Civil wars and Restoration
Ormond had a troubled childhood. His grandfather, the 11th earl, lost out in the machinations of royal policy when the death of the 10th earl in 1614 left the heir to his estate, his daughter, Elizabeth, vulnerable to royal pressure to marry James I’s favourite, Sir Richard Preston, the future Baron Dingwall [S], and earl of Desmond [I]. The 11th earl was incarcerated to prevent him protesting. In 1619, while Ormond’s grandfather was in the Fleet prison, his father, styled Viscount Thurles [I], died at sea. Ormond was taken from the Catholic school he attended at Finchley and from his grandfather in the Fleet and put in the care of George Abbot, archbishop of Canterbury, who raised him a Protestant. His mother remained a devout Catholic and was remarried, to George Mathew (d.1636) of Thurles, providing Ormond with a number of half-siblings. As Ormond was later to remark, ‘my father and mother lived and died papists and bred all their children so. Only I, by God’s merciful providence, was educated in the true Protestant religion from which I never swerved towards either extreme, not when it was most dangerous to profess it and most advantageous to quit it.’
The family estates were reunited by the marriage in 1629 of the young heir to the earldom of Ormond to the heiress of Desmond, whose wardship had been granted to Henry Rich†, earl of Holland, an arrangement which cost his grandfather £15,000. This merely added to the family debts caused by the long incarceration of the 11th earl, and the extravagance of Desmond, who left debts of between £15,000 and £20,000. When Ormond succeeded his grandfather in 1633, his debts may already have reached as much as £45,000, while his Irish estates were estimated to yield only £8,000 in 1641.
As the chief royalist commander in Ireland, during the civil wars Ormond faced the dual threat posed by a Catholic insurgency and by the Presbyterian supporters of Parliament. He surrendered his vice-royalty to Parliament in June 1647 and retired to England, moving to the continent in 1648. Ormond was back in Ireland in 1649 rallying the royalist cause. Military defeat saw him sail into exile again in December 1650. There he remained one of the leading counsellors of Charles II and a key adviser during the negotiations that led to the Restoration.
Following the Restoration, Ormond was an important supporter of the new chief minister, his fellow exile, Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon from 1661.
In the faction-ridden English court of 1660, Ormond was seen as an ally of Hyde, and an opponent of the French and Catholic influences focused on the queen mother, Henrietta Maria. As early as June 1660 Mazarin’s English agent suspected Hyde and Ormond of ‘sowing the seeds of dissent between the two courts in order to avoid the danger in which the presence of the queen would put them’.
Ormond was not an English peer at the Restoration, a fact soon remedied by his creation as earl of Brecknock. He was introduced into the House on 27 July 1660 by the lord great chamberlain, Montagu Bertie, 2nd earl of Lindsey, William Russell, 5th earl (later duke) of Bedford and William Wentworth, earl (later 2nd earl) of Strafford. He attended on 78 days of the 1660 session (48 per cent of the total, although since he missed the first 76 days, 95 per cent of possible sittings). His elevation coincided with legislation to restore Ormond to his Irish estates. Following its rapid passage through the Commons the bill was brought up to the Lords on 23 July by Francis Aungier‡, 3rd Baron Aungier [I] (later earl of Longford [I]), and passed through the Lords with equal speed, receiving the royal assent on 28 July. By this act Ormond was restored to all the land, honours and rights in Ireland of which he was possessed on 28 Oct. 1641. Such legislation must have proved welcome to the duke, whose debts in 1660 have been variously estimated at around £130,000 or £154,000.
Ormond’s important position in the royal household ensured that he would often be used by the upper House as a conduit of messages and information between peers and the monarch. On 15 Aug. he was appointed to manage a conference on the amendments to the bill of indemnity. On this issue, his influence helped Henry Cromwell‡ in retaining his land after the Restoration, probably in recognition of his assistance to the duchess during Ormond’s exile.
During the recess, Ormond was nominated to a commission of 34 to try the regicides, which began its proceedings at Hicks Hall on 9 October.
In the second part of the Convention, after Parliament reassembled on 6 Nov. 1660, Ormond was appointed to a further eight committees. On the 19th he was one of the peers named to wait on the king to discover his pleasure concerning the passage of the bill restoring Thomas Howard, 23rd earl of Arundel, to the dukedom of Norfolk, to which the king duly agreed. On 13 Dec. Ormond signed a protest against the passage of the bill voiding Sir Edward Powell’s fines. On 20 Dec. he was added to the commissioners for assessing peers for the poll tax.
The opening years of the Cavalier Parliament, 1661-2
Ormond remained busy following the dissolution of Parliament. On 29 Dec. 1660 he attended the interment of Princess Mary of Orange in Westminster Abbey.
The Irish land settlement was expected to be enacted by the Irish Parliament, due to open at the same time as the English, in May 1661. Given his place at the apex of Irish society, the land settlement there was inevitably going to have a profound impact upon Ormond. He was astute enough to realize that not all parties could be accommodated, noting that ‘if the adventurers and soldiers must be satisfied, to the extent of what they suppose intended them, by the Declaration [of 30 Nov. 1660]; and if all that accepted and constantly adhered to the Peace of 1648 must be restored’, then there must be ‘discoveries made of a new Ireland, for the old will not serve to satisfy these engagements.’
Ormond was also closely involved in proceedings in the English Parliament. In May, when his son, Thomas Butler, earl of Ossory [I] (later Baron Butler of Moore Park), was seated for Bristol after a double return, Ormond approached Robert Bulkeley‡, 2nd Viscount Bulkeley [I], in an unsuccessful attempt to obtain the vacant seat at Beaumaris, which had been promised to Ossory, for Sir George Lane.
