HOWARD, Charles (1669-1738)

A northern magnate and election manager, 1693-1700

Charles Howard, 3rd earl of Carlisle, was described by a fellow Whig in the early years of Queen Anne as ’a gentleman of great interest in the country, and very zealous for its welfare, hath a fine estate, and a very good understanding, with a grave deportment; is of a middle stature, fair complexion’. Macky Mems., 59. Styled Viscount Morpeth from the time his father became 2nd earl of Carlisle in 1685, he married the thirteen-year old daughter of the Whig martyr, the earl of Essex, in July 1688. He embarked on his grand tour through Europe only twelve days after William of Orange had landed at Torbay, as it was deemed that ‘through the greenness of their years’ the underage couple should not yet cohabit together. CSP Dom. 1687-9, pp. 214-15, 356.; Ellis Corresp. ii. 45-6. He was abroad for the next three years. During that time he was considered for the position of governor of Carlisle as his father was incapacitated by gout, but the post was given to Sir John Lowther, later Viscount Lonsdale. PH, xxxii. 145; Clarendon Corresp. ii. 261; EHR, xxx. 93. Despite his absence, he was elected to the family seat of Morpeth in Northumberland for both the Convention and William III’s first Parliament. He succeeded his father on 23 April 1692 and first entered the House one week into the following parliamentary session, on 11 Nov. 1692.

Within two weeks of his first sitting in the House, Carlisle was summoned to account for his protection of an Edward Howard, and on 24 Nov. 1692 he submitted to the will of the House and agreed to have Howard’s name struck off the register of protections. Carlisle voted against the commitment of the place bill on 31 Dec. 1692, a vote in favour of the court which strongly opposed the bill, but he appears to have abstained from voting to reject the bill at its third reading on 3 Jan. 1693, for he was marked as present for that day in the Journal but does not appear in the division list drawn up for the vote by Thomas Bruce, 2nd earl of Ailesbury. As Ailesbury forecast he would, on 2 Jan. 1693 he voted to give the divorce bill of his kinsman Henry Howard, 7th duke of Norfolk, a first reading. On 4 Feb. he found Charles Mohun, 4th Baron Mohun, not guilty of murder, along with the majority of the House. In total he came to 44 per cent of the meetings of this session of 1692-3, but he was named to only two committees throughout his attendance, the first being on 20 Jan. 1693. His engagement with the House at this point was sporadic in other ways. On 1 Mar. 1693 he was named one of the nine reporters for a conference on the House’s amendments to the bill to prevent malicious prosecutions. The conference was abandoned that day because of the late arrival of the acting speaker of the House, Sir Robert Atkyns^‡, owing to the bad condition of the roads. When the conference was held two days later, Carlisle was not in the House, or at least his name does not appear in the presence list for that day. The following day, 4 Mar. 1693, he was, according to the manuscript minutes, initially proposed to sit on the drafting committee for an address on the situation in Ireland, but his name does not appear among the committee nominations in the formal Journal. HMC Lords, iv. 249, 372. He did not attend any of the meetings of the following two sessions, and on 11 Dec. 1693 registered his proxy with Thomas Herbert, 8th earl of Pembroke, for the remainder of the 1693-4 session. On 29 Jan. 1695 Norfolk solicited Carlisle’s proxy for the 1694-5 session, explaining that ‘I was put in mind by an accident the other day of a vote’s being got by one single voice to look in the book of proxies where I did not find your Lordship’s’, and enclosing a blank proxy for Carlisle to fill in. Castle Howard, J8/1/671. Carlisle however did not take him up on this offer and did not register a proxy at all for that session.

Carlisle’s long absences from the House may be explained by the new regional responsibilities that were thrust upon him in 1693-5. He was appointed governor of Carlisle on 1 Mar. 1693, in succession to Jeremiah Bubb^‡, and a little more than a year later he replaced Lowther as lord lieutenant of Cumberland and Westmorland. Carlisle’s correspondence of 1694-5 shows that, when he was not discussing horse racing at Newmarket with his fellow northern magnate Charles Seymour, 6th duke of Somerset, he was busy in his family’s seat of Naworth Castle with garrison and lieutenancy matters. Castle Howard, J8/1/658-73; J8/37/2-4; HMC Le Fleming, 339-42.

