PELHAM HOLLES, Thomas (1693-1768)

Thomas Pelham-Holles, duke of Newcastle-on-Tyne, was one of the major political figures under the first three Georges; his long career in the House, and in successive ministries, will be recounted in much more detail in the relevant succeeding volumes of this work. This biography is based on Browning, Newcastle, ch. 1. Apart from his first two brief and uneventful appearances in the House in August 1714, following the death of Queen Anne, Pelham-Holles merits a place in the volumes for this period because of the controversy surrounding his vast inheritance, which provided the foundation for his power under the Hanoverians, particularly because the people involved included many of the most prominent political figures of Anne’s reign and the controversy was in part fought out in the House of Lords.

Thomas Pelham, as he was until 1711, was the eldest son and namesake of Thomas Pelham, created Baron Pelham of Laughton in 1706, a prominent landowner based in Laughton in Sussex who sat in the Commons for the boroughs of East Grinstead and then Lewes from October 1678 to 1702. He was returned for the county itself in the first Parliament of Anne. Throughout, Pelham acted in Parliament as a moderate Whig, and from an early age the future duke of Newcastle was linked to a number of Whig families and individuals. In 1698 his half-sister Lady Elizabeth Pelham married the rising Whig politician Charles Townshend, 2nd Viscount Townshend, and for many years the younger Thomas Pelham saw himself as a follower of this brother-in-law. CSP Dom. 1698, pp. 329–30. More significantly for his future fortunes, his mother (his father’s second wife) was Lady Grace Holles, daughter of Gilbert Holles, 3rd earl of Clare, and sister of John Holles, who, through a lucrative marriage and a fortuitous inheritance, became one of the greatest landowners in England and was created duke of Newcastle in 1694. It was almost certainly through the influence of Newcastle, lord privy seal from 1705, that his brother-in-law, Thomas Pelham, was elevated to the peerage on 16 Dec. 1706.

At Pelham of Laughton’s death on 23 Feb. 1712 his heir, Thomas, still only 18 years of age, became 2nd Baron Pelham of Laughton and reportedly ‘the richest heir in England’. Wentworth Pprs. 271. The wealth of the new Baron Pelham did not come principally from his father’s inheritance (which was reputed to be only £4,000 p.a.) but from his maternal uncle Newcastle, who had died without a male heir on 15 July 1711. By his will of 29 Aug. 1707 Newcastle left to his only child, his daughter Henrietta, a marriage portion of £20,000 and only a part (worth about £5,000 p.a.) of the estates in Staffordshire, Northumberland and Yorkshire that her mother, a daughter and eventually the sole heiress of Henry Cavendish, 2nd duke of Newcastle, had brought with her to the marriage. He left the remainder of the Cavendish estates and all of the Holles properties – both those he had inherited from his father, the earl of Clare, and those that had come from his second cousin Denzil Holles, 3rd Baron Holles (estimated when combined to be worth about £37,000) – to his nephew Thomas Pelham, on condition that he adopt the surname Holles.

Henrietta was also encouraged by her father’s will to marry her cousin Thomas to keep the estate and title together, despite the ongoing negotiations, set in motion after the will had been written but before Newcastle’s death, for a match between Henrietta and Edward Harley^† (later 2nd earl of Oxford), the son of Robert Harley, earl of Oxford. Browning, Newcastle, 2–3; Add. 72491, f. 39. Newcastle had long been closely connected socially and politically with Oxford, and had even served as the only Whig in the lord treasurer’s Tory-based ministry after 1710. So close was the connection that there were rumours that Oxford himself would be made duke of Newcastle after his friend’s death without male heirs, and it appears that one motivation for promoting the marriage of his son to Newcastle’s daughter was so that that prestigious dukedom would be conferred on Lord Harley. Add. 72496, f. 61; Add. 70140, Oxford to E. Harley, 13 Aug. 1713. Both the estate and the title were at stake in the ensuing battles.

Thomas Pelham quickly added the name and arms of Holles to those of Pelham to signify his acceptance of this inheritance, but the dowager duchess of Newcastle was equally quick to contest the validity of the will of her late husband, angry at what she saw as his unwarranted parcelling out of the Cavendish lands she had brought to the marriage. She was aided in this by her ally, confidant and prospective kinsman, the earl of Oxford. HMC Portland, v. 92; Add. 33064, ff. 1–2; Add. 70242, Lady Newcastle to Oxford, 4, 11 and 27 Aug. 1711. The matter came before chancery, which ordered the dowager duchess to produce a deed of settlement and other writings of her late husband regarding the Cavendish estate. As she consistently refused to do so, arguing that the validity of the will had still not been determined, on 9 Dec. 1712 chancery ordered her property to be sequestered until she complied. She presented an appeal against this decree to the House on 21 Apr. 1713. The matter aroused much interest, for, as the attorney-general, Sir Edward Northey^‡, acting for Pelham, stated before the House, ‘All the wills of England are concerned in this case’. HMC Lords, n.s. x. 56–57. The case was heard at the bar of the House on 19 May. The House resolved unanimously to affirm the order against the dowager duchess, ‘which was a great disappointment to her grace, and is reckoned a great step towards Lord Pelham’s possessing what the late duke of Newcastle left him by his will, which is about £30,000 p.a.’. It was also noticed with interest by contemporaries that Oxford was not in the House for the hearing, ‘nor would he interest himself in this occasion, which is supposed might go a great way to the issue that happened’. Add. 72500, f. 170.