When the House resumed on 20 Nov. 1661, Ormond and the lord chamberlain, Edward Montagu, 2nd earl of Manchester, were appointed to thank the king for his speech. The following day, Ormond reported that they had done so. Also on the 21st he was appointed to attend the king to ask for a proclamation sending suspicious persons out of London. Having done so, on 22 Nov. Ormond and Manchester informed the House that he had appointed that afternoon for the House to wait upon him.
In response to a message from the king on 19 Dec. Ormond was named to a conference with the Commons to consider the peace and security of the kingdom. He was also appointed to report a conference with the Commons on the bill regulating corporations. He was appointed to a further nine committees during the session, including on 24 Jan. 1662 that to prepare a bill repealing some of the 1641-2 legislation placing limitations on the crown. On occasion Ormond was absent from the Lords due to other duties, such as on 16 Jan. when he accompanied York to Deptford.
Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, 1662-7
With Ormond heavily involved in the debates in the English Privy Council on the Irish settlement bill that dragged on from late August, the king decided, according to Clarendon, at the prompting of the duke of Albemarle, to appoint him lord lieutenant. Ormond’s patent for the lord lieutenancy of Ireland, announced in council on 4 Nov. 1661, was sealed on 21 Feb. 1662.
In April 1662 Ormond informed the lords justices in Dublin that the king and Privy Council had finally agreed to the Irish settlement bill, and had appointed seven commissioners, the court of claims, for its execution.
Ormond arrived in Dublin on 28 July 1662.
In the meantime, Ormond was worried by the replacement of Nicholas as secretary of state by Henry Bennet, the future earl of Arlington, so much so that in October 1662 he requested that he be allowed only a public correspondence with the new secretary. Bennet, a man of sharp political antennae, was soon attempting to smooth relations with Ormond. Later in October, Clarendon referred to Ormond’s desire for ‘a cypher’ by which he would be able to impart anything of secret to the king, ‘which, at parting, you told him you would still do by me; and I am sure will still, when you think it best.’ Ormond’s main conduit of influence in England remained Clarendon, especially as regards the vexed question of Irish legislation laid before the Privy Council. On 15 Nov. Clarendon laid down what he thought was the way he should deal with them: ‘when any bills or letters are sent from Ireland hither … I shall conclude, if you say nothing of them to me of your judgment or wishes, that it is all one to you what becomes of them; and therefore I am not at all solicitous in the ‘bill of explanation’, which I do not at all understand.’ No doubt Ormond was reassured by Bennet’s report at the end of December 1662 that the king had expressed his unwillingness to sign papers relating to Ireland without first knowing the duke’s opinion.
In 1663 Ormond purchased Moor Park, Hertfordshire, a house and park near Uxbridge and within convenient reach of London, although he had to ‘leave part of my estate still in pawn, to be redeemed by the rest, in time’, in order to pay for it.
Ormond missed the entire 1663 session of Parliament, being excused attendance on 23 Feb. 1663 because of his absence in Ireland. According to Orrery, writing from Dublin on 12 Mar. 1663, Ormond had sent his proxy to Portland.
Ormond had another spat with Bennet in April 1663 over allegations that Bennet had told the king that Ormond was ‘not kind to him’. As a result Ormond felt that ‘a letter from the king, upon which depends the redemption of my fortune and posterity from ruin... brought upon them by my service and engagements to and for the Crown, is, notwithstanding it has been often promised, still kept from me.’ To this, Bennet responded by pointing out that this proceeded not from the ‘enmity of the writer, or to lack of kindness in the king, but to the conduct of the Parliament’, and its hostility to the expenditure of money on Ireland.
Ormond wanted to be kept abreast of political developments in England and complained when this was not the case. On 20 June 1663 Daniel O’Neil‡ thought that in ‘not knowing all the results of our juncto and council, you are not friendly nor fairly dealt with. I can with some confidence say, it’s not the king’s sense nor his desire you should be made a stranger to the secretest of his counsels and resolutions.’ Clarendon was not remiss in sending to Ormond in July 1663, the particulars of the articles of high treason and misdemeanours charged against him by Bristol, ‘to which, the good lord averred that you are one of his principal witnesses.’
At the beginning of October 1663, Ormond hoped Clarendon was ‘busied’ with the consideration of the new draft Irish bill for explanation, designed to overcome the problems with and the opposition caused by the original Act of Settlement. The new legislation, he emphasized, was absolutely necessary for the security and settlement of the people and the good order of the realm.
There were intense pressures within the English court on the Irish settlement, including the concerted campaign waged by the queen mother on behalf of Randal MacDonnell, marquess of Antrim [I].
Ormond could not be spared from Ireland immediately, so he did not in the end get to the session held in March-May 1664. Absence had its compensations, however, as he was able to write to Bennet on 25 Mar., of his relief that he was removed from all part in the ‘garboyle’ in which Bristol had embroiled himself, having been ‘so long his friend and servant, that it would have been some trouble to see him successful in the disturbance he designs, or miserable for the attempt.’
Ormond was preceded by the duchess, who arrived at Chelsea on 19 May 1664, and immediately received visits from ‘most grandees of the court’.
Apart from the many questions of Irish policy requiring his attention, Ormond also initiated negotiations for the marriage of his son, Richard Butler, earl of Arran [I], the future Baron Butler of Weston, to Lady Mary Stuart, niece, and potentially heir, of George Villiers, 2nd duke of Buckingham. No sooner had these been completed in September, than in October plans were under discussion for the marriage of Ormond’s youngest son, Lord John Butler, the future earl of Gowran [I], but the negotiations faltered and were finally called off in January 1667.
In mid-June 1664 Ormond informed the archbishop of Dublin that although much of his time had been spent in visits and in receiving civilities, this had allowed him the opportunity of setting right mistakes on Irish affairs that had taken place by misinformation. Apart from the explanatory bill, he was engaged in promoting a number of draft bills sent for approval in England.