As governor of Carlisle, Carlisle exercised a preeminent influence in parliamentary and municipal elections there. He united this interest with the Lowthers, both the senior branch of Lowther represented by Sir John Lowther and the cadet branch of Whitehaven, against the Musgraves of Edenhall, led by one of the great figures among the Tories in the Commons, Sir Christopher Musgrave^‡, 4th bt. The first instance where Carlisle could exercise his new influence was at the by-election of November 1694, prompted by the death of the sitting member for Carlisle William Lowther^‡, a half-brother of Sir John Lowther of Lowther. Lowther and his namesake and cousin Sir John Lowther^‡, of Whitehaven, solicited Carlisle’s patronage for Lowther of Whitehaven’s son James Lowther^‡, who was elected without a contest. In the following two general elections Carlisle and the Lowthers united again to send a representative of each of their houses—James Lowther and the earl of Carlisle’s brother Hon. William Howard^‡—to Westminster, defeating the aspirations of the Musgraves to have Sir Christopher’s second son, Christopher Musgrave^‡ elected. HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 113-117; Cumb. RO, D/Lons/W1/16, 17); Lowther of Whitehaven Corr. ed. Hainsworth.

Carlisle also worked with the Lowthers and with the other major landowners, Somerset and the Junto Whig Thomas Wharton, 5th Baron (later marquess of) Wharton, in the county elections for Cumberland and Westmorland. The Cumberland elections during the 1690s were largely calm and straightforward affairs, as Sir George Fletcher^‡ and Sir John Lowther of Whitehaven^‡, moderate court supporters, were always returned without a contest. Carlisle’s other county of Westmorland was also dominated by the Lowthers, as Lowther of Lowther sat in the Commons for that county until called to the Lords in 1696 as Viscount Lonsdale. Carlisle generally took Lonsdale’s lead in Westmorland politics. Away from those areas where he exercised a governing control, Carlisle also maintained significant electoral influence in Northumberland, which he worked in partnership with the duke of Somerset. In Morpeth, where his family were lords of the manor, he was always able to ensure that at least one candidate of his choosing was returned for a borough seat. HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 107-9, 446-8, 451-3, 635-8; Castle Howard, J8/37/13, J8/1/679; HMC Carlisle, 8.

Having worked hard to ensure the election of Whigs in the 1695 and 1698 Parliaments, Carlisle himself attended less than half of the sittings of the House between 1695 and 1700. He was relatively diligent in the session of 1695-6, when he attended 68 per cent of the sittings, but his attendance in the remaining five sessions between 20 Oct. 1696 and 11 Apr. 1700 ranged between 33 and 44 per cent. He stood out in the session of 1696-7, however, through his prominence in the events surrounding the bill of attainder of Sir John Fenwick^‡, 3rd bt. Carlisle’s paternal aunt Mary was Fenwick’s wife, and from the moment of Fenwick’s arrest in June 1696 the earl became one of his staunchest supporters. It was Carlisle, one of the few people allowed to confer with the prisoner, who in July conveyed to the lord steward William Cavendish, duke of Devonshire, Fenwick’s offer to expose prominent Jacobite plotters. CSP Dom. 1696, 234, 240, 260. Ailesbury, a fellow prisoner in the Tower, attributed the relative ease of access Lady Mary Fenwick had to her husband to ‘her near relations of the House of Carlisle and the rest of the Howards having credit at Court’. Ailesbury Mems. 379. Carlisle first sat in that winter’s session on 30 Oct. 1696 and was an assiduous attender for the last weeks of the year, especially after the bill to attaint his uncle was brought up from the Commons on 26 November. Carlisle was absent from the House on 15 Dec., which meant that he was not present to vote against the House’s acceptance of the evidence of Cardell Goodman against Fenwick. He was present on 18 Dec. when he subscribed to the protest against giving the bill of attainder a second reading. Over the following days he and his Howard kinsman the duke of Norfolk were frequently mentioned in the testimony of both Sir John and Lady Mary Fenwick as potential sureties for bail, confidants, advisers and middlemen for the beleaguered couple, and they were indirectly implicated in Lady Mary’s contacts with Charles Mordaunt, earl of Monmouth, later 3rd earl of Peterborough. Carlisle voted against the bill of attainder and signed the protest against it on 23 December. Nothing could save him, Fenwick wrote to his wife in the days before his execution, ‘but my Lord Carlisle’s going over to him [the king], backed by the rest of the family of the Howards to beg it, and offering that I will live abroad all his time where I cannot hurt him and that I will never draw sword against him’. Carlisle did try to save him and on 22 Jan. 1697, just five days before Fenwick’s execution, he was named to a committee to petition the king for reprieve, one of only five committees to which the earl was named throughout this session. HMC Lords, n.s. ii. 278, 279, 282-5, 288, 289, 294; Add. 47608, ff. 1-2, 52-5, 58-61; Add. 33251, ff. 57-62; Burnet, iv. 347; HMC Hamilton, ii. 136; CSP Dom. 1697, p. 20.

