MORDAUNT, John (1626-75)

The younger son of puritan and parliamentarian parents whose lives and beliefs had been heavily influenced by Archbishop Ussher, John Mordaunt was an unlikely cavalier hero. The Letter Book of John Viscount Mordaunt 1658–1660, ed. M. Coate, x. Like his elder brother, the 2nd earl of Peterborough, he may initially have supported Parliament but while Henry Mordaunt had joined the king by 1643, the process of John Mordaunt’s conversion to royalism seems to have taken a little longer. Both brothers were involved in the abortive rising of 1648 and both then went into exile. Concerns expressed by the council of state in 1652 about a possible duel establish that John Mordaunt had returned to England at or before that date. He was an active royalist agent from at least 1654, although it is unclear whether he was involved in the rising of the following year. In 1658 he was arrested for his part in a projected rising in Sussex and narrowly escaped conviction on a charge of treason. Persuaded by his wife to acknowledge the authority of the court by which he was tried, he owed his subsequent acquittal, on the casting vote of John Lisle, president of the court, to a combination of luck and bribery. Those accused with him, Dr John Hewit and Sir Henry Slingsby^‡, were both convicted and executed. HMC 5th Rep. 152; Mordaunt Letter Book, xi; Verney ms mic. M636/16, H. Verney to Sir R. Verney, 3 June 1658.

Mordaunt’s narrow escape from the gallows did not deter him from his purpose. Over the next year he worked hard to reinvigorate the royalist cause in England and to broaden the base of its support. He urged the king to marry ‘some princess of your own religion’, warned him against the Catholics, who ‘are not so much your servants as they ought to be’, and assured him of the support of the Presbyterians. Mordaunt Letter Book, 5–6. He exploited his family’s puritan connections in order to gain access to influential but disillusioned presbyterian politicians in Parliament and the City of London and to entice them into support for the royalist cause. He also began to organize a rebellion to take place in the summer of 1659, based around the concept of synchronized regional risings. Both were formidable tasks. The Presbyterians required the exiled king to make concessions about religious freedom, specifically to grant the terms of the Treaty of Newport. Not unnaturally, they also expected assurances for the confirmation of title to lands they had bought from the Church and royalists. Mordaunt agreed with Charles II and his advisers that such conditions were incompatible with the restoration of monarchical power. Further difficulties were caused by the attitude of the leaders of the existing royalist organization, the Sealed Knot. They resented Mordaunt’s success at court, were suspicious of his parliamentarian connections, and distrusted the Presbyterians.

Mordaunt himself attributed the root of the problem to the lack of ‘some wise and powerful person’ to act as the acknowledged leader of the royalists. CCSP, iii. 426. Charles II therefore authorized a second royalist association, the Great Trust, to conduct negotiations. The Great Trust included the leaders of the Sealed Knot, as well as Henry Hastings, Baron Loughborough, and Mordaunt himself. Within a short time they were joined by a number of others, including the presbyterian peer Francis Willoughby* , 4th (CP 5th) Baron Willoughby of Parham, and Sir John Granville, later earl of Bath. Mordaunt’s position in the Great Trust should have been strengthened by these new members but his overbearing attitude meant that he upset a number of the more traditional royalists such as Aubrey de Vere, 20th earl of Oxford. Friction with the Sealed Knot continued, especially over his somewhat sketchy plans for the projected rising, which were dismissed, probably correctly, as hopelessly overambitious.

For his part, Mordaunt regarded members of the Sealed Knot as overcautious and suspected that the organization had been infiltrated by parliamentary agents. His expectation that he should assume full leadership of the royalist cause in England upset traditional royalists. Edward Hyde, later earl of Clarendon, had to explain that ‘He has received no commission or command, except to consult with and bring others together. A great part of the trust is to deliver commissions to proper persons in each county to dispose the county as best they can’, and to demand that ‘Mordaunt should disabuse men of the error that he has all the power and command’. Ibid. iv. 536, 540–1. In the event, the only serious threat to the government came from the rising in Cheshire organized by Sir George Booth, the future Baron Delamer. Mordaunt himself, with a party of 30 men, arrived at the Surrey rendezvous on Banstead Down only to discover that government troops were waiting for them. He escaped capture and fled to London and thence to France.