In order to facilitate the revision of the land settlement as proposed in the bill of explanation, Ormond gave up his interest in forfeited lands which he was due to receive as compensation for his losses in the royal service, originally estimated at over £70,000, in return for a payment of £50,000, payable within two years.
On 20 Aug. 1664 Ormond was present at the prorogation of Parliament, and although his return for Ireland was originally planned for October, it was soon delayed.
Ormond’s ambitious plans for Arran received a setback with the public acknowledgment of the marriage of ‘Northern Tom Howard,’ brother of Charles Howard, earl of Carlisle, to the dowager duchess of Richmond, Buckingham’s sister. That the marriage had taken place before her daughter, Lady Mary Stuart, had married Arran, clearly perturbed Ormond.
According to a memorandum produced by the French court in March 1665, Ormond, Clarendon and Southampton were against a war with the Dutch. In May, the French diplomat Hugues de Lionne thought that the Spanish were ‘counting’ on Ormond and Albemarle ‘being entirely in their interest’. Another assessment, sent to Lionne in May, portrayed Ormond as ‘an enemy to Madame Castlemaine, and his interests are linked to the chancellor, from whom he will not separate at this time when they are trying to regulate the affairs of Ireland, because he has much property which was given him through confiscation, and whose owners are demanding its return.’
Ormond spent some part of the summer of 1665 at Moor Park, a useful bolt-hole from the plague.
Almost immediately upon his arrival in Ireland early in September 1665 Ormond wrote to Clarendon bemoaning the financial shortfall which would make it impossible to meet governmental expenditure ‘unless the freedom of trade (for such it is), be restored to us’, a reference to the restraint placed on the Irish cattle trade by the act of 1663. It was his constant refrain that the financial concerns of Ireland must be heeded in England for there was insufficient money to pay the taxes that were needed to cover the costs of defence.
Ormond was now working on the details of the land settlement as provided for by the Act of Explanation, which he complained would condemn him to a great deal of drudgery.
Despite the threat to the Irish economy posed by the bill, Ormond remained in Ireland for the whole of the 1666-7 session and was excused attendance on the Lords on 1 Oct. 1666. He did deem it advisable to protect himself from attack while in Ireland and on 15 Oct. he was granted a free and general pardon by the king.
When the bill passed the Commons 165-104 on 13 Oct., Arlington thought that the size of the minority vote would encourage opposition in the Lords, and soon afterwards Allen Brodrick‡ offered Ormond some hope that the king would veto the bill.
A prospective marriage between Kelme Maccarty, 3rd earl of Clancarty [I], and a niece of Orrery’s demonstrated Ormond’s religious position in January 1667. His sister, the dowager countess of Clancarty, had been ‘made to believe she cannot consent it should be by a priest of our church without sinning, and my Lady Elizabeth [Boyle], is as much persuaded she shall offend if she shall consent to be married by a popish priest’. Ormond, evidently asked to intervene, wrote that ‘I am not able to remove the scruple from my sister and I am not willing to endeavour to do it with Lady Elizabeth.’
At the end of March 1667, Anglesey, believing that court politics might be coming to a critical point, suggested that Ormond should come over to England.
Under attack, 1667-9
Ormond was aware that Clarendon’s dismissal showed the ascendancy at court of politicians likely to be unsympathetic towards him, and that as a consequence he might find his own position under attack.
One avenue of attack on Ormond concerned the land settlement in Ireland, with the appeal of William Barker to the Privy Council over a judgment made in Ireland the possible vehicle for it. The council confirmed the judgment on 11 Oct. 1667 after a long debate. Sir Thomas Clifford, the future Baron Clifford, Anglesey, Lauderdale, Bridgwater, Arlington and York spoke ‘very well to the thing’ in question, whilst Carlisle, Denzil Holles, Baron Holles, John Berkeley, Baron Berkeley of Stratton, Buckingham, and some others, supported the appeal.
When Parliament met on 10 Oct. 1667, Ormond was necessarily absent, and on 29 Oct. he was granted leave from attendance on the Lords. With an impeachment against Clarendon in the offing, Ormond prepared to defend his conduct in Ireland, anticipating complaints that the quartering of the army was against the law, although as he pointed out ‘either the king must, by raising the pay of the soldiers, enable them to pay for lodgings; or they must have them free; or there must be no army’. His tactics in the face of accusations were that ‘particulars of all sorts will be best answered, when they are judicially objected, and the weaker the objection is, the less it should be answered beforehand. For the answering of one weak or ill-proved accusation discredits all the rest.’
By 12 Nov. 1667, Ormond had access to a copy of some of the main accusations against him.
Ormond was aware that a successful attempt to remove him from his government in Ireland ‘at this time and conjuncture of my private affairs, would be to my irreparable inconvenience and damage, and may be to my utter ruin in my fortune, if the remove should be otherwise, than by appointing one or more governors, and that only in my absence.’ The only means left to redeem his estate from the weight of debt that lay upon it was the £50,000 allocated to him under the Act of Explanation, ‘which will hardly be brought in, but by my own presence or the great friendship of the chief governor, and may be utterly lost under the discountenance of any other kind of remove, or by the coldness of a successor’.
Despite Anglesey’s view, following Clarendon’s flight at the end of November 1667, that although ‘whispers go still up and down’ the danger to Ormond had been averted, Ormond was increasingly inclined to protect his position by a visit to England.
With Parliament due to resume on 6 Feb. 1668, on 25 Jan. Ossory reported that Ormond’s position was still under threat because the king was under pressure to comply with the undertakers in Parliament, ‘who being creatures of the duke of Buckingham are consequently unfriendly to you’. Not that Ormond lacked for influential supporters: on 1 Feb., when Ossory told him about the report to the Privy Council of the committee examining into Irish affairs, he went on to extol the efforts of York ‘who took occasion to speak of you in the most favourable terms that could be when the Irish business was under consideration’. On 17 Feb. Ormond was again excused from attending the Lords. On the following day Ossory reported that Buckingham and his party continued ‘in their malice and intentions of accusing you’, although some of the charges they had concocted ‘for executing mutineers, and for permitting popery’, were ‘so evidently frivolous’ that they would be left out, ‘lest they should discountenance other charges’.
