s alternative Court, with which William was often on especially poor terms. Anne’s accession, then, began a period of spectacular success for both the Marlboroughs. From 1701 Marlborough became commander-in-chief of the allied forces and the following year was distinguished with the title of Captain General. It was his service during the War of the Spanish Succession (1702-1713) which resulted in his best-known achievements, above all the victory at Blenheim, and led to him being rewarded with a former royal hunting estate in Oxfordshire, where a new palace was constructed for him. He was also promoted in the peerage to a dukedom; the Emperor made him a prince.

However, Marlborough was much more than a talented tactician on the battlefield and a clever courtier. Working together with Godolphin, he was also a supremely influential political operator. Unfortunately for him, things began to unravel following Robert Harley’s assumption of power in 1710. The queen’s passionate friendship with Duchess Sarah also proved a decidedly mixed blessing and after the queen and duchess fell out in 1711 both were out of favour. In 1712 Godolphin died and the Marlboroughs found themselves in exile.

George I’s accession offered the Marlboroughs an opportunity to reset. Marlborough had toured the continent during his exile warning of threats to the Act of Settlement, which would prevent George from becoming king. However, although the duke and duchess were welcomed back with open arms, he did not get the post he really wanted, that of groom of the stole – the closest household officer about the new king. Plus, it was increasingly to a newer generation of politicians that power now shifted, with Robert Walpole and his brother-in-law Viscount Townshend, alongside the Marboroughs’ son-in-law, Sunderland and James Stanhope, vying for supremacy. Marlborough was left ‘bowing and smiling in the antechamber’ while the others got on with managing events where it mattered. In 1716 Marlborough suffered two strokes and from that point on he was a figurehead only with much of the family influence wielded by his duchess.

Over the remaining years there were legal struggles over the construction of the palace at Blenheim. Designed by Sir John Vanbrugh it quickly became a far more ostentatious pile than either duke or duchess had originally intended and the cost of it proved a crippling embarrassment. It was not long after a high-profile case in Parliament, arising from a dispute with the builders, that Marlborough fell into his final illness and died, perhaps fittingly at the more modest Cranbourne Lodge near Windsor.

Despite being somewhat marginalized at the end, Marlborough was given a suitably grand ceremonial funeral to see him off. Although he died in June it was not until August that everything was ready and the funeral cortege, surmounted with a suit of armour, trundled off to Westminster Abbey, where he was to be buried until a new mausoleum at Blenheim could be completed for him. One newspaper described how the occasion was ‘celebrated with unparallel’d Magnificence’, a fitting end for ‘he, who surpass’d all the Heroes of Antiquity’ [Daily Journal, 10 Aug. 1722]. The hearse – an open chariot ‘after the Model of Queen Mary’s – was accompanied by a huge procession, including 72 Chelsea Pensioners, in spite of the duchess’s concerns that ‘the wicked enemies to the poor Duke of Marlborough might not say something disagreeable’ at the sight of a mass of a mass of aged, wounded veterans. She need not have worried and when the procession finally set off on 9 August it made its way through the streets of London ‘in the best order of anything (of the kind) that has been seen this many years’. [Harris, 244-5]. Minute guns sounded from the Tower of London, and at around 6pm three rockets were let off from the Abbey roof to signal to the army to fire a salute. Following his interment, four officers snapped their staves and threw them into the vault.

Not everything was managed with such decorum. On the morning of the funeral government messengers raided the premises of the Jacobite newspaper man, Nathaniel Mist, whose journal had criticized the duke. They were not able to stop others from scattering flyers in the streets traducing his memory. There were also problems closer to home. Marlborough left no son and by the time of his death, Duchess Sarah had fallen out with her daughters. She would continue to exert tempestuous political influence for the rest of her life, outliving her husband by 22 years. She survived to see George II on the throne, to outlive Queen Caroline and only just missed out on the 1745 Rebellion.

RDEE

Further reading:
Frances Harris, A Passion for Government: the life of Sarah duchess of Marlborough (OUP 1991)

Sunderland had been under enormous pressure for well over two years before, having been caught up in the South Sea Bubble, seen the death of his long-term political partner, Earl Stanhope, and been entangled in the mirky goings on of the Atterbury Plot. In the aftermath of the Bubble, Sunderland had been forced out as first lord of the treasury and replaced by Robert Walpole, but he was still widely thought of as the ‘premier’ minister. His death finally opened the way for Walpole to emerge as undisputed Prime Minister and brought an end to some of the spirit of the Augustan ‘rage of party’ that had survived Anne’s demise.

Sunderland had always been a controversial figure. His father, Robert Spencer, 2nd earl of Sunderland, had been a particularly mercurial political operator, emerging as a courtier in the later years of Charles II, becoming James II’s factotum, converting Catholicism (at the very worst moment), staging a return from exile after the ‘Glorious Revolution’ and then operating as a minister ‘behind the curtain’ during the latter years of William III.

