Interregnum and Restoration, 1649-61
John Egerton’s grandfather was the celebrated Thomas Egerton†, James I’s lord chancellor, who had been created Viscount Brackley in the year of his death, 1617. Brackley’s heir was created earl of Bridgwater shortly after his father’s death, and ruled Wales and the English marcher counties during the reign of Charles I both as lord lieutenant and lord president of the council of Wales. Increasingly disenchanted with the policies of Charles I, Bridgwater resigned all these local posts at the outbreak of Civil War and retired to his house at Ashridge in Hertfordshire, where he and his growing family of two sons and eight daughters by his wife (and step-sister) Lady Frances Stanley, lasted out the conflict relatively unscathed.
In 1641 John, then styled Lord Brackley, married Lady Elizabeth Cavendish, daughter of the royalist marquess of Newcastle. It was perhaps because of this connection that, after he succeeded to his father’s peerage in December 1649, the new earl of Bridgwater came under the suspicion of the Commonwealth government. In April 1651 he was arrested, imprisoned and examined along with his Cavendish brothers-in-law Charles Cavendish, Viscount Mansfield, and Henry Cavendish, later 2nd duke of Newcastle, but was released on bail on a bond of £10,000.
Hanging over Bridgwater throughout his life were the prodigious debts and obligations accumulated by his father and his brother-in-law, the failed merchant William Courteen. In his correspondence with Cromwell over the presentation to Whitchurch, Bridgwater apologized for the necessity of informing him of his choice of Bernard by letter, as ‘through the multitude of engagements my father stood bond in, not for himself, but for his son-in-law, my brother Courteen, who is now beyond the seas, I cannot in any safety appear in public’.
At the time of the Convention Bridgwater was one of the ‘young peers’ who had succeeded to their title during the Interregnum, who were persuaded by the royalist agent John Mordaunt, Viscount Mordaunt, to assert their right to sit despite the attempts of the peers who had been sitting in 1648 to restrict membership of the reconvened House to themselves alone. On 27 Apr. 1660, Bridgwater and 18 other such ‘young peers’ were able to take their seats in the House, with the connivance of George Monck, later duke of Albemarle.
Bridgwater attended all but 11 of the 163 sittings of the Convention. On his very first day in the House he was named to a select committee appointed to draw up heads for a conference to find ways ‘to make up the breaches and distractions of this kingdom’ and probably attended that conference when it was held on 1 May. On that day he was also placed on the committee to draw up a letter of thanks for the Declaration of Breda, and on 5 May he was added to the committee to prepare an ordinance to establish a committee of safety. Between14 May and the return of the king he was nominated to a further four committees and on 24 May was placed on the small group of six assigned to draft a letter to the king congratulating him on his return.
From this point Bridgwater, despite being one of the new members, with no previous experience of parliamentary procedure, increasingly marked himself out as one of the leading members of the House. From June he was named to 27 select committees on legislation and on 10 Aug. he received the proxy of his nephew John Cecil, 4th earl of Exeter, which he held for the remainder of the session. Between 4 Sept. and 28 Dec. Bridgwater reported to the House from five committees, including that on the bill to give the county palatinate of Durham parliamentary representation (4 September). Otherwise the bills he dealt with were largely on private and personal matters, including the estate bill, which he reported on 29 Nov., of Richard Sackville, 5th earl of Dorset, who was quickly establishing himself as Bridgwater’s only rival in the frequency and number of committee chairmanships.
Bridgwater marked himself out from the start as an effective chairman of committees, which became his speciality. Between 1660 and 1685 he chaired select committees on 119 separate pieces of legislation, second only to Dorset with 170. He led committees of the whole House on 37 different bills, the highest number of committees of the whole chaired by any single peer by quite a margin. He was also one of the most frequently-chosen delegates to manage or report conferences with the Commons (on 117 occasions), exceeded in this only by Arthur Annesley, earl of Anglesey.
On 17 Nov. 1660 Bridgwater was added to the sub-committee for the Journal, and thus began his work preparing the record of the Lords Journal, with which he was to have a long association. His signature indicating his review and approval of the record of the House’s proceedings appears in the manuscript Journals more often than that of any other peer, usually at the head of the other signatures. This might suggest that he was the chairman of the sub-committee and its chief examiner. In addition, papers among his private manuscripts show him marking up draft manuscript copies of Journal entries as if in preparation for a copyist or scribe, suggesting that he may also have been the dominant figure (or at least the most diligent) in the sub-committee responsible for the layout and appearance of the manuscript Journal.
The Egerton family’s focus for local power had shifted during the 1650s from the Welsh marches to the Hertfordshire-Buckinghamshire area in which was located the principal residence of Ashridge, and in July 1660 Charles II constituted Bridgwater both lord lieutenant and custos rotulorum of Buckinghamshire. The following month he was made warden of game within ten miles of his seat. At this time he also defeated the claims of Charles Stanley, 8th earl of Derby, to the manor of Great Gaddesden in Hertfordshire, part of a tangled inheritance dispute between William Stanley†, 6th earl of Derby, and the 6th earl’s sister-in-law, Alice Spencer, dowager countess of Derby, third wife of Bridgwater’s grandfather.
First sessions of the Cavalier Parliament, 1661-4
Bridgwater attended every single meeting of the session from May 1661 to May 1662 – all 193 sittings in what was a very busy and intense session. In the brief period of May-July 1661 before the summer recess he was named to 29 select committees, chaired nine meetings of these concerning eight different pieces of legislation, while also chairing the committee for privileges once. He reported to the House from committees on five occasions: from those concerning the bills to make the river Stour navigable (17 June 1661), to manage payment of the debts of Thomas Wentworth, earl of Cleveland, for Sir Edward Moseley (both on 15 July), to vest the king’s money in the hands of treasurers (20 July), and to provide carriages for the king’s processions (20 July).
In November 1661 he informed his solicitor John Halsey that he would be coming to town soon to see to business, ‘for Parliament draws me, at which to attend, I must needs say, doth agree so much with my nature and disposition that I cannot find in my heart to forbear it’.
There were a number of bills, particularly dealing with religion, on which he took a leading role. On 26 Nov. 1661 he was named to the large select committee for the bill to punish Quakers, ‘and others’ as it was originally framed, for refusing to swear oaths. From the time of the bill’s first recommitment on 29 Nov. Bridgwater appears to have effectively taken over the chair of its select committee. The bill’s progress was tortuous, for on each occasion over the next few weeks when he reported the committee’s version of the bill, it was again recommitted. After the Commons had objected to the fourth version of the bill - reported by Bridgwater and passed by the House on 28 Jan. 1662 - because it did not extend the penalties in the bill to all nonconformists who refused to swear oaths, the House re-committed the bill once again to the same select committee on 21 February. Bridgwater reported another version of the bill on 27 Feb. and this one was eventually passed by both houses. From mid-February 1662 he was also involved in the tithes bill.
