A legacy of debt
John Granville, earl of Bath, served as a member of the House of Lords for 40 years. Throughout that time he was a significant figure in local and national politics yet an effective assessment of his career is extremely difficult because of the almost total loss of his family papers. Documentary material is particularly rare for the period when Bath’s influence was at its height, that is to say, during the reign of Charles II. Within ten years of his death, his dynasty had failed and what was left of his estate passed through the female line to the Carteret family. Granville’s financial legacy was, to say the least, a tangled one in which allegations of fraud and forgery were never far away. His political legacy involved suspicions of a growing rapprochement with the exiled James II, which were reinforced by the activities of his Jacobite brother Denis (sometime dean of Durham) and by the outspoken ‘country’ party sympathies of his younger son, John. The family’s Jacobitism was seemingly later confirmed by the activities of his nephew George, later Baron Lansdown. It is tempting to speculate whether any or all of these factors contributed to a deliberate decision to destroy the family papers, yet it is equally possible that the destruction was carried out as an unthinking consequential effect of the demolition of the family mansion in the 1720s. A few of Bath’s key papers do however survive among those of the family of the dukes of Grafton.
The Grenvilles had been established in Kilkhampton since the thirteenth century. Despite claims of Norman aristocratic ancestry the family were ranked as no more than minor gentry. In the early seventeenth century they were proud to bask in the military glory won by their Elizabethan ancestor, Sir Richard Grenville of the Revenge, but the lustre was wearing decidedly thin. By the mid-1620s Sir Bevil Grenville was so deeply in debt that he sought election to Parliament as part of a strategy to protect himself.
The young John Granville’s inheritance was thus heavily encumbered. His financial problems were further compounded by Parliament’s attempts to sequestrate the Granville estate, but his own decision to fight for the royalist cause then worked in his favour. In 1651, when he relinquished the Scilly Isles to parliamentarian forces, the articles of surrender contained, inter alia, a provision protecting his estates from sequestration.
The surviving documentation from his various legal actions paints a picture of an unscrupulous individual who, backed by a network of kinsmen and allies in the West Country, including John Arundell of Trerice (father of Richard Arundell, later Baron Arundell of Trerice) and Peter Prideaux‡, was prepared to use any means to attain his objectives. The allegations against him included claims that he had repossessed lands that had been mortgaged or sold by his father by producing fraudulent deeds to establish that Sir Bevil had acted illegally. He was also alleged to have threatened to rig criminal charges against some of his opponents and to have used his soldiers and threats of actual force against others.
Restoration and the rewards of loyalty
Only two years’ older than Charles II, with shared interests and perhaps also shared grief and anger at losing a father at a young age, Granville and Charles II seem to have become close friends. The young king’s surviving letters to Granville are informal, sometimes written in his own hand and close with the phrase ‘your affectionate [occasionally “very affectionate”] friend’. From as early as November 1649 the new king promised Granville that his absence from the exiled court would never prejudice his interests, and subsequent letters include promises of future rewards ‘on any seasonable occasion that may manifest your deserts and the esteem and kindness I have for you’.
In the summer of 1659 Granville became involved in negotiations with George Monck, the future duke of Albemarle, about the possibility of restoring the king. Monck was Granville’s cousin (their mothers were sisters) and had reason to be grateful to the Granville family. Granville’s uncle, Sir Richard Grenville, had rescued him as a youth from a charge of murder and had fostered his early military career; John Granville had presented the general’s younger brother Nicholas Monck, later bishop of Hereford, to the rich living of Kilkhampton. John Granville, his younger brother Bernard Granville‡, and Nicholas Monck were all involved in the negotiations that led to the Restoration but it was John Granville who was entrusted with the king’s commission to treat with Monck and who gained most credit for the success of the negotiations, together with renewed promises of recompense ‘suitable to your desires’.
That Granville was to be created earl of Bath was already well known before the king’s return to England. Early in April 1660 he was promised an earldom, along with payment of his debts, the office of groom of the stole, and an estate worth at least £3,000 a year. A number of letters, including one from the king himself, referred to him as Lord Bath long before the letters patent were sealed in April 1661.
More significantly, Bath received two royal warrants. That of April 1661 recognized his (probably false) claim to descent from Rollo, duke of Normandy, and hence to kinship with the king. Two of the ancestors so claimed included Hamon Dentatus, earl of Corbeil and lord of Thorigny and Granville in Normandy, and Robert Fitzhamon, lord of Gloucester and Glamorgan. Bath’s desire to emphasize his family’s Norman ancestry appears to have been behind the decision to encourage the use of the name Granville instead of Grenville or Greenville both as a surname and as a peerage title. The warrant went on to promise that should the earldom of Glamorgan become available during Charles II’s lifetime it would be conferred on Bath and that in the meantime Bath and his heirs could use the titles of Corbeil, Thorigny, and Granville. The second warrant, issued in December 1661, stated that Bath and his father had ruined the family estate by contracting debts in the royalist cause and that the king accepted that £25,000 of these debts should be recognized as public debts. Additionally, in recognition of Bath’s services towards the Restoration he was, as previously promised, to be given an estate (or pension in lieu) worth £3,000 a year.