Peak of career, 1700-1702

Other than the Fenwick attainder, there is little record of Carlisle’s activities in the House in the second half of the 1690s. He was not even nominated to committees very often, no more than five in any session. However in the 1699-1700 session, on 15 Feb. 1700 Carlisle presented to the House the petition of his kinsman Norfolk to bring in a bill for his divorce, and on 23 Feb. he voted to adjourn into a committee of the whole House to discuss further amendments to the bill to continue the old East India Company as a corporation, an indication that he supported the bill. Add. 29576, f. 21. He was absent, perhaps purposely, from the House on 10 Apr., the day on which the House reluctantly voted to accept the Commons’ controversial bill for the resumption of William III’s Irish land grants, even though he had been present for all the previous days when this matter was mentioned.

Even with such an unremarkable record of activity in the House, and his opposition to the court-driven attainder of Fenwick, Carlisle was seen as a firm supporter of the crown and of William III personally. In March 1700 Fenwick’s remaining personal estate was granted to Carlisle, to satisfy his own claims and to help satisfy Sir John’s many creditors. Add. 72517, ff. 57-8. In June Carlisle replaced Henry Sydney, earl of Romney (who had been promoted to be groom of the stole), as a gentleman of the bedchamber—but only after the position had been turned down by William Cavendish, styled marquess of Hartington, later 2nd duke of Devonshire, because he was ‘so much a friend’ John Somers, Baron Somers (who had been dismissed from office in April 1700), ‘that he would not now be obliged’. Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters, iii. 15, 22-3, 94. Carlisle would also probably have considered himself a ‘friend’ of Somers, for contemporaries considered him closely associated with the Junto and one who would remain loyal to that group, now out of favour, as William tried to remodel his ministry throughout the summer of 1700.

Throughout 1700 he aggressively threw his interest behind Whig candidates in a host of elections in the northern counties. The year saw many changes in the parliamentary personnel in Cumberland and Westmorland. William Fleming^‡, a commissioner of excise, resigned as a member for Westmorland following the passage of the Land Tax bill in April 1700 with its place clause concerning excisemen. Lonsdale died on 10 July; one of the sitting Members for Cumberland, Sir George Fletcher^‡ followed suit on 23 July. In Cumberland, Carlisle invoked his authority as lord lieutenant and insisted that no candidates for Fletcher’s replacement be selected until he had returned to the county to convene a general meeting of freeholders, despite the vociferous complaints of Sir Christopher Musgrave about ‘peers meddling in elections’. The Lonsdale interest was in the hands of the viscount’s widow during the minority of Richard Lowther, 2nd Viscount Lonsdale, and she agreed to follow the directions of Carlisle. The Lowthers were worried by the increasing effectiveness of the Musgraves, who used Carlisle’s absence to augment their own interest, which, Lowther of Whitehaven confided to Lady Lonsdale, ‘is more than my Lord Carlisle will approve of’. Carlisle finally arrived in early September when he and the Lowthers, along with Somerset and Wharton, chose Gilfrid Lawson^‡ to stand and heavily promoted his candidacy. Carlisle followed a similar interventionist policy in Westmorland, where James Grahme, father of the candidate Henry Grahme^‡, of one of the leading Tory (if not Jacobite) families of the county, was incensed by Carlisle’s heavy involvement in this campaign and his support for Richard Lowther^‡. Grahme pointed out to the freeholders of the county that Carlisle did not actually own any land in in Westmorland and ‘that it is a new thing for any man who has no lands in a county to concern himself in elections there’. The first two earls of Carlisle, also lieutenants of the county, had never dared to do it, ‘and I am sure this noble Lord is too good an Englishman to think the power he has over the militia proper to be made use of in this occasion’. Bodl ms Eng. misc. b. 44, f. 160; HMC 10th Rep. IV, 334-5.

Parliament was dissolved during the by-election campaigns, on 19 Dec. 1700. At the general election that followed Carlisle’s candidate Lawson was elected for Cumberland with Richard Musgrave^‡, member of a cadet branch of the Musgraves. In Westmorland, Carlisle was not able to defeat the Tory interest and Henry Grahme and Sir Christopher Musgrave were returned. Carlisle was more successful elsewhere. In Northumberland he reached his apogee of influence in this election as his brother William, although absent abroad at the time and initially standing for his seat at Carlisle, was returned for both Morpeth and for the county and chose to sit for the county. In Carlisle, James Lowther and Carlisle’s cousin Philip Howard^‡ (whom Carlisle, after much indecision, had presented as William Howard’s replacement) were eventually returned after a stiff fight. HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 108-9, 117-18, 448, 638-9; Castle Howard, J8/1/680-85; Cumb. RO, D/Lons/W1/20, 21; D/Lons/W2/2/3.