At the end of February 1668 Edward Cooke reported on a ‘confederacy offensive and defensive’ concluded between Buckingham and Albemarle, to whom Ormond was ‘a kind of a common enemy’. Ormond’s position had been so undermined that at the end of February 1668, Ruvigny reported, that his erstwhile ally, Arlington, had attempted ‘to regain’ Buckingham by offering either ‘the office of viceroy of Ireland or that of grand master, both of which are the duke of Ormond’s’.
Conversely, Ormond saw the attack of Edward Brabazon, 2nd earl of Meath [I], as opportune because it had alerted his friends to his arguments against him.
Consultations with Ossory upon his return to Ireland seemed to leave Ormond uncertain, but by 12 Mar. 1668 he was edging towards a decision to visit England.
The summer of 1668 saw reports of reconciliation between the various protagonists. In June Theobald Taaffe, earl of Carlingford [I], reported a ‘new-settled friendship’ between Ormond and Buckingham.
Ormond was also weighing up the reliability of Arlington as an ally, ‘whenever my Lord Buckingham and I should come to declared enmity’. At the end of June 1668 he had concluded that Arlington would endeavour to prevent an attack from Buckingham, or failing that he would give reasonable notice of it and would assist with all the interest he had in Ormond’s defence.
Ormond was still under threat, for as was said in July 1668 ‘Orrery works covertly not openly. My Lord Meath and others prosecute it, but the duke of Buckingham is [Ormond’s] great enemy’.
Financial concerns still played an important part in Ormond’s calculations. Money was required to keep both him and the duchess in England until the spring. He planned to find it ‘out of rents and entertainments, and if neither of these ways will serve, then by mortgage’, since the ‘vast sums’he was expecting to receive as a result of the land settlement would not obtain credit of even £500.
On 12 Sept. 1668 the duchess reported that Ormond had gone to wait upon the king, while Arlington had gone into the country ‘to put preparations on foot when the court returns to prosecute all the designs that are laid against my lord and the lord of Anglesey; so as a very little time will make a full discovery of what my lord’s enemies are able to do against him.’
Buckingham was still hankering after the dismissal of Ormond at the beginning of October 1668, but in this he was opposed by Arlington.
Meanwhile, Ormond continued to command attention regarding Irish affairs, attending the treasury in August, October and November 1668 concerning proposals for the farm of the Irish revenue.
Early in February 1669, according to Colbert, Ormond was sufficiently confident of his position to risk speaking ‘to the king very heatedly against the duke of Buckingham; that he [Buckingham] had treated him [Ormond] as a traitor and a rascal, and that this might not happen without blood being spilt’.
Out of office, out of favour, 1669-73
Ormond was now in a quandary, given his precarious financial position. He had already told Arlington that he could not live in England.
While Ormond negotiated about his personal finances, he continued to engage in public affairs, attending regularly at the committee for foreign affairs, and at the treasury when Irish matters were under discussion, especially the Irish farm.
Ormond had also decided to deal with the earl of Meath, whose touting of articles accusing him of various misdeeds had been a thorn in his side for months. On 9 July, Ormond petitioned the king asking that Meath be summoned before the Privy Council to substantiate the allegations he had made against Ormond in his conduct as lord lieutenant. Meath refused to do so for fear of a suit of scandalum magnatum.
Ormond expressed uncertainty at the end of July 1669 about the new lord lieutenant’s measures, an important consideration given that he would play a significant role in any investigation of Ormond’s conduct as viceroy. He took it for granted that he would experience continuing enmity from Orrery. He thought that when Parliament met as scheduled in October, difficulties in managing it and continuing disputes between the Houses would force a dissolution. Such things, he wrote, were ‘doubtless’ the subject of ‘frequent consultations held at my Lord of Orrery’s’, where Buckingham, Osborne and John Wilkins, bishop of Chester ‘make their cabal.’
On 20 Nov. 1669 it was reported that ‘there is talk of an impeachment coming in’ against Ormond, and ‘some say another against the earl of Orrery. Things begin to grow high.’
According to Edward Montagu, earl of Sandwich, on 10 Dec. 1669, at a late night meeting ‘of the king and junto’, Ormond was one of those, along with York, Arlington and Prince Rupert*, duke of Cumberland, who carried a vote for the prorogation of Parliament. At this date Buckingham was trying, but failing, to prise Arlington away from the Ormond faction, which consisted of ‘the duke of York’s friends, the Church, the old cavaliers, and the Clarendonians.’
Having missed the opening two days of the 1670-1 session, Ormond first sat on 21 Feb. 1670. He attended on 35 days of the session, before its adjournment on 11 Apr. 1670 (87.5 per cent of the total). He was named to ten committees, including a small subcommittee to prepare a clause for the conventicles bill (23 March).
Following the sale of Moor Park, Ormond moved his main residence to Clarendon House in late June 1670.
Ormond was in attendance on the opening day of the adjourned session, on 24 Oct. 1670, attending in all on 105 days, 84 per cent of the total. He was missing on 14 Nov. when he was excused attendance following a call of the House, but was present on the following day. His rate of attendance must be considered even more impressive considering that the bulk of his absences were the result of his abduction on 6 Dec. by a gang of men led by Thomas Blood.
The removal of his official responsibility for Ireland freed up more of Ormond’s time for parliamentary duties. He was named to 27 committees during the session. His committee work included chairing on 21 Mar. 1671 the committee investigating the printed version of the notorious speech on supply delivered by John Lucas, Baron Lucas, in February. In the committee on the bill to prevent the growth of popery, on 13 Apr., Ormond was named to a subcommittee to draw up the test and oath according to the debate in the committee, but it appears not to have met. On 14 Apr. he took the chair of two committees for the purposes of their adjournment, on the bill taking account of the money paid to loyal, indigent officers and on the bill preventing the planting of tobacco in England and for regulating the plantation trade.
