SMITH, Francis (c. 1621-1701)

Carrington succeeded to the peerage following the murder of his father in France in 1665. One of the most prominent Catholic peers in the Midlands, Carrington inherited substantial estates in Warwickshire, Leicestershire and Oxfordshire. His Leicestershire estate of Ashby Folville played host to the largest Catholic community in the county; the Warwickshire estate of Wootton Wawen was valued at £944 a year in 1714. VCH Leics. ii. 66; VCH Warws. ii. 48. One of Carrington’s sisters, Mary, joined the English canonesses of Liege in 1659, and his younger brother, John, joined the Jesuits four years later. Cath. Rec. Soc. xvii. 8; VCH Leics. ii. 66. Carrington himself donated substantial sums to English Catholic communities, and he was a signatory to a petition requesting that Catholics be exempted from the penal laws that was presented to the House on 10 June 1661.

Carrington took his seat on 10 Oct. 1665, after which he was present on just under 58 per cent of all sitting days during which he was named to four committees. During the 1666-7 session he was named to the committee considering the bill submitted by his Rutland neighbour, Lady Elizabeth Noel. Although he was present on just under three-quarters of all sitting days in the session, he was named to just one further committee before the prorogation in February 1667.

Carrington returned to the House for the 1667-9 session on 21 Oct. 1667, after which he was present on approximately 64 per cent of all sitting days. Added to the committee for petitions on 31 Oct., he was named to four further committees during the session, including that named on 7 Dec. to consider the bill to banish Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon.

Carrington attended the 1669 session for 72 per cent of all sitting days and was named to two committees. During the 1670-1 session he was present on 81 days (just under half of all sitting days). He was named to 15 committees in a pattern of activity that may reflect local interests. On 21 Mar. he was named to the committee considering the Deeping Fens bill, and on 28 Mar. he entered his dissent over the resolution to pass the divorce bill of John Manners, styled Lord Roos (later duke of Rutland). Carrington’s motivation in opposing the divorce may have been religious, but it is also possible that he did so out of loyalty to Lady Roos’ father, Henry Pierrepont, marquess of Dorchester, with whom Carrington was associated. Two days later Carrington was named to the committee considering a bill to settle the estates of his Warwickshire neighbour, Thomas Leigh, later 2nd Baron Leigh. On 3 Dec. Carrington was named to the committee considering the bill of James Bertie, 5th Baron Norreys (later earl of Abingdon), and two days later he was added to the committees concerning Leigh’s bill, and that for Edward Ingram, 2nd Viscount Irwin [S]. On 6 Dec. he was also nominated to the committee considering a bill for settling an agreement between his kinsmen, Sir William Smith, Sir Thomas Hooke and others.

Carrington was absent at the opening of the new session in February 1673, and at a call of the House on 13 Feb. he was noted as being en route to London. He resumed his place two days later, after which he was present on 70 per cent of all sitting days but was named to just two committees. That year Carrington endowed a number of almshouses at Ashby Folville, and on 31 Jan. of the following year (1674), he conveyed lands in Lincolnshire to Dorchester, James Compton, 3rd earl of Northampton, Theophilus Hastings, 7th earl of Huntingdon, and George Savile, Viscount (later marquess of) Halifax, as trustees for the charity. W.A. Copinger, History and Records of the Smith-Carrington Family, 318.

Carrington attended three of the four days of the brief session of October 1673. He was present on just five days of the 38-day session in 1674 during which he was named to a solitary committee. In advance of the new session, Carrington was listed among those thought likely to support the non-resisting test. He was present on over 80 per cent of all sitting days during the first 1675 session but was again named to just one committee. On 29 Apr. he was listed among those lords who had failed to take the oath of allegiance. He then returned to the House shortly after the opening of the new session on 19 Oct. 1675 after which he was present on over 85 per cent of all sitting days. Named to six committees, on 20 Nov. he voted in favour of addressing the king to request a dissolution of Parliament and then subscribed the protest following the House’s rejection of the motion.