By far his most intensive work was with the bill for the relief of the poor, on which he chaired 15 committee meetings from 25 Feb. 1662 and reported on 26 Apr., and the bill to regulate printing, on which he chaired 12 committee meetings from 15 Feb., reported on 22 Apr. and then managed a conference on the Commons’ objections on the last day of the session. Other less well-known bills which he reported from committee in the final weeks of the session were those for his fellow peers Heneage Finch, 3rd earl of Winchilsea, and George Booth, Baron Delamer, which were reported on 7 Apr.; for pilchard fishing (18 Apr.); to naturalize Anna Ferrers (29 Apr.); to repair Bengworth Bridge (3 May); and against the export of wool (16 May).
The lord chancellor saw Bridgwater as a worthy recipient of proxies for the government’s interest and encouraged James Butler, duke of Ormond [I] (earl of Brecknock in the English peerage), to register his proxy for the 1663 session with Bridgwater, ‘a right working person’, following the death of Ormond’s usual proxy recipient Jerome Weston, earl of Portland.
His work on Byron’s bill, the Heralds’ bill and his other committees came to an abrupt halt in June when Bridgwater was for a time put under house arrest and ultimately censured by the Lords. Two months earlier, Lady Elizabeth Cranfield, the 14-year-old only surviving child and heir of James Cranfield†, 2nd earl of Middlesex, and niece of Lionel Cranfield, 3rd earl of Middlesex, had run away from her uncle’s residence to Bridgwater whom she persuaded, without much difficulty, to act as her guardian. As he wrote to her stepfather Sir Chichester Wrey‡, 3rd bt., ‘she was now in such a distressed condition that if I did not assist her she was utterly undone’. Wrey’s suspicions about this arrangement can be seen by Bridgwater’s half-hearted assurances that:
though there is not a person in the world whom I should more desire to match with my son than her ladyship, yet I never did intend, or do intend to do anything of that kind without first treating with her relations, of whom Lord Middlesex is one of the nearest.
Those assurances were little believed by Middlesex, who was enraged by his niece’s absconding and her choice of guardian and defender. Lady Elizabeth was due by the terms of her father’s will to receive a large marriage portion when she reached 16 years and was already receiving a maintenance of £200 a year.
My Lord, I must forget your quality, since you have only a title, and no honour, therefore I must let you know, that you are the basest, and the most unworthiest person that ever owned himself a gentleman, and as for the injury that you have done me, know that there is nothing but your sword shall ever give me a satisfaction for it, which if suddenly you refuse to give me, expect in print, on every post in the town to find yourself an infamous coward.HEHL, EL 8092.
The king got wind of this challenge and sent the serjeant-at-arms to apprehend the two peers. He found Bridgwater alone waiting on the spot arranged for the duel. Charles tried his hand at mediation, but this having proved fruitless, he referred the matter to the House, and the dispute was first presented on 12 June 1663. Bridgwater and Middlesex had to withdraw themselves while the Lords considered the matter and the appropriate punishment for this breach of the public peace. Middlesex was sent to the Tower, while Bridgwater was committed to the lodgings of Black Rod.
Here what he considered the greatest tragedy of his life occurred. His wife, heavily pregnant with their ninth child, came to visit him, but on 14 June died in childbirth at Black Rod’s residence. This was an extreme blow to Bridgwater. He never remarried and the inscription for his own memorial, whose wording he specified himself in his will of 1685, dwells exclusively on the virtue and goodness of his wife. He portrayed his marriage of 22 years as the greatest achievement of his life, as he enjoyed ‘all the happiness that a man could receive in the sweet society of the best of wives till it pleased God in the 41st year of his age to change his great felicity into a great misery’. When the anniversary of his wedding, 22 July, came around in 1664, he found himself so distracted by grief and memories – ‘once a day of the greatest joy and comfort to me, now (by the remembrance of past felicity, which never can return) a day of sorrow, of sadness’ – that he had to break off writing a business letter to his solicitor John Halsey, ‘my thoughts already so far strayed from what was the subject of the beginning of this letter’.
The day following her death, 15 June, the House, being informed that Bridgwater ‘desired their Lordships’ compassion upon him in this sad condition, his Lady dying in the same house where now his Lordship is confined’, ordered that Bridgwater could be removed from Black Rod’s house to stay under confinement at his London residence in the Barbican. On 25 June Middlesex petitioned for readmission to the House, acknowledging and regretting his actions, and the following day, the House judged that both Middlesex and Bridgwater should stand at the bar and receive the reprehension of the House. After this, both, standing in their own places in the House, were to make their submissions while Middlesex was to make his own acknowledgment and apology to Bridgwater. The two peers came before the House on 2 July to hear the reprehension and make their submissions to be readmitted to the House. Afterwards they went to the king to submit to him as well.
Despite his claim made in August 1663 to his trusted Buckinghamshire deputy lieutenant Sir Ralph Verney‡, bt, that ‘by reason of the great loss with which it hath pleased God lately to afflict me ... all manner of business is yet troublesome to me’, Bridgwater resumed his usual busy activity as a chairman and reporter from as early as 10 July, chairing committees on ten occasions concerning seven bills from that time.
The following year witnessed further manoeuvrings over the disputed guardianship of Lady Elizabeth Cranfield. In January 1664 Middlesex resorted to chancery to attempt to attach some of Bridgwater’s property.
There is no indication that Bridgwater did invoke privilege of Parliament to evade legal proceedings during the parliamentary session which began on 16 March. He attended every one of the 36 sittings of this brief session, during which he was nominated to 11 select committees. He chaired these on seven occasions, dealing with four separate matters, and reported from committees two times. He was involved in directing the bill for the transportation of felons through committee, before it was recommitted by the House upon his report on 2 April. He also led the committee established on 21 Apr. to examine the ‘noisome’ open ditch next to the part of the Tower of London where the records of the House were kept, from which he reported to the House on 5 May.
The next several months before the next session were taken up with further proceedings with Middlesex, which became more rancorous as at the same time Bridgwater was preparing for Brackley’s marriage to Lady Elizabeth Cranfield. The marriage was celebrated on 17 Nov., only a few days after Middlesex had arranged to have a subpoena served on the prospective bride. Despite the imminence of another parliamentary session, Bridgwater still categorically refused to invoke privilege of Parliament to escape the legal proceedings.