The promise of financial rewards was accompanied by a number of key appointments in the government of the West Country, enabling him to build a formidable power base there. In so doing he provided the court with a reliable ally in an area notorious for religious Dissent and parliamentarian politics, as well as with a capable military commander to oversee a strategically important (and vulnerable) coastline. As warden of the stannaries he played a crucial role in negotiating the potentially profitable pre-emption of tin. He also enjoyed a powerful position at court, where as groom of the stole and first gentleman of the bedchamber he had ready access to the person of the king. His standing with the royal family must have been enhanced still further by his wife’s appointment in June 1663 as one of the ladies-in-waiting to Charles II’s new queen.
Parliamentary life and West Country magnate, 1661–7
Bath took his seat at the opening of the 1661–2 session and was present for some 67 per cent of sitting days. He was named to the committees for privileges and petitions and to 17 other committees. Some of the bills considered by these committees were of obvious personal or local interest, such as Albemarle’s bill, the bill for distribution of money to loyal commissioned officers, and those for the duchy of Cornwall and the pilchard fisheries in Devon and Cornwall. Others, such as the two bills for Westminster streets, may have reflected interests acquired as a result of Bath’s appointment (for life) as keeper of St James’s Palace. A number of the bills dealt with the aftermath of the civil wars and interregnum, such as that for reversing Strafford’s attainder, the restoration of the lands of Charles Stanley, 8th earl of Derby, and the repeal of acts passed by the Long Parliament after 1640. Others reflected Bath’s position both as a courtier and as a significant figure in the defence of the new regime: these included the committee to draw an address to the king for communicating his intention to marry, the committee to consider the Quakers’ petition, and the militia bill. On 24 May he was added to the committee for the preservation of the king’s person which had been named earlier that day, suggesting that he had perhaps arrived late to the sitting.
The destruction of the family papers makes it difficult to be absolutely sure that he had a working partnership with his various kinsmen and dependants in the Commons but the parliamentary activities of his brother Bernard Granville and his brother-in-law Sir Cyril Wyche‡ are certainly suggestive of a productive family alliance.
Bath’s attendance fell markedly during the 1663 session, when he was present on only 40 per cent of sitting days. He did not take his seat until 23 Mar. 1663, a month after the session had begun. He spent his time instead in the West Country, where he had invested much time and effort settling the affairs of the tinners and organizing the militia, tasks that he considered essential in ‘a county so full of disaffection’. He was particularly proud of his work with the tinners, claiming that he had recovered revenues of £12,000 for the crown that had been ‘lost many years’ and, despite the rewards he had already received, was anxious for more.
Bath was present almost every day of the short spring 1664 session and was appointed to three committees. It is a telling mark of the importance of his position at court that in the summer of 1664 he was specifically exempted from the consequences of the king’s order to suspend payments of pensions.
Despite the rewards he had already received, Bath was keen for more. In the summer of 1665 he used Albemarle as go-between in an attempt to secure the keepership of the privy purse. Although Albemarle declared that he would be ‘much troubled’ by a refusal of the request, Bath lost out to Baptist May, who commanded a still more influential patron – the king’s mistress, Lady Castlemaine.
During the troubled 1666–7 session Bath was present on nearly 63 per cent of sitting days and was named to seven committees, including bills on the coinage and for the rebuilding of London. On 23 Jan. 1667 he entered a protest over the failure to allow for an appeal to the House of Lords in the bill creating the fire court. At court he was pursuing his arrears. Neither the £25,000 nor the £3,000 a year promised him in 1661 had yet materialized. He settled instead for payments of £5,000 a year towards the £25,000 capital sum and interest.
in regard that your petitioner is grown old, and having only one son under age who may not live to have issue, your petitioner intends for failure thereof to settle all the crown lands granted by your majesty to your petitioner in fee simple upon his near and most deserving kinsman John earl of Bath, whom your petitioner hath chosen in that case to inherit his estate, and doth most humbly recommend unto your majesty to enjoy his titles of honour rather than any other of his kindred, not only for being his near relation in blood and the most deserving but more particularly for his late personal merit in conjunction with your petitioner for your majesty’s most happy restoration, wherein the said earl of Bath was intrusted alone by your majesty to treat and conclude with your petitioner about those important affairs, which he did most faithfully perform with so much hazard, courage, secrecy and prudent conduct, as was requisite in those dangerous times for carrying on that great work …Northants. RO, G 2860.
A week later the king issued a warrant under his signature promising ‘upon the word of a king’ to confer both the crown lands (especially Theobalds Park) awarded to Albemarle and the Albemarle dukedom on Bath in case of failure of male heirs and exhorting his successors to honour the undertaking.
The deteriorating political situation led at least one observer to suggest that Bath was ‘not a little pleased with this disgrace of my lord chancellor’.
Parliamentary life and west country magnate,1668-85
The financial crisis caused by war made Bath’s position as warden of the stannaries even more important, with the result that during the second half of 1668 through into the spring of 1669 much of his time was taken up acting as an intermediary between government and tinners during negotiations over the pre-emption of tin.
By May 1669 Bath’s arrears of salary as groom of the stole and first gentleman of the bedchamber had reached £7,250 and new arrangements were made to ensure payment. Continuing discussions of the arrears suggest that these new arrangements were not entirely successful: although the arrears had been reduced to £5,250 by the following May, by July 1670 they had risen to £7,250 again.
