‘A worthy man’ and of a ‘good temper’ but ‘too credulous’, Lee was advanced to the peerage while still underage following a contract to marry one of the king’s favourite children, Charlotte Fitzroy.
Lichfield’s interests were concentrated in Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, his influence there reinforced by his connection to a number of prominent families in both counties. Lichfield’s grandmother, Anne St John, married as her second husband Henry Wilmot†, earl of Rochester. Lichfield’s cousins Eleanor and Anne Lee, daughters of Sir Henry Lee, also made influential matches: Eleanor marrying James Bertie, 5th Baron Norreys (later earl of Abingdon), while Anne was married to Thomas Wharton, (later marquess of Wharton). Connection to the Bertie family was then further underpinned by the marriage of Lichfield’s mother to Robert Bertie, 3rd earl of Lindsey.
Much of the time between Lichfield’s elevation to the peerage and attainment of his majority was taken up by the young peer’s trustees securing his title to lands and pensions settled on him at his marriage. In 1678 he was granted a warrant to hold a weekly market and four fairs each year at Charlbury.
Lichfield was expected back from his foreign journey in the spring of 1679, but he failed to return in time to be present at the birth of his first daughter. At the same time reports circulated of additional preferment headed his way and that he was to replace John Lovelace, 3rd Baron Lovelace, as ranger of Woodstock.
Matters failed to improve for Lichfield for much of the year. Efforts to sort out his finances were still unsettled by the autumn and in October he suffered the loss of his heir, styled Viscount Quarendon, who had been born a few months before.
The accession of James II promised Lichfield the expectation of an improvement in his fortunes as he proved himself amenable to many of the new king’s policies. Lichfield took his seat at the opening of the new Parliament on 19 May 1685, introduced between Thomas Bruce, 2nd earl of Ailesbury, and Thomas Lennard* , earl of Sussex. He was thereafter present on 53 per cent of all sitting days, and on 6 June was named to the committee considering the bill for rebuilding the house of William Herbert, marquess of Powis, in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. News of the rebellion of James Scott, duke of Monmouth, inspired Lichfield to join the army opposing the insurgents but he appears to have been too late to participate at Sedgemoor. By September he was back at Woodstock.
Lichfield’s close relations with the court were indicated by Robert Spencer, 2nd earl of Sunderland, and Lady Anne Spencer standing godparents to his daughter in the summer of 1686. That summer Lichfield and other members of his family were faced with a new crisis over his brother’s mésalliance with Miss Williamson, daughter of a serjeant-at-arms. Lichfield’s annoyance with his brother was not confined to his poor match, and by September it was reported that they were to resort to the courts over a disputed legacy amounting to £10,000.
The early autumn of 1686 found Lichfield engaged in his favourite pursuit of hunting, though a bad fall brought an early end to his activities and resulted in him being laid up with a dislocated leg. He had recovered by the middle of November when he returned to London in order to be on hand for the court case with his brother.
Despite a royal policy of retrenchment that led to Lichfield’s pension being reduced to £1,200 a year, at the Revolution of 1688 Lichfield remained loyal to James II.
Unsurprisingly, given his close association with the former regime, Lichfield was soon stripped of most of his offices. In early January 1689 it was reported that he had lost command of his regiment to Thomas Wharton while the Oxfordshire lieutenancy was returned to Abingdon.
Although absent from the chamber for the rest of his career, Lichfield remained a significant political broker in Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire. He was also cited frequently over the next few years among those engaged in low level Jacobite intrigue. According to Ailesbury, Lichfield’s mentor was major general Sackville, and it was Sackville that Ailesbury blamed for a breach in relations between the two earls over their respective ambitions to be made lord chamberlain should James ever succeed in achieving his restoration.
At the close of June a warrant was issued for Lichfield’s arrest along with a small number of other high profile adherents of the former regime.
Lichfield and his fellow non-jurors had been released by the close of the year. He was also, once more, said to have arrived at a final agreement with his brother.
For the next few years Lichfield avoided any further scrapes with the ministry, but he continued to feature in occasional news reports, such as one of January 1694 that relayed a tale of him having died after drinking bad wine in a tavern in company with two other peers (who were also supposed to have perished). In November of that year the newsletters again announced his premature demise.