When Parliament reconvened one week after the wedding, Bridgwater attended all but two of its 53 sittings. On the very first day of the session, 24 Nov., he was assigned with five others to present the thanks of the House to the king for his speech describing the depredations of the Dutch and setting out the justifications for war. The same delegation was sent into the City to thank the corporation for the money they had given the king for the war effort. On that same day Henry Mordaunt, 2nd earl of Peterborough, registered his proxy with Bridgwater; two days later Bridgwater also received that of Edward Montagu, earl of Sandwich. On 30 Dec., during the Christmas recess, Henry Carey, earl of Dover, also registered his proxy with Bridgwater. Most likely Bridgwater arranged to receive Dover’s proxy in the knowledge that Peterborough would return to the House to vacate his proxy once the session resumed on 12 Jan. 1665 – otherwise Bridgwater would have held more than the permitted number of two proxies (Sandwich’s was not vacated until 27 Feb. 1665). During the session Bridgwater was again mainly concerned with committee work. He was nominated to 25 committees, chaired 12 of these on 23 occasions and reported to the House from them eight times, with the bills (among others) to make rivers in Hampshire navigable (reported 20 Jan. 1665), to repair highways in London and Westminster (3 and 11 Feb.) and Hertfordshire (17 Feb.), to regulate the measurement of coal (2 Mar.) and to provide for the settlement of the younger siblings of Nicholas Tufton, 3rd earl of Thanet (11 February).
Dutch War and fall of Clarendon, 1665-7
Throughout the spring and summer of 1665, and in the many following months, Bridgwater was busy in mustering and managing Buckinghamshire’s militia for the defence of the county in the Dutch War, aided by his deputy lieutenant Sir Ralph Verney.
Bridgwater, for his part, was present at all but three of the meetings in Oxford, during which he chaired select committees on 11 occasions dealing with six separate bills, four of which he reported to the House. As usual, he was highly involved in legislation affecting the Church of England, and chaired and reported on 16 Oct. from the committee on the bill to unite churches in cities and corporate towns. He also led the busy and well-attended (at least 15 being present for three divisions) committee meeting on 21 Oct. on what would become the Five Mile Act. Bridgwater’s report on 30 Oct. of the bill with the stringent oath imposed on nonconforming ministers aroused passionate debate. Those peers who had long advocated a more comprehensive Church urged the recommitment of the bill to reconsider the oath imposed on ministers. These propositions were rebuffed by the bishops and Bridgwater, who ‘desired that it might be understood that those who were for the recommitment were against the bill and those who were against the recommitment were for the bill’. The bill was passed by the House without being recommitted. He was also heavily involved in framing and passing the bill for further regulations against the plague, chairing the committee three times and reporting the bill to the House on 30 October. He also reported on 21 Oct. from the committee on the bill for removing damage cleer.
In the months following the prorogation, Bridgwater continued to delay his proceedings against Middlesex for Lady Brackley’s property and by the end of March 1666 was highly defensive against his solicitor’s accusation that he had neglected her interest. On one point he was adamant, he would not take possession of the disputed properties before the suit began: ‘I do absolutely dislike that and will by no means begin the suit, by such an action, as may, by the end of the suit, prove to be the greatest injustice imaginable’. On 30 Apr. 1666 Bridgwater joined the majority of his peers in finding Thomas Parker, 15th Baron Morley, tried for murder in the court of the lord high steward, guilty only of manslaughter. He revealed his sympathies in the increasing rivalries at court in late May when he complained to his solicitor that, regarding the expectation that he and other peers would advance money to the king for the war, he had had some ‘usage’ from the secretary of state Henry Bennet, Baron (later earl of) Arlington, ‘which is not very fair’ and ‘which I must represent to my lord chancellor before I can begin to endeavour to do his Majesty any service in it’.
Bridgwater attended all but three of the sittings of the session which began in September 1666. From 25 Sept. he held the proxy of Christopher Hatton, Baron Hatton. In this busy session he was nominated to 36 select committees and chaired 14 of them on a total of 33 occasions. In the first weeks of the session he was busy completing a bill which he had first worked on in the previous session before it was lost at the prorogation, that for sowing hemp and flax, and throughout October he chaired five meetings of the committee before reporting the bill on 22 October. On 12 Oct. he was placed on the committee to draft points for a conference with the Commons concerning their vote and proposed address for a complete ban on the import of French goods and between 17 and 30 Oct. he was one of the delegates of the House for four conferences on this matter. He was busy again in committees from December and between 10 Dec. and 8 Feb. 1667 he reported from 11 of them, including the bills for the encouragement of the coinage (reported 10 and 11 Dec.), to unite churches in Southampton (18 Dec.), for burying in woollen (17 Jan. 1667), to make provisions for those infected with the plague (23 Jan.), to establish a judicature to settle differences arising from the Great Fire (23 Jan.), to prevent the disturbances of seamen (5 Feb.), for rebuilding the City of London (7 Feb.), and for settling the taxes on the Adventurers’ lands in the Bedford Level (8 February).
Like most peers in the House, he was most preoccupied from December 1666 with the controversy between the houses over the Irish cattle bill. He was chosen one of four reporters for the conference with the lower House on 14 Dec. in which the Commons insisted on their use of the controversial word ‘nuisance’ in the bill. Upon the report on the conference three days later he was further named to a committee of seven to draft the House’s resolution that they would not admit the word ‘nuisance’ and that they hoped to alleviate the Commons’ fears by proposing an address to the king requesting him not to grant any dispensations or licenses which would circumvent the intent of the act. Three more peers were added to this committee on 20 December. Bridgwater chaired its well-attended meeting the following day; eight peers were involved in each of the nine divisions Bridgwater oversaw which rejected five of the reasons proposed to be offered to the Commons and accepted four.
It was not until 29 Dec., after the Christmas recess, that Bridgwater reported from this committee with the petition to the king and with a number of points to be made against the use of the word ‘nuisance’. He was named as one of eight peers to manage the free conference on this matter to be held the following day. On that same day (29 Dec.) the king’s answer to the House’s petition to establish a royal commission to examine the public accounts was read and Bridgwater was among the six peers who, with 12 members of the House of Commons, were nominated to the new body.
The final days of the session were taken up with the impeachment proceedings against Mordaunt. Bridgwater had already attended a conference on the matter on 29 Dec. 1666 and had chaired a meeting of the committee for privileges entrusted on 17 Jan. 1667 with determining precedents on how Mordaunt’s answers to the articles of impeachment should be transmitted to the lower House. On 28 Jan. he reported from another meeting of the committee for privileges with precedents the committee had found to answer the Commons’ objections to the ‘demeanour’ of Mordaunt in the House during his defence and the behaviour of his counsel.
On 13 Feb., only five days after the prorogation, Bridgwater was sworn to the Privy Council, a belated recognition of his many years of close attention to the court’s interests in the House, and particularly of his intensely busy activity in the most recent turbulent session.
When Clarendon, in another example of his ‘extraordinary preference’ for Bridgwater, nominated his protégé to replace Southampton as lord treasurer upon the latter’s death in June 1667, his suggestion was overruled and instead a treasury commission was established consisting of many of the lord chancellor’s fiercest enemies.
He spent much of the autumn of 1667 defending Clarendon and his associates, both in the Privy Council and in Parliament.