Carlisle’s determined zeal for the Whigs in the northern counties was well noted and rewarded. He was a rising man at court in 1701-2. In Feb. 1701, as the new Parliament convened, there was talk that he would be sent as ambassador to Madrid, at this most diplomatically sensitive time following the death of Carlos II the previous November. Ultimately it was decided not to send an embassy at all. Add. 72487, ff. 29-32. He was even less attentive than usual, however, to this Parliament for which he had spent so much energy ensuring the return of Whig members to the Commons. He came to only just over a third of the meetings and was named to three committees on legislation. He may have been preoccupied by new duties, for on 22 May 1701 the king appointed Carlisle earl marshal, to act in place of his underage and Catholic kinsman Thomas Howard, 8th duke of Norfolk, the hereditary earl marshal. On 9 June Carlisle was in the House to inform it of his new appointment, and a week later, at the same time as the House was being exercised by the impeachment of the Junto peers, it was moved to consider what precedency Carlisle as earl marshal could take for the purpose of the trials. It was decided on 17 June that Carlisle could assume the ranking of a full earl marshal, without prejudice to any future decision as to his proper place, and on that day Carlisle, listed as earl marshal, voted for the acquittal of Lord Somers. On 19 June Carlisle was sworn a member of the Privy Council and four days later further voted to acquit Edward Russell, earl of Orford. The following day Carlisle was chosen by his peers by ballot to be one of the nine members, all of them Whigs, to consider the proposals for a union between England and Scotland. The committee was short-lived for on the same day, 24 June, the king prorogued this Parliament in anger at the partisan stalemate over the impeachments of the Junto ministers. William fled to his palace at Het Loo to draw some respite from English politics, where Carlisle visited him in late summer to complain about Sir Christopher Musgrave’s actions in trying to place more Tories on the commissions of the peace for Cumberland and Westmorland. Cumb. RO, D/Lons/W2/2/4. Robert Harley, later earl of Oxford, alleged that Carlisle was the principal emissary for the Whigs who travelled to Holland to negotiate with William for the dissolution of Parliament. Add. 70272, ‘Large Account Revolution and Succession’. This interpretation was supported by John Macky. Carlisle had returned by early October 1701, one month before the Parliament was dissolved, where he allegedly became ‘the great instrument of procuring from the country the addresses upon the French king’s declaring the prince of Wales’. Macky Mems. 59; HMC Cowper, ii. 436. William heeded the advice of Carlisle and others and dissolved Parliament on 11 Nov. 1701. Carlisle’s central role in these negotiations and proceedings is suggested by the rumour that appeared only a few days after the dissolution that Carlisle would be made a secretary of state. Add. 70149, Lady A. Pye to A. Harley, 22 Nov. 1701. He again played a central role in the elections in the northern counties. His choices won in Morpeth, Carlisle and Cumberland, where he withdrew his support from Gilfrid Lawson because he had disappointingly voted with the Tories throughout the previous Parliament. Carlisle tried to influence the Westmorland election again as well, letting it be known that he was ‘all for keeping out Sir Christopher Musgrave and rather than fail would have Sir Richard Sandford^‡ and Grahme join’. In the event Musgrave conducted a surprisingly lacklustre campaign and Sandford and Grahme, although they had not formally joined, came top of the poll, providing the county with a politically divided representation. HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 109, 118-19, 639; Cumb. RO, D/Lons/W1/21, D/Lons/W2/2/4.

Carlisle reached his brief pinnacle of influence when he was appointed first lord of the Treasury on 30 Dec. 1701, following the resignation of Sidney Godolphin, Baron (later earl of) Godolphin. This was also the first day of the new Parliament during which he attended 57 per cent of the sittings, more than his usual rate. Within the first days of the session, on 2 Jan. 1702, Carlisle was placed on the drafting committee for the address to the king affirming the House’s willingness to stand by the king ‘to redress the balance of power in Europe’. At the same time James Lowther^‡ reported to his father in Cumberland:

I am afraid my Lord Carlisle will have enough of his place and business too. In a little time he may grasp both in town and country at more than he can hold. Very likely he will find himself overloaded with business here and my Lady Lonsdale may find fault in a little time that he is endeavouring to engross the Parliament men for the 2 counties. My Lord Carlisle has set up a meeting of the members of the six northern counties that are of our side to dine together every week. Yesterday was the first day. My lord was with us and there were 29 of us. We hope to be 50 next week. My lord does this, I suppose, to make the king believe that he governs the north of England. Cumb. RO, D/Lons/W2/2/5.