Believing that the rising had been betrayed, Mordaunt remained committed to the conviction that a successful insurrection was possible. He returned to London in October hoping to capitalize on Lambert’s ejection of the Rump. He then reported back to Charles II in France but was again in London in January 1660. In the weeks before the meeting of the Convention, he worked eagerly to facilitate the return of the king. Using the aldermen John Robinson^‡ and John Langham^‡ as go-betweens, he managed to inform the Corporation of the City of London of Charles’s intention to renew and enlarge their liberties. He contacted Fairfax and kept in touch with important presbyterian leaders such as Edward Montagu, 2nd earl of Manchester. He even circulated arguments supplied by William Prynne^‡ and Arthur Annesley, later earl of Anglesey, in an attempt to stimulate county petitions for a free Parliament.

When Lady Mordaunt joined her husband in England in March 1660 she was amazed at the transformation in their fortunes that had taken place in a mere six months. Then,

most persons afraid to see me and I more afraid to see them, our estate and all our things seized and we overjoyed to be out of our own country, and now I return welcomed by all … our estate released … our persons freed and our goods restored by act of council.

She went on to boast that most business was referred to Mordaunt’s judgement and that his friends in the Commons regularly sought his advice on topics of debate. Bodl. Clarendon 70, ff. 184–5; CCSP, iv. 605–6.

In mid-April, when it was still not clear whether the House of Lords would sit or, if it did, whether all peers would be admitted, Mordaunt was instrumental in undermining what he called the cabal of Presbyterian peers who were set on excluding the post-1642 creations and the ‘young’ lords. He informed Hyde that he had made it his business to persuade Oxford and William Wentworth, earl of Strafford, to sit. He had told them that their entitlement to do so did not depend on receiving a writ of summons but on their status as hereditary counsellors of the crown. Bodl. Clarendon 71, ff. 305–6. Meanwhile, Mordaunt’s knowledge of the presbyterians’ strategy was assisted by a pragmatic alliance with Annesley, who attended their meetings and reported on their discussions. CCSP, iv. 674–5.

Mordaunt’s friend Hartgill Baron was reputed to have declared that ‘the king must owe his crown to Lord Mordaunt’. Mordaunt Letter Book, xix. His expectations of reward must therefore have been high, especially as Hyde’s secretary, John Nicholas^‡, encouraged him to believe ‘that the king must do something very glorious for you, or make himself infamous to all ages’. In reality, his jealous and suspicious nature had caused almost as much upset at the exiled court as in England and his services had been eclipsed by those of his colleague in the Great Trust, Sir John Granville. Add. 32499, ff. 7–11. Granville, who was closely related to George Monck, later duke of Albemarle, undertook the final negotiations between Monck and the king. Mordaunt learned of the details of Monck’s response only after Granville had reported to Charles II.

Edward Hyde later described Mordaunt as ‘totally neglected’. Clarendon, Life, i. 356–7. This was not strictly true but Mordaunt clearly expected far more than Charles II was willing or able to give. The king had already rewarded Mordaunt with a viscountcy, although in what was perhaps a commentary on the relative value of the two men he went on to confer an earldom on Sir John Granville. Mordaunt’s financial rewards were rather better: he gained the reversion of Reigate Priory, a grant of the crown’s share of certain lands recovered from the sea, the reversion of the park of Curry Mallet and the manor of Shepton Mallet in Somerset, and a lease of the Newcastle coal farm. CSP Dom. 1660–1, p. 138; CTB, i. 52, 109, 121. Although less than he had expected, this was still a major improvement on his pre-Restoration financial position. Before 1660, Mordaunt had been dependent on the goodwill of his mother, who made him an allowance valued at £500 a year by the committee for compounding but which was said to be worth £700 a year shortly after the Restoration. CCC, i. 769; CSP Dom. 1666–7, pp. 421–2. Her parliamentary sympathies meant that she disapproved of his royalist activities but she appears to have disapproved still more of the much earlier conversion of her elder son to the royalist cause and, as a result, to have diverted the descent of various properties from him to her younger son. This resulted in much family dissension and a number of law suits. CSP Dom. 1666–7, pp. 421–2.

