PELHAM, Thomas (c. 1653-1712)

Thomas Pelham was first returned to the Commons to fill a vacated seat for East Grinstead shortly after the convening of the last session of the Cavalier Parliament in October 1678. He was returned for the same borough in the subsequent election, and from that point until he voluntarily stood down before the election of 1705 he sat in every Parliament. During those long years in the Commons, he allied himself with first the Exclusionists and later the Whigs but always maintained an independent ‘country’ stance. He was influenced, in part, by his first father-in-law, the former attorney-general and firm advocate of Exclusion, Sir William Jones^‡. His wife Elizabeth, Jones’s daughter, died within two years of the marriage, and in April 1686 Pelham made a marriage alliance with an even more prestigious and powerful Whig family when he married Grace, daughter of another Exclusionist, the melancholy Presbyterian peer, Gilbert Holles, 3rd earl of Clare.

From this point Pelham’s career was closely linked with his new brother-in-law, John Holles, who became 4th earl of Clare in 1689. By 1694, through his marriage to a daughter (and as of 1691 sole heiress) of Henry Cavendish, 2nd duke of Newcastle, and a fortuitous inheritance from a distant cousin, Clare had become one of the greatest landowners in England; he was himself created duke of Newcastle in 1694. It was perhaps through the influence of Newcastle that Pelham rose to prominence during the reign of William III. His resignation from the treasury commission in late February 1692 was a gesture of support for his brother-in-law’s resignation of his court offices over William’s refusal to grant his demand for the dukedom of Newcastle. In the Commons Pelham maintained his Whig stance but did not follow the Junto consistently, often taking an independent line, as in his opposition to the attainder of Sir John Fenwick^‡. His connection with the Whigs, was further strengthened by the marriage in 1698 between his daughter, Elizabeth (with a portion of £30,000) and a prominent Whig politician, Charles Townshend, 2nd Viscount Townshend. CSP Dom. 1698, pp. 329-30; Luttrell Diary, iv. 398.

Pelham returned to the treasury commission in May 1697 but was removed from it again in June 1699. Reappointed in March 1701 he lost office again at Anne’s accession. CSP Dom. 1697, p. 125; 1700-2, p. 278; HMC 5th Rep. 325; HMC Johnstone, 110. In her first Parliament Pelham was returned for both the county (Sussex) and for Lewes and chose to sit for the county. Since the latter years of William III’s reign Newcastle had turned to the rising star, Robert Harley, later earl of Oxford, as his closest political ally. Add. 33084, f. 165; HMC Portland, iii. 613. In early April 1705 Harley was able to have Newcastle appointed lord privy seal, as a first move in the gradual replacement of Tory officers with Whigs, and that same month he tried to gratify Newcastle by promoting his brother-in-law, Pelham, to the vice-admiralty of the Sussex coast, a position formerly held by his father. Harley further encouraged Newcastle to persuade Pelham to stand for Sussex in the elections of spring 1705, but Pelham declined the offer. Eg. 929, f. 72.

Perhaps Pelham withdrew from the Commons to further emphasize his desire for a peerage; the growing influence of his patron, Newcastle, in the government ensured that his wish for further favour would eventually be gratified. Under constant pressure from Harley and the ‘duumvirs’, throughout 1705-6 Anne provided offices and honours to an increasing number of Whigs, often against her own judgment. In December 1706 Harley and Sidney Godolphin, earl of Godolphin, included Pelham among their list of ten Whigs who were to be either created peers or elevated from their existing titles. Verney ms mic. M636/53, Sir T. Cave to Fermanagh, 3 Dec. 1706; HMC Portland, iv. 362. The patent creating him Baron Pelham of Laughton in Sussex was sealed on 16 Dec. 1706, and he first sat in the House two weeks later on 30 Dec. 1706, along with the nine other Whig creations or promotions. His elevation to the upper House did not reduce his interest in the Commons; members of the extended Pelham family continued to sit for Lewes for the next few Parliaments.