When Parliament reconvened for the short session of autumn of 1669 Bath was present on 72 per cent of sitting days. His friend and patron Albemarle was by this time a very sick man; he died early in January 1670. The king immediately selected Bath as the person to inform the young Christopher Monck, 2nd duke of Albemarle, that he was to be invested with his father’s vacant garter.
Bath was present on nearly every day of the first part of the 1670–1 session, last attending on 11 Apr. 1670 – the day on which the Roos divorce received the royal assent. During this period, in what seems to have been a deliberate action, he collected proxies, holding that of James Howard, 3rd earl of Suffolk, from 15 Mar. and that of Aubrey de Vere, 20th earl of Oxford, from 2 April. Towards the end of March 1670 he was also offered that of Richard Vaughan, who sat in the House as Baron Vaughan but was better known by his Irish title as earl of Carbery. Bath appears to have declined it with the excuse that he would be detained at Plymouth and unable to use it.
During that spring Bath was named to seven committees, including those on the Roos divorce and the projected union with Scotland. He was absent from the House for the remainder of the session, which did not end until April 1671. Scattered references suggest that that he spent much of that period in the west country tending to the defences there.
In May 1671 Bath was back in the London area; it was reported that he was to take part in a garter investiture ceremony at Windsor where he would stand in for the duke of Saxony.
entertained his majesty with all his officers and followers in the citadel at his own cost, and also kept a table in the town … where his lordship entertained the duke of Monmouth, the marquess of Blanquefort [i.e. Louis de Duras, later 2nd earl of Feversham], with many others of the nobility, having provided all things in very great plenty to entertain his majesty with all the nobility and persons of quality, and giving money to all his majesty’s inferior officers at their departure.
In return, the king bolstered Bath’s position still further by promising his royal favour to the corporation.
When Parliament reconvened in 1673, Bath was present for almost every day of the session. He was also once again involved in difficult discussions with the tinners, whose demands for what Danby considered an ‘unreasonable price’ meant that negotiations continued well into December 1674.
Bath was present for all four days of the autumn 1673 session. He continued his high attendance through the 1674 session and both those of 1675, not missing a single day. He held the proxy of James Bertie, 5th Baron Norreys (later earl of Abingdon), for both sessions of 1675 as well as that of William Ley, 4th earl of Marlborough, from 12 May 1675, re-entered on 14 Oct. 1675. During the 1674 session he was named to five committees to consider legislation, including one for the estates of the underage Charles Cornwallis, 3rd Baron Cornwallis, and (somewhat ironically, given allegations about his future activities over the Albemarle inheritance) one for the prevention of frauds and perjuries. On 16 Feb. he was also named to a committee to consider a master and servant bill which was specifically asked to consider adding a clause regulating ‘in what manner, and upon what terms, slaves, either blacks or any other foreigners, not being Christians, may be used in England’. As one of the trustees for Albemarle, who had inherited his father’s role as one of the proprietors of Carolina, Bath may well have had a personal interest in slavery and in the contentious issue of whether slavery could be said to exist in England. However the committee seems never to have met and details about just what such an amendment might have been expected to achieve and who had promoted it remain tantalizingly elusive. Bath was also named as one of the mediators between the Hamburg Company and its creditors. During the first session of 1675 he was named to seven committees. Two forecasts for divisions confirm that, as one might expect, his political allegiances were to Danby and the court. In April he was listed as a supporter of the non-resisting test and in November he opposed making an address to the crown requesting a dissolution. During the second session he was named to the committee for privileges.
Throughout this period Bath continued to act as the hinge between central and local government, representing the interests and claims of individuals and corporations in the west country to the crown. His involvement in west country patronage and politics continued even after 1675, when Albemarle reached his majority and assumed the lord lieutenancy of Devon in his own right. Bath also looked to the interests of his own family. In December 1674 he obtained a promise from the king that his brother Denis would be promoted to the deanery of Durham.
Bath’s attendance over the troubled sessions between 1677 and the end of 1678 was again high. During the 1677–8 session he missed only three days; he missed another four days during the first session of 1678 and one during the second session of that year. He held proxies from Norreys and also from Charles Howard, 3rd earl of Nottingham, from the beginning of the 1677–8 session; Norreys’ proxy was re-entered in October 1678. He also held those of Robert Bertie, 3rd earl of Lindsey, from 22 Feb. 1677 to 5 Mar. 1677, Thomas Colepeper, 2nd Baron Colepeper, from 14 May 1677 to 15 Jan. 1678, Charles Dormer, 2nd earl of Carnarvon, from 23 Feb. 1678, and James Scott, duke of Monmouth, from 28 Feb. to 11 Mar. 1678.
Predictably, Anthony Ashley Cooper, earl of Shaftesbury, listed Bath as triply vile. During the 1677–8 session he was named to 26 committees, mostly estate bills. He was also named to the committee to trace the author of Some Considerations upon the Question, Whether the Parliament is Dissolved by Prorogation for Fifteen Months. Only one bill (that for the stannaries) was of obvious personal interest to him. During the first session of 1678 he was named to four committees, one of which concerned his west country neighbour Sir John Weld. Another, for boats carrying coals, might also have been of personal interest as Denis Granville had a financial interest in coal mines. Bath was not named as one of the original members of a fifth committee – that concerning the unlawful killing of deer – but was added later, which suggests that this too may have been a subject in which he was interested. On 4 Apr. 1678 he voted Philip Herbert, 7th earl of Pembroke, guilty of manslaughter. During the second session of 1678 he was named to five committees whose business was related to the growing fears of a popish plot; he was also named to the committees for privileges and petitions.