In May 1660 Mordaunt was one of those who accompanied the newly restored king into the City of London. HMC 5th Rep. 184. He was instrumental in gaining a pardon (at a cost of £1,000) for Colonel Harbert Morley but otherwise his access to patronage seems to have limited. Evelyn Diary, iii. 245. Mordaunt was said to have had ambitions to be appointed as secretary of state but the post went instead to William Morice^‡, who was closely associated with and related by marriage to George Monck. Mordaunt did receive offices but they were of local rather than national importance. Despite his limited property holdings in Surrey and his main residence being in Fulham, Middlesex, he was appointed lord lieutenant of Surrey. His other major offices were all in Windsor. It is difficult to be precise about the dates of his appointments: the letters patent appointing him as constable of the castle, for example, were issued on 28 Feb. 1661 but he was clearly already in office early in July 1660. R.R. Tighe and J.E. Davis, Annals of Windsor, ii. 294.

Mordaunt’s Windsor offices gave him considerable local power but may not have been particularly lucrative: the constableship of Windsor Castle was said by its previous incumbent to be an office ‘of very great antiquity, honour, power, and pleasure, but of very little profit’. As constable, Mordaunt had the right to use any lodgings not required by the king, to act as judge of the court of the Honour of Windsor (which included 59 parishes in Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, and Surrey), and to appoint attorneys to practise there. As keeper of the Great Park and Forest, he had the right to dispose of lodges and walks, and to issue licences for felling and taking game. Ibid. ii. 294–7.

At Lady Mordaunt’s request, their old friend and ally Sir Thomas Woodcock^‡ was appointed deputy governor of Windsor Castle. Other offices were distributed by the crown without reference to Mordaunt’s wishes or the terms of his patent, leading him to complain that his authority was being undermined: ‘I must look for no interest, no civility here, where I alone of all that ever was constable have not power to oblige a friend or gratify a servant’. Eg. 2537, f. 166. Among the offices so granted was that of surveyor, which, together with a number of other posts relating to the maintenance of the castle, was conferred on William Tayleur^‡ against Mordaunt’s wishes. Tayleur was also appointed clerk to the constable of the castle, as well as steward, receiver of rents, and bailiff of the Honour of Windsor. CSP Dom. 1660–1, pp. 72.

Although Mordaunt’s electoral influence in Windsor had been enhanced by his appointment as high steward, the franchise was in dispute and he was worried that his lack of patronage might make it difficult to impose his authority there. Thomas Higgons^‡ who stood for election at Windsor in 1661 was almost certainly a client of Mordaunt’s. Higgons did not have a distinguished royalist past but was about to marry the niece of Mordaunt’s friend and political ally, Bath. Higgons’ rival was William Tayleur, whose unwelcome appointment as surveyor of Windsor Castle has already been mentioned. Unlike Higgons, Tayleur was a well-established local figure: his father had served as surveyor of the castle before the civil wars. Tayleur had previously represented Windsor in the Commons but had been imprisoned in the Tower and expelled from Parliament in 1641 for describing the attainder of Thomas Wentworth^†, earl of Strafford as committing ‘murder with the sword of justice’. Tighe and Davis, Annals of Windsor, ii. 155–60.

Mordaunt had become increasingly suspicious of his former Presbyterian allies, writing in 1661 that they ‘preach only rebellion’, so his resentment of Tayleur was probably heightened by Tayleur’s Presbyterian connections. CSP Dom. 1661–2, p. 89. Tayleur was closely associated with Sir Robert Pye^‡, who had abandoned his early parliamentarian sympathies to become a leading Presbyterian royalist. Furthermore, Tayleur owed his various appointments at Windsor Castle to the patronage of Anne Monck, duchess of Albemarle. Mordaunt’s antipathy to Tayleur’s candidacy influenced the attitude of the corporation but may not have been decisive; there is some evidence of a long-standing feud between the two: Tayleur’s expulsion from Parliament in 1641 had resulted from information supplied by the then mayor of Windsor. In the event, Tayleur was elected on the wider franchise and Higgons on the corporation franchise; Parliament decided in favour of the corporation franchise and Higgons was returned. HP Commons, 1660–90, i. 131.