His first opportunity to register his dissatisfaction with the Commons’ prosecution of Clarendon came on 21 Nov. when the Commons did not immediately respond to a request from the Lords for a conference but instead later sent their own messenger to request a conference, without giving its subject matter. This was seen as a breach of parliamentary procedure and after the peers had agreed to accept the Commons’ request for a conference, Bridgwater, Anglesey and William Brydges, 7th Baron Chandos, were the only peers to protest. They argued that the Commons should have answered the Lords’ request first and should not have made their own request without finding out what the subject of the Lords’ conference was to have been. Upon the report of this conference the following day, Bridgwater was appointed to a committee of seven peers to draw up the reasons for the House’s censure of the Commons’ actions, which was subsequently presented by Bridgwater and other members of the drafting committee to the lower House at a conference. On 25 Nov. he was again named a manager for a conference to explain the House’s reasons for refusing to commit Clarendon without charge. Two days later he was again appointed a manager for a free conference to be held the following day on the growing disputes between the two houses. The situation was soon transformed by Clarendon’s flight and the subsequent bill for his banishment. In other matters of this stage of the session, Bridgwater was appointed one of eight reporters who attended the conference on 10 Dec. at which the lower House presented two resolutions concerning their freedom of speech in Parliament, with which the House agreed the following day. Just before Parliament was adjourned he reported two bills from committees he had chaired: that against atheism (18 Dec.) and for making prize ships free for trade (19 December).
After Clarendon, 1668-71
In the recess before Parliament reassembled in February 1668 it was widely expected that Bridgwater would be one of the Clarendonians who would be removed from the Privy Council but, perhaps owing to the influence of the duke of York, this cull did not happen.
He was opposed to the petition and appeal of Cuthbert Morley and Bernard Grenville to have a chancery decree against them reversed and he signed the three protests of 9, 16 and 31 Mar. against the House’s resolutions in favour of these petitioners. In April and May he continued to be engaged in committees. He reported from two select committees—on the bills to regulate the accounts of administrators (3 Apr.) and against the abuses of drovers (1 May)—and one committee of the whole House, on the bill against duelling, for which he was subsequently named to the drafting sub-committee (24 April.). Among those matters in which he took a special interest was the bill against atheism and prophaneness, whose consideration had been postponed until after the recess when he had reported it from committee on 18 Dec. 1667.
During the long series of adjournments which kept Parliament officially in session during 1668-69 Bridgwater was named a commissioner on the council of trade when its commission was renewed on 20 Oct. 1668.
Four days before the new session of Parliament convened on 19 Oct. 1669, the duke of Newcastle, absent from the House since 1660, once again registered his proxy with Bridgwater for the entire forthcoming session. Bridgwater himself attended all but one of the sittings of this brief session of winter 1669 but was not greatly involved in committees, only chairing the committee on the bill for preventing fraud in the export of wool, from which he reported on 26 October.
Once again, before that session even started Bridgwater had his full complement of two proxies from his ever-absent father-in-law Newcastle and cousin Leigh. He thus could not comply with the request of his brother-in-law Richard Vaughan, Baron Vaughan (2nd earl of Carbery [I]), to take over his proxy in late March 1671, after Vaughan’s original proxy recipient, John Granville, earl of Bath, himself had left the House.
Bridgwater was his usual assiduous self and missed only one sitting throughout this long session of 165 days from February 1670 to April 1671. That one day was in the shorter period of February to April 1670 when Bridgwater distinguished himself by his guidance of the second conventicle bill, with which he had been so concerned the previous summer, through the House in March. From the time it was first considered in a committee of the whole House on its second reading on 14 Mar. to its final passage on 26 Mar., Bridgwater was the sole chairman of the committee of the whole House on the bill on ten occasions, many of them attended, somewhat controversially, by the king himself.
Parliament reconvened from its summer adjournment on 24 October. Bridgwater came to all of the ensuing 124 sittings of the House until the prorogation of 22 Apr. 1671 and was named to 55 select committees. Of these he chaired 12 on a total of 22 occasions and reported from six.
It was only from March 1671 that Bridgwater became his usual busy self again. On 6 Mar. he chaired the committee of the whole on the bill for an additional excise upon beer and ale. On that same day he was named a reporter for a conference in which the Commons objected to the amendments the House had made, which they subsequently agreed to omit. A week later he was a reporter for two other conferences. On 15-16 Mar. he joined in two protests against the House’s decision to suspend the judgments found against the petitioner John Cusack. On 11 Apr. he also reported from a committee of the whole House with the bill for impositions on legal proceedings ready to be passed without any amendments. Within the first two weeks of April alone he reported four bills from select committee, including those to explain a proviso in the bill settling the Post Office revenue on the duke of York (3 Apr.), to settle the land taken for the fortifications of Portsmouth (11 Apr.), and to prevent abuses in the Smithfield cattle trade (13 April).
On 18 and 20 Apr. he also served as a delegate of the House in a series of three conferences on the dispute between the houses over the amendment to this latter bill. He was also involved in the numerous conferences in which were aired the disagreements over the House’s claimed right to amend the bill to raise supply through impositions on foreign goods such as West Indian sugar. He was initially on 10 Apr. named a manager for a conference on the bill and for a proposed address to the king, but this conference fell through when the lower house responded the following day concerning the conference on the bill but not on the address, an answer which the Lords conceived to be ‘unparliamentary’. Bridgwater was assigned to be one of the managers to represent the House in the two conferences on 11 and 12 Apr. to discuss this breakdown in communication. He was a reporter of the two ensuing conferences on 12 and 15 Apr. discussing the bill for impositions, and on 17 Apr. was placed on the committee to draw up reasons justifying the House’s right to make amendments to the rates of imposition in a money bill. Three increasingly bad-tempered conferences were held on 20 and 22 April. After the last, Bridgwater was again placed on a committee to prepare answers to the Commons and to show their dislike of ‘the unusual expressions of the Commons’ to be presented in a free conference. But the committee stopped its work when it learned that the king, annoyed at the breakdown of all manner of business between the houses over this matter, was going to prorogue Parliament that afternoon. Bridgwater’s active involvement in this matter is suggested by the survival among his manuscripts of a large bundle of papers (26 leaves) written in his own hand and entitled ‘Observations concerning a dispute between the Lords and the Commons about the granting of impositions’, a fair copy of the reasons that were to be presented to the Commons at the abortive conference.
Defender of Protestantism, 1672-4
Shortly after the prorogation, the lord chamberlain Edward Montagu, 2nd earl of Manchester, died of a ‘griping of the guts’, and Bridgwater was one of those put forward as a possible replacement, although the post eventually went to Henry Jermyn, earl of St Albans.