Oxford’s absence and lack of support led to a breach between him and the dowager duchess, who now also turned against the marriage of her daughter to Lord Harley. Lady Henrietta, still underage, took matters into her own hands, broke with her mother and looked to Oxford to act as her guardian. In early August 1713 he declared ‘that there is a necessity of the lady’s marrying somebody [and] that this must be done with speed as to her own affairs’. The urgency was caused in part by the proposal Pelham made to the late duke of Newcastle’s close friend and executor Henry Paget, 8th Baron Paget (later earl of Uxbridge), that, as the marriage between Henrietta and Harley was apparently off, he would willingly embark on negotiations for a match with her himself. Oxford hurriedly engineered the marriage of Lord Harley and Lady Henrietta, celebrated in private on 31 Aug. 1713, over the continuing opposition of the dowager duchess. Wentworth Pprs. 349–50; Add. 70140, Oxford to E. Harley, 13 Aug. 1713. There were predictions that ‘this fortunate great match betwixt Lord Harley and Lady Harriet [Henrietta] Holles is like, they say, to be followed with an accommodation of the lawsuit betwixt Lord Pelham and the duchess’. Add. 72496, ff. 98–99.

The dowager duchess rejected attempts at mediation, and, increasingly estranged even from her own daughter, continued to litigate. Almost all of the judicial decisions went against her whilst in the meantime the other parties set about trying to come to their own settlement. Add. 70140, E. Dummer to E. Harley, 1 Oct. 1713; Add. 61463, ff. 108–9. Pelham enlisted his uncle’s old friend Paget as a mediator to arrange a settlement between himself and the lord treasurer over the estate. Add. 70251, Paget to Oxford, 22 Sept., 22, 24 Oct., 19 Nov. 1713. In early 1714 Pelham, Oxford, Lord and Lady Harley and Paget all turned to the former (and future) lord chancellor William Cowper, Baron (later Earl) Cowper, asking him to act as arbitrator. The award settled by Cowper between the parties was finished by 10 July 1714 and its signing was witnessed by Townshend, among others. By its terms Henrietta, Lady Harley, received almost all of the Cavendish properties, with the exception of Nottingham Castle, which the late duke of Newcastle had received from his father-in-law, and the properties that Newcastle had acquired after making his will in 1707. The Holles estate (as it was in 1707) was to go to Pelham and, as a recompense for the lost Cavendish property, Harley was to forego the £20,000 portion charged on the estate by the late duke’s will and Pelham was to have the ownership of Newcastle House, previously Powis House, in the north-west corner of Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

This marked ‘a happy agreement for Lord Harley, and a plentiful provision there is for himself and his lady’, but Pelham did equally well. Herts. ALS, DE/P/F55 and DE/P/F97; Add. 72501, ff. 147–8; Add. 70504, f. 104. Even though the estate he surrendered to Lord and Lady Harley, and left as jointure to the dowager duchess, was worth around £12,200 p.a., Pelham was still in possession of the Holles estate, which brought in about £28,000 p.a., and, with his paternal inheritance of the Pelham lands, he enjoyed an income of about £32,000 p.a., making him one of the richest landowners of the realm. Browning, Newcastle, 4–5. The death of the dowager duchess in 1716 removed the principal obstruction to the agreement between Harley and Newcastle (as Pelham had become by that time) and this settlement was able to receive statutory form by an Act of Parliament in February 1719.

Pelham came of age on 21 July 1714, only a few days after this agreement was formally signed, and marked his new status with a lavish feast in Sussex costing £2,000. HMC Portland, v. 476. He attended the House as soon as he could, on 1 Aug. 1714, the first day of the session convened following the queen’s death. He came again four days later when the regents for the kingdom proclaimed George I king of Great Britain, and was placed on the committee of 24 members of the House assigned to draw up an address of congratulations and of loyalty to the new king.

Pelham loudly proclaimed his adherence to the Hanoverian Succession and as a rich, young and ardent Whig he was quickly rewarded by the new king. In October 1714 he was created earl of Clare, a previous title of his benevolent uncle which had been extinguished at his death, and over the following months he received several offices. Browning, Newcastle, 8. He further showed his adherence to the new regime in the elections of early 1715, as his double inheritance gave him strong influence in the selection of over a dozen members of the Commons from Sussex, Nottinghamshire and the Yorkshire burgage boroughs of Aldborough and Boroughbridge. HP Commons, 1715–43, i. 298–9, 331–2; Browning, Newcastle, 8–9. He first sat in George I’s Parliament on 21 Mar. 1715 and on 11 Aug. was further raised in the peerage as duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. He helped to prepare Middlesex and Nottinghamshire against the threat of Jacobite rebellion and promoted the further repression of the Jacobite movement by supporting the government measures to prolong the Parliament (the Septennial Act) and for the forfeiture of the estates of those involved in the Jacobite insurrection (the Traitors’ Estates Act). Browning, Newcastle, 9–10; WSHC, Ailesbury mss 3790/1/1, pp. 102, 106–7.

On 2 Apr. 1717, after months of protracted negotiations, Newcastle married Lady Henrietta Godolphin, the daughter of Francis Godolphin, 2nd earl of Godolphin, and Henrietta, eldest daughter of John Churchill, duke of Marlborough (later suo jure duchess of Marlborough). Whereas previously Newcastle had been a loyal follower of his brother-in-law Townshend, in the early months of the ‘Whig Schism’ of 1717 he, with great prescience, threw in his lot with his new uncle (the husband of his wife’s maternal aunt) Charles Spencer, 3rd earl of Sunderland. It was almost certainly Sunderland who promoted his nephew at court, and on 13 Apr. 1717, only one day after Sunderland was himself made a secretary of state, Newcastle was appointed lord chamberlain of the household and three days later was sworn to the Privy Council. Thus began his public career in which he was involved at the heart of ‘old corps’ Whig politics and public life until his death in 1768.