During the 1660 session Mordaunt attended the House on 63 per cent of sitting days. He was not named to the committee for privileges as he was absent from the House on 27 Apr. when that committee was named. However, during the session he was named to the committee for the restoration of the earl of Arundel (10 Nov.), the committee for the Journal (17 Nov.), and a committee for a naturalization bill (15 Dec.). His presence in the House has otherwise left no trace in the Journal. In June the committee for privileges deputed him, along with Oxford, to investigate charges of treason against the former parliamentarian Robert Danvers, previously known at various times by the surnames of Wright, Howard, and Villiers, whose doubtful legitimacy made it equally doubtful that he should be regarded as 2nd Viscount Purbeck.

With no further claim to put him at the centre of the political stage and apparently without ambition to cut a figure in parliamentary politics, Mordaunt was present on only 41 per cent of sitting days during the 1661–2 session. His last attendance of the session was on 22 Mar. 1662, a full seven weeks before the prorogation of 19 May. He was named to the committees for privileges and petitions (11 May 1661) and to three other committees. In the spring and early summer of 1661 he was forecast as being in favour of awarding the great chamberlaincy to Oxford and in November 1661 he held the proxy of his brother, Peterborough.

During the 1663 session he was again present on 41 per cent of sitting days and was named to the committee for petitions (25 Feb.), to the bill for repealing acts of the Long Parliament (19 Mar.), to the temporalty subsidy bill (17 July), and to the militia bill (18 July). His absence from the House was excused on 23 Feb. 1663, possibly because, although he was actually in nearby Weybridge, he was preoccupied with law and order issues in Windsor. He demanded that an example be made of a group of rioters who had attacked the park there, insisting that ‘without severity people will look on the king’s parks as their own’. His duties as governor of the castle also included keeping political prisoners in safe custody and this too may have distracted him from his parliamentary duties. CSP Dom. 1663–4, pp. 29, 219, 347, 483, 542, 612, 667; 1664–5, pp. 237, 288, 567.

In the summer of 1663 an investigation into the various royal grants that Mordaunt had received was said to have resulted from ‘the disputes of the court’ and was perhaps an ominous forerunner of the imminent attempt by George Digby, 2nd earl of Bristol, to impeach Clarendon. Bodl. Carte 32, f. 597. Mordaunt voted in Clarendon’s favour. On 25 July his participation in the protest against the Lords’ proviso to the bill to amend the Act of Uniformity identified him as a firm defender of the established Church. In November 1663 his role in a dispute between officers of a regiment of horse stationed in Surrey and the local militia is uncertain but it was to him, as lord lieutenant, that Charles II sent a letter communicating a perpetual command that in the absence of the lord lieutenant or his deputies the militia should take orders from the officers of the standing regiments. CSP Dom. 1663–4, p. 340.

During the short 1664 session Mordaunt was present on 50 per cent of sitting days and was named to the committee for Sir John Pakington’s bill on 27 April. In the autumn he went to sea as a volunteer, earning the contempt of Samuel Pepys^‡, who wrote indignantly about those who were ‘good for nothing while they serve but to impoverish their captains and enslave them … as my Lord Mordaunt in particular did do’. The Tangier Papers of Samuel Pepys, ed. E. Chappell, 120. As a result of his naval service he was absent when the new session opened on 24 Nov. 1664. He covered the absence with a proxy to Bath which was vacated when Mordaunt returned to the House on 20 Jan. 1665. He was then present for just over 50 per cent of the remaining sitting days of the session and was named to three committees. His attendance during the short autumn 1665 session was also in the order of 50 per cent and he was named to the committee for privileges (12 Oct.) and that for the bill to attaint Dolman, Bampfield, and Scott (31 Oct.). On 30 April 1666, when Parliament was not in session, Mordaunt was one of the peers summoned as triers for the trial of Thomas Parker, 15th Baron Morley, in the court of the lord high steward. He found Morley guilty of manslaughter rather than murder. State Trials, vi. 775.