This brief climb to high office and influence was suddenly halted with the unexpected death of William III on 8 Mar. 1702. During William’s final sickness, Carlisle was appointed on both 2 and 7 Mar. a commissioner to give the royal assent to bills in the king’s absence, and in his capacity as earl marshal Carlisle played a central role in planning both the funeral of William III and the coronation of Queen Anne. Add. 70073-4, newsletter, 3 Mar. 1702; TNA, PC 2/79, pp. 14, 65, 67, 73, 77, 103-4.

Loss of office and influence, 1702-10

Carlisle’s position in the new queen’s eyes was not helped by a speech he made in the House on 12 Mar. responding to her speech of the previous day, in which he objected to her phrase ‘that her heart was entirely English’. Carlisle ‘would have strained it to a reflection on the memory his late Majesty and moved that it might be enquired who were the advisers of it’. He was ‘smartly’ answered by Francis North, 2nd Baron Guilford, Edward Montagu, 3rd earl of Sandwich, and several others, and was only saved when Devonshire made a ‘mollifying speech’ on his behalf. Add. 70073-4, newsletter, 14 Mar. 1702. He was anxious to defend the reputation of the late king again when he moved in the House, seconded by the Junto Whigs Wharton and Charles Montagu, Baron (later earl of) Halifax, that a formal inquiry should be made into the charges recently levelled against William III that he had had plans to set aside the succession of Anne. Burnet, v. 15. Carlisle was one of those delegated by the House to present the queen on 4 May with the report that no evidence of this project could be found among the late king’s papers and, according to one account, the queen took the opportunity of this public audience to dismiss him, telling him ‘that she had no further occasion for his Lordship’s service in the Treasury’. Add. 70073-4, newsletter, 7 May 1702. Earlier that day he had been one of the 16 members placed on the committee to draft the address of thanks for the queen for her announcement of the declaration of war. Carlisle thus lost his place in the Treasury and, naturally, the bedchamber, but he did remain as a privy councillor and as earl marshal. In northern matters, Ailesbury recorded in his memoirs, inaccurately, that Anne replaced Carlisle in the lieutenancy of Cumberland and Westmorland with Thomas Tufton, 6th earl of Thanet, the leading Tory peer of the region and hereditary sheriff of Westmorland, only to reinstate Carlisle in that post at the Tories’ fall from grace in 1704. The reports of Luttrell and other contemporaries confirm that this change was considered in early 1703, although it was not put into effect. Ailesbury Mems. 533, 568; Luttrell, Brief Relation, v. 279; Add. 70075, newsletter, 16 Mar. 1703; Add. 61292, f. 99.

With Carlisle’s pretensions to ‘govern the north of England’ now under threat, the shift in his political world brought on by the accession of Anne was shown in the elections of 1702, and indeed in all the subsequent elections of her reign. Cumberland in 1702 saw the return of two Tories, Richard Musgrave and Gilfrid Lawson, despite the best efforts of Carlisle. Thereafter the county had a divided representation of one Tory and one Whig (from 1708 James Lowther, who had transferred his seat from Carlisle, despite some initial hesitation on Carlisle’s part) throughout the remainder of Anne’s reign. In Carlisle itself Christopher Musgrave^‡ (Sir Christopher Musgrave’s son), supported by William Nicolson, recently made bishop of Carlisle, topped the poll in 1702, followed by a popular local army officer Thomas Stanwix^‡, leaving Carlisle’s kinsman Philip Howard without a seat, a decision which Carlisle did not even try to petition against. Stanwix thereafter had Carlisle’s support and continued to sit for the borough for the remainder of Anne’s reign. His colleague in the Commons from 1705 to 1713 was Carlisle’s other nominee Sir James Montagu^‡, brother of the Whig Junto lord Halifax. In Westmorland the interests of Carlisle, Wharton and Lady Lonsdale were effectively counter-balanced by those of the earl of Thanet, who had inherited the Clifford estates in Westmorland, and of the Musgraves and Grahmes. Carlisle was never (despite his controversial pretensions in 1701) able to exercise the predominant electoral patronage in Westmorland that he could in those areas where he did hold substantial land or office. In Northumberland he continued to work with Somerset in trying to return Whig members to Parliament, and from 1708 Somerset’s son and heir Algernon Seymour^†, earl of Hertford, later 7th duke of Somerset, always held one of the county seats. HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 109-13, 119-21, 448-9, 639-42; Cumb. RO, D/Lons/W2/1/40-49, D/Lons/W2/2/8, D/Lons/L1/4/Stray Letters (Wharton).