On 3 Mar. and again on 10 Mar. 1671 Ormond was appointed to a conference on the petition to the king against the growth of popery. He was then appointed to find out from the king when the two Houses could present their petition and address to him, reporting back on the following day. On 13 Mar. Ormond signified to the House that the bill allowing the guardians of the duke of Norfolk to make leases of Arundel House had been agreed to by the king. He was then nominated a reporter the conferences on the Boston-Trent navigation bill and the bill to prevent merchant ships being delivered up to pirates. On 15 Mar. he entered his dissent against a resolution to suspend the judgment against John Cusack in the case of Cusack v. William Usher, an appeal against a decree in the Irish court of claims, and on the following day he was one of four peers to enter his dissent against the resolution to suspend it for two months. On 27 Mar. Ormond informed the Lords that the king intended a recess of Parliament on 8 Apr. (although the House continued to sit until 22 April). On 17 Apr. he was ordered to ask the king when he would receive the joint address of both Houses for the encouragement of wearing domestic manufactures, reporting back on the 20th, and being deputed on the 22nd to thank the king for his favourable response.
Meanwhile, Ormond was busy in defence of the Irish land settlement, in a manner which eventually impinged upon Parliament. In January 1671 Ormond opposed a petition presented to the Privy Council by Richard Talbot on behalf of the Catholic nobility and gentry against the land settlement, which was referred to a committee including Ormond on 18 January.
who has the greatest interest in this inquiry, and has seen it as being strongly supported by his enemy the duke of Buckingham, has moved all the friends he has in Parliament to attack the whole religion, and by this attack, so agreeable to the people of England, to divert all the harm with which the Irish affair could threaten him. His intrigue has produced a committee in the lower chamber which has proposed the renewal and execution of the most severe penalties against Catholics, and above all against the priests.TNA, PRO 31/3/126, p. 27.
This was a reference to the report, on 17 Feb., of the Commons committee on the growth of popery which contained several resolutions about Ireland. Despite several other committees of council being named to deal with Talbot’s petition, nothing conclusive was proved against Ormond’s management and the affair petered out in 1673, amid renewed pressure from the Commons in support of the existing land settlement.
Perhaps because of all this activity around the land settlement, Ormond adopted a relatively low profile. He did participate in the usual ceremonial rituals, such as the installation of a new batch of Garter knights in May 1671.
Ormond spent much of February 1673 engaged in correspondence with the representatives of the Stanley family, working towards a marriage between the young William Richard George Stanley, 9th earl of Derby, and Ormond’s granddaughter, Lady Elizabeth Butler.
Ormond attended on the opening day of the 1673 session, 4 February. He did not attend between 5 Feb. and 8 Mar. and was excused on 13 Feb. but even so he was present for 22 days of the session, 54 per cent of the total, and was named to six committees. On 8 Mar. Ormond was named to ask the king when the House could wait on him to give thanks for his speech earlier in the day. On 19 Mar. Arthur Capell, earl of Essex, registered his proxy with Ormond. On 24 Mar. Ormond was named to report a conference on the bill against popish recusants. On 26 Mar. he was one of those delegated to ask the king when the committees of the two Houses should wait on him to ask him to wear English manufactures and on the following day he was nominated to attend the king on the matter. On 29 Mar. he was appointed to report two conferences on the bill for the ease of Dissenters. Ormond took the sacrament at St Martin’s on 6 Apr. to qualify under the Test Act.
Return to favour, 1673-7
The weakening of the Cabal saw the return to influence of Ormond. By June 1673 he had returned to the cabinet council.
Ormond attended the prorogation on 20 Oct. 1673. Around this date, but before the start of the 1673 session on 27 Oct., Ormond, Shaftesbury (as Ashley had become), Arlington and Secretary Henry Coventry‡ advised the king to send York away from the court.
According to Colbert, on 10 Nov. 1673, Ormond, Prince Rupert and ‘all their cabal witnessed by their sad countenance the displeasure they had at the disgrace of their friend’, Shaftesbury, following news of his dismissal from the chancellorship.
Relations among other ministers were not so good, however, and the decision to let Parliament sit in January 1674 in an attempt to extricate England from the war with the Dutch made the divisions among them even worse. On 6 Jan. 1674 in council Arlington and Ormond opposed the ‘proposition’ the king wanted to make to Parliament on the following day, presumably a reference to allowing a small parliamentary committee to inspect the treaty with France.
On 24 Jan. 1674 Ormond was named to ask the king when the House could wait upon him to give thanks for his speech communicating the letter and articles of the States General for a peace. On 29 Jan. Ormond reported from the committee of the whole on the bill regulating the trial of peers. On 3 Feb. Essex registered his proxy with Ormond. That day Ormond was named to report on the conference on giving advice to the king about a treaty with the States General and was then one of those named to ask the king when he would receive the joint address of the Houses on the matter. On 6 Feb. he was one of the peers named to consider the conditions under which Buckingham and the countess of Shrewsbury were to give £10,000 security to abide by the order of the House that they not converse or cohabit together. On 11 Feb. he was one of the peers deputed to ask the king when the House could attend him with their thanks for his speech that day on the peace. On 16 Feb. Ruvigny reported that Ormond and Arlington preferred to continue Parliament, rather than prorogue it as was favoured by York and Danby.
At the beginning of March 1674 Verney reported that Ormond would be travelling to Ireland to inspect his estates, ‘but not with any public character’.
Ormond expressed some doubts as to whether his removal into Ireland would actually improve his private affairs, but he also believed that there was no need of him in England, where Ossory could keep a watching brief over his affairs and give him ‘timely notice’ if his presence in England were required.
