Early Life to 1680
The exact date of Charles Mordaunt’s birth is unknown, but his mother was pregnant in June 1657, and it is likely that he was born at Berkshire House in mid-February 1658 and named after the exiled Charles II.
Mordaunt succeeded his father as 2nd Viscount Mordaunt on 5 June 1675. At the end of February 1676, John Evelyn wrote in his diary that he ‘took leave of my young Lord Mordaunt going into France’ to continue his education at Foubert’s Academy.
Once back in England Mordaunt embarked on three of his favourite pastimes: duelling, romance and litigation. At the end of February 1680 he acted as a second to Plymouth in a duel with Sir George Hewett, and was wounded in the shoulder by William Cavendish, styled Lord Cavendish, the future duke of Devonshire.
The Last Years of Charles II, 1681-4
As he had approached his majority, Mordaunt had become of increasing interest to the leading political figures. On the list of lay peers compiled over 1677-8 by Anthony Ashley Cooper, earl of Shaftesbury, Mordaunt had been classed as ‘doubly vile’, which given his future conduct proved to be an inaccurate assessment, but may have been owing more to his connection with his uncle Peterborough, whom Shaftesbury considered ‘triply vile’. Danby, too, was unsure of Mordaunt’s politics, marking him as doubtful and absent in March-April 1679 in his calculation of likely voting in the proceedings against him. Mordaunt had been excused attendance on the Lords on 9 May 1679 on the (probably erroneous) assumption that he was under-age. On 30 Oct. 1680, Mordaunt was again excused attendance, this time on the grounds that he was still abroad. He was therefore absent from the division of 15 Nov. on the exclusion bill. He first took his seat in the Lords on 21 Dec. 1680, having received a writ of summons dated the previous day. A contemporary list of those who on 7 Jan. 1681 entered their dissent from the Lords’ decision not to put the question to commit the lord chief justice, Sir William Scroggs, following his impeachment by the Commons, includes Mordaunt’s name, although the printed version of the Journal does not include him among the signatories.
Mordaunt was a signatory of the petition presented to the king on 25 Jan. 1681 requesting that the Parliament called for Oxford should sit at Westminster as usual.
I am called one of the discontented and factious, but am glad to be sure you are of my mind in this; there is no tie but honour and gratitude. I am sure you, as little as anybody, can bear ill-usage and contempt, and since I never could deserve a good word from the king, nor ever had any obligation from Whitehall, whatsoever your thoughts are you will allow me the liberty of mine, and not confound as some do betwixt public and private concerns.Add. 39757, f. 108.
After the Parliament, Mordaunt contributed to a present of a gilt bowl from 14 Whig lords to Balliol College.
At the beginning of August 1681, ‘Romantic Lord Mordaunt’ fought a ‘pretty duel’ in Greenwich Park with James Hamilton, styled earl of Arran [S], the future 4th duke of Hamilton. Even the preliminaries reflected Mordaunt’s opposition to the court for, in attempting to arrange the duel, Mordaunt wrote that ‘circumstances force me to hazard as little as I can, hoping no favour from the Court, therefore will engage nobody’, and so the two men fought without seconds and were both wounded.
On Mordaunt’s majority there were serious legal issues to be addressed relating to his mother’s will. She had died in April 1679, leaving as her executors Peterborough, Henry Hyde, 2nd earl of Clarendon, Laurence Hyde, the future earl of Rochester, Hon. Andrew Newport‡, Sir Charles Wheeler‡, bt., Charles Herbert‡, (Sir) Edward Herbert‡, Arthur Herbert and John Evelyn. They had met in November 1679 ‘for the examining, auditing and disposing of this year’s account of the estate’. They also had some difficult matters to resolve, such as the provision for Mordaunt’s younger siblings. Some of them met at the end of April 1680 to consider Lady Mordaunt’s instructions to sell Parsons Green. This was clearly not to Mordaunt’s liking for on 18 Sept. 1681, Evelyn attended a further meeting of trustees to discuss Mordaunt’s ‘offer to procure’ £2,000 ‘for the payment of his brother and sisters’ portions, in consideration that we would possess him of Parsons Green and the coal farm’, worth £3,000 a year. On 21 Mar. 1682 the lord chancellor, Heneage Finch, earl of Nottingham, appointed in Lady Mordaunt’s will as an arbiter in any disputes, made an order detailing the payments Mordaunt would undertake to gain possession of his mother’s ‘real and personal estate’.
So successfully had Mordaunt mended his fences at court that while at Newmarket on 6 Oct. 1681 he kept the king up until midnight ‘having got him accidently in his closet’. He spent two hours attempting to reconcile the king to his son, James Scott, duke of Monmouth, but to no avail.
Reign of James II, 1685-8
Mordaunt was not present when James II’s Parliament opened on 19 May 1685, but he was in attendance at the next sitting on the 22nd. He attended on eight days of the 31 days of the first part of the session, before the adjournment on 2 July, and was named to two committees. After Parliament resumed on 9 Nov., Mordaunt was one of those who on the 19th seconded the motion of Devonshire (as Lord Cavendish had since become) to consider the king’s speech, which ended in an order for it to be considered on the 23rd. Before it could be discussed, though, Parliament was prorogued.
Gilbert Burnet, bishop of Salisbury, later wrote that ‘Mordaunt was the first man of quality that came over to try the Prince with relation to the affairs of England’.