In March 1670 Lady Brackley died in childbirth. In late 1672 and early 1673 Bridgwater was busy trying to finalize the settlement for a marriage between his heir and Lady Jane, daughter of Charles Powlett, styled Lord St John (later 6th marquess of Winchester, ultimately duke of Bolton). Despite the fact that Bridgwater calculated that there remained £21,050 worth of debt encumbering the estates he intended to settle on Brackley, St John was pleased to proceed, and even to give his daughter a portion of £12,000 upon the marriage, which was celebrated in April 1673. His other children also occupied Bridgwater in the long months without Parliament. In May 1672 his daughter Lady Elizabeth Egerton married Robert Sidney, later 4th earl of Leicester, with a portion of £10,000.
On 30 Dec. 1672, well before the long-anticipated reconvening of Parliament was to take place in early February, Bridgwater received the proxy of his nephew Edward Herbert, 3rd Baron Herbert of Chirbury. To this he added Newcastle’s proxy, also registered in anticipation of the session. Bridgwater took his place on 4 Feb., the opening day. He missed only three meetings of this session, and on 1 Mar. he was named to a small committee of eight peers assigned to draw an address of thanks to the king for communicating to the House the matter of the exchange of addresses he had been conducting with the Commons regarding the Declaration of Indulgence. Four days later he was named to a much larger committee which was to prepare heads for a bill, suggested by the king himself, to set out by statute the scope of the king’s dispensing power. That Bridgwater was one of the more active members of the drafting committee for this bill is suggested by the survival among his papers of a draft, which never got out of committee.
Bridgwater was central to the important religious legislation discussed in that session. From 15 to 19 Mar. 1673 he acted as the sole chairman of the four committees of the whole House that rushed through and eventually passed the Commons’ test bill that would exclude Catholics from holding office. He was a reporter for the conference held on 24 Mar. concerning the Commons’ disagreements with the bill, which the House accepted with surprising readiness in order to get the measure passed so that the much-needed supply bill could be passed in time for the prorogation. Bridgwater was also the sole chairman of the six meetings of the committee of the whole between 22 and 27 Mar. which considered the Commons’ bill for the ease of Protestant dissenters. During these debates a clause was added granting the king power to issue proclamations on religious matters when Parliament was in recess. On 29 Mar., Bridgwater was named a reporter of the conference to hear the lower house’s objections to this amendment, which seemed like a confirmation of the dispensing power against which they had just fought. This time the Lords did not accept the Commons’ arguments, and Bridgwater was assigned to manage another conference later that afternoon at which the House made the reason for its adherence to the clauses clear. The matter was still in dispute when the king prorogued the session that afternoon, upon which the bill was lost, to the dismay of many nonconformists.
From this session of 1673 a change in Bridgwater’s attitude and activity in the House can be discerned. Bridgwater, so long a pillar of the Anglican Church and a leading enemy of Dissent, now probably began to believe, like so many other staunch Anglicans, that the greatest threat to the Church of England came not from nonconformity in the country but from Catholicism at court. Over the following years, Bridgwater increasingly took a role in guiding through the committee of the whole House, for which he became the principal chairman, the country religious legislation which sought to halt the growth of popery, place limitations on the power wielded by a Catholic monarch, and provide protection to Protestant dissenters. He did so even though it placed him in some distinctly uncomfortable positions regarding his previous attitudes towards dissent.
It would be difficult, though, to categorize Bridgwater in the later 1670s solely as a country peer, or even more so as a Whig, as some have done.
In the turbulent session of January-February 1674, for which he once again held Newcastle’s proxy for the entire session, he remained busy as chairman of the committee of the whole House concerning controversial religious legislation. He was the only chairman of the four committees of the whole which from 10 to 21 Feb. considered the ‘heads of advice’ for securing the Protestant religion ‘as it is established in the Church of England’. Over these days the committee discussed proposals to ensure that royal children be educated as Protestants, to prohibit the marriage of a member of the royal family to a Catholic except by parliamentary approval, to disarm Catholic recusants and to remove the queen’s English Catholic servants from Whitehall. The exclusion of a Catholic monarch unwilling to take the Test was even discussed in the committee. Contemporaries attributed such proposals to ‘some hotspurs’ in the Lords, in particular Shaftesbury, George Savile, Viscount (later marquess of) Halifax, and James Cecil, 3rd earl of Salisbury, who made up the core of a sub-committee appointed by the committee of the whole on 14 Feb. to draw up these proposals into a bill. It was Shaftesbury who presented the bill for the better securing the Protestant religion to the committee of the whole chaired by Bridgwater on 21 February.
Rumours circulated again shortly after the prorogation that Bridgwater was to be removed from the Privy Council, but not only did he remain on the council, he was even appointed in March 1675 one of the councillors on the newly formed committee for trade and plantations.
Danby, court and country, 1675-8
Bridgwater’s shifting political stance did confuse people. Thomas Osborne, earl of Danby (later duke of Leeds), considered the privy councillor and high Anglican Bridgwater a natural supporter of the ‘non-resisting’ test bill that he was intending to introduce into the House, with the support of the bishops, during the session of spring 1675. On the other hand, Shaftesbury’s A Letter from a Person of Quality to his Friend in the Country listed Bridgwater as second in its list of 24 peers who managed the opposition to the bill in the House. It even singled out Bridgwater for praise as ‘the never-to-be-forgotten earl of Bridgwater, who gave reputation and strength to this cause of England’ and pointed out that Bridgwater urged in debate on the bill the inclusion of a mandatory oath ‘for preserving the freedom of debates in Parliament’.
Bridgwater attended all of the sittings of the following short session of the autumn of 1675. On 10 Nov. he was a manager for a conference on the Commons’ address to recall Englishmen fighting in Louis XIV’s service. Two days later he chaired a committee of the whole House on the bill for the trial of peers and was placed on the sub-committee of seven peers established to frame amendments.
In May 1676, Bridgwater stepped down as lord lieutenant of Lancashire and Cheshire, when Derby came of age and could take over the role himself. At the end of the following month he was one of the 35 peers who sat in the court of the lord high steward to try Charles Cornwallis, 3rd Baron Cornwallis, for murder. Bridgwater joined with the majority of peers in finding Cornwallis not guilty.
Five days before Parliament reconvened on 15 Feb. 1677, Bridgwater, no longer needed to hold the proxy of his late father-in-law Newcastle, who had died on Christmas Day 1676, instead received that of his nephew John Cecil, 4th earl of Exeter, who had not sat in the House since 5 Apr. 1670. Bridgwater held this proxy until Exeter’s death on 1 Feb. 1678. Bridgwater maintained his consistent attendance rate of 100 per cent throughout this long session, which was not prorogued until 13 May 1678. In the records of this first period of the session before the adjournment of 16 Apr. 1677 Bridgwater appears most frequently by his signature next to the many deletions from the Journal’s official record of the proceedings against Shaftesbury, Wharton, Salisbury and George Villiers, 2nd duke of Buckingham, for claiming at the commencement of the session that Parliament was automatically dissolved by its 15-month prorogation. By a later order of 13 Nov. 1680, based on a report from Bridgwater from the committee for the Journal delivered the previous day, all records of these proceedings were to be excised. Bridgwater, usually the first name among the signatories, seems to have managed the effort to go back through the Journal’s records from 15 Feb. 1677 to 26 Feb. 1678 in order to implement this order.