By mid January 1675 Ormond was contemplating a sojourn at Bath for his health, and Lane was encouraging his return to England for the parliamentary session in order to defend himself against Lauderdale’s ‘malice’, and other opponents such as Berkeley of Stratton and Orrery.
Ormond arrived back in London on 12 Apr. 1675, the day before Parliament sat.
During June 1675, when the dispute between the House over Sherley v. Fagg was at its height, Ormond was named to report two conferences, both on questions of the Lords judicature: Stoughton v. Arthur Onslow‡ (2 June) and Crispe v. Thomas Dalmahoy‡ (3 June). On 4 June he was one of the peers named to address the king to appoint a new serjeant at arms to attend the Commons, following the Lords’ action in ordering Serjeant Topham into custody. He was then ordered to present the vote of thanks and address to the king to remove the lieutenant of the Tower for refusing to deliver up to the Lords the prisoners sent there by order of the Commons.
Ormond made a somewhat ill informed intervention into Lancashire politics following the death of Sir Gilbert Ireland‡, member for Liverpool in April 1675. He originally recommended a Mr Fleetwood (probably Edward‡), only to backtrack in May once he found out that William Banks‡, another client of the Stanleys, had a much better claim to the seat.
By the summer of 1675, Essex was coming into increasing conflict with Ranelagh over the Irish revenue. Harbord was of the opinion that if Ormond were in London he would do Essex ‘some good and no harm’ on the issue.
On 4 Sept. Ormond wrote to Arlington that his plans to return to Ireland had been changed because his presence was required to secure his £5,000 p.a., which the new farm of the Irish revenue might bring into ‘an inconvenient state of uncertainty.’
With relations between Ormond and Ranelagh at least patched up by the king in May 1676, there was a concomitant rapprochement between Ormond and Danby.
Meanwhile, on 30 June 1676 Ormond found Cornwallis not guilty of murder at his trial by the court of the lord steward.
Ormond attended on all 49 days of the session of 1677-8, before its adjournment on 16 Apr. 1677. Essex registered his proxy with Ormond on 13 Jan. 1677, cancelling it on 3 Dec., and St Albans registered his proxy with Ormond on 10 Feb. 1677, cancelling it on 12 March. On the opening day of the session, 15 Feb., following the debate upon whether Parliament was dissolved, Ormond supported Danby’s suggestion that the House consider how to proceed against those peers that had asserted the dissolution, by moving that his old enemy Buckingham be questioned. On 17 Feb. it was Ormond who moved that Buckingham should be sent to the Tower.
On 1 Mar. 1677 Ormond confirmed to the House details of the account given by Danby of the interrogation by the king of Dr Nicholas Carey concerning the publication of The Grand Question concerning the Prorogation of this Parliament. Ormond was lobbied by Justin McCarty to secure an exemption from the bill for recalling troops from French service, which subsequently was lost in the Lords.
Lord Lieutenant of Ireland 1677-85
Sir Cyril Wyche‡ informed Essex in March 1677 that the two parties contending to replace him in Ireland had cancelled each other out: ‘Ormond labours hard for himself, but is hindered by Ranelagh’, who in turn favoured Monmouth, with Conway as his deputy. Danby and the duchess of Portsmouth were also against Ormond, although others thought that ‘the services of Ormond this session to treasurer and party must be rewarded with that government’, especially because he was ‘now very well with’ the duke of York. Ormond was, though, victorious in the battle to succeed Essex. He attempted to smooth things over with his predecessor, writing to him on 20 Apr. 1677 that ‘there has been so much contrivance during the time of your government to do me ill offices with your excellency that I cannot doubt but on your leaving it and my succeeding at least the same art will be continued.’
Ormond attended on all of the five days on which the House sat between 21 and 28 May 1677. On the 29th, the day following the adjournment of the House to the middle of July, James Cecil*, 3rd earl of Salisbury asked for Ormond’s advice and assistance in procuring his release from the Tower, which was effected shortly afterwards.
At about this date Shaftesbury classed Ormond as thrice vile; despite this indication of his firm value to the court in Parliament, and although in December 1677 Danby had asked the king if he would command him to attend the ensuing session on 15 Jan. 1678, Charles II thought that he would be more useful in Ireland.
In such a conjuncture I am not ignorant how useful and obliging your interposition may be to prevent early and disadvantageous impressions, that they take no place till a fair disinquisition of the matter shall be allowed, that then it may appear whether private interest or discontent, or the king’s service is the true ground of information.
Eg. 3331, ff. 11-12.
Ormond’s political philosophy was summed up in April 1678 by his comment to Southwell that he ‘does not ridiculously affect to swim against a strong tide; neither does he give himself to be carried away with it. If fixed principles fail him now; better that, than departure from them.’
The summer of 1678 saw some preparations for a Parliament in Ireland, especially a bill of confirmation for the Irish land settlement. Ormond regarded this as essential, although he expected it to be attacked by those interests adversely affected by it.
During the second half of 1678 enquiries were made, via Ormond’s sons, Arran and Ossory, about his willingness to part with the lord stewardship. Ossory suspected the intended beneficiary was probably the king’s illegitimate son (and Danby’s son-in-law) Charles Fitzcharles, earl of Plymouth.
Ormond was much exercised by the problem of security during the Popish Plot, but was keen not to overreact and thus create the disturbance he was trying to avoid. He spent much time reassuring the English in Ireland that they were not in danger.
With a new Parliament due to be elected in England, Ormond no longer saw the time as propitious for calling a new Parliament in Ireland.
Not surprisingly, given the furore over Catholic influence at court, Ormond was concerned about being labelled pro-Catholic. He was particularly worried about the inference drawn from his taking Catholics into his closet, which he claimed was the common policy of all chief governors and essential ‘if they hope to [obtain] good intelligence or to keep that people from uniting themselves generally against our government and religion’.