In June 1678 Bath entered a protest against the decision to proceed on the claim of Robert Danvers alias Villiers to the title of Viscount Purbeck, arguing that it was impossible ‘upon complicated and accumulative questions [to] give a resolution; nor hath the practice been so, but upon the case agreed, or single propositions, except where the House is unanimous in judgment; whereas in this cause they appear yet much divided’. Also that year he was summoned as one of the peers to sit in the court of the lord high steward for the Cornwallis trial; along with the majority of his fellow lords triers, and in the face of the evidence, he found Cornwallis not guilty.
In November 1678 in a committee of the whole considering the Test, Bath voted against making the declaration against transubstantiation attract the same penalty as the oaths. On 20 Dec. he was one of those named to draw up arguments for the conference on disbanding the forces. This was a matter in which as the commander of a military garrison he had both a personal and a professional interest. That day the House went into committee and agreed extensive amendments to the bill, including changes that specifically exempted troops at Bath’s garrison in Plymouth and at Pendennis (commanded by Bath’s political ally and neighbour, Arundell of Trerice) as long as they had been recruited before 29 Sept. 1677. He was not named to the subsequent conference to discuss the amendments, possibly because the provisions regarding Plymouth and Pendennis were not matters of controversy. On 26 Dec. he voted in favour of insisting on the Lords’ amendment relating to the payment of money into the exchequer and the following day he voted against the motion to commit Danby.
Bath was present at the opening of the first Exclusion Parliament on 6 Mar. 1679 and was present at five of the six days in the first abortive session. He missed only one day of the 61-day second session, attending 98 per cent of all sitting days. He held the proxy of Edward Clinton, 5th earl of Lincoln, from 2 Apr. 1679 and that of Norreys from 15 Apr. to 24 April. His close relationship with the king was demonstrated by his willingness to obey the king’s instructions to seal Danby’s pardon.
Bath was consistently listed by Danby as a supporter and became an important intermediary between Danby and the king, as well as with Danby’s wider network of allies, even to the extent, some said, of perpetuating Danby’s influence in the Privy Council.
During the elections for the second Exclusion Parliament, Bath lent his support to Sidney Godolphin, later earl of Godolphin, who was successfully returned for Helston.
Despite his close connections to the court, Bath did not know, as late as 13 Oct. 1679, that when Parliament met on 17 Oct. it would immediately be prorogued to the following March.
During the subsequent four-year interval before the next Parliament, Bath continued to play a central role in the campaign to free Danby and in the communications between Danby, the court, and the outside world.
For almost a year, from 1682 to the spring of 1683, Bath was involved in an unpleasant quarrel at court about the right of access to the king. The quarrel was given just a little more edge because his opponent, Henry Bennet, earl of Arlington, was a politician on the wane and one of Danby’s enemies. Arlington, who was lord chamberlain of the household, complained that he had been refused admission to the bedchamber ‘in a very rude manner’ and had thus been prevented from speaking with the king. Bath, who, as groom of the stole, was in charge of the bedchamber, defended himself by producing a book of rules and orders, supposedly dating from 1661. This incensed Arlington still further, who complained that the rules were ‘never seen before by himself or his predecessors wherein over and above the wrong to the petitioner, as he conceives, in the abridgment of the best part of his privileges and jurisdiction of his office, many other clauses are inserted to the disturbance of the king’s service’.
Edward Conway, now earl of Conway, somewhat gleefully remarked that he would be ‘very glad to hear that my lord chamberlain gets the better of my lord of Bath’ but the ensuing investigation appears to have found in Bath’s favour. A group of privy councillors declared that the 1661 book of rules that had been confirmed by the king as recently as 1678, and on which Bath relied, did ‘exclude generally all persons whatsoever, except the princes of the blood, and such as are sworn of the bedchamber’. Nevertheless they concluded that the 1661 orders had rarely been implemented and contained items that were ‘unusual and not agreeable to constant practice’.
Almost contemporaneously with this quarrel Bath found himself defending his conduct as trustee for his teenage son-in-law, Carteret. Carteret was still a minor and was abroad on his travels but in his absence his grandmother, acting on his behalf, sought information about the state of his finances, which Bath (the only active trustee) refused to disclose.
In Feb. 1684 Bath stood bail for Henry Arundell, 3rd Baron Arundell of Wardour, one of the Catholic peers who had been accused and imprisoned during the Popish Plot scare.
Loyalty under pressure, 1685–8
In February 1685 Bath’s loyalty and friendship for the royal brothers was such that he and Feversham were the only Protestants to be present at the death of Charles II.
In part it seemed that his loss of influence at court might be compensated for by the growth of his family connection in Parliament. In 1685 his brother Bernard and his older son Charles were joined in the Commons by Bath’s younger son, John, and his nephews. Bath’s local influence remained undiminished. In March 1685 he was appointed recorder of Plympton under the stannary town’s new charter. He and Albemarle also became burgesses.