Lichfield survived this latest accident without long lasting consequence and for the rest of his life he concentrated on his local interests. Although he avoided Parliament, he was not averse to involving himself in elections. In December 1696 in response to a request from Sir John Verney‡ (later Viscount Fermanagh [I]) he undertook to do all he could on Verney’s behalf in the Buckinghamshire by-election, where Verney was opposed by Henry Neale‡, standing on Wharton’s interest.
Lichfield was faced with more immediate anxieties by the news of the conversion of his daughter, Charlotte, to Catholicism in the autumn of 1699. Her decision proved ‘a great affliction’ to him, not least because he insisted that he had used the ‘utmost care to have her well grounded in the Protestant religion.’ Others doubted the extent of his sorrow and reckoned that he was on the point of converting himself, ‘He is accounted but a weak man which the world says is all as can be said for him.’
Expectations of a dissolution before the close of 1700 found Lichfield eager once more to use his interest on behalf of Newhaven in Buckinghamshire. He also enquired after Verney’s intentions, being willing to support his candidature again. In spite of Lichfield’s resolve to send out his bailiff and command everyone over whom either he or his mother had any influence to be for Verney and to ‘highly resent it of any person that is not’, the result was the same with Newhaven securing a seat and Verney again unable to compete against the Wharton interest.
Lichfield’s rights to the Oxfordshire estate at Adderbury, which had been left to him by his grandmother Anne, countess of Rochester, were challenged in 1701 when Edward Montagu, 3rd earl of Sandwich, John Vaughan, Viscount Lisburne [I], and Francis Greville petitioned the House on behalf of other members of the family. In the event Lichfield’s possession of the manor was upheld, but three years later he faced further difficulties over his rights there when a challenge was launched by Sir Edward Cobb. Once more Lichfield resisted the attempt, but he was still being harried by Cobb at the end of the decade.
The accession of Queen Anne sparked early rumours that Lichfield and other non-jurors might be willing at last to take the oaths but these were quickly ended. In March it was again put about that he was one of those to have taken the oath of allegiance, but this too proved to be fanciful and when Lady Litchfield sought leave to wait on the queen, she was informed that she might not do so until her husband had qualified himself.
Lichfield never did fulfil the queen’s condition, and in April 1705 he was noted as a Jacobite in an analysis of the peerage. The decision to reward John Churchill, earl (later duke) of Marlborough, with the royal estates at Woodstock that year left Lichfield stripped of his remaining interest there, but it was reported that he had been handsomely compensated with an estimated £20,000 for his ‘pretensions’.
Lichfield was assessed as a Tory in a list of peers’ party affiliations in the early summer of 1708. He failed to rally to the cause of Dr Sacheverell two years later and was noted as being in the country at the time of Sacheverell’s trial. Despite this and for all his declining interest in Oxfordshire, Lichfield retained his influence in Buckinghamshire, and in December 1710 he wrote to Viscount Fermanagh (as Sir John Verney had since become) congratulating him on his return in the autumn election, trusting that his servants had ‘obeyed my orders in speaking to all those I can influence to be for your lordship.’ His efforts on behalf of one of the other candidates, Sir Henry Seymour, were less effective and Seymour was left trailing in last place.
From the beginning of 1711 Lichfield’s health seems to have been on the wane, and he complained of a weakness of the legs that prevented him from walking up and down stairs without difficulty. Even so, there seem to have been rumours of his return to office, though he professed himself uninterested being only too ‘sensible of the vanity of employments and the trouble that attends them.’ Two years later he again undertook to use his interest on behalf of Fermanagh, this time in partnership with John Fleetwood‡. Both men were successful in defeating their Whig opponents, though Lady Fermanagh complained of Lichfield’s failure to give directions to a number of his tenants who would otherwise vote the other way, their ‘inclinations’ being ‘for the low party.’
Lichfield did not long outlive the Hanoverian accession, which spelled the end of what remained of his interest. Even at the height of his influence, he appears to have been only modestly effectual and he was always dependent on acting in concert with others. William Lloyd, bishop of Norwich, thought him ‘a very sober good tempered gent’, while the duchess of Marlborough admitted ‘a respect for his character because he is plain and fair’, even though he was ‘not in the interest I wish for.’