ARUNDELL, Henry (?aft 1659-1726)

Arundell’s date of birth is unknown. A calculation based on a stray reference in a letter about his mother’s approaching death suggests that his parents married in or about 1659 so it is inferred that his birth was after that date. Add. 70244, H. Jeffreys to Speaker Harley, 1 Jan. 1705. Like his father he was a committed Catholic and hence barred from the House by the Test Acts. It is likely that he was a Jacobite sympathizer, but there is no evidence to confirm this. He is known to have supported the interests of the Tory, Henry Somerset, 2nd duke of Beaufort, at Salisbury in 1713, but information about his political activities beyond this is non-existent. Szechi, Jacobitism and Tory Politics, p. 146. He was granted a passport to travel to Spa on 27 July 1715 and is known to have been in Paris in November of that year. WSHC, 2667/20/2, 2667/22/4/6. He did not return to England until mid-November 1716. Bodl. Ms Rawl. Letters 2, f. 40a; Weekly Packet, 17 Nov. 1716. It is unlikely therefore that he could have had any direct involvement in the 1715 Jacobite uprising.

By 1720, although he was at most only 60 years of age, he was suffering from dementia. He had lost his memory and was ‘uncapable of doing much business.’ Add. 70281, D. Moloney, to Oxford, 31 June 1720. By 1723 ‘my lord by reason of his age and infirmities is reduced to dotage’, and his son and heir, also named Henry Arundell, began proceedings to have his father declared a lunatic. He was warned that such a procedure would not necessarily protect the family estate since ‘commissioners of lunatics have no authority to commit waste or to meddle with the estate’, and such proceedings were in any case very slow. WSHC, 2667/20/2, Pigot to H. Arundell, 25 and 27 July 1723. Arundell of Wardour died on 20 Apr. 1726.