Over the next two years, perhaps in response to the policies of Thomas Osborne, earl of Danby (later duke of Leeds), Carrington appears to have been one of several Catholic peers to become associated with Anthony Ashley Cooper, earl of Shaftesbury. Jones, Party and Management, 15. Having taken his seat at the opening of the new session on 15 Feb. 1677, he proceeded to attend on approximately three-quarters of all sitting days during which he was named to 24 committees. Absent at a call of the House on 9 Mar., in May he was assessed by the now imprisoned Shaftesbury as a ‘Worthy Papist’ (Shaftesbury appears initially to have noted Carrington as doubly vile, but this was scratched out). Despite this, Carrington also appears to have been closely associated with James, duke of York, and to have been a member of a prominent Catholic circle that included his kinsman, Charles Fairfax, 5th Viscount Fairfax of Emley [I], and his uncle by marriage, Richard Walmsley. H. Aveling, Northern Catholics, 333-4.

Carrington took his seat in the new session on 19 June 1678 and was then present on just under 40 per cent of all sitting days, during which he was named to three committees. He was present on a further ten days during the second session of 1678. On 15 Nov. 1678 Carrington voted against disabling Catholics from sitting in Parliament but events soon overtook him. Implicated by William Bedloe as being involved in the Popish Plot, he attended the House for the last time on 19 Nov. to inform the Lords that he had been accused of complicity in the ‘horrid design’ and that a warrant had been issued for his arrest. According to Bedloe, Carrington was to have been responsible for raising £5,000 and a body of men to join with another of the supposed conspirators, John Belasyse, Baron Belasyse. Committed to Black Rod, Carrington was imprisoned briefly in the Tower, but the evidence was soon demonstrated to be unreliable and he was permitted to return to his estates in Oxfordshire. Kenyon, Popish Plot, 123. Following the passing of the Test Act, he was disabled from sitting in the House. He may have left the country in December 1678, but on 12 May of the following year he petitioned the House for leave to visit London with his cousin John Smith ‘to perfect a business of great importance to the Lady Smith and her children.’ Permission was granted for him to be in London for one week, and on 22 May Carrington and John Smith sold part of the family estate to Lord Roos for £4,200. Copinger, 328.

Opportunism arising out of the Popish Plot appears to have been behind Carrington’s involvement in a damaging exchequer case between 1679 and 1683. TNA, E134/33 Chas2/Mich 28. In May 1674 Carrington had become one of the trustees of Sir Thomas Preston’s extensive estates, following Preston’s departure for the continent to join the Jesuits. Preston’s agreement with Carrington and Carrington’s kinsman, Richard Walmsley, provided for some of the estate’s revenue being made over to the Jesuits. In May 1679 Preston’s protestant cousin, Thomas Preston^‡ of Holker, initiated proceedings claiming that the estates were thereby forfeit. Recusant Hist., xiii. 212. In response, Sir Thomas entered into a new settlement with Carrington, Walmsley and Caryll Molyneux, 3rd Viscount Molyneux [I], establishing them as trustees for the estate until his daughter, Anne Preston, came of age. In spite of Sir Thomas’s attempts to safeguard his property, and Carrington’s argument that he was unaware of his trusteeship, hearings in exchequer between 30 May 1682 and 24 Feb. 1683 established that the initial trust had been ‘for superstitious purposes’ and resulted in the estates being conveyed to the Crown. E134/33 Chas2/Mich 28; Bodl. Top. Lancs. d. 4.

Carrington appears to have been experiencing financial difficulties towards the end of Charles II’s reign, Ledwell Park being sold in 1685 or 1686, but the accession of James II offered him the opportunity of recovering his position. VCH Oxon. xi. 173. Carrington was not able to take his seat in the House in 1685, but in 1686 he was dispensed from the oaths of allegiance and supremacy. CSP Dom. 1686-7, p. 67. The following year he married Lady Anne Herbert. It was perhaps to coincide with his marriage that Carrington undertook substantial improvements on Wootton Hall where tradition held that Sir Christopher Wren^‡ may have been involved with the building work; the rebuilding seems to have overstretched Carrington’s resources, causing him to lease several of his manors in February 1688. Cooper, 32, 37.