Bath was absent for two days in the first half of the 1685 session and did not attend at all after 19 June, having left London to assist in the subjugation of Monmouth’s rebellion. By 22 June he was in Exeter organizing the Cornish and Devon militias; he remained there after the capture of Monmouth to deal with the prisoners.
Yet within months there were signs of major disagreement between Bath and the king. Bath, who considered himself an expert on the political and military management of the west country, asked that he be given the command of the standing forces there and that the forces be dispersed to avoid complaints about quartering too many together. On behalf of the king Robert Spencer, 2nd earl of Sunderland, refused both requests.
that your power, interest and command in Devonshire is still as fully absolutely in yourself as formerly, and shall ever so remain whilst I am honoured with the commission of lieutenancy, which I shall rejoice, and be always desirous, as once before, to lay at your grace’s feet whensoever you will be pleased with his majesty’s approbation to accept the same …HMC Buccleuch, i. 345.
In 1686 revelations of irregularities in the tin industry prompted Bath to suggest new elections to a convocation of tinners. Given the difficulties of earlier attempts to come to terms with the tinners, this was an undertaking fraught with difficulty. The rights and customs of the stannaries were a matter of controversy, having been disused since the civil wars. Bath nevertheless claimed to be in no doubt that the stannary towns would ‘elect such loyal sober persons, as would breathe new life into those languishing laws’.
The actual convocation proved to be something of a mixed blessing. While Bath insisted in November 1686 ‘that no meeting could ever end better that had so ill a prospect of agreement before it met’, he was equally convinced that his authority had been undermined by Jonathan Trelawny, recently appointed bishop of Bristol. Just as Bath had had a long and close attachment to Charles II so the Trelawny family had had a similarly close association with James II. Trelawny owed his elevation to the episcopate to his friendship with the new king and, according to Bath, he flaunted his new influence at court,
insinuating that he had by his interest at court procured the convocation ‘to get them a farm’ and a good price for their tin; on all occasions making use of the lord treasurer’s name and the king’s authority; acting therein contrary to his [Bath’s] commission: which made it very difficult to reconcile all things to the satisfaction of the tinners and convocators, and impossible to mention a less price, as the bishop had so raised their expectations.Ibid. pp. 19–20.
Meanwhile, although Bath’s attitude to the repeal of the Test Act remained determinedly ambiguous (his contemporaries variously listed him as opposed to repeal, supportive of repeal, and undeclared), he was caught up in the king’s new campaign against charters. He managed to persuade several Cornish boroughs by prescription to exchange their ancient rights for chartered ones.
I was glad to find the gentry unanimous for the preserving the Test and our laws and what pleased me as much, resolved to appear in their several corporations and not suffer so many foreigners to be put upon them, as were returned hence by the wheedle of the earl of Bath our lord lieutenant, whom they will attend in a body upon his coming into the country, and with the decency of a complement desire that they themselves may be permitted to serve the king in Parliament, which if his lordship will not yield to, but answer that he has the king’s commands for the return of such as his majesty named to him, the gentry, at least a great part of them will assert their particular pretensions in such boroughs as have dependence upon them, and try whether the earl of Bath will with a high hand turn out such mayors and magistrates as will not comply with his nominations, disoblige the gentry, and endanger the kingdom.Bodl. Tanner 28, f. 139.
Early in March 1688 Bath was ‘very joyfully received’ at Exeter but the town’s new charter, granted the same month, sent a chilling message to those most anxious to defend the Anglican Church. It provided a model for the charters that followed, containing clauses that empowered the king to appoint as well as to remove members of corporations and that dispensed them from the Test.
Letters from the west bring the news that the earl of Bath labours with as little success in the counties of Devonshire and Cornwall who return most of the members to Parliament as other lord lieutenants have met with in other parts of the kingdom, notwithstanding he has very seriously offered to the inhabitants to grant them the sale of tin, which would give them the facility of delivering all the tin they might dig out to his m[ajesty] at the rate of £3.10 – pr cwt – and to receive cash for it on delivery without having to wait for other buyers or having to send it to market.Add. 34510, ff. 101–2.
When Bath returned to London in April he confirmed this in person. His failure marked a major setback for government policy. As a result *Sunderland and William Herbert, marquess of Powis, both postponed planned trips to their own lieutenancies.
Bath went back to Cornwall in August, and the following month, despite the setbacks, he was given a list of approved parliamentary candidates.
which gives laws to all the rest, but it is so miserably divided and distracted that I dare affirm there is not a place in the king’s dominions that wants more speedy or serious consideration. It is the bishop’s seat, the residence of the dean, canons and prebendaries. The great interest of the place consists of church men, and it has always been true to the church and consequently loyal to the king. Its motto is Semper fidelis [always faithful]. You may easily imagine it to be a great mortification to them to see the most substantial, rich, loyal citizens turned out of the government for no offence … and this in such a hurry that they destroyed their charter for very haste. It cannot choose but be grievous to them to be domineered over by a packed chamber of dissenters, and to see the sword … carried every Sunday before the Mayor in state to a conventicle. The animosities, I am told, are so great that they would be dangerous in the most peaceable times. In these they may be fatal if some speedy course be not taken.Ibid. 304–5.
