Henry Clinton, son of Sir Francis Clinton*, 6th earl of Lincoln, was seven years old when he inherited the title upon his father’s death in early September 1693. On 6 Nov. 1696 his mother Susanna, dowager countess of Lincoln, submitted a petition to the House begging for the revocation of a chancery decree of earlier that June which had given much of the Clinton estates in Lincolnshire to Samuel Rolle‡, Hugh Fortescue‡, and Vere Booth. Edward Clinton, 5th earl of Lincoln, had entailed his lands and personal goods at Tattershall Castle in Lincolnshire to his heir male Sir Francis Clinton in his will of 6 Nov. 1684. Rolle, Fortescue and Booth, cousins to the 5th earl through the daughters of Theophilus Clinton, 4th earl of Lincoln, their mutual grandfather, argued successfully in chancery that the strict settlement made in this will had been later rendered void by the terms of a marriage settlement the 5th earl had entered into in 1691, when he was proposing to marry Anne Calvert.
very industrious to qualify himself for the army to live in some figure, which the misfortune of losing the greatest part of his estate will not let him do, without some employment, and though his present circumstances will not allow him to pay the salary that belongs to his quality, he will content himself to be upon the same foot with gentlemen’s sons rather than lose the opportunity of learning his exercises.
Beinecke Lib. OSB mss 1, box 3, folder 163, Lady Dewes to Edmund Poley, 7 May 1705.
After he came of age, Lincoln was made a gentleman of the bedchamber to George, prince of Denmark (also duke of Cumberland), with a salary of £600 p.a., and even after the prince’s death in October 1708 he continued to claim that pension for the next several years.
In the 1709-10 session he was noted for his opposition to Dr. Henry Sacheverell. Lincoln diligently attended the hearings on Sacheverell throughout February and March 1710 and often, according to Ossulston’s diary, had his dinner in the House of Lords with his companions during the long hearings and debates on the impeachment. On 17 Mar. 1710 Ossulston dined in the House with Lincoln, Bolton and Charles Montagu, 4th earl (later duke) of Manchester.
Lincoln maintained much the same attendance level in the first two sessions of the new Tory-dominated Parliament, coming to 65 per cent of each of the 1710-11 and 1711-12 sessions. In the months before the first meeting of Parliament in November 1710, Robert Harley, (later earl of Oxford) felt that Lincoln’s political affiliation could be ‘doubtful’, especially as he was so dependent on the government’s largesse. But Lincoln quickly revealed a continuing firm allegiance to the Whigs, regardless of its affect on his finances. On 11-12 Jan. 1711 he joined 35 other members, almost all of them Whigs, in signing three protests against the resolutions condemning the generals Henri de Massue de Ruvigny, earl of Galway [I], Charles O’Hara, Baron Tyrawley [I] and James Stanhope* , (later Earl Stanhope) for their conduct of the war in Spain and against the rejection of the generals’ petitions to be heard in their own defence. This potentially dangerous defiance of the ministry was remarked on by Lincoln’s colleagues. Anne Clavering wrote to her brother James on 16 Jan. of ‘that glorious honest youth, Lord Lincoln, who has nothing but a pension to depend on, and votes for his country’.
Lincoln continued to defend the previous ministry’s policy in the Spanish war and on 3 Feb. 1711 he subscribed to two protests against resolutions of the House condemning the Whig ministers’ ‘neglect of their service’ by inadequately supplying the troops in Spain. Regardless of these protests the House was intent on drafting a representation strongly condemning the former war policy in Spain. Ossulston recorded that on 7 Feb. 1711 he attended a dinner at the house of Charles Montagu, Baron Halifax, where also present were Lincoln, Manchester and Charles Beauclerk, duke of St Albans. Perhaps they were gathered to discuss strategy to counter this growing attack. Certainly Lincoln joined in two protests on 8 Feb. in an attempt to prevent the address being delivered to the queen, and the following day he and 19 other Whig members were impelled to subscribe to a further three protests against the resolutions that expunged from the Journal the reasons given in the earlier protest of 3 February. That same day, Lincoln was again found in the company of Whigs, dining at Ossulston’s with Halifax, St Albans, Evelyn Pierrepoint, marquess of Dorchester (later duke of Kingston) and William Cavendish, 2nd duke of Devonshire. Ossulston’s diary further shows that over the following few days Lincoln continued to be a participant at dinners and gatherings of Whig peers and commoners, particularly Dorchester, Thomas Wharton, earl (later marquess) of Wharton and Robert Darcy, 3rd earl of Holdernesse.