Mordaunt’s chief claim to parliamentary fame was to have been the subject of the first attempt to revive the judicial process of impeachment after the Restoration. In the political crisis that led up to the fall of Clarendon in 1667, Mordaunt proved to be dangerously isolated. Traditional royalists such as Bristol’s ally John Lucas, Baron Lucas, may have welcomed his support for the Act of Uniformity but nevertheless continued to be suspicious of him and to resent any success he might have. His old Presbyterian allies were disappointed by his treatment of Tayleur and his fervent Anglicanism. They probably also resented his role as the gaoler of those suspected of disloyalty, many of whom appear to have been imprisoned for disproportionate lengths of time for offences relating to attendance at conventicles. Both groups were further alienated by his firm friendship for Clarendon. His continuing usefulness to the government was however recognized by a grant of the estate forfeited by Sir Robert Honeywood junior in August 1666. CSP Dom. 1666–7, p. 83.

During the 1666–7 session Mordaunt was named to the committee for privileges and to the committee to consider the bill to render Lady Roos’s children illegitimate (both on 14 Nov. 1666), as well as to five other committees. The threat of impeachment explains why his attendance over this session was uncharacteristically high, at 91 per cent. The articles of impeachment were presented against him in December. The seven accusations (printed in full in the Commons Journal and also in State Trials) relate to various allegations of arbitrary and oppressive actions taken by Mordaunt against William Tayleur, starting well before the contested Windsor election of 1661. They included threats, forcible dispossession of rooms, illegal imprisonment, contempt of court, and perversion of the course of justice, as well as the sexual harassment of Tayleur’s daughter. In his defence Mordaunt made a number of cross allegations against Tayleur, accusing him of embezzlement, fraud, and false accounting. As members of the Commons almost certainly knew, these allegations were well founded: the crown had been investigating Tayleur’s accounts and had suspended him from office in the spring of 1665, before commencing an action against him in the court of exchequer. CSP Dom. 1664–5, p. 362–3; TNA, E 134/19 Chas II/East32; E 134/19 Chas II/Mich23. Tayleur had refused to vacate rooms legitimately required for the use of the royal household and had fomented problems in the corporation of Windsor, refusing to pay his share of the tax for providing plague houses and encouraging others to the same. According to the king, Tayleur was a spectacular cheat who was far worse ‘than parliament libellers say of others, or even suspect’. CSP Dom. 1665–6, p. 79; 1666–7, p. 220.

It was by no means clear that the allegations against Mordaunt provided sufficient grounds for impeachment. He may have acted overenthusiastically but he had acted under royal authority, either by specific warrant or by virtue of his judicial powers within the jurisdiction of the castle. In attacking Mordaunt, the Commons were implicitly attacking the king and the king’s chief minister, Clarendon. The only alleged offences that were clearly criminal were those involving sexual assaults on Tayleur’s daughter and these Mordaunt absolutely denied. At best, Tayleur may have had a claim against Mordaunt for the way in which he had carried out his duties – a private action for damages, rather than a criminal prosecution or an impeachment. Furthermore, the alleged offences all arose from a limited set of circumstances (the feud between Tayleur and Mordaunt). It was difficult to argue that they were genuinely against ‘the rights and liberties of all the commons and freemen of England’, which, even at this formative stage of parliamentary judicature, was arguably already a prerequisite for an accusation made in the name of the House of Commons. Shortly after the attempted impeachment of Mordaunt, the Commons would argue that Thomas Skinner ought not to seek an extraordinary remedy by means of an action in the Lords, rather than use the usual course of the law. Similar arguments applied in the case of Tayleur, since he had a remedy in the ordinary courts of Westminster Hall.

The allegations against Mordaunt shocked his contemporaries. Pepys disliked the viscount so his condemnation is perhaps understandable but even Evelyn, who regarded Mordaunt as his ‘special friend’, considered the charges to be ‘foul and dishonourable’ and feared that they would stick. Evelyn Diary, iii. 468–9. Mordaunt might not have acted illegally but he had acted arbitrarily and oppressively with little or no concern for justice or the liberties of the subject and it was clear that the government had either connived at his actions or had actively encouraged them. Whether technically guilty or not, he symbolized the moral malaise and autocratic tendencies of Charles II’s government. Pepys was not the only person to predict that Mordaunt’s impeachment would soon be followed by another, this time against Clarendon himself. Pepys Diary, viii. 501–2. The government probably also feared too close a scrutiny of the way in which it had been using Windsor Castle as a political prison and of the very flimsy legal basis on which prisoners had been detained there. CSP Dom. 1664–5, p. 288; 1665–6, p. 237.