The new English Parliament assembled on 6 March 1679, and by the end of the month Ormond certainly felt he had much to complain about, particularly the manner in which all his measures for the security of the crown and the Protestant interest had been misconstrued.
Discussion of Irish affairs in the Lords continued into April, though Shaftesbury denied to Ossory that any of it was aimed at Ormond personally, and rather more towards Col. John Fitzpatrick, Ormond’s brother-in-law. They resulted in an address to the king, agreed on 15 Apr., to instruct the lord lieutenant to take firmer measures against Catholics.
About March-April 1679, Danby noted Ormond’s absence when estimating his voting strength among the Lords. At the beginning of May Ormond seemed willing to dispose of his steward’s place to Charles Powlett, 6th marquess of Winchester (later duke of Bolton), for £10,000, but only if the king approved, and only for ready money, preferably to be deposited in Holland. On 21 May Ormond made an interesting point about his office, which made the sale of it more attractive: if the succession were changed by Parliament, it would require oaths from office-holders to make it effectual. He was, he wrote, ‘somewhat tender in the point of oaths. The matter must be true in my opinion, just in what they bind to, and compatible with other lawful oaths formerly taken by me, or else I shall refuse them, cost me what it will.’ Winchester, however, declined the deal in July.
In mid-May 1679 Henry Coventry concurred with Ormond’s decision to remain in Ireland: to come over to England now ‘would but precipitate those designs of your enemies by giving them the alarm.’ Whereas before, he suggested, Ormond’s danger lay at court and his strength in the Commons, now the prevailing interest in the lower House lay with men of different principles.
Over the summer of 1679 Ormond’s friends reminded him of the need to respond to the address of the Lords of 17 Apr. relating to Irish security and warned him that Shaftesbury and others continued to question his governance in Ireland, particularly his failure to nurture the Protestant interest. For Ormond the most difficult issue related to the ‘guardianship of the children of papists, wherein we are bound in £10,000 to see young Aylmer [?Sir Gerald Aylmer of Balrath] educated a Protestant, which has been neglected and the boy is in France, but I will do the best I can to have him suddenly brought over’.
Ossory’s death at the end of July 1680 had a profound effect on Ormond, who was ‘extremely afflicted’ by it.
Ormond was excused attendance on 30 Oct. 1680 and was absent when the bill for Exclusion was defeated on 15 November. On 11 Nov. the informer William Hetherington appeared before the Commons; he did not explicitly link Ormond to the Plot, but rather informed them about the miscarriages of his government. To Arran, the obvious inference was that Hetherington’s testimony was preparing the ground for an address to secure Ormond’s removal. Arran felt the threat was increased by the failure of Exclusion, but others correctly perceived that there were more immediate targets, such as Halifax.
On 20 Dec. Ormond received a series of articles alleged against his government, mostly relating to his favourable treatment of Catholics, to which he responded by pointing out that his aim in working with Catholic clergy, such as Peter Walsh, had been to ‘work a division amongst the Romish clergy. I believe I had compassed it to the great security of the government and protestants, and against the opposition of the Pope and his creatures and nuncios, if I had not been removed from the government’ in 1669. He noted that such opinions would have cost Walsh his life were he to come under the Pope’s jurisdiction.
In February 1681 Ormond ridiculed Anglesey’s remarks on the Memoirs concerning the Wars of Ireland written by James Tuchet*, 3rd earl of Castlehaven [I] (and 13th Baron Audley). He nevertheless set out to refute it, collecting documents and evidence to bolster his case against Anglesey’s interpretation of history.
In February 1682, Ormond alerted Arran to his plans to spend part of the summer in England. His departure was delayed by the death of his sister, Lady Clancarty, and he did not arrive in London until 10 May, being attended by 27 six-horse coaches, and about 300 horse, having been ‘very splendidly entertained all the way on the road hither from Chester.’
Whilst in London Ormond took the opportunity to complain to the Privy Council concerning his continuing dispute with Anglesey over Castlehaven’s memoirs.
Ormond, a talisman of Anglican and royalist orthodoxy, found himself being used to bolster government support. On 22 July 1682, in the midst of the contest for the City launched by Shaftesbury’s supporters, Ormond dined with the lord mayor in order ‘to keep him fixed’.
Already by the first week in August 1682, Ormond was waiting only for the conclusion of discussions over the new farm of the Irish customs’ duties before going over to Ireland.
Although Ormond was willing to believe the king, York and Hyde when they suggested that his reputation, especially with the ‘old loyal party,’ was of use in the present conjuncture, his political antennae had also picked up that ‘there is not so perfect a friendship, and so entire a confidence, betwixt those that govern, as is needed’, and too much jockeying for position between ministers.
Ormond’s high standing was further emphasized in the autumn of 1682 when it became known that he was to receive an English dukedom, an honour that had long been intended, and that could now be attributed to Hyde’s influence.
A further potential drain on his finances was the projected marriage of his granddaughter, Lady Betty Stanhope, which raised the probability that her father, Chesterfield, ‘may expect the payment of the money I owe him, which must be got for him if he do.’
In January 1683, Ormond surveyed the political landscape, criticizing the fact that ‘those the king owns to be his children, their mothers, and their dependents are so many; so over-dignified (being so numerous); and so insatiable’, so that ‘the enemies of the government are gratified and assisted, by those that subsist’ by the government. He also noted that ‘at home… we are now under the three denominations of Tories, Whigs and Trimmers, the first and the last have the patronage of the court’. The language of the last was ‘moderation, unity and peace, in joining with the Whigs in the care of religion and property and with the Tories for monarchy and army and legal prerogative… If we have good luck, we shall be all Tories, if we have bad, we shall not be all Whigs’.