On 28 July 1687 Mordaunt was granted another pass to go beyond the seas and by the end of August it was reported that he had arrived in Holland with his wife, and that he would command a regiment in the army of the States General and she serve as Princess Mary’s groom of the stole.
On 15 Oct. 1687 Mordaunt arrived at The Hague, and on the following day he and Henry Sydney visited William at Loo, the report being that he would be made lieutenant colonel of the regiment of Sir Henry Belasyse‡.
The Revolution and the Convention, 1689
According to one report, Mordaunt had reached London by 13 Dec. 1688 with the advanced party of William’s army led by Henry Fitzroy, duke of Grafton.
Mordaunt attended on the opening day of the Convention, 22 Jan. 1689. On 23 Jan. he was named to a small committee to look into the death of Arthur Capell, earl of Essex, and on 5 Feb. to a secret committee of four on the same matter. On 25 Jan. he presented a petition from his uncle, Peterborough, praying to be admitted to bail, but it being opposed, the earl was merely granted the liberty of the Tower.
Mordaunt’s wife arrived on 12 Feb. 1689, returning with Locke in the flotilla which brought Princess Mary to England.
Mordaunt acted as William’s messenger to the Lords as well as to individual peers. On 1 Mar. 1689 he acquainted the House on the king’s orders of a series of arrests: Mordaunt reported a draft of the Lords’ response, which called for any means necessary for the safety of the realm resulted in a suspension of habeas corpus. On 23 Mar. he entered his protest against the rejection of a proviso to the bill for abrogating the oaths which, by extending the time for taking the sacramental test and allowing it to be taken in any Protestant church, would have allowed Protestant Dissenters to qualify for office.
Mordaunt’s reward for his early commitment to William was his appointment on 9 Apr. 1689 as first commissioner of the treasury. Confident as ever, he was convinced ‘he would understand the business of it’ as well as Sidney Godolphin, Baron (later earl of) Godolphin, ‘in a fortnight’.
On 10 May 1689, a warrant was issued appointing Monmouth and eight others as commissioners for reforming abuses in the army, a task which took him away from Westminster into the Midlands and the North.
On 12 July 1689 Monmouth entered his dissent from the proviso added to the bill reversing the judgments in the court of king’s bench against Titus Oates, which enacted that until the matters for which Oates had been convicted had been heard and determined in Parliament, Oates should not be a witness, or give evidence, in court. On 30 July he entered his protest against the Lords’ resolution to adhere to their amendments to the bill. Also on 12 July he was named to manage a conference on the bill concerning the succession to the crown. On 14 Aug., in the company of Edward Fowler, the future bishop of Gloucester, and Thomas Firmin, he helped to pacify the silk weavers lobbying the House with their petition against the bill enjoining the wearing of woollens.
Monmouth attended on the first day of the new session which followed almost immediately afterwards, opening on 23 Oct. 1689. He was classed among the supporters of the court in a list prepared by the marquess of Carmarthen (as Danby had become) between October 1689 and February 1690. On 2 Nov. he was one of those instrumental in the appointment of a committee (of which he was a member) to investigate ‘the advisers and prosecutors of the murders’ of William Russell‡, Lord Russell, Algernon Sydney‡, Sir Thomas Armstrong‡, Henry Cornish, and others, and to establish ‘who were the advisers of issuing out of writs of quo warrantos against corporations, and who were their regulators, and also who were the public assertors of the dispensing power.’
Monmouth made great play with his links to the City, dining on 18 Dec. 1689 with Sir Stephan Evance‡, John Foche and Charles Duncombe‡ (who was ‘much devoted’ to him), and proposing that they lend the king £300,000. Having secured their agreement he could not resist the observation that the money had been raised by ‘some that were countered disaffected to his government, and friends to a commonwealth, for it was mostly fanatic and Whigs money’.
As early as February 1690 Morrice had heard that Monmouth would be put out of the treasury, and saw it as an indication of William’s inclination towards the Tories. ‘No man’, Morrice thought, ‘hath done more for his majesty’.
The Parliament of 1690
Monmouth attended the opening of the new Parliament on 20 Mar. 1690, but on 31 Mar. he was absent from a call of the House. Despite his removal from the treasury Monmouth kept his bedchamber place and his regiment. Nor did he cut his ties to the radicals: on 3 Apr. Edward Harley‡ delivered a letter from his father to Monmouth when ‘Major Wildman was with him’.
On 2 May 1690 notes made by Carmarthen on the second reading of the abjuration bill record Monmouth making several interventions in support of the bill, including asking of the peers why anyone who had taken the oath would ‘scruple the declaration’, and suggesting ‘that Lords would submit their private scruples to the acts of Parliament’.
On 7 May 1690, Monmouth supported an enquiry into the lists of the lieutenancy and militia of London.
After the prorogation of January 1690, William had announced that when he went to campaign in Ireland the queen would be assisted by a council of nine, including Monmouth.
On 19 June 1690 Monmouth was elected master of the Company of Skinners, in another show of his popularity in the City, which not everyone regarded with equanimity.
The threat of a French invasion brought Monmouth’s meddling to a peak. With Torrington (as his uncle Arthur Herbert had since become) apparently unwilling to risk a naval battle with the French, Monmouth had offered to join the fleet in late June 1690, an offer the queen was willing to consider in order to remove him from London, especially because he was suspected of leaking details of government discussions.