It is sometimes suggested that Clarendon’s allies, especially Robert Atkyns^‡, who was appointed as one of the managers of the ensuing conferences between the two Houses in the Commons, helped to prolong the proceedings against Mordaunt in the hope that the campaign against Clarendon would falter. This may be partly true but the procedural issues thus raised touched on important points of principle and were considered at length by the committee for privileges. In a society where hierarchical values were constantly displayed via ritualized rules of etiquette, questions about where Mordaunt should be placed during the proceedings, whether in the chamber or at the bar, whether he should sit or stand, and whether or not he should wear a hat, were not trivial ones. They reflected real anxieties about his status during the proceedings (including his legal status – was he or was he not one of the judges?) and the psychological intimidation of witnesses that might result. Disputes about whether or not he should be allowed counsel to advise on the conduct of his case similarly reflected fears about the subversion of justice by status and privilege, since it was well established that in criminal trials the function of defendant’s counsel was restricted to addressing the court on difficult questions of law.

The impeachment proceedings were ended by the prorogation in February 1667. Pepys thought that the king would take advantage of the recess to appease the Commons by dismissing Mordaunt, thus letting ‘them see he will do of his own accord which is fit, without their forcing him’, and rumours of Mordaunt’s removal continued through the summer, although he actually managed to cling on to his offices for a further year. Pepys Diary, viii. 50; Add. 75354, ff. 87–88; Bodl. Tanner 45, f. 202. Early in July 1667 Mordaunt received a royal pardon. CSP Dom. 1666–7, p. 277. This was intended to prevent further controversy in Parliament but it did not assuage the government’s critics, especially as Mordaunt’s acceptance of the pardon could be interpreted as amounting to a virtual confession of guilt. Pepys was shocked that, when Parliament was further prorogued on 27 July, Mordaunt was present and ‘as merry as the best’, even though there had been reports that he had committed ‘such further indignities to Mr Taylor … as would hang if there were nothing else, would the king do what were fit for him’. Pepys Diary, viii. 361–2. To Andrew Marvell^‡ the king’s actions simply ensured that ‘Now Mordaunt may within his castle tower / imprison parents and the child deflower’. POAS, i. 117.

Tayleur attempted, unsuccessfully, to revive the impeachment proceedings when Parliament reconvened for the 1667–9 session in October 1667. Pepys Diary, viii. 501–2; CJ, ix. 8, 27, 33. By that time the parliamentary spotlight was on the attempt to impeach Clarendon and the charges against him also included his role in securing Mordaunt’s pardon. Not surprisingly, Mordaunt’s attendance was exemplary: he was present every day until the end of 1667. He was named to the committees for privileges and petitions on 11 Oct. 1667, appointments that were repeated, together with nomination to the committee for the Journal, on 25 October. He was also named to three other committees and to a subcommittee of the committee for privileges to investigate questions of precedence relating to foreign nobility. PA, HL/PO/DC/CP/1/2, 4 Nov. 1667. After the end of December 1667, despite continuing wrangling between the Houses, which one might have thought would have commanded his attention, his attendance dropped to 58 per cent of sitting days. By July 1668 his wife was in Montpellier, visiting Clarendon in exile and lamenting her husband’s poverty, attributable, so she said, to the debts that he had contracted in the royalist cause during ‘the late usurpation’. Bodl. Carte 215, ff. 508–9.

Mordaunt’s problems with Tayleur were at last settled in September 1668, when he resigned his Windsor offices in favour of Prince Rupert, in return for a sum variously reported as £3,500 or 3,500 guineas. HMC Le Fleming, 59; Add. 36916, f. 115. The potential for future conflict was also ended when Tayleur was persuaded to sell his offices to Prince Rupert’s nominees. CSP Dom. 1670 and Addenda, 1660–70, p. 736. In October 1668 Mordaunt left for France, claiming a need to travel overseas for his health but probably to visit Clarendon. CSP Dom. 1668–9, pp. 12, 18. He remained close to the former chancellor and corresponded with him about political affairs, including the possibility of Clarendon’s return to England. Add. 32499, f. 25.