On 7 Dec. 1711, the first day of the 1711-12 session, Lincoln defied the ministry once again, despite the lobbying attempts and confidence of Harley, now earl of Oxford, by voting in favour of the additional clause to the address of thanks to the queen emphasizing that there should be ‘No Peace without Spain’. On 20 Dec. he voted to deny the right of James Hamilton, 4th duke of Hamilton [S], to sit in the House as a peer of Great Britain, duke of Brandon. Two days following this he was placed on a drafting committee for an address requesting the queen to order her plenipotentiaries in Utrecht to maintain a strict correspondence with the ambassadors of the Allied powers in order to effect a mutual ‘Guaranty’ to ensure a Protestant Succession in Britain. He registered his proxy briefly with Mohun from 11 to 13 Feb. and again from 25 to 30 May 1712. He is recorded in a contemporary pamphlet as having voted on 28 May 1712 in favour of the motion to address the queen against the ‘restraining orders’ which had been issued to the captain-general James Butler, 2nd duke Ormond, ordering him not to engage in offensive military action against the French, but it is likely that this vote was made through his proxy with Mohun rather than in person.
At this time Lincoln was a member of both the Kit-Kat Club and of the Hanover Club.
Lincoln maintained his highest attendance record in the Parliaments of Queen Anne in the first session of the new Parliament beginning in February 1714, in which he attended 87 per cent of the sittings. In late May Daniel Finch, 2nd earl of Nottingham, was sure that Lincoln would vote against the Schism Bill. Thomas Grey, 2nd earl of Stamford, may have made the same calculation and registered his proxy with Lincoln on 11 June, just before the Schism Bill came to a vote. Lincoln’s two votes against the bill were to no avail, but he did subscribe to the large protest against the bill’s passage on 15 June. Lincoln was able to hold his full complement of two proxies from 29 June, when Charles Cornwallis, 4th Baron Cornwallis, also registered his proxy with him. Lincoln held both proxies until the end of the session. On its penultimate day, 8 July, Lincoln protested against the resolution not to bring to the queen’s attention abuses in the disposition of the Assiento which, the Whigs alleged, was being used by individuals such as Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke, for personal gain. Lincoln dutifully came to all but three sittings of the session of August 1714 which took steps to ensure a peaceful Hanoverian Succession following the death of Anne, and from 5 Aug. he also held the proxy of John Sydney, 6th earl of Leicester, for the rest of the session.
He may have been so assiduous in August 1714 because, as a supporter of the Hanoverian Succession who had even spent time at the Hanoverian academy at Wolfenbüttel, he could have expectations of being rewarded by the new king. Lincoln was quickly made a gentleman of the bedchamber for the new king in October 1714. The following month he submitted a petition claiming that he was due £2,100 in arrears of his annual pension of £600, payment of which Oxford had deliberately withheld in an unsuccessful attempt to force him to support the ministry. In November 1714 Lincoln was given £1,800 as partial payment of these arrears
Lincoln’s most surprising stroke of good fortune came from an unexpected quarter, the admiral Arthur Herbert, earl of Torrington, who bequeathed in his will of April 1716 much of his estate, including the manor house of Oatlands in Weybridge, Surrey, and 10,000 acres in the Bedford Level, to the impecunious Whig stalwart.
With his lucrative government offices and this unexpected legacy from a distant stranger, Lincoln’s fortunes were suddenly transformed, and were then further enhanced by his marriage in May 1717 to Lucy Pelham, daughter of Thomas Pelham, Baron Pelham, and sister to Thomas Pelham Holles, duke of Newcastle, and of Henry Pelham‡. The 7th earl’s new family connections to some of Britain’s leading statesmen and magnates bound him more tightly to the Whigs and increased his standing among them. During the remainder of George I’s reign, Lincoln remained a leading member of the Whig ascendancy, newly wealthy, landed, and with strong family connections to an increasingly powerful political family. It was a dramatic transformation from his early impecunious days.
During the reign of George I, Lincoln was an energetic member of the House, who acted there as a leading spokesmen and proxy manager for the Whig ministry and Hanoverian court which had rewarded him so well. A far more detailed account of his political activities in and out of the House during the reign of George I will appear in the 1715-90 volumes on the House of Lords. Lincoln died intestate at his mansion of Oatlands on 7 Sept. 1728. His earldom and lands, those unexpectedly gained through Torrington’s bequest, were inherited in succession by his two surviving sons, George Clinton* [469], 8th earl of Lincoln and Henry Fiennes Clinton* [472], 9th earl of Lincoln, whose ties to the Pelham family were reinforced by his marriage to his cousin and who succeeded his Pelham uncle as duke of Newcastle-under-Lyne in November 1768 under the terms of a special remainder.