On 15 July 1690 the queen informed the king that on the previous day, she had received an offer from Monmouth of £200,000 to dissolve Parliament, to which she replied that it was ‘a thing I could not promise, and unless they would lend money, which is extremely wanted, upon other terms, I must go without it’.
Monmouth attended the prorogation on 28 July 1690. On 8 Sept. he met the king at Marlborough upon his return from Ireland, and four days later he spoke three times in council against the king’s plans to go to Holland before the parliamentary session.
In January 1691 Monmouth was one of those who accompanied the king into Holland, arriving back in England in mid-March.
Monmouth was also involved in the case of Foulke Wallwin, an ‘idiot’, having been awarded custody of his estate and person on 7 Dec. 1689 and granted wardship of the boy on 5 Apr. 1690. On 17 Dec. 1691, the boy’s mother, Mary Wallwin, petitioned the Lords complaining of some of Monmouth’s proceedings, which he was ordered to answer on 21 December. Once he gave in his answer the matter was referred to the committee for privileges. On 31 Dec. Locke commented that ‘the idiot occasions much talk, I know nothing of it but that it shortly comes before the House of Lords’, where it lapsed, possibly because of an agreement drawn up between the parties in February 1692, or the death of Foulke shortly afterwards.
On 31 Dec. 1691 Monmouth was named to draw up reasons for a conference concerning the votes of the Commons on the 18th relating to the regulation of the East India Company. He acted as a teller on 12 Jan. 1692, in opposition to Scarbrough, on the question whether to receive the bill of Henry Howard, 7th duke of Norfolk, for a divorce from his wife, Mary, duchess of Norfolk, the only daughter and heiress of Peterborough, and consequently Monmouth’s cousin and eventual rival for Peterborough’s estate. Ten days later Monmouth was once again a teller, this time in opposition to Norfolk, in a division in committee of the whole House on the bill against adhering to their majesties enemies on a clause concerning returning to England from France without the king’s leave. On 26 Jan. Monmouth was selected to count the ballots in the election of peers to act as commissioners for examining the public accounts. He was named on 22 Feb. to report a conference on the small tithes bill. On the same day he acted as a teller in opposition to Thomas Tufton, 6th earl of Thanet, in a division on a bill on judges’ commissions and salaries, on a proposed clause that if a judge gave a corrupt judgment, the aggrieved party might bring an action against the judge. A clause was included in the Commons’ bill vesting the forfeited estates in England in the crown to help pay for the war exempting Monmouth’s grant of the manor of Dauntsey. The bill, however, was lost in the Lords at the prorogation.
On 14 Apr. 1692 Robert Yard‡ reported that Monmouth was going to Guernsey to command there in the absence of its governor Christopher Hatton, Viscount Hatton. Monmouth’s regiment was quartered there and at Jersey. He left London on 18 Apr. and after a spell organizing the defences of Guernsey, he went over to Flanders in June, arriving back in England on 20 July.
Monmouth attended on the opening day of the next session, 4 Nov. 1692. On 19 Nov. he wrote to Locke that ‘our revolving government always affords us something new every three or four months, but what would be most new, and strange, were to see it do anything that were really for its interest’. Although, he wrote, it had been reported that the king was
grown in love with Englishmen and Whigs, it is true he smiles and talks with us, but Mr [Edward] Seymour and [Sir John] Trevor‡ come up the backstairs’. Having been informed that ‘Nottingham is a little lawyer and no man of business, yet the Court have taken all possible pains to prevent the petition against him and my good Lord Mayor to set it aside broke up the court’.
The reference was to the mayor adjourning the common council on 11 Nov. to prevent it voting to petition against Nottingham.
After being forecast as a likely opponent of the duke of Norfolk’s divorce bill, on 2 Jan. 1693 Monmouth acted as a teller against its first reading. On 31 Jan. he protested against the decision not to continue with the trial of Charles Mohun, 4th Baron Mohun, that day. On 3 Feb. he posed two questions to be asked of the judges relating to the circumstances of the killing of their victim, Mountford, and on 4 Feb. he was one of a minority of peers that voted Mohun guilty of murder.
When Middleton left England for St Germain in March 1693, he carried with him offers of assistance from Monmouth among others, which led to James II’s conciliatory declaration of April 1693.
Having had personal experience of Guernsey, in March 1693 Monmouth had approached Hatton, through Nottingham, with a proposal touching the government of the island. As Nottingham explained it, ‘upon your Lordship’s resignation of it to him, you shall have ample security for the payment of all the profits of it during your two lives and in case that he should die before your Lordship that he believes his majesty would grant your Lordship the government, which must be intended of a present grant of the reversion after my Lord Monmouth’. Negotiations continued until August, when the project appeared to stumble on the king’s unwillingness to decide the matter while on campaign. It then lapsed.
Monmouth attended on the opening day of the 1693-4 session, 7 Nov. 1693. On 1 Dec. he acted as a teller in opposition to Norfolk on the question whether to adjourn the House in the cause of Grafton v. Holt.