From this date Mordaunt’s activities, whether in or out of Parliament, become increasingly difficult to trace. He was back in England for the opening of the brief 1669 session, when he was present for just over two-thirds of sitting days and was named to the committee to consider papers from the commissioners for accompts (9 November). His attendance fell sharply over the 1670–1 session, when he was present for less than a quarter of sitting days and was named to only three committees. On 17 Mar. 1670 he entered a dissent to the passage of the Roos divorce bill. Somewhat puzzlingly, on 12 Dec. 1670 he covered one of his shorter absences from the House with a proxy to Clarendon’s enemy, the high Anglican Lord Lucas, vacated by his return on 13 Feb. 1671.

Mordaunt attended the first 1673 session for some 58 per cent of sitting days and was appointed to two committees. He was present on three of the four days of the autumn 1673 session and was appointed to one committee. The following (1674) session he was present on 34 of the 38 sitting days and was named to the committee for privileges and to committees for four bills. One of those bills, that for governing servants and apprentices (16 Feb.), was to be amended with a clause relating to the treatment of slaves in England. The bill was lost at the end of the session, barely a week later, but Mordaunt’s possible involvement in an abortive attempt to legislate for slavery is particularly interesting given that his Fulham household later contained at least two waged black servants. Add. 15907, Accounts of Elizabeth, widow of John, Lord Mordaunt, 1678–9.

In January 1675 Mordaunt made a well-publicized visit to the Dorset home of Anthony Ashley Cooper, earl of Shaftesbury. The exact purpose of his journey is unknown, although it seems likely that he was trying to smooth the way for the ensuing parliamentary session by opening lines of communication between Shaftesbury and the court. Whether he was doing so as the court’s emissary or trying to repeat his success at the Restoration by acting as a self-appointed negotiator remains equally unclear. Sir Ralph Verney^‡ rated Mordaunt’s chances of success very low; he reported that the town talk likened it to sending ‘a sparrow to catch a kite’. Bodl. Carte 72, ff. 255, 257–8; Verney ms mic. M636/28, Sir R. Verney to E. Verney, 8 Jan. 1675. If Mordaunt were an emissary then he may have been sent by Thomas Osborne, earl of Danby (later duke of Leeds), whose proposed non-resisting Test he fully supported. Mordaunt hoped to cement an alliance with Danby by marrying his eldest son, Charles Mordaunt* , (later 3rd earl of Peterborough), to Danby’s daughter Bridget Osborne but the match fell through, possibly because Mordaunt was unable to make the kind of generous financial settlement on the couple that Danby required. Verney ms mic. M636/28, Sir R. Verney to E Verney, 21 Dec. 1674; Eg. 3329, ff. 7–9.

Perhaps Mordaunt’s association with Danby encouraged him to become more active in Parliament. During the 1675 session he held the proxy of Charles Stanhope, 2nd Baron Stanhope, and was absent on only two days before his final attendance on 20 May. He was named to the usual sessional committees as well as to committees on three bills. He quarrelled with Charles Mohun, 3rd Baron Mohun, during a debate on 14 Apr. and the House, taking notice of the ‘unusual words’ that had passed between them, intervened to prevent a duel and to prompt Mordaunt to explain ‘that he meant no disrespect to the Lord Mohun therein’.

Mordaunt’s final illness seems to have come on suddenly. On 27 May, only a week after his last attendance and barely six weeks after the quarrel with Mohun, Sir Ralph Verney reported that Mordaunt ‘was very like to die of a malignant fever and a pleurisy’. Verney ms mic. M636/28, Sir R. to E. Verney, 27 May 1675. He died just over a week later. His will, made in March 1673, suggests that his wife’s influence continued to be significant. He left the bulk of his property to his eldest son but made no arrangements for portions for his many younger children, delegating that power to his widow ‘in regard of her present indisposition to settle the same’. In the event of her remarriage, the power of settling portions was to be transferred to his close friends and political allies Henry Hyde, 2nd earl of Clarendon, and Andrew Newport^‡. Mordaunt’s personal estate, including the reversion of the Newcastle coal farm, was valued at £5,026 6s. 6d. An inventory of the contents of his house shows that, for all his protestations of poverty, it was luxuriously furnished. TNA, PROB 4/326.