As a younger son, Charles had not been expected to inherit, but his hard-drinking older brother had died young leaving him to succeed as 3rd earl of Sunderland. Though much more capable than his brother and heavily influenced by a formative period in the Netherlands, Sunderland was also headstrong and given to outbursts of temper. Viscount Townshend wrote of one of his letters having been composed during ‘one of his frenzy fits’, while Lord Midleton, the Irish Lord Chancellor, noted him suffering explosive nose bleeds when he was crossed. Politically, he quickly identified himself with the ‘Junto Whigs’, but he was far and away the most radical of them.

Although talented, Sunderland split opinion. Queen Anne could not abide him but was eventually compelled to accept him coming into office. He was then the first targeted to be replaced when Robert Harley (earl of Oxford) and Charles Talbot, duke of Shrewsbury, staged their ministerial coup in 1710. Consequently, Sunderland was among the most eager to see members of the queen’s last ministry humbled, leading the charge for Oxford and several others to be impeached in 1715. After Oxford was acquitted, they remained on bad terms and ‘hot words’ only narrowly avoided turning into a duel after the Lords ordered them to keep the peace.

With George I safely on the throne Sunderland had his work cut out to assure the king that he was not simply a youthful radical. He was annoyed to be side-lined with appointment as lord lieutenant of Ireland and refused to take up his post there, using as an excuse his busyness in England and several bouts of poor health. Rather than punished, though, he was rewarded with appointment to the more pleasing role of lord privy seal and the government steadily came to be dominated by two pairings: the Norfolk based Walpole with his brother-in-law, Viscount Townshend; and Sunderland with the soldier-diplomat, James Stanhope.

By 1716 Sunderland and Stanhope had become influential enough to persuade the king to demote Townshend. This ultimately triggered a mass resignation and the beginnings of the ‘Whig Split’ along with a fissure at Court. Although engineered by Sunderland and Stanhope, the duke of Somerset hoped – wishfully – that Sunderland too ‘whoe hathe been false even to his best friends, will now fall unpityed’. [Coxe, Walpole, ii. 148] He could not have been more wrong.

From 1717 to 1721 Sunderland and Stanhope were the effective joint premiers. In spite of such successes, Sunderland found himself increasingly in hot water. To bolster his electoral position, he reached out to members of the Tory party, hoping to detach them from Walpole and Townshend’s opposition Whigs. He was even suspected of turning Jacobite in an effort to cling onto power. While this is unlikely, he undoubtedly courted those who were and may have made promises that he had no intention of keeping. It was certainly noticeable that after his death there was a rush to secure his papers as it was feared he had left behind compromising material.

Sunderland was also increasingly in financial trouble. Hearing that he was being considered for the Garter he confessed to his countess that ‘something more solid is much better and much wanted’.

It was no doubt this that contributed to Sunderland’s greatest blunder: his role in the South Sea disaster. He was at the centre of the web involving illegal selling of stocks and shares and as the value of the stocks plummeted, he wrote in increasingly desperate terms justifying his conduct:

I never thought of anything but of doing the best I could for the public, with honest intentions, and with as much prudence as my poor understanding is capable of.

In the end it was Walpole who was to prove instrumental in ensuring that Sunderland was exonerated from the Commons’ investigation into the scandal and Walpole who was the principal beneficiary. In 1721 he succeeded Sunderland as first lord of the treasury, with Sunderland shifted over to the influential – but marginalized – role of groom of the stole.

Walpole’s return by no means meant that Sunderland was finished. He was a powerful presence in Parliament, one contemporary noting, ‘when he gives the hint all his party takes it.’ He entered into the 1722 general election with gusto hoping that the result would strengthen his hand and enable him to stage another comeback. It was not to be. The effort finished him off and just a few weeks after the elections he succumbed to pleurisy.

Sunderland’s sons Robert and Charles became in succession 4th and 5th earls of Sunderland. As a Churchill descendant, Charles ultimately became 3rd duke of Marlborough as well. Sunderland’s house in Northamptonshire, Althorp, was inherited by a younger son, John. His son (also John) was later made Earl Spencer, making Sunderland the progenitor of Princess Diana, and thus, of a future king.

RDEE

Further reading:
Henry Snyder, Charles Spencer, 3rd earl of Sunderland, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
Memoirs of Sir Robert Walpole, ed. Coxe

In a note on page 4 of his biography of Winston Churchill, published in 2001, Roy Jenkins allows himself a somewhat waspish comment about the 7th duke of Marlborough being described as the 6th duke, when clearly he was not. However, such numbering was not unusual and is explicable because the second duke was in fact a duchess.