Although a series of assessments compiled in 1687 concerning peers’ attitudes to repeal of the Test Act and to James II’s policies in general noted Carrington merely as a Catholic, without indicating whether or not he supported the king’s policies, it seems safe to suggest that he was wholeheartedly in favour of repeal. In September he appeared along with ‘all the eminent gentry of our county who were red letter men’ to greet the king during his progress through Warwickshire, and in November of that year he succeeded Thomas Windsor, earl of Plymouth, as lord lieutenant of Worcestershire. Sherborne Castle, Digby mss vol. ii. f. 319. Carrington’s appointment may have owed something to his recent alliance with the Herbert family but was more likely an indication of the king’s desperation in having to select a peer with no obvious connection within the county. Once more noted a Catholic in an assessment of attitudes to repeal of the test at the beginning of 1688, Carrington took an active part in the electioneering of that year. Duckett, Penal Laws, 442. In February he was said to be travelling to Worcestershire to put the three questions, and in May he wrote to his relative, Robert Brent, enclosing a list of suitable candidates to be deputies in the county. Morrice, Entring Bk. iv. 223; Bodl. Rawl. A 139, f. 183. Carrington’s connection with Brent, a central figure in James II’s attempts to control the elections, added to his influence, and in September 1688 Carrington’s position was further bolstered with his election as recorder of Warwick. HJ, iii. 67; CSP Dom. 1687-9, p. 271.

Such prominence was rapidly eroded by the Revolution. Carrington himself does not appear to have played an active role in opposing William of Orange’s invasion, though one of his relatives took up a commission in the militia. TNA, PRO 30/53/8/74. Following William and Mary’s accession, Carrington was put out of all of his offices after which he retreated back into relative obscurity. This did not prevent him from being liable to the general aid voted to the new king and queen in 1689. In September of that year Carrington provided a self-assessment in which he declared that, although he was in expectation of several sums, ‘which are very disparate and uncertain, however I am contented to charge myself with the sum of one thousand pounds personal estate, which according to the intent and words of the act obliges me to pay to you (as collector) three pounds.’ Chatsworth, Halifax collection B.57.

Carrington appears to have become associated with some Jacobite intriguers in the 1690s, notably his mother-in-law, Lady Powis. HMC Finch, ii. 348-9, 357-8, 368-9. He attempted direct communication with the exiled court in August 1690, but at least one of his letters was successfully intercepted en route and in 1694 Carrington was one of a number of ‘persons of great quality’ named by the informant James Lunt as supplying the exiled king with money. Ibid. ii. 400-1; HMC Kenyon, 300, 370. Carrington did not follow his wife’s family into exile, and in June 1697 he stood surety for £5,000 for his brother-in-law, William Herbert, still styled Viscount Montgomery despite his father’s death the previous year, since the marquessate was under attainder. Luttrell, Brief Relation, iv. 241; CSP Dom. 1697, p. 206. Two years later Carrington, acting as agent for his Powis relations, was involved in a lengthy dispute with William Lloyd, bishop of Lichfield, and Edward Jones, of St Asaph, over Powis’ lease of a portion of the tithes of several parishes in the bishopric of St Asaph. PRO 30/53/8/93, 94, 96; Esgobaeth Llanelwy, 126n. The timing of the case coincided with a number of clergy in the diocese complaining at Bishop Jones’s corruption, and Carrington was confident that they would benefit from a claim to privilege by one of the bishops (presumably Jones), ‘neither judge nor juries being pleased with those that stand upon privilege.’ PRO 30/53/8/96.

Carrington died on 7 Apr. 1701. The title passed to his brother Charles Smith, 3rd Viscount Carrington [I]. Anne, Lady Carrington, was later rumoured to have secretly married her attorney Kenneth Mackenzie, son of Kenneth Mackenzie, 4th earl of Seaforth [S], one of the executors of Carrington’s will. Add. 28251, f. 90.