Carlisle attended half of the sittings of the first session of the 1702 Parliament in 1702-3, and he marked himself out as an associate of the Whig Junto, now in opposition to the government, from the very start. He joined the Whig attack against the government’s reluctance to accede to the request from the United Provinces for 10,000 more troops. He seconded a motion from Charles Townshend, 2nd Viscount Townshend, condemning the Tory ministers for insisting that such a request could only be granted if Parliament was prorogued and another bill of supply voted in a new session. Carlisle ‘offered a form of words’ to avoid this impasse, ‘which were such as none seemed to regard’, but he nevertheless reported from the committee assigned to frame an address to the queen on this matter. On 19 Jan. 1703 he spoke and subscribed to the protest against the clause that would specifically allow Prince George of Denmark, duke of Cumberland, to continue holding office and sitting in the House after the death of the queen, arguing strongly that this measure was a ‘tack’ on what was otherwise a supply bill to provide the prince with a pension, and that it effectively disabled the other foreign peers (principally William III’s Dutch followers) then in the House from continuing to sit after the succession. He was also involved in the debates on the bill to extend the length of time permitted to take the oath of abjuration. This was originally a bill brought in by the Tories, but he and other Whigs such as Wharton turned it against its original intent by adding a number of amendments which made it more disadvantageous to those who objected to the Williamite settlement. Carlisle’s suggested amendment was that the oath and the penalties for non-compliance be extended to Ireland, and on 5 Feb. he submitted the report from the committee on the amendment, which was ‘a long one’ and accepted by the House. Nicolson, London Diaries, 163, 164, 165, 177, 181, 197, 198. Throughout the winter he opposed the bill against occasional conformity, and took an active part in the debates surrounding it. He was a manager for conferences on the bill on 17 Dec. 1702 and 9 Jan. 1703 and on 16 Jan. he voted to adhere to the House’s amendment to the penalty clause which was sure to wreck the bill in the Commons.

When that bill came up for the vote again on 14 Dec. 1703, during the following session of 1703-4, Carlisle (listed on the division list as earl marshal) once again voted against it. He came to just over half of the meetings of this session, but was present in the House during the hearings on the Scotch Plot in early 1704, and took an active part in them. On the evening of 13 Feb. he was part of a large group of nineteen Junto-allied peers—including Wharton, Somers, Halifax, Townshend, another close contact Evelyn Pierrepont, 5th earl (later duke) of Kingston and the recorder of this gathering Charles Bennet, 2nd Baron Ossulston—who met at the St James’s Square townhouse of Charles Spencer, 3rd earl of Sunderland where ‘tea drunk and our discourse was only about the Scotch Plot which the papers was before the House of Lords’. A week after this meeting, on 19 Feb., the House was ‘in a very great heat’ about the Scotch Plot and Carlisle in particular made ‘very great reflections’ against the secretary of state Daniel Finch, 2nd earl of Nottingham. SCLA, DR98/1649/10. Carlisle was still having meetings with the Junto peers later in the session, as the proceedings on the Scotch Plot rumbled on, and Ossulston recorded meeting him on 18 Mar. 1704 at the Queen’s Arms in Pall Mall with Halifax, Kingston and Richard Savage, 4th Earl Rivers. A larger gathering took place at Sunderland’s house on St James’s Square on 21 Mar. where Ossulston found Carlisle, Wharton, Halifax, Somers, Orford, Townshend, Kingston, Somerset and a number of others at nine in the evening after a long day in Parliament. Two days later Ossulston dined with Somerset where he was joined by Carlisle, Wharton, Somers, Townshend, Sunderland, Orford, Rivers and Charles Montagu, 4th earl (later duke) of Manchester. TNA, C 104/116, Ossulston diary, 13 Feb., 18, 21, 23 Mar. 1704. They may have been meeting to discuss further strategy on the Scotch Plot proceedings for on the following day, 24 Mar., Carlisle joined seven other of his dinner companions of the previous day in signing the protest against the House’s refusal to put the question whether Nottingham’s record of the testimony of Sir John Macleane on the Scottish conspiracy was ‘imperfect’. After this activity, Carlisle did not appear at all in the House during the following, 1704-5, session, but on 12 Nov. 1704 he did register his proxy with Wharton. Not surprisingly a contemporary political analysis of the peerage listed Carlisle as a supporter of the Hanoverian succession.