John Churchill was made duke of Marlborough in December 1702. However, his only son, also John, died in February 1703. In 1706 an Act of Parliament was passed to allow Marlborough to pass on his dukedom through the female line. When he died in June 1722 he was succeeded in the title by his eldest daughter Henrietta, the wife of Francis Godolphin, second earl of Godolphin. When Henrietta died in November 1733, without male heirs (her only son, William Godolphin, marquess of Blandford having died in 1731) the title passed to the eldest surviving son of her next sister, Anne (who had died in April 1716), who had married Charles Spencer, third earl of Sunderland. Thus, Charles Spencer, who was already fifth earl of Sunderland, also became third duke of Marlborough.

For eleven years, Henrietta thus held the same title as the formidable dowager duchess of Marlborough, Sarah, the widow of the first duke. Relations were strained not least because correspondence was sometimes delivered to the wrong duchess. Neither did Henrietta control the family wealth, which was held by Sarah under a life interest under the first duke’s will.

Fortunately, Henrietta’s husband, the son of Sarah’s great friend Sidney Godolphin, was a man skilled at conciliating his mother-in-law and capable of soaking up the tremendous screeds of paper she dispatched in his direction complaining at the perfidious nature of her daughter and his wife.

The old duchess outlived her daughter by many years, dying in October 1744, aged 84. Indeed, she outlived three of her four daughters (the third, Elizabeth, countess of Bridgwater having died of smallpox in April 1714). The survivor, her youngest daughter, Mary, duchess of Montagu, upon hearing of the event, affected disbelief with the comment that it was not in her mother’s style to die (Harris, 348).

In politics, the key point about a female holder of a peerage was that they could not sit in the House of Lords and any political influence had to be exercised indirectly. It was a point not lost on the first duchess of Marlborough, who opined ‘I am confident I should have been the greatest hero that ever was known in the Parliament House, if I had been so happy as to have been a man’ (Harris, 3). Nevertheless, she managed to play a major role in political life. Indeed, any woman with control of the family estates could play a significant role in electoral politics. Between 1722 and 1744, when she administered the Marlborough estates, Sarah intervened in elections at Woodstock, St. Albans, Northamptonshire, Buckinghamshire and New Windsor, often in favour of her grandsons.

Another example, was Richard Temple, created Baron Cobham in 1714, who, without male heirs, was created a Viscount in 1718. Both barony and viscountcy were to descend to his second and third sisters respectively, Hester Grenville and Christian Lyttelton. Hester, who had married Richard Grenville (died 1727), succeeded to the title in 1749, and later that year was created Countess Temple. Her son, Richard Grenville Temple, succeeded as second Earl Temple in 1752.

The point may also be made of those women, created peers, who then passed them on to their sons. Sometimes this was a way of continuing the family name after it had died out. Thus, Grace Granville, daughter of the first earl of Bath, who married Sir George Carteret, (later Baron Carteret) in 1711 became one of the coheirs of the Granville family. In 1715, she was created Viscountess Carteret and Countess Granville. Her son succeeded his father in 1711 as 2nd Baron Carteret, and his mother in 1744 as second Earl Granville.

Royal mistresses were often given peerages, but often only for life. Thus, Louise de Keroualle was created duchess of Portsmouth in 1673, a title which was extinguished on her death in 1734. Again, she exercised her influence not in the Parliament chamber, but the bedchamber. Likewise, Ermengard Melusina, Baroness von der Shulenberg, was created duchess of Kendal for life in 1719.

Perhaps the moral is never to forget to investigate and assess the role of women in politics. Power could be exercised in the bedchamber, or at elections, through the power of patronage and the purse.

SNH

Further Reading

Frances Harris, A Passion for Government: the life of Sarah duchess of Marlborough (Oxford, 1991).
Roy Jenkins, Churchill (Macmillan, 2001).

Until the extinction of the line in 1990, one of the grandest titles in the British nobility was the dukedom of Portland. Their principal seat of Welbeck Abbey in Nottinghamshire came to the family through one of the advantageous marriages with well-endowed heiresses which characterized the family’s ascent in the 18th century. The 2nd duke married an heiress to the Cavendish (dukes of Newcastle branch), Holles and Harley fortunes. The 3rd added to the estate by marrying an heiress of two other wealthy families, the Boyles and the Cavendishes, dukes of Devonshire, and subsequently renamed himself Cavendish-Bentinck.

However, the ancestor of these Cavendish-Bentincks, at the pinnacle of the British establishment, was a Dutch noble, Hans Willem Bentinck. Bentinck was William of Orange’s closest companion in the Netherlands who accompanied him in his invasion of 1688 and remained his principal adviser and ‘favourite’ during his English reign. Already a member of the Holland nobility, Bentinck was created earl of Portland in April 1689, much to the consternation of the offended native English nobles.