Meanwhile, on 15 Jan. 1694 Monmouth was named as a manager of a conference relating to the previous summer’s expedition at sea. He voted on 17 Feb. in favour of reversing the court of chancery’s dismission of Montagu’s petition in the case of Montagu v. Bath and entered his protest against the order to dismiss the petition and to affirm the judgment. A week later he entered his dissent from the order dismissing a further petition from Montagu. On 19 Feb. George Horton and John Deverell were ordered into custody for using violence when preventing the delivery to the servants of Charles Seymour, 6th duke of Somerset, of a horse belonging to Monmouth. In his report of the proceedings of 26 Feb. L’Hermitage noted that Monmouth had been in favour of the bill for regulating treason trials: it was rejected at second reading, however, without a division being called for.
On 17 July 1694 Shrewsbury, promoted to a dukedom the previous April, wrote to the king concerning reports that Monmouth had been reconciled to the exiled court at St Germains: ‘it is natural for a man that is very ill of one side, to desire not to be so on the other’. Shrewsbury pleaded his case: ‘although he may have made what advances are possible of that kind, if he could find his account under your government, it is what he would prefer much before any such alteration’. Given that in Shrewsbury’s opinion ‘he appears in so much better a temper to act anything for your service than you can believe’ he did ‘not think it at all advisable to turn him out of his lieutenancy’. He cleared Monmouth of involvement in the recent corn riot at Northampton. Monmouth kept his lieutenancy.
Monmouth attended on the opening day of the 1694-5 session, 12 Nov. 1694, but two weeks later he was excused attendance at a call of the House. When the Lords passed the triennial bill on 18 Dec., ‘without a division or amendment’, Robert Sutton, 2nd Baron Lexinton, recorded that ‘eight or ten Lords were against it; that is, they would have this Parliament determine in 1695 [the act as passed provided for the termination of the current Parliament in November 1696]. The earl of Monmouth began it, but did not insist upon it, as being convinced if the Commons should oppose the amendment, the bill was not to be hazarded, or the House put to retract for so small a difference as one year’.
On 12 Mar. Monmouth was represented by counsel as one of several peers claiming baronies by descent, whose ancestors were called by writ, part of the debate over the peerage claim of Sir Richard Verney, who would eventually become 11th Baron Willoughby de Broke. A week later Monmouth acted as a teller, in opposition to John Churchill, earl (later duke) of Marlborough, on the previous question: the main question was over whether the child of a daughter of a person summoned to Parliament by writ had a right to demand a summons to Parliament. As John Verney‡, the heir to the disputed barony, reported the debate lasted till six o’clock with Monmouth one of those undertaking ‘the cause of the barons’.
Monmouth was one of the most determined pursuers of John Sheffield, marquess of Normanby (later duke of Buckingham) when it was discovered that he had apparently taken and distributed bribes to promote the passage of the convex lights bill, relating to the illumination of the city of London, which had been taken on by the Convex Light Company the previous year. On 5 Apr. 1695 Vernon noted that Monmouth was determined to attack Normanby, and if it failed ‘he will endeavour to enter a protestation that shall contain the substance of the whole affair’.
On 18 May 1695 Robert Price‡ told Henry Somerset, duke of Beaufort, that it had been ‘positively affirmed’ by Monmouth, that ‘the king declared the night before he went hence that this Parliament should be dissolved next September’.
The Parliament of 1695
Monmouth attended on the opening day of the 1695-6 session, 22 Nov. 1695. On 3 Dec., in committee of the whole House debating the state of the nation, he favoured enquiring into the state of trade first ‘because the ill coin is a disadvantage’. Then when the state of the coin was debated the following day, he was in favour of setting a date by which clipped money could no longer be used, and called for an address to be drawn up on the subject matter. He was appointed to the committee to draw up the address, which was also entrusted with attending a conference on it on the 5th. On that same day, in a debate in committee of the whole on the proceedings of the Scottish East India Company, Monmouth opposed the suggestion that the merchants also attend. In a debate on the state of the nation the following day he noted the losses of merchant shipping and moved to enquire into the management of the fleet.
On 3 Jan. 1696 Monmouth was named to prepare for a conference on the Lords’ amendments to the bill regulating the silver coinage, and to manage subsequent conferences. Following the report on 8 Jan. of the conference the House resolved to vindicate its rights to inflict pecuniary penalties in legislation, before it finished going through the Commons’ amendments. Monmouth acted as a teller, in opposition to Louis de Duras, 2nd earl of Feversham, on the question whether to adjourn or to proceed with consideration of the amendments.
On 20 Feb. 1696 Monmouth and Algernon Capell, 2nd earl of Essex, introduced William Henry Nassau de Zuylestein, earl of Rochford, into the House. Monmouth was named on 24 Feb. to manage a conference on the address following the king’s speech on the Assassination Plot. He was one of those peers that ‘made very learned speeches upon the occasion’ of Devonshire bringing in the Association on 26 February.
Monmouth was one of those Whigs touted for office after the end of the session.
In the wake of the Assassination Plot, Sir John Fenwick‡ was arrested in June 1696. Rumours abounded as to whom he had implicated during interrogation as in contact with the Jacobite court. Many assumed that Monmouth would be one. Monmouth reacted to these rumours by spreading his own, chiefly against Godolphin, and he may even have been behind some agitation in the City for a full parliamentary examination of the Plot.