Bath had already sent lists of justices to be added and removed from the commissions of the peace to the lord chancellor, George Jeffreys, Baron Jeffreys. He was careful to secure royal approval for reinstating prominent individuals and tried to balance conflicting demands by nominating a number of ‘gentlemen of the first rank’ who were sympathetic to Dissent but whose status would make them acceptable to loyal Anglicans. The earlier purges had resulted in the addition of men who were ‘of mean quality and small estate and very unacceptable to those worthy gentlemen who are now to be restored’ and he suggested that they should be removed. Jeffreys complied.
So deep were the worries that news of the birth of a prince of Wales caused economic as well as political upset in Cornwall. The newly appointed farmers of the pre-emption of tin found that ‘the difficulties of the times’ had delayed the passing of their patent, which was perhaps fortunate as they also claimed that the market had collapsed.
was a person in whom he had no confidence, as he had often faithfully acquainted the king; the rest of the officers had tendered him their commissions, and desired to be excused from serving under him (the mayor), so that his lordship might easily judge what was to be expected from such a commander in case of necessity. He had not thought fit to remove him, but would be glad of his majesty’s pleasure therein by the next post. Without putting the militia of that city into better hands it was impossible (unless the king sent some of his standing forces) to preserve that important place long in peace, or defend it against an enemy.Ibid. p. 31.
Revolution and defection to the prince of Orange, 1688–92
Bath’s reputation as the king’s man and his apparent willingness to accept policy changes, even when he disliked them, seems to have blinded James II to the depth of his rage. On 30 Oct., as the prospect of invasion became ever more likely, Bath was one of several lords lieutenant of strategically important counties to receive instructions to keep watch on the coast and to remove ‘all horses oxen and cattle fit for burden or draught’ 20 miles inland from any attempted landing place.
In reality Bath was already in touch with the invading forces.
In the meantime Bath continued to play the part of attentive host, offering his own shalloop to Huntingdon, who had expressed an interest in visiting St Nicholas Island. Although pleased at the favour, Huntingdon declined; it was not until later that he realized that Bath had intended to leave him there as a prisoner. He was invited instead to dine with Bath, who explained to his somewhat gullible listener that he had restrained ‘port liberty’ for his soldiers as part of their training ‘the better to accustom them to a siege’. During what seems to have been a pleasant and genial dinner, Bath’s men seized the citadel and removed all the Catholic officers and soldiers. As soon as he was informed that the operation was complete, Bath placed Huntingdon under arrest.
The next day, 26 Nov. 1688, Bath had the prince of Orange’s declaration read to the garrison who greeted it with huzzas and threw up their hats. The declaration was then posted on the gates of the citadel.
In December 1688 Bath was only one of three peers who received a summons to the Parliament that James had scheduled for January.
Bath now appeared to be distancing himself from his own political past. His once close relationship with Danby had turned sour, but dating the breakdown is extremely difficult. One factor in the transformation may have been the failure of Lansdown’s marriage to Martha Osborne in or about the summer of 1682.
Bath returned to London in January 1689 determined to pursue all these claims. His first step seems to have been to register the warrant of April 1661 – with its claim to the earldom of Glamorgan and the titles of Corbeil, Thorigny, and Granville – with the college of arms.
While Bath found it necessary to besiege the crown with petitions for what he perceived to be his just recompense, Danby enjoyed a privileged position as one of the ‘immortal seven’. Before the Revolution Bath’s earldom had enjoyed higher precedence than that of Danby; until 1685 as both groom of the stole and a trusted friend of Charles II he had also been closer to the centre of power than the erstwhile lord treasurer. Danby’s promotion to a marquessate (as Carmarthen) in April 1689 and his ability to command office under the new regime meant that their relative positions were now reversed: he was now more powerful than Bath and also outranked him.
Bath’s parliamentary activity undoubtedly also contributed to the process. In February 1689 both men voted consistently in favour of the words ‘abdicated’ and ‘that the throne is thereby vacant’ and both were named as managers of the conference to consider amendments to the declaration declaring William and Mary to be monarchs. Then in May, when Carmarthen led the campaign against reversing Oates’s convictions for perjury, Bath not only parted company with him but went on to enter three protests against the refusal to do so. In so doing he allied himself with Carmarthen’s Whig enemies. He held Carteret’s proxy from 12 July so was able to employ that in the division on Oates that took place on 30 July 1689. During the session he acted as teller on seven occasions, leading one to wonder if he had been similarly involved before the Revolution (for which records of tellerships do not survive).
On 5 Mar. Bath told on the division for an amendment to the bill for the trial of peers; on 23 Apr. for the division concerning the Commons amendment to the abrogating oaths bill; in June for that on the addition of a proviso to the land tax bill which would have bolstered privilege of peerage by enabling the peers to name their own commissioners and on the vote for reversing the 1682 judgment against the former sheriff of London, Thomas (now Sir Thomas) Pilkington‡. In all these cases, although solid evidence is lacking, it seems likely that he voted with the Whigs. In September 1689 news of the death of Lady Lansdown, which was said to bring ‘joy’ to Bath, removed the final link between him and Carmarthen.