He was in the House for only four days during the 1705-6 session, between 11 and 15 Mar. 1706. In April 1706, however, he was appointed a commissioner for the Union with Scotland, most likely owing to his influence and government of the northern border, and his most sustained attendance during any of the sessions of the 1705 Parliament was between late January and early April 1707, at the time the Union was being debated. Ossulston’s diary reveals that Carlisle was involved in the meetings and dinners of the Junto that occurred frequently during this time. On 15 Feb. 1707, after the House had passed a number of articles from the Union bill, Carlisle dined at the Queen’s Arms with Ossulston, Wharton, the marquess of Dorchester (as Kingston had become in 1706), Charles Cornwallis, 4th Baron Cornwallis, Charles Powlett, 2nd duke of Bolton, and some others. The same group of Junto peers and their associates, with the addition of Halifax and many others, met again nine days later for a meal at Wharton’s house after a marathon session lasting until six in the evening, during which the House went through all the articles of the union. TNA, C 104/116, Ossulston diary, 15, 24 Feb. 1707. Judging by the company he kept and that he signed none of the protests against the bill it is certain that Carlisle supported the Union with his Whig colleagues.

In August 1706 Carlisle had lost the office of acting earl marshal to his kinsman, Henry Howard, earl of Bindon (later 6th earl of Suffolk). Luttrell, Brief Relation, v. 610. By the time of the 1708 Parliament, Carlisle was disappointed in his hopes of attaining high political office and largely retired from public life. Since 1700 he had been engaged in turning the small hilltop farming community of Henderskelfe in the North Riding of Yorkshire into the site of his imposing country seat, Castle Howard, originally conceived as a fitting symbol of his arrival on the political scene. When those ambitions failed to be realized he looked to this monument to his family’s ambitions as his retreat from the disappointing world of Westminster. As the years wore on he spent more and more time there and less at his town house in Soho Square, the base of most of his earlier political activities, or his family’s other residences in Cumberland and Northumberland. C. Saumarez Smith, Building of Castle Howard. By 1707 construction of the edifice was well underway, often drawing the architect John Vanbrugh far from his other projects, such as Blenheim Palace. Carlisle, with his increasing stake in Yorkshire, also became involved in elections there, often in collaboration with the Junto’s election manager Wharton, who held estates in Yorkshire as well as Cumberland and Westmorland. Cumb. RO, D/Lons/L1/4/Stray Letters (Wharton) Carlisle did not abandon his Cumbrian connection, either in the county itself or when he was in London. When in the capital he frequently met William Nicolson, bishop of Carlisle. The editors of Nicolson’s London diaries estimate that from about 1706-7 the bishop had more contact with the earl than with any other single peer, and that about a quarter of the bishop’s meetings with peers consisted of encounters with Carlisle. Unfortunately the bishop’s diaries seldom specify the topic of their conversations or meetings. Nicolson, London Diaries, 21-22, 413, 426, 490-1, 497, 538, 548-9, 564, 580, 592, 593, 611-12, 619-22, 626, 630, 632-3, 656, 660.

Having all but given up on Parliament, Carlisle came to only 35 of the 198 sittings of the Lords between 16 Nov. 1708 and 5 Apr. 1710. His only attendance during the 1709-10 session was during the trial of Dr Sacheverell, whom he voted guilty on 20 March. It was Carlisle who was deputized by the Junto lords to move, on the day following this verdict, that Sacheverell’s punishment consist of seven years’ suspension from preaching, incapacity for further preferment and three months imprisonment in the Tower. These harshly punitive measures were immediately objected to, even by some who had voted the doctor guilty, and were whittled down to a much more lenient sentence. Add. 72494, ff.171-2.

In opposition, 1710-14

The Tory victory of autumn 1710, which Carlisle was unable to halt in his own counties in the north, appears to have roused the earl to action and he came to 29 per cent of the sittings of the House in 1710-14, more than he had attended in either of the previous two Parliaments of 1705-8 and 1708-10. In early 1711 he opposed the attack on the previous ministry and its conduct of the war in Spain, subscribing to two protests on 3 Feb. against resolutions condemning the handling of that campaign. He was more concerned than he had been previously to keep up his party’s numbers in the House, and assiduously registered his proxy with colleagues in the sophisticated Whig proxy network that was so effective in these sessions. On 8 Feb. 1711 he registered his proxy with Cornwallis, and vacated it eighteen days later when he returned to the House, while on 2 April he gave it to Sunderland, but this too was vacated two weeks later, on 16 April.