Monmouth attended the opening day of the 1696-7 session, 20 Oct. 1696. Two days later he informed the House that the king had appointed later in the day to receive the Address on his speech. When Vernon sent a copy of the Address to Shrewsbury on 29 Oct., he noted that it had been ‘drawn by’ Monmouth.
According to Vernon, Monmouth was one of the peers involved in making the case for the second reading of the Fenwick attainder bill on 18 December. During his speech, ‘making his observations on some iniquities in the late times’, Monmouth happened ‘to jumble’ George Jeffreys, Baron Jeffreys, with James II’s notorious agents, Philip Burton and Richard Graham‡, provoking a complaint from John Jeffreys, 2nd Baron Jeffreys. Thomas Herbert, 8th earl of Pembroke, as lord privy seal, intervened to prevent a quarrel, and Monmouth apologized.
At the same time Monmouth was manoeuvring behind the scenes. On 19 Dec. George Rodney Bridges‡ told his step-son, Shrewsbury, that Monmouth had ‘employed persons’ to Lady Mary Fenwick, suggesting that if Fenwick would continue to endeavour to prove his ‘hearsay paper’, Monmouth would ‘send him letters to make it good’, presumably from Smith.
Despite the revelations of the previous day, Monmouth ‘spoke and voted’ for the third reading of the Fenwick attainder bill on 23 Dec. 1696.
Those willing to put a favourable gloss on Monmouth’s dabblings thought that the duchess and Mrs Lawson had applied to Monmouth to ‘ask what was fit for him to do on this occasion and the answers he gave them and occasional discourses he had with them at several times the duchess put in writing in one paper and styled it instructions for Sir John Fenwick how to behave himself at his trial.’
On 9 Jan. 1697, following the Christmas adjournment, and after the House had read the three papers, Monmouth was heard in a speech lasting over two hours in which he attempted to discredit them.
Monmouth may have escaped lightly, for as Somers reported, ‘the thing at first insisted on, was, to have voted him the contriver; but this way was accepted of at last, as not being altogether so hard. I can hardly remember a question insisted on, when there were so few negatives; six or seven at most were the number’.
On 20 Jan. James Brydges, the future duke of Chandos, reported that Monmouth had ‘a vast deal of company’ visiting him in the Tower.
At the beginning of February Monmouth approached Portland in an attempt to obtain his release, suggesting that Thomas Tenison, archbishop of Canterbury, and Somers might move the matter in Council. On 9 Feb. Vernon reported that Monmouth will ‘forbear moving for his liberty till next week. In the meantime, he is pretty much visited by my Lord Sunderland, and Blanchard goes sometimes to him. So that some people intend to keep fair weather with him’.
Vernon commented that it would be ‘better for himself and his neighbours’ if Monmouth were to be ‘a quiet one’.
On 3 Dec. 1697 Peterborough attended the opening day of the 1697-8 session. He visited the king on 15 Dec., and (despite Blanchard’s comments) Vernon noted that he was keen to support Sunderland against his detractors in Parliament, declaring himself ‘a champion of my lord chamberlain, and if he be attacked he will break his truce, which, he says, he only entered into at his solicitation’. However, as Vernon implied, Sunderland may not have found that too helpful.
Vernon reported to Shrewsbury on 1 Jan. 1698 a conversation with the recently resigned Sunderland in which he told the latter that people ‘were puzzled to think what should occasion so great a familiarity’ between himself and Peterborough; Vernon was also ‘amazed’ by Sunderland’s suggested recipe for keeping Peterborough ‘quiet’, ‘by making him easier in his fortune, which was very low’, and therefore he proposed asking the king to give him a pension of £2,000 a year and to restore him to the Council. Vernon still thought it necessary to make plans to counter any moves Peterborough might make to revive the charges made in Fenwick’s papers.
In the new year, Peterborough’s name was mentioned in the context of a series of factional battles, starting with the attempts in the Commons to accuse the chancellor, Charles Montagu, the future earl of Halifax, of corruption. On 18 Jan. Vernon informed Shrewsbury that ‘there are four taken notice of in the House of Lords, who would be troubling the waters’, including Peterborough, but that they were ‘so well-known as to have all their motions narrowly watched’.
Minor controversy followed Peterborough, when, on 22 Mar. 1698, Joseph Wilson and others were ordered into custody for breach of privilege for fishing in a tumultuous manner in the river Nene within one of the manors of George Compton, 4th earl of Northampton. The men petitioned on 31 Mar., claiming they had the right to do so, but on 18 Apr. the Lords found in Northampton’s favour. Luttrell described the dispute as ‘by breaking into his fishery, which the earl of Peterborough’s son claimed a right to do’.
The Parliament of 1698
Just prior to the sitting of the 1698 Parliament, Sunderland felt the need to reassure Shrewsbury that ‘I cannot imagine Lord Peterborough can be so mad as to revive a thing, which, when new, had such a reception as that had. If he should, it is certain it will hurt nobody but himself.’ He told the duke that his last communication with Peterborough had been five or six weeks previously, from Drayton, where he said he ‘avoided company, was a philosopher, and very easy in his own concerns’. Over the summer, Sunderland wrote, Peterborough had written to him with ‘a good deal against the present men employed, but nothing particular, and much compliment to me and kindness, which I have deserved if giving good and friendly advice were the way, for that I have done very plainly and very often’.