He was named to 42 select committees but only chaired two and reported from one, on 1 Mar. 1677, and devoted most of his attention, as usual, to leading committees of the whole House in the important religious legislation of the session. In the first two weeks Bridgwater chaired a number of meetings of the committee of the whole House which once again considered many of the measures proposed for securing the Protestant religion put forward in February 1674 and November 1675. At the first committee on 21 Feb. 1677 the heads from November 1675 concerning the Protestant education of the royal children, the disarming of Papists and the queen’s Catholic servants were read and agreed upon, while some other new points were raised. The following day, Bridgwater reported from the committee of the whole with points for other bills: one for mitigating the penalties for Catholics who voluntarily placed themselves on a register of recusants, the other to limit a Catholic monarch’s control over the nomination of Anglican bishops.
On 4 Apr. Bridgwater was a manager for a conference on the Commons’ amendments to the bill for the naturalization of children born abroad of English parents. The following day he chaired the committee of the whole on the bill for securing the liberty of the subject. On 10 Apr. he chaired another sitting of the committee of the whole on the supply bill for building warships, and over the following days he was one of the group of peers assigned to manage a series of conferences in which the House defended its amendments against the Commons’ complaint that the House could not change money bills. At the free conference held on 14 Apr. it was noted that Bridgwater was one of the conference managers, along with Anglesey and Halifax, who ‘argued with great sharpness to show the impossibility that the Lords could at this time comply’ with the Commons’ request to recede from their amendments. After the report of the next free conference which Bridgwater managed, on 16 Apr., the House resolved that because of the urgent need for supply, they would reluctantly recede from their amendment. Bridgwater, true to form, dissented with seven other peers from this desertion of the principles which he had expressed vehemently in conference.
With the supply bill passed, the king adjourned the bad-tempered Houses for a few weeks until a very brief meeting of five days, all of which Bridgwater attended, was held in late May 1677. Parliament was then further adjourned. During these spring months Bridgwater was noted ‘worthy’ by the imprisoned Shaftesbury. He confirmed Shaftesbury’s estimate when the session resumed on 15 Jan. 1678, from which day he attended all the meetings until the prorogation of 13 May. On 1 and 7 Feb. he chaired and reported from two committees of the whole House discussing the bill for punishing atheism and blasphemy. From 23 Feb. Bridgwater held the proxy of his great-nephew John Cecil, 5th earl of Exeter, and he had his full complement of two proxies for the remainder of the session from 11 Mar. when Leigh also registered his proxy with him. On 6-7 Mar. he chaired both a meeting of the committee for privileges and two select committees, while he represented the House in two conferences on 9 and 19 Mar. on the bill to regulate fishing. On 27 Mar. he reported from committee two bills, a private bill and the bill for burying in woollen.
Bridgwater again attended all of the sittings of the session which began only ten days later, and lasted until 15 July, during which he briefly resumed his past activity as a leader in select committees. He was named to 28 committees, chairing six of them on 12 occasions. He also chaired the committee for privileges once.
He was engaged in two particular issues during this session. The first was Robert Villiers’s claim to the viscountcy of Purbeck, which Bridgwater strenuously opposed to the point of protesting against motions even to consider the matter. He was named on 20 June to the committee assigned to draft a petition asking the king to grant permission that a bill be brought in to disable the petitioner from ever claiming the title. Bridgwater himself reported from this committee six days later. The petition was approved and presented to the king on 9 July. He was also at the heart of the debate between the Houses on the supply bill for disbanding the forces raised for the war with France. He chaired the first committee of the whole House on the bill on 19 June and managed the conference the following day at which the king’s message emphasizing the necessity of maintaining the army in Flanders in order to force France to the negotiating table was conveyed to the Commons. On the following day, 21 June, he served once more as chairman of the committee of the whole for the bill and reported the House’s amendment to extend the deadline for the disbandment from the end of June to the end of July. On 25 June Bridgwater was named one of the seven reporters for the conference at which the Commons explained their objections to the House’s amending a money bill and during which they submitted a proviso which they hoped would satisfy the Lords’ intentions. Bridgwater was placed on the committee to draw up reasons why the House could not accept the proviso which he helped to present to the Commons in another conference on 26 June. Between 28 June and 2 July Bridgwater represented the House in three increasingly bad-tempered conferences in which the House’s right to amend money bills was debated. At the last conference, on 2 July, the Commons effectively placed the blame for the bill’s failure to pass on the Lords. The House’s representatives, including Bridgwater, emphatically rejected this, and ‘their Lordships left the bill still with them [the Commons]’. To solve the impasse the Commons brought up new bills over the following days – a bill to lay an additional duty on wines and a new supply bill for £619,388, with a provision to disband the army conveniently ‘tacked’ on. Over 11-12 July Bridgwater chaired the committees of the whole which dealt with these bills in turn and, probably with the imminent prorogation and the need to pass a supply bill in mind, he reported both bills fit to pass without amendment.
These last days before the prorogation on 15 July were very busy for Bridgwater as the House frantically tried to wrap up overdue legislation. Bridgwater held the proxy of John Lovelace, 3rd Baron Lovelace, which was registered with him on 4 July, for the remainder of the session. On 5 July he dissented from the decision not even to put the question whether the petition in Darrell v. Whichcot should be dismissed first before the House went ahead to ascertain the relief which should be granted to the petitioner. In the last week of the session he reported three bills from select committee, including those for the enlarging of common highways (11 July) and for a general naturalization of Protestant strangers (12 July). The most troublesome was the bill for the relief of poor prisoners, which was recommitted to his committee after his first report on 10 July, and did not satisfy the House until two days later.
Popish Plot and Exclusion, 1678-9
Bridgwater served as a commissioner at all three of the prorogations in August and October 1678. He attended the first day of the new session on 21 Oct., convened in response to the allegations of the Popish Plot, and missed only four of its sittings. Within two days of the first sitting Bridgwater was named to both the large committee entrusted to examine the papers transmitted from the council regarding the Plot and the smaller committee of five assigned to draw up an address requesting the king to banish papists from London and Westminster. The following day he was placed on the committee to examine whether any of the constables or other officers in London and Middlesex were papists. On 26 Oct. he reported from the committee of the whole House with advice to be given to the king ‘for the better preservation of his person’ and he was named to the ensuing sub-committee to draft the resulting address. He attended on 1 Nov. two conferences in which the houses agreed that there was a ‘hellish’ Popish plot to assassinate the king and that effective steps for the preservation of his person and the Protestant religion should be taken. On 9 Nov. he was placed on the committee to examine the murder of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, and he was also a reporter for two conferences held on 11 Nov. at which the houses discussed the Commons’ complaint that the lord chancellor (Heneage Finch, Baron Finch, later earl of Nottingham), was being unduly slow in issuing out commissions for justices of the peace to tender the oaths to suspected papists.