Alongside his parliamentary activities during this session, Bath also took the first steps in what was to become a long-running attempt to gain possession of the Albemarle fortune. As noted above, he had expected to be the major beneficiary under the 2nd duke of Albemarle’s will. He was therefore dismayed to discover that Albemarle had made a new will shortly before leaving England in 1687 in which, after safeguarding the interests of his wife during her lifetime, he had entailed virtually the whole of his property on a Col. Henry Monck and his two sons, Christopher and Henry Monck. Col. Monck had been a protégé of the 1st duke of Albemarle; the 2nd duke had taken a similar interest in the careers of Christopher and Henry junior. There is no extant evidence to confirm a family connection but Albemarle clearly believed that he and Col. Monck were related to each other through the paternal line. It seems that it was not until 1684 that he realized that his relationship to Bath was through their mothers and that Bath was not therefore the heir to the Monck patrimony.
The will of 1687 was drawn up by the leading lawyer Henry Pollexfen‡. Albemarle took the original with him to Jamaica but made sure that two certified copies were left in England; the original and both copies were opened in the presence of witnesses on 8 Apr. 1689. Within six months Bath was embroiled in a case in the prerogative court of Canterbury to overturn the 1687 will and in a suit and counter-suit in chancery to the same end.
During the 1689–90 session Bath was present for 71 per cent of sitting days. His activities during this session are more difficult to trace but his protest on 23 Nov. 1689 about the loss of a proviso to the bill of rights that would have required royal pardons to impeachments to have the approval of both Houses of Parliament suggests open enmity to Carmarthen, who marked him as an opponent of the court in a list he compiled between October 1689 and February 1690. His attendance over the short first session of 1690 rose to nearly 92 per cent, perhaps because his presence in London was required in order to continue litigation over the Albemarle inheritance. In March 1690, as a result of an enquiry into protections, he withdrew one protection and claimed that a second was forged.
The 1690–1 session saw Bath’s attendance rise to nearly 90 per cent. He almost immediately faced a challenge to his claim of privilege in the Albemarle case.
Various enquiries had supported the validity of Bath’s financial claims.
Other matters progressed in a less satisfactory manner. In May 1691 the delegates – who included Carmarthen, Daniel Finch, 2nd earl of Nottingham, and Thomas Herbert, 8th earl of Pembroke, unanimously rejected Bath’s appeal against the duchess of Albemarle.
Bath was absent when Parliament reassembled for the 1691–2 session, not taking his seat until 14 Nov. 1691. He did not attend after 27 Jan. 1692 at all. He covered his absence during the first part of the session by a proxy to Lansdown and during the second part by a proxy to Carteret. There were other scattered absences so that overall his attendance was just under 58 per cent. During November, after an exceptionally long trial, Bath won his case against the duchess of Albemarle. Carmarthen spoke so reluctantly for the duchess that neither she nor Bath were satisfied with his testimony.
Only partial information is available about the state of Bath’s finances at this time. He was apparently still in possession of a substantial quantity of plate issued to him during the reign of Charles II and never returned, and it seems that even after Bath had relinquished his claim to the arrears of £20,000 the crown still owed him some £10,000.
Overplaying his hand, 1692–1701
Shortly before the 1692–3 session began Bath petitioned the queen about his pension. Having, in his view, sacrificed £20,000 in return for a contractually guaranteed payment of £5,000 a year, he was incensed to find that that payment had been stopped, allegedly because of financial exigency, but more probably because William III was trying to force Bath to exercise his influence over his two sons in order to persuade them to support the administration.
Shortly after the session ended in March 1693, Lansdown, who had been appointed jointly with his father as lord lieutenant of Devon and Cornwall in 1691, was removed from those offices after quarrelling with the king over his own unpaid arrears.
Sunderland’s attempts to discipline the Granvilles may also have included promises of reward. Contemporaneously with Lansdown’s quarrel with the king, there were renewed rumours of a dukedom for Bath, and in June Sunderland, in discussing the prospects for managing the Lords, referred to Bath as one of three peers who needed ‘something besides money’. Unfortunately for Bath his prospects of promotion in the peerage had to be weighed against the needs of others. John Sheffield, 3rd earl of Mulgrave (later duke of Buckingham), had made it clear that he wanted a marquessate – but not if others were to be offered dukedoms.
Bath was present on 77 per cent of sitting days in the 1693–4 session, with well over half his absences being in March and April 1694. He was present almost every day in November and December 1693 but absent on 22 Dec., presumably because he was attending yet another hearing in the Albemarle case. On 3 and 15 Jan. 1694 he was named as one of the managers of the conference over the controversial issues surrounding the loss of the Turkey convoy the previous summer. Meanwhile, the Albemarle inheritance case now began to assume even greater prominence. On 8 Jan. the duchess of Albemarle and her new husband, Ralph Montagu, earl (later duke) of Montagu, brought an appeal against the 22 Dec. verdict in Bath’s favour and on 26 Jan. Thomas Pride petitioned for a waiver of privilege by Bath and Montagu so that he could proceed with a claim as heir at law to his uncle, the 1st duke of Albemarle. On 29 Jan. Bath and Montagu both agreed to waive privilege. On 17 Feb., after a hearing that had lasted several days and which had even attracted the king to attend incognito, Bath won yet another round in the legal battle, although only by a small majority.