Peterborough attended on the second sitting of the 1698-9 session, 9 December 1698. On 8 Feb. 1699, in the debate in committee of the whole House on the king’s speech of 1 Feb., Peterborough intervened to ask Burnet if, given his writings on the subject, his support for retaining the Dutch Guards meant that he was a bad historian.
Vernon continued to keep a close watch of Peterborough’s activities. In August 1699 he wrote a lengthy note for Shrewsbury detailing Peterborough’s state of mind. The earl, he wrote, professed he had always felt ‘a coldness from the duke, even while both of them were carrying on the business of the Revolution’. He did express some esteem for Shrewsbury, but none at all for Orford. Peterborough also believed there were ‘contrivances to ensnare and ruin him; that he was forced to be upon his guard; and for these three years he had not gone anywhere, or spoke to anybody, without noticing it down in his table-book’. He thought he had been ‘turned out disgracefully, and expected amends to be made him; but did not mean it by being restored to any of his employments, for he declared he would accept of none’. He thought the Whigs had been ungrateful to Sunderland: he understood, he said, that the Whigs ‘took a pretence to suspect him’ on account of his friendship with Peterborough himself. In fact, he said, Sunderland had taken ‘great pains to restrain him following his own resentments’; indeed Sunderland had told him ‘that he must and would be his enemy, while he and the party were at variance, which, he said, he could not take ill from him.’
Peterborough attended on the opening day of the 1699-1700 session, 16 Nov. 1699. At this point Matthew Smith’s allegations, chiefly against the shortcomings of Shrewsbury, resurfaced. In late November Vernon’s assessment of Smith’s Remarks upon the D-of S-‘s Letter to the House of Lords, concerning Captain Smith was that ‘Peterborough has a greater hand in it than I thought at first’. On 7 Dec. the Lords took Smith’s allegation into consideration. Peterborough intervened to ‘know whether the printed letter agreed with what [was] entered in the Journal’, presumably attempting to divert attention from his own role in the work. Vernon noted that Peterborough had ‘affected very much of late to be whispering with’ Edward Villiers, earl of Jersey, the secretary of state, who ‘says Lord Peterborough told him this morning, he wondered what Smith meant by publishing this book; that if he had had any hand in advising him, he should have gone another way to work’. On 11 Dec. Smith was examined before the Lords, where he admitted writing a book he sent via lord chancellor Somers to the House. As Vernon recounted, ‘Peterborough behaved himself like one that raved’; after insisting that Smith’s book be read, ‘while it was reading, in a careless manner, he fell a talking all the while with my lord chancellor, and then would have it read again, because he had not minded it; but the Lords were not for humouring his frenzies’. They resolved that Smith should be re-committed for a breach of privilege in printing their proceedings. At this Peterborough spoke against the first order for Smith’s commitment, ‘though he had seconded the motion, there being no proof that he had published the book till he came to the bar and owned it; and I hear some Lords were not satisfied that it was very regular’. On 15 Dec., according to Somers, the Lords resolved that the written book ‘sent to the House by Smith’ and the printed book, ‘being a copy of it, was a false and scandalous libel, reflecting on your grace’s honour, and the honour of the House, and have ordered it burnt by the hangman’. Somers added, ‘that which I am most pleased with’, that Peterborough, ‘after much ado, was brought to tell his long-threatened story, and, I think, it is not possible a thing should come off more poorly’.
This session also saw the revival of the dispute between Peterborough and the duchess of Norfolk over her father’s estates in Northamptonshire, which Peterborough was pursuing through chancery. The matter at issue was some work in Drayton Park; Peterborough had failed in an attempt in chancery to prevent it taking place, so he had resorted to claiming a breach of privilege. On 7 Dec. 1699 Thomas Hoite was ordered into custody. On 22 Dec., the duchess petitioned the House, owning Hoite to be her servant, and praying to be heard by counsel on the matter. After the House heard Serjeant Nathan Wright (shortly to be appointed lord keeper) on behalf of Peterborough and Sir Thomas Powys‡ for the duchess, on 9 Jan. 1700, Hoite was discharged, without paying fees. The House indicated their unhappiness with the whole proceeding by ordering that in future, if the House adjudged a complaint not to be a breach of privilege, the Lord who made the complaint should pay the fees and expenses of the person taken into custody.
Peterborough ‘took notice’ in the Lords on 10 Jan. 1700 of the pamphlet An Enquiry into the Causes of the Miscarriage of the Scots Colony at Darien. He described the book as written ‘in the language of persons that smarted under great losses’, although they aimed at ‘being admitted to an union with England’. He thought a union both convenient, ‘and in this conjuncture’, necessary, ‘in regard to our present and future tranquillity’.
Although Peterborough had struck a chord with the court and James Ogilvy, earl of Seafield [S], thought ‘the king has a good while resolved to propose it to both Houses and was only considering a good opportunity for it’, he also added ‘it would have done much better’ had it come from him. John Campbell, 2nd duke of Argyll [S], felt that Peterborough had acted to pre-empt the court, possibly with the intention ‘to ruin the success of the project, though on other occasions he professes a regard to the Scots nation’.
In response to the Commons’ refusal to vote thanks to William Stephens for preaching a sermon before them on the anniversary of the execution of Charles I, Peterborough was reported to have given him a living valued at £150 a year, though Stephens turned it down.