Anticipating that he would not be allowed to return to Ireland until the question of the charter of the City had been settled, and that a possible sitting of Parliament would certainly detain him in England.,
By staying in England, Ormond was on hand to witness the fallout from the Rye House Plot. On 3 July he wrote of his employment in taking examinations relating to the Plot, which led him to the conclusion four days later that there seemed to have been two plots, ‘yet those crimes are so near akin and the time of consulting for them both almost the same, and some of the persons in it at both, that nothing but the monstrousness of the ingratitude of such a parricide’ in such as Monmouth, William, styled Lord Russell‡ and Ford Grey, 3rd Baron Grey of Warke (later earl of Tankerville) ‘can leave a doubt but that it was all one entire plot, though consisting of two parts.’ He expressed similar views in December, noting that it was ‘hard to believe’ Russell, Salisbury, Essex and Grey of Warke ‘could have any part in the assassination .... but if they had no inkling of that impious treason, they were very negligent or ill befriended in their own party.’
On 15 June 1684 Ormond finally learnt that he was to return to Ireland, and to that end he recalled his grandson from France so that they could take the journey together. At this stage Ormond did not detect his position to be vulnerable, referring on the 26th to his return as ‘by somewhat more than the king’s approbation’.
On 3 Dec. 1684 Ormond wrote to Rochester worrying about plans to make an ‘almost total change in all the changeable part’ of the Irish government.
been so long suffered to mistake what was, or what was not, for the king’s service, or what he thought was, or was not so … I confess I am at this time more confounded in my notions then ever I was, not from the report we have of almost a total change in all the changeable parts of the government of this kingdom, but from what the king himself was pleased to intimate to me to the same purpose; for which alteration … there neither is, nor can be any necessity, or good reason at this time … and therefore … I hope that intention will, at least, again be considered before it be put in execution.’
Add. 27448, f. 295.
Reign of James II 1685-8
Rochester was not appointed as lord lieutenant before Charles II’s death put an end to the prospect of his transfer to Ireland. Ormond proclaimed the succession of James II, though with, as he told Southwell, ‘dismal sadness’ in his heart.
In a rather ironic tone, Ormond wrote to William Stewart, Viscount Mountjoy [I], in April 1685, that
it is no new thing to me to be calumniated sometimes for a papist, at least a favourer of popery, and at other times for a persecutor of Catholics and the greatest enemy they had. This has alternatively been my lot for above 40 years and yet I thank God I have stood firm to my principles without wavering so much as in my thoughts. It is now the Roman Catholics’ turn to asperse me. Yet I shall not wish to see them persecuted unless they will needs have it persecution not to be in power to persecute others. From that I will do my part to keep them. Let them call or think it what they will, but still with that loyalty and duty I have always shown to my king and master be he what religion and temper it shall please God to make him.Bodl. Carte 220, f. 112.
Ormond was on hand to play a significant role in the coronation on 23 Apr., and as Southwell reported, to bring to fruition plans to marry the widowed Ossory to the eldest daughter of Henry Somerset, duke of Beaufort.
On 3 Aug. 1685, Ormond was at Badminton for Ossory’s marriage.
When the Parliament reconvened on 9 Nov. 1685, Ormond was on hand to introduce Henry Fitzroy, duke of Grafton, into the House. He attended on each of the 11 days of the session. On 18 Nov. Ormond was ordered to erect a court in Westminster Hall for the trial of Thomas Grey, 2nd earl of Stamford, due on 1 Dec., as he was officiating as lord great chamberlain in the absence of Robert Bertie, 3rd earl of Lindsey. The trial never took place.
Arran’s death almost certainly fuelled rumours at the end of January 1686 that John Sheffield, earl of Mulgrave, would replace Ormond as steward.
When Southwell visited Ormond in March 1686 he reported that Ormond ‘spends his time in exercise or in reading as the weather will allow, and I suppose has little thoughts of any other kind of life.’
That month, Morrice noted that at an election at Charterhouse, the lord chancellor, George Jeffreys, Baron Jeffreys, had attempted to use the king’s recommendation to secure a place for a Catholic, but was out-voted by Danby, supported by Ormond, Halifax and William Sancroft, archbishop of Canterbury: Morrice also reported a similar case under July 1687.
Ormond attended the prorogation of Parliament on 15 Feb. 1687. From Cornbury on 12 Mar. Ormond expressed his disappointment that Clarendon would no longer be privy seal, but was pleased that his ‘old friend’ Arundell of Wardour was likely to be his successor.
On the crucial issue of the repeal of the Test Act, Ormond was assessed as an opponent of repeal on four lists dating from 1687 and January 1688. This was consistent with what Southwell reported following one of his visits, that although Ormond thought depriving Catholic peers of their seats in the Lords a ‘hardship and injustice’, yet he now felt that the danger of disposing of the Tests was ‘now so visible’ that no man could justify being absent from the Lords if they came into question.
In December 1687, Lord Yester reported that Ormond was ‘very unwell’ in Dorset.
Reactions to Ormond’s death were mixed. One correspondent of John Ellis referred ‘the greatest man and best of subjects… who hath had the honour to outdo all the subjects in Europe, by his gallant actions and constant loyalty and integrity to his Prince for above fifty years together.’
Ormond has similarly divided historians; their assessments have ranged from regarding him as a ‘mettlesome hero’ to a ‘venal traitor.’
There is no doubt that Charles II valued Ormond as an ‘instinctive loyalist’, and that he was willing to put up with a certain amount of administrative inertia, of which Strafford had remarked in 1682: ‘I should have been ashamed not to have done more in four years than a certain person, I am not much obliged to, has done in fourteen’.
In religious matters Ormond was a pragmatist; as he wrote to Southwell in November 1678, ‘I am taught by nature and also by instruction that difference in opinion concerning matters of religion dissolves not the obligations of nature, and in conformity to this principle I own not only that I have done but I will do my relations of that or any other persuasion all the good I can.’