The 1711-12 session was his best attended, at 47 per cent, since 1703-4. On the session’s first day, 7 Dec. 1711, he supported the motion to add a clause calling for ‘No Peace without Spain’ in the address to the queen. The following day, after a tumultuous morning in the House which saw the ministry’s division on whether to present the queen with the address abandoned in the middle of counting, Carlisle met a number of his fellow promoters of the address at the Queen’s Arms for dinner – Dorchester, Bolton, Ossulston, Henry Clinton, 7th earl of Lincoln, and Lionel Sackville, 7th earl (later duke) of Dorset, among others. TNA, C 104/113, Ossulston diary, 8 Dec. 1711. On 20 Dec. Carlisle joined other Whigs again in voting against the right of James Hamilton, 4th duke of Hamilton [S], from sitting in the House by right of his British title of duke of Brandon. In the first months of 1712 he became a linchpin in a network of proxy exchanges with his colleagues Dorchester and Wharton. Dorchester registered his proxy with Carlisle on the first day of 1712, the day before Parliament was set to reconvene after the Christmas recess with the addition of 12 new Tory peers in the House, created en masse by the queen on 1 January. Carlisle was a teller, almost certainly for the minority Not Contents, in the division the following day on whether the House should adjourn for another two weeks, a vote held so that the ministry could show its new majority with the addition of the twelve new peers. On 12 Jan., two days before Parliament was set to resume, Carlisle registered his proxy with Wharton, who held it until Carlisle’s return on 4 February. On 2 Apr. 1712 both Dorchester and Wharton registered their proxies with Carlisle. Wharton’s was vacated just over a week later when he returned to the House, but he gave his proxy to Carlisle again on 26 April. Carlisle continued to hold both these proxies until early May, when both Wharton, on 5 May, and Dorchester, on 8 May, sat again in the House, although he held Dorchester’s again between the 16th and 20th of May. These three – Carlisle, Dorchester and Wharton – formed a tight set of friends, and both Dorchester and Carlisle were named in Wharton’s will as trustees for his son and daughters, along with the Whig Nicholas Lechmere^†, Carlisle’s son-in-law from 1719 and Baron Lechmere from 1721. TNA, PROB 11/548.

On 28 May 1712 Carlisle joined with others opposed to the Tory peace negotiations by voting and protesting against the House’s decision to reject the Whig address against the ‘restraining orders’ that prevented British troops from engaging in offensive actions against France during the peace negotiations. PH, xxvi. 177-81. He signed a protest on 7 June against the resolution not to insert a clause in an address to the queen insisting on co-operation with England’s allies to form a ‘mutual guarantee’ to ensure the Protestant Succession in Britain. Throughout the remainder of the Parliaments of Anne Carlisle remained in opposition to the ministry, and it is not surprising that after the contentious session of 1711-12 Sir Christopher Musgrave^‡, 5th bt, grandson and heir of the Tory grandee of Carlisle’s earlier days, asked Oxford to grant him the governorship of Carlisle in place of the Whig earl so that he could exercise a Tory interest for the next election. HMC Portland, v. 209. Oxford did not accede to the request. In the 1713 Parliament Nottingham rightly considered Carlisle an enemy to the Schism Bill, which Carlisle did protest against when it was passed on 15 June 1714. Barely a week after signing that protest, Carlisle registered his proxy on 21 June 1714 with Wharton, who retained it until the end of the session.

Under the Hanoverians, 1715-38

Carlisle’s steady adherence to the Whigs positioned him to benefit from the Hanoverian succession, and he was named by the elector one of the lord justices to manage the realm in the period between Anne’s death and the arrival of the new king. In October 1714 Carlisle expressed disappointment to Bothmer that he was not made a gentleman of the bedchamber while others, who had not proved themselves as loyal to the Hanoverians as he had, were being preferred to both him and his son, Henry Howard^†,styled Viscount Morpeth (later 4th earl of Carlisle). Castle Howard, J8/1/644-9; HMC Carlisle, 13-14. He was, however, confirmed in his positions as lord lieutenant of Cumberland and Westmorland and governor of Carlisle, through which he was able to continue to exercise influence in the elections of those counties and the city, as well as neighbouring Northumberland. The reasons for George I’s mistrust of Carlisle are not clear, but it remained a feature throughout the new reign. On the death of Halifax in May 1715, Carlisle took his place as first lord of the treasury, but this new honour was almost as short-lived as his first time in 1702, and he was dismissed five months later to make room for Robert Walpole^†, eventually earl of Orford.

Carlisle effectively retired to Castle Howard after 1715, making only occasional visits to the capital to attend the House or court. An account of Carlisle’s activities in the House and northern politics after 1715 will be provided in the succeeding part of this work. He died at Bath on 1 May 1738. His estate and title passed to his son, Henry Howard, 4th earl of Carlisle, who had already served a long political apprenticeship in the Commons as Member for Morpeth.