With the Whig ministers under pressure during the session, Peterborough was not perceived as favourable to the Junto. On 27 Feb. Vernon reported that Somers was aware that Peterborough ‘lay in wait to show him a mark of his kindness’, seeing that Somers ‘stood in his way against his being revenged’ on Shrewsbury and Orford. Peterborough, he wrote, ‘could not bear’ Shrewsbury having the white staff as lord chamberlain, and although ‘Orford were out of employment, yet he must be brought lower, and it must not be deferred’, otherwise Orford, he feared, would return to the admiralty. Nevertheless, Somers thought that although Peterborough ‘was an ill man, yet there were others as bad as he’.
Peterborough attended the opening day of the 1701 Parliament on 10 Feb. 1701. Three days later he chaired and reported from the committee on the Address.
Peterborough entered wholeheartedly into the attack on the Junto of 1701, taking the Commons’ part in the increasingly angry exchanges over the impeachments of the Junto lords. On 9 June he entered his protest against the decision not to appoint a committee to meet with a Commons’ committee regarding the impeachments. Five days later he protested against sending a message to the Commons requesting a conference on the subject, and later in the day he entered another protest against a second resolution not to appoint a committee of both Houses. He entered a third protest on 17 June against the resolution that the Lords go into Westminster Hall, in order to proceed upon the trial of Somers, and then he voted against Somers’s acquittal and entered a protest against the decision to acquit. Two days later he acted as a teller, opposite Rivers, on a question about when to give a third reading to a supply bill. On 23 June he entered a sole protest against the resolution that the delay in passing supply was occasioned by the ‘fatal counsel’ to delay the meeting of Parliament, and by the ‘unnecessary delays’ of the Commons. In the protest he argued that while ‘nothing could be more fatal to the interest of Europe, to the interest of the Protestant religion, and the safety of England, than the so long delay of the meeting of a Parliament, after the death of the King of Spain’, yet he rejected the imputation of ‘unnecessary delays’ to the Commons. On that same day, following the arrest on the 21st of Peterborough’s servant, James Drake, all four men involved in the arrest were ordered into custody for breach of privilege. On 24 June he was one of four peers given the task of counting the ballots for a committee of nine to examine proceedings on a union between England and Scotland, and reported the result to the House, including his own election. The House was prorogued on 24 June, Peterborough having attended on 58 days, 55 per cent of the total. He had been appointed to a further ten committees.
Peterborough attended on the opening day of the 1701-2 Parliament, 30 Dec. 1701. On 1 Jan. 1702 he signed the address expressing the resentment of the House at the proceedings of the French king in owning the Pretender. The following day he was named to the committee to draw an address promising that the Lords would assist the king ‘in reducing the exorbitant power of France, and settling the balance of Europe’, which he reported to the House. On 12 Jan., in a debate in committee of the whole House on the abjuration bill, there was much discussion of the definition of ‘abjuration’: Peterborough ‘explained in several particulars what he thought was meant by the word abjure vizt - that the rich man should fight against the pretended P. of W. with his purse and the poor man with his person &c’.
Possibly through Harry Mordaunt’s political connection to Wharton, Peterborough had been drawn into the election at Malmesbury in November 1701. Mordaunt delivered an election petition to the Commons on 14 Jan. 1702 from five burgesses complaining of bribery by William Adye in the return of Sir Charles Hedges‡ and Edward Pauncefort‡. On 29 Jan. the Commons heard the evidence and in the end resolved to take the petitioners and the defeated candidate Daniel Parke into custody. Although Parke absolved Peterborough from any role in the bribery, Adye challenged this view. Peterborough was present in the chamber, because when Robert Dormer‡ asked that Peterborough should have leave to make his defence before the Commons, Sir Christopher Musgrave‡ responded that ‘there never was such an invasion of our rights to have a Lord come into the House and prompt the counsel as a solicitor and stand with his hat on as a member’. The Speaker affected not to be aware that Peterborough had been there; but he was eventually invited to speak. He did so for around an hour and a half, but to no avail, it being voted that he was ‘guilty of many indirect practices’ in endeavouring to get Parke elected.
our good friend Lord Peterborough was by the treachery and malice of the Tory Party censured yesterday in the House of Commons, for which he is the less pitied because he last year joined so much with that party, and in the impeachment and prosecution of his Brother-Whigs, for which his new friends the Tories have well repaid him. But I thank them for the example: not only for setting my Lord Peterborough right (for this fixes him ours) but for shewing all those of our party who tamper with them, what they have to expect.
TNA, PRO 30/24/20/55.
After the third reading of the abjuration bill on 24 Feb., Nottingham’s proposal for union with Scotland was seconded by Peterborough, although the matter did not proceed for the moment as the ministry had no instructions from the king.
The Accession of Anne and the 1702 Parliament
As Peterborough was present in the House on 8 Mar. 1702 he was appointed to manage a conference on the death of the king, and later reported from the committee of the whole House drawing up an address to Queen Anne. He also reported from committee on 12 Mar. the Address on the Queen’s Speech. On 18 and 20 May he was named to manage a conference on the prevention of correspondence between England and the allies with France and Spain. Also on 20 May he was named to manage a conference on the Lords’ amendments to the bill for the encouragement of privateers and on 22 May he was named to draw up an address on the same matter, which he reported on the following day. Peterborough was present on the last day of the session, 25 May, having attended on 71 days, 71 per cent of the total. He had been named to a further 17 committees.