Exeter registered his proxy with Bridgwater again on 30 Oct. 1678, for the entire session. Charles Dormer, 2nd earl of Carnarvon, also registered his proxy on 7 Nov., but this was vacated on his return on 19 December. While holding these proxies Bridgwater was at the heart of the procedures surrounding the test bill aimed to bar Catholics from sitting in Parliament. Bridgwater chaired a committee of the whole considering proposals for the ‘further preservation’ of the king’s person on 4 Nov. and then from 7 to 19 Nov. he acted as sole chairman of all eight intense committees of the whole House, which worked out the details of the test bill, and which he reported to the House the morning of 20 November. Throughout this two-week process, the Commons sent numerous messages urging, in ever more panicked tones, the House to hurry up with this bill which had first been brought up to the Lords on 28 October. The House was not to be rushed, though. Many peers were directly touched by the terms of the bill and argued vigorously against it. Bridgwater himself voted on 15 Nov. in favour of an amendment that would bar from the House peers who refused to make the declaration against transubstantiation, but this motion was defeated in committee by five votes, largely from Catholic peers and the bishops present. However, when Bridgwater gave his final long report on the many amendments to the bill on 20 Nov., the full House reversed this earlier decision and voted the amendment through, while at the same time voting in favour of a proviso which excepted York alone from the bill’s provisions.
Apart from his work on these committees, he was also involved in Privy Council sub-committees examining the Plot and its ramifications.
Throughout early December Bridgwater picked up where he and the committee of the whole had left off before the Test Act was pushed through, and from 4 to 13 Dec. he chaired five committees of the whole House in consideration of further heads of bills for preserving the king’s person and securing the Protestant religion. Among the recommendations that were to be shaped into bills was one that children of English subjects were to be prohibited from attending foreign seminaries and another that recent converts from Catholicism to Protestantism were to be free from the penalties of the penal laws but were still to be barred from holding civil or military office for a further two years.
Bridgwater had little success in bringing his sons into Parliament in the elections of spring 1679. Within three days of the dissolution of Parliament on 24 Jan. 1679 both Wharton and Richard Hampden‡ had assured Bridgwater of their interest for his eldest son Brackley for one of the Buckinghamshire county seats. Bridgwater in turn had to tell them that Brackley declined to stand. Instead, he offered his interest, or at least his neutrality, to Wharton’s and Hampden’s sons, respectively Thomas Wharton and John Hampden‡, after his three preferred candidates, William Cheyne,‡ Sir Ralph Verney, and Sir Anthony Chester‡, all stood down close to the time of the election.
Bridgwater attended all six meetings of the short session which began on 6 Mar. 1679, but which, owing to disputes between the Commons and the king over the choice of Speaker, had to be prorogued prematurely on 13 March. When Parliament reconvened two days later he was there and proceeded to miss only one of the 61 days of the first Exclusion Parliament. From the first day he held Exeter’s proxy, which he retained for the entire session. Danby forecast that Bridgwater would act against him in the matter of his impeachment and his calculations were by and large correct. On 22 Mar. Bridgwater was placed on the committee of 13 peers, almost all of them members of the country opposition, assigned to draw up the bill suggested by Shaftesbury to disqualify the lord treasurer from ever coming into the king’s presence again and banning him from all employments. Four days later Bridgwater chaired two committees of the whole House considering the bill for disabling Danby and, following the news that the lord treasurer had gone into hiding, he reported to the House that the Committee had turned the bill into one for Danby’s banishment if he did not surrender himself by 1 May. Bridgwater chaired a committee of the whole on 3 Apr. on the Commons’ alternative bill to attaint Danby in case he continued to remain in hiding. He reported the changes in the bill which sought to revive the terms of the Lords’ original measure by threatening the lord treasurer with the lesser penalty of banishment. On the next day he was a manager for the conference in which the altered bill was returned to the Commons and between 8 and 14 Apr. he represented the House in a series of six conferences where the houses argued over the evasive lord treasurer’s punishment. He himself eventually voted in favour of the bill of attainder, and was a manager for the conference on 14 Apr. where the Commons were informed that the House now agreed with its original bill. He was also part of the delegation to the king that same day requesting him to give the bill a speedy royal assent. The bill had its desired effect even without the king’s immediate approval, as Danby voluntarily gave himself up to Black Rod two days after its passage, but before the deadline for his surrender it had set.
On 24 Mar. 1679 Bridgwater was delegated, with Essex and Henry Hyde, 2nd earl of Clarendon, to go to the Tower to examine Danby’s fellow prisoners, the imprisoned Catholic peers, about allegations raised in a French pamphlet that they had employed an agent in Flanders to find evidence to counter the charges against them. Bridgwater reported the result of the interviews to the House the following day and on 27 Mar. conveyed to the House the request of two of the prisoners for liberty to receive visitors during their incarceration. On 20 May, though, Bridgwater was part of a deputation sent by the House to the king to request him to ensure that the gates of the Tower were securely locked at ten o’clock at night, so that sympathizers of these imprisoned peers could not have access to them after that time.
He was involved in a number of committees of the whole House as well. In late March he chaired two on the bill for the better discovery and speedy conviction of recusants (20 and 25 Mar.), one on framing a bill to clear London and Westminster of papists (28 Mar.), and a further two to consider ways of excluding Catholics from the Inns of Court and Chancery (28 and 29 Mar.). On 31 Mar and 1 Apr. he chaired committees of the whole considering measures to counteract the danger of the Plot and of Catholicism in Ireland. He took up this matter again in another Committee on 15 April.
On 21 Apr. 1679 Bridgwater was sworn to the newly constituted Privy Council, remodelled in the wake of the exclusionist agitation, and the following day he was again placed on the sub-committee for trade and plantations.
His principal activity from late April was shaping the habeas corpus bill and seeing it through both houses. On 17 Apr. he was placed on a sub-committee assigned by a committee of the whole House, chaired by John Robartes, 2nd Baron Robartes (later earl of Radnor), to clarify sections of the bill. After over a week of deliberations the sub-committee’s amendments to the bill were considered in two committees of the whole, both chaired by Bridgwater, on 28 and 30 April. The bill was passed and sent to the Commons on 2 May. Bridgwater was appointed a reporter for the conference on 3 May in which the Commons set out their objections to the Lords’ amendments and, after the House resolved to adhere to many of these, he attended another conference on 9 May to deliver the House’s reasons for its intransigence. There the matter stood for two weeks, but as the day of prorogation rapidly advanced, the Commons decided to give a last effort to settle the differences over the bill. They requested another conference on 22 May, which Bridgwater was delegated to manage, where the Commons acceded to all but four of the House’s amendments. In turn, Bridgwater and his fellow managers of the free conference on 26 May offered to rescind these amendments if the Commons would insert an even more offensive proviso in their place. At a free conference on 27 May, where Bridgwater was again manager, the Commons thwarted the Lords’ attempt to wreck the bill through its amendments by reluctantly agreeing to accept all of the House’s amendments it had previously rejected rather than include the new proviso. The bill, having just barely passed both houses, was ready to present to the king for his assent when he came to prorogue Parliament that same afternoon.