If Pelham was created a baron in order to increase Whig numbers and voting power, his subsequent record in the House would have been a disappointment to his brother-in-law and those who promoted him. His activity and attendance remained low over the next six years. After coming to 22 sittings of the House from the time of his introduction, he left the House for that session on 14 Mar. 1707, just when proceedings on the bill of Union were heating up, and did not come at all in the brief session of April 1707. He was present at 15 of the sittings in 1707-8, first sitting in this session on 10 Nov. 1707. Even when the Whigs dominated Parliament, as they did after the 1708 elections, Pelham seldom showed up in the House, and he came to only 16 meetings of the 1708-9 session. At this point his attitude to the two principal ministers, the ‘duumvirs’ Godolphin and John Churchill, duke of Marlborough, was ambivalent. For while he obsequiously solicited Marlborough in March 1709 for a military commission for his kinsman, James Pelham^‡, in the House he joined with Newcastle and the Junto Whigs against the increasingly beleaguered Godolphin. Add. 61293, ff. 48, 50; Add. 61391, f. 65. On 21 Jan. 1709 he voted against the right of Godolphin’s close colleague James Douglas, 2nd duke of Queensberry [S], to vote in the election of the Scottish representative peers because he had received the British title of duke of Dover. Pelham came to 38 per cent of the sittings in the session of 1709-10, his highest rate of attendance in the House during his entire career there. He was present in particular during the proceedings against Henry Sacheverell, for which he was nominated to a number of committees. On 20 Mar. 1710 he found Sacheverell guilty.

Even though Newcastle was the only Whig to remain in office throughout the change of ministry in the summer and autumn of 1710, Pelham barely bothered to come to the Tory-dominated Parliament. He came to only nine sittings in the 1710-11 session. He was perhaps summoned or encouraged to appear in the House for these few brief meetings in early 1711, for he put his name to the two protests of 3 Feb. 1711 objecting to the House’s condemnation of the previous ministry for its failure to supply the forces in Spain adequately to counter the Franco-Spanish army at Almanza. Two days after this protest he left the House and registered his proxy with Newcastle, who himself did not return to the House from a period of absence until 19 February.

For the following (1711-12) session Thomas Howard, 6th Baron Howard of Effingham, registered his proxy with Pelham on 1 Dec. 1711. Pelham sat for 12 sittings from the session’s first day on 7 Dec. until 25 Jan. 1712 when he once again left the House, probably due to illness. He registered his proxy with Godolphin on 31 January. PA, HL/PO/JO/13/7. During this brief period in the House Pelham voted in favour of presenting the address to the queen insisting that there could be ‘No peace without Spain’ and against the right of James Hamilton, 4th duke of Hamilton [S], to sit in the House as duke of Brandon, as this British title had been conferred on him after the Union. Jones, Party and Management, 157.

Pelham died, apparently of apoplexy, on 23 Feb. 1712 at his house of Halland at Laughton and reportedly ‘left his son ... the richest heir in England’. Wentworth Pprs. 271. This estimation proved to be correct but the wealth of the young Thomas Pelham, later duke of Newcastle, did not come principally from his own father. His paternal inheritance was substantial (it was estimated to be worth £4,000 p.a.), but most of his wealth came from his maternal uncle, Newcastle, who had died in July 1711. Newcastle had no male heir and had spent much of 1711 arranging a marriage between his only daughter Henrietta ‘who will be the richest heiress in Europe’ and Harley’s son, Edward Harley^†, later 2nd earl of Oxford. Yet when his will, written on 29 Aug. 1707, was produced it shocked contemporaries, for Newcastle had left the bulk of his vast estate, including the Holles properties, both those he had inherited from his father, the earl of Clare, and those from his second cousin, Denzil Holles, 3rd Baron Holles, to his nephew Thomas. His daughter Henrietta was to receive only a marriage portion of £20,000 and the Cavendish estates her mother had brought to the marriage. As Gilbert Burnet, bishop of Salisbury described Newcastle at the time of his death as ‘the richest subject that had been in England for some ages’, with an estate estimated at above £40,000 p.a., this was a vast and unexpected fortune for the young man. Burnet, vi. 69. Pelham was not slow to claim it on behalf of his son. Nor was the dowager duchess of Newcastle, assisted by her daughter’s prospective father-in-law, Harley (now earl of Oxford), hesitant in contesting the will. Throughout much of the time between Newcastle’s death and his own less than a year later, Pelham and his son were engaged in litigation with the dowager duchess and Oxford. HMC Portland, v. 92; Add. 33064, ff. 1-2; Add. 70242, Lady Newcastle to Oxford, 4, 11, 27 Aug. 1711; Add. 70251, Pelham and Oxford 17 Sept. 1711, Oxford to Pelham 19 Sept. 1711. After Pelham’s own death on 23 Feb. 1712, his son was able to make a settlement making him one of the wealthiest peers in England for much of the eighteenth century. HMC Lords, n.s. x. 56-57.