The death of Sunderland on 28 Sept. 1702 removed a steadying influence on Peterborough. He had arrived at Althorp shortly after the event and felt sufficiently moved to write to the countess of Marlborough on 6 Oct. acknowledging the ‘many obligations’ he had owed to the earl.
Queen Anne’s new ministry faced the stark dilemma of how to employ Peterborough’s talents. Even before William’s death, as early as January 1702 Peterborough had been rumoured to be in line for a commission as captain general of the forces to be sent to the West Indies.
Peterborough had been present on the opening day of the 1702 Parliament, 20 Oct. 1702. On 10 Dec. William Nicolson, bishop of Carlisle recorded receiving ‘a very pleasant account of the earl of Peterborough’s turning himself into all shapes (of porter, chairman &c.) to ferret out intrigues’. On 23 Dec. Peterborough petitioned, as the grandson and heir male of John Mordaunt†, earl of Peterborough, against an order made in the court of Chancery on 16 Dec., on behalf of Lady Mary Mordaunt (as the dowager duchess of Norfolk was sometimes known) and her husband, Sir John Germaine‡. On 20 Jan. 1703, the Lords heard the case for five hours, with Sir Simon Harcourt, the future Viscount Harcourt, and Sir William Cowper, the future Earl Cowper, acting as Peterborough’s counsel. The case rested on the relative status of two deeds from the reign of Charles I: Peterborough claimed the lands in question by the second deed. Lord Keeper Wright explained why he regarded both deeds as of equal regard and that the earl’s title was maintainable at common law, so that Chancery had no jurisdiction. The House then ordered one counsel on either side to argue the issue. On the advice of the judges the Lords dismissed his petition and affirmed the order.
In about January 1703 Nottingham forecast Peterborough as likely to oppose the bill against occasional conformity. On 17 Dec. 1702 and 9 Jan. 1703 he was named as a manager of conferences on the bill. On 16 Jan. he managed and spoke at the conference on the bill and supported adhering to the Lords’ wrecking amendment to the penal clause of the bill.
The death of the dowager countess of Peterborough on 18 Apr. 1702 saw Peterborough gain her jointure of £1500 a year, although the duchess of Norfolk received her personal estate.
but I must at the same time confess he hath not that gift I wish in a minister, of timing things aright. He should with less difficulty in my poor opinion and with less dispute have abjured the prince of Wales and with greater dispatch and less hesitation have accepted the Portugal Treaty, and I fear he is likely to trouble us again unseasonably, and without occasion, with his occasional bill.
Add. 61458, ff. 201-2.
In about November, Charles Spencer, 3rd earl of Sunderland, forecast Peterborough as likely to oppose a new bill against occasional conformity. Sunderland did not feel the need to alter his assessment in a second forecast made around the end of November.
Peterborough attended the opening day of the 1703-4 session on 9 Nov. 1703. On 11 Nov. he reported from the committee on the Address. On 14 Dec. he spoke and voted against the occasional conformity bill, having assured Swift ‘in the most solemn manner, that if he had the least suspicion, the rejecting this bill would hurt the Church, or do kindness to the dissenters, he would lose his right hand rather than speak against it’.
On 8 July 1704 Peterborough wrote to the duchess of Marlborough that the queen had now, he wrote,
what is so necessary in England[’s] success. The victory at home is of equal importance with that abroad. The elector of Bavaria reduced is not of greater advantage to the common cause, than that the queen has now at her feet all faction here. Everybody will now own the effects of the happy influence of those she confides in, malice and all cabals are defeated even Parliaments (I will not say are subdued) but overcome by her majesty’s virtue and the good fortune of her general.
Add. 61458, ff. 207-8.
On the death of the Tory leader, Sir Christopher Musgrave, at the end of July, he remarked that although they ‘were not always of opinion’, ‘there was so much of a sturdy Englishman in him, that I always wished him well’.
Peterborough attended the opening of 1704-5 session, on 24 Oct. 1704. On 23 Nov., following one of Haversham’s set piece speeches on the ills of the nation, Peterborough remarked that ‘when we live without French drink, the French must live without English victual’. He also remarked on the ‘different figures made by our land and sea-commanders; an admiral being forced to foot in, from Whitehall to Wapping, whilst a field officer greater than a lord’, presumably comparing the poor reception given to the returning Sir George Rooke‡ after his capture of Gibraltar and holding off the French fleet off Cape Malaga to the status of the victors of Blenheim, fought on the same day as Malaga. In the debate in committee of the whole House on the state of the nation with regard to Scotland on 6 Dec., provoked by the Scottish Act of Security, Peterborough ‘was for playing act against act, and all would be safe’. He said he had been frightened by a series of dangers: the joining of the French army with the Bavarians, the French attack on the English fleet in the Mediterranean, and ‘the late noise of a Tack’; but all of these ‘had blown over’. Scotland, he concluded, was ‘our little sister, and she will squawl till something’s given her’. James Johnston‡ also recorded the debate noting that when it was said that the queen should have resisted the Scottish acts, Peterborough replied that the queen ‘had the power of France to resist, with the folly of Austria, the selfishness of the Dutch, and the ignorance of the Portuguese, with factions and other disorders at home; all which she had resisted, and would resist; but he should be sorry to have her accustomed to resist Parliament’. On