BATHURST, Allen (1684-1775)

A vivacious and colourful figure until well into his ninetieth year, Allen Bathurst took his seat in the House of Lords in January 1712 as one of 12 new peers created by the Tory ministry of Robert Harley, earl of Oxford. Bathurst had been raised in court circles, as his father was a household official to Queen Anne and his mother a childhood friend of both Anne and her sister Queen Mary. HP Commons 1690-1715, iii. 149. At his father’s death in 1704 he inherited estates said to be worth £7,000 a year, mainly centred on Paulersbury in Northamptonshire and Cirencester Park in Gloucestershire. The Cirencester estate carried with it the electoral interest that his father had built up. His landholdings were further augmented by much of the Apsley estate, worth £4,000 a year, which his wife inherited on the death of her brother in 1708. Add. 70282, notes from Mr Lawson, c. 13 Oct. 1710. By the time of his death in 1775, he was able to bequeath not only his real estate but numerous annuities and cash legacies amounting to more than £3,000.

What Bathurst did not inherit was his father’s political discretion. A Tory who made no bones about his hatred of Whiggery, he supported the highflying religious politics of Francis Atterbury, bishop of Rochester, voted against the impeachment of Henry Sacheverell in 1710 and presented the Tory address from Gloucestershire against the Whig ministry later that year. With the Tory election victory of 1710, it was rumoured that he would be elevated to the peerage as part of a general promotion ‘but it won’t be until they see what strength they have in the House of Commons’. Wentworth Pprs. 135-7. More loyal to Henry St. John* [355], Viscount Bolingbroke, than to his Tory rival, Oxford, Bathurst nevertheless figured in Oxford’s plans and in December 1711 appeared in an Oxford memorandum as one of a number of potential new peers whose votes would be required to secure ratification of the peace. Bathurst was one of four members of the Tory Saturday dining club (to be elevated at this time. The other three, George Hay, Baron Hay, George Granville, Baron Lansdown, and Samuel Masham, Baron Masham, were almost certainly more favoured by Oxford; Bathurst was of the lowest precedence, but he met Oxford’s fundamental criteria: family connection with the Commons and high social status. Partisan Pols. Principle and Reform in Parliament and the Constituencies, 1689-1880 eds. C. Jones, P. Salmon and R.W. Davis, 19, 25, 33-34. On 2 Jan. 1712 he received his writ of summons and was introduced to the House between Francis North, 2nd Baron Guilford, and Francis Seymour Conway, Baron Conway. Bathurst proved an utterly reliable Tory presence in the Lords and attended this, his first session, for nearly 74 per cent of sittings. On 15 May 1712 he received the proxy of Thomas Foley, Baron Foley (almost certainly for divisions on the grants bill). The proxy was vacated on 27 May. On 28 May 1712 Bathurst supported the ministry in the division on the restraining orders. PH, xxvi. 177-81. He was present on 21 June 1712 when the session adjourned and during the summer of 1712 and spring of 1713, Bathurst attended the House on six occasions for formal prorogations.

In Cirencester Bathurst ensured that his younger brother, Benjamin, replaced him in the Commons, causing considerable inconvenience to his erstwhile partner, the Tory Charles Coxe^‡ who was forced to renounce an interest that he had cultivated for more than 15 years and had to be found an alternative seat. HP Commons 1690-1715, ii. 215; iii. 774.

In March 1713 Bathurst was listed as a reliable supporter of the Oxford ministry. On 9 Apr. 1713 he attended the House for the first day of the new parliamentary session and attended for nearly 70 per cent of sittings. In June 1713 he was estimated as a supporter of legislation confirming the eighth and ninth articles of the French commercial treaty. Attending sporadically for the remainder of the session, he was present on 16 July 1713 for the prorogation.

On 16 Feb. 1714 Bathurst attended the House for the first day of the new Parliament and thereafter attended the session for nearly 75 per cent of sittings. Estimated by Daniel Finch, 2nd earl of Nottingham, as a supporter of the schism bill, he attended the House regularly throughout spring 1714. On 9 June 1714 he acted as teller in the division of a committee of the whole House on the resumption of the House. On 12 June 1714 he received the proxy of Robert Benson, Baron Bingley (vacated on the 14th). The proxy was probably given in anticipation of the schism bill division.

Bathurst attended the brief August 1714 session at the start of George I’s reign for nearly half of all sittings (seven in total). On 23 Sept. 1714 he again attended the House for the prorogation. After the accession of George I, he hoped to be part of a loyal Tory opposition; alienated by the king’s partisan preference for Whigs, Bathurst turned Jacobite, supported the Old Pretender with financial assistance and consistently opposed the ministries of Robert Walpole* [1540], later earl of Orford, and the Pelhams. A member of the Leicester House faction that gathered around Frederick^†, prince of Wales, in the 1740s, he naturally gravitated to Frederick’s son, the future George III. He was raised to an earldom in 1772. His active parliamentary career after 1715 will be examined in detail in a subsequent volume. At the age of 91, Bathurst died at Cirencester on 16 Sept. 1775. He was buried alongside his wife in the Church of St. John the Baptist in Cirencester and was succeeded in the peerage by his eldest surviving son, Henry Bathurst* [1858], 2nd earl Bathurst. The second earl destroyed the bulk of his father’s surviving correspondence, allegedly to protect his father’s political reputation. HP Commons 1690-1715, iii. 149.