Tory reaction, 1680-5
Parliament was dissolved on 12 July and Bridgwater served as a commissioner at the seven prorogations of the House as Charles II continuously put off convening his new Parliament for over a year. Over these long months, he continued his activities with the Privy Council in investigating the Plot in both England and Ireland, and he appears to have been fully convinced of its reality and danger.
The new Parliament finally convened on 21 Oct. 1680. Bridgwater was there on its first day and proceeded to attend all but eight of its sittings. He chaired a committee of the whole House on the bill for ‘freeing’ London and Westminster from papists on 29 Oct and chaired another one on the same subject on 8 Nov., on which day he was also manager for a conference in which the House handed over to the representatives of the Commons transcripts of the papers from the Privy Council regarding the Plot in Ireland. As Bridgwater had been placed on the council’s sub-committee investigating the Irish situation earlier that summer he may have had a special interest and involvement in this conference.
Although Bridgwater had previously joined the country group in many measures to secure Protestantism in England, he did not join with Shaftesbury and his followers in supporting York’s exclusion. On 15 Nov. he voted to reject the exclusion bill and voted against the motion to form a joint committee with the Commons to consider measures for the safety of the kingdom. He did, however, vote Viscount Stafford guilty on 7 December. Bridgwater quickly returned to his role of managing religious legislation in the committee of the whole House and between 13 and 21 Dec. he chaired committees of the whole seven times on some very closely related bills, those for ‘securing the Protestant religion’ (13 Dec.), to repeal the statute of 35 Elizabeth I against Protestant Dissenters (15 Dec.) and to distinguish Protestant Dissenters from popish recusants. This latter he chaired five times that week in committee before it was passed after the Christmas recess on 3 Jan. 1681.
On 7 Jan. he most likely voted for the motion to put the question whether Lord Chief Justice Scroggs should be committed while the impeachment charges against him were considered. At least, Bridgwater’s name appears on a list drawn up by Wharton of the protesters against the decision not to put the question. However, Bridgwater is one of the seven peers who appear on Wharton’s list but who are not among the protesters found in the Journal. Wharton may well have merged together those who merely voted in favour of the previous question with those who actually protested against its rejection. It is likely that Bridgwater also voted for the succeeding motion to put the question whether to suspend Scroggs from his duties pending his impeachment hearings. Here too, though, Bridgwater was unwilling to sign the protest when the motion was rejected.
Shortly after the dissolution, a cull of the king’s perceived enemies occurred in which Essex, who had voted for exclusion, was deprived of his lord lieutenancy of Hertfordshire. He was replaced by Bridgwater who, although he had worked closely with Essex in investigating the Plot and promoting legislation to protect the Protestant interest, was probably still seen by the court as a moderate, and a safe pair of hands for the elections of early February.
In the weeks preceding the Parliament called for Oxford, Danby considered Bridgwater one of the ‘enemy Lords’ whose support he felt he could solicit for his application for bail from the Tower.
Although I know not any one action of my life wherein I have not paid your Lordship all the respect which is due both to your worth and quality, yet I know not how fortunate I may be to stand well or not in your Lordship’s opinion. I thank God I know not a thought in my heart that is not suitable to what I take your Lordship’s judgment to be both as to Church and State, and therefore I am the more desirous to preserve the good opinion of all such: but however your Lordship may judge of my person, I am assured your Lordship is a great assertor of the rights of the Peers, which I think has been so deeply wounded in the never before known procedures about me, that unless some care be taken for preventing the like for the future, I am sure the condition of a Peer must speedily become both the most unsafe and most contemptible in this nation.HEHL, EL 8431.
Bridgwater was a suitable target for Danby, as he was in the House from the very first day of the Parliament, 21 Mar., attended all seven of its meetings, and showed himself typically engaged in the business of the House from the start. On the first day of the Parliament he administered oaths and declaration to the members of the Commons gathering in the History School. On 23 Mar. he chaired the committee of the whole House considering the failure of the clerk of the Parliaments to present the bill passed by both houses at the end of the previous Parliament for the repeal of the Elizabethan statute against Dissenters to the king for his royal assent. Bridgwater was assigned to present the report of the committee in six days’ time, but in the meantime he was on 26 Mar. a reporter for a conference concerning this matter. Danby’s petition for bail was presented on 24 Mar., but his earlier solicitations had apparently had no effect on Bridgwater. Latimer wrote to his father that day that his advocates had presented the lord treasurer’s petition to the House, but that it had been strongly opposed by peers such as Shaftesbury, Halifax, Salisbury, Essex and Bridgwater – who, Latimer parenthetically noted, ‘was not so fierce as the rest’.
Bridgwater spent the years following the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament largely on Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire lieutenancy duties. He engineered a loyal address to be presented to the king from those counties in January 1682 and assured the government of his diligence in tracking down those suspected of involvement in the Rye House Plot.
James II and final year, 1685-6
At the accession of James II Bridgwater was confirmed in his places as a privy councillor and as lord lieutenant of Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire.
Bridgwater resumed his 100 per cent attendance level in James II’s sole Parliament. He even slightly resumed some of his former involvement in select committees, as in the sittings of May-July he chaired three on a total of five occasions, and reported from one, a naturalization bill, on 10 June.
Bridgwater may have served James II in the elections and in the management of the House, but his religious views were strong and well enough known that it was clear he would refuse to support the king’s proposal to repeal the Test Acts—which he had done so much to frame in the first place—when Parliament reconvened in November. Halifax, trying to convince his friend Philip Stanhope, 2nd earl of Chesterfield, that he would not be alone if he came down to Westminster to vote for the defeat of the attempted repeal used Bridgwater as an example of a ‘court lord’ (mentioned in the company of, surprisingly, Danby, Daniel Finch, 2nd earl of Nottingham, and the bishops) who was intending to vote against repeal.
Shortly after the prorogation, Bridgwater was one of the peers summoned to try Henry Booth, 2nd Baron Delamer (later earl of Warrington), for conspiracy during the time of Monmouth’s Rebellion. Bridgwater already had, on 10 Nov., acted as a teller in a division over whether to adjourn a debate on this trial. On 14 Jan. 1686 he joined his fellow peers in unanimously finding Delamer not guilty.
Bridgwater died on 26 Oct. at his London residence at the Barbican, at 63 years of age.
These gentlemen of Buckinghamshire were clearly upset by Bridgwater’s death. He was dubbed ‘a true friend both to his king and country’ and ‘a man of a quiet spirit and well beloved’. They were anxious that the new earl of Bridgwater immediately step in to take his father’s role.