Despite his victory, Bath’s standing with the government was still precarious, probably because of his son’s activities in the Commons in favour of the triennial bill, and there were fresh reports that he was to be removed from his lord lieutenancies.
Bath’s attendance in the following (1694–5) session was just over 82 per cent but there is almost no information about his parliamentary activities. The Albemarle inheritance dispute dragged on with further lengthy hearings in the court of king’s bench (one of which was said to have lasted all day and all night) in November 1694 and February 1695.
Bath appears to have been relatively inactive during the 1695 elections but even so he still headed a significant parliamentary connection. During the 1695–6 session he was again present on some 82 per cent of sitting days but he left no trace of his activities until 24. Jan. 1696 when, together with his son and four other Tory peers, he signed the protest against the passage of the bill to prevent false and double returns at elections to the Commons. On 27 Feb. 1696 he signed the Association. Lansdown, who was absent on 27 Feb., signed the following day. In the Commons Sir Bevil Granville also signed the Association but John and Bernard Granville refused it.
When Parliament reassembled for the 1696–7 session Bath was present for nearly 73 per cent of sitting days. Almost half his absences were concentrated in the period between 25 Feb. and 13 Mar. inclusive and may well relate to the final illness of his daughter Jane, dowager Lady Leveson, who died on or about 27 Feb. 1697. During the early months of the session the House was confronted with a series of allegations and counter-allegations about the use and misuse of privilege in the Albemarle case by both parties. A decision to allow Bath privilege for a period of six months so that he could pursue his actions for perjury was allegedly undermined by Montagu’s determination to obstruct and delay the prosecutions.
Bath was furious. He tried to prevent the use of the Albemarle title and petitioned for the dukedom.
Bath’s only other known activity in the House that session took place on 15 Apr. 1697 when (again in company with his son Lansdown) he entered a protest against the failure of an amendment to the bill to restrain the number and ill practices of stock-jobbers, arguing that the amendment was necessary to prevent the retrospective application of the new regulations.
During the summer of 1697 there were lengthy hearings concerning the perjury allegations in the Albemarle case. There would have been more but the judges postponed them because they were too tired to cope with another all-night sitting.
During the 1697–8 session Bath was present for just over 76 per cent of sitting days. His known activities in the House again centred on the Albemarle case. In the autumn he claimed privilege yet again, leading to yet another compromise brokered by the House in January 1698.
Bath’s longest absence during the 1697–8 session was concentrated towards the end of May and early June 1698. It is tempting to wonder whether this too was related to the Albemarle case, since on 12 May it was reported that ‘The great lawsuit … has met with an unexpected turn.’ Bath had bought off Christopher Monck, the residuary legatee under the 1687 will, in order to undermine Montagu’s case by means that were later alleged to be fraudulent.
Although he reached his seventieth birthday shortly after the commencement of the 1698–9 session, Bath’s attendance remained high: he was present on some 73 per cent of sitting days. In September he and Montagu had finally agreed to settle their long dispute, though Bath had still not given up hopes for the Albemarle title.
Whether he obtained the personal interview for which he was angling is unclear. He continued to be unwilling to adopt a political line that would secure him in the court’s favour. On 8 Feb. 1699, perhaps again in alliance with opposition members in the Commons, he voted against the resolution to assist the king to retain the Dutch guards and entered a dissent on the same subject. He was also involved in less controversial matters: on 20 and 21 Apr. he was named as one of the managers for conferences on the acts for Blackwell Hall and Billingsgate markets. His presence in the House on those days (after an absence of a week) may well have been related to another issue: the writ of error brought by Christopher Dighton against Bath’s brother Bernard Granville. Although not included in the presence list, on 3 May 1699 he was named as one of the managers of the conference to discuss the supply clauses that had been tacked by the Commons to the bill for duty on paper. This was an issue that overrode party politics since the interest of the peers in preserving their privileges and the interests of the king coincided.
Over the next (1699–1700) session, Bath’s attendance fell slightly to some 68 per cent but there is little information about his activities other than that he was believed to be opposed to the bill for continuing the East India Company as a corporation. Although still in office as ranger of St James’s Park his inability to suppress alehouses and encroachments there continued to irk the king and he was faced with demands to return the plate that had been issued to him as groom of the stole during the reign of Charles II.
The first session of the 1701 Parliament was the last that Bath was able to attend before his death in August 1701. His attendance over this session fell to 44 per cent, which was largely attributable to long spells of absence in February and March and again in June. On 20 Mar. he entered a protest at the failure of the Tory attempt to send the address relating to the partition treaty to the Commons. On 23 May he (and other proprietors of Carolina and the Bahamas) petitioned the House against the bill for uniting the government of several colonies and plantations in America to the crown. Although the House ordered him to be heard, the bill appears to have been lost, possibly because of the disruption to business caused by the attempted impeachments of the Junto lords. Bath’s last attendance was on 17 June 1701 when he voted to acquit Lord Somers.
Bath died on 22 Aug. 1701, leaving a will in which he claimed to be owed some £25,000 by the crown. Somewhat ironically, in view of the long-running and still unresolved disputes over the Albemarle inheritance, his own disposition of his estate also gave rise to litigation.