Portland, however, was not the only Dutchman to receive an English title at the hands of William III and to found a prominent British dynasty. Portland soon had a rival in Arnold Joost van Keppel, a young Dutch army officer who was as charming and outgoing at court as Bentinck was serious and reserved. William III rewarded van Keppel with positions of trust and in 1697 raised him to the English peerage as earl of Albemarle. Portland was so enraged by the rapid ascent of his rival that in 1699 he formally resigned his court offices.

Through William’s generosity Portland died very rich in 1709 and his English estates went to his heir Henry Bentinck, 2nd earl of Portland, subsequently created duke of Portland in 1716. Albemarle had returned to the United Provinces after Anne’s accession and fought for the Allies during the War of the Spanish Succession. His heir William Anne van Keppel, 2nd earl of Albemarle, strategically named after the British queen, also looked to Britain for his future. He had no landed estate in the country, but enjoyed the patronage of George I and the British officers who had fought alongside his father.

Albemarle pursued a successful military career and rose to be colonel of the Coldstream Guards and eventually ambassador to France and groom of the stole. His progeny cemented the place of the Keppels in British society, who significantly had dropped the ‘van’ in the family name by this generation. The family even infiltrated the Church of England, as one of the 2nd earl’s sons, Frederick, was bishop of Exeter from 1762 to 1777. His three other sons, including his heir, followed him into the military and rose to the highest levels of command in their respective services. George, 3rd earl of Albemarle, and William Keppel both ended their careers as lieutenants-general in the army, while Augustus Keppel rose to admiral in the navy, for which he acquired his own title, Viscount Keppel, in 1782. In 1762 the 3rd earl was appointed commander-in-chief of the expedition to capture Havana after Spain had entered the war allied with France. He and his brothers commanded the naval and land forces in the three-month siege and amphibious assault which led to the surrender of the Moro fortress in August. Apart from the renown they acquired, the Keppel brothers became rich from the spoils of this campaign, enough to undo their father’s debts and to become substantial landed proprietors.

These descendants of William of Orange’s Dutch followers stayed true to their roots by working to uphold the legacy of the Revolution of 1689 and the Protestant Succession. During the 1760s, when ministries were formed and dissolved at dizzying speed, both William Henry Cavendish Bentinck, 3rd duke of Portland, who succeeded to the title in 1762, and the 3rd earl of Albemarle stayed loyal to the Whigs, both in and out of office. In the summer of 1765 they were at the heart of the efforts to form a Whig ministry, eventually headed by Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd marquess of Rockingham, as first lord of the Treasury. Portland was made lord chamberlain, while Albemarle retained his military posts, but did not hold office.

After the fall of the Rockingham ministry in summer 1766 the two Anglo-Dutch peers became devoted lieutenants to Rockingham as he led the Whigs into a long period of opposition. In February 1770 Albemarle entrusted his proxy with Portland. Thus the heirs of the bitter rivals at William III’s court were, less than a century later, working together for their inherited Whig tradition. Albemarle’s brothers were also active for the opposition from their seats in the Commons. Portland held office again in the second Rockingham administration from March 1782 and, after Rockingham’s death in July, became leader of the Whigs and then nominal prime minister for the short-lived Fox-North coalition in 1783 (he was Prime Minister again from 1807 to 1809).

Albemarle had died in 1772 when his heir was barely six months old, but as soon as he reached his majority William Charles Keppel, 4th earl of Albemarle, got stuck straight away into business in the House of Lords on behalf of the opposition. In the 1850s the 3rd earl’s grandson, the Whig politician George Thomas Keppel, 6th earl of Albemarle, scoured the family archive to compile a laudatory two-volume work, the Memoirs of the Marquis of Rockingham and His Contemporaries, perhaps as an act of reverence to the long-standing family political tradition.

There were important differences between the two Anglo-Dutch families. Bentinck and other Dutch members of William of Orange’s coterie arrived in 1688 with existing English connections through kinship or diplomatic experience. Arnold Joost van Keppel, though, was more thoroughly Dutch, arriving with no English connections and, despite William III’s best efforts, leaving with no landed estate. Yet his descendants became thoroughly integrated into British society and were some of the most energetic servants of the British state and adherents of the Whig cause in the 18th and 19th centuries.

CGDL

Further Reading

Frank O’Gorman, The Rise of Party in England: the Rockingham Whigs, 1760-1782 (1975)
Paul Langford, The First Rockingham Administration, 1765-66 (1973)
George Thomas Keppel, 6th earl of Albemarle, Memoirs of the Marquis of Rockingham and His Contemporaries (2 vols, 1852)
Sonia Keppel, Three Brothers at Havana, 1762 (1981)
A. S. Turberville, A History of Welbeck Abbey and its Owners (2 vols., 1938-9)
David Onnekink, The Anglo-Dutch Favourite: the Career of Hans Willem Bentinck, 1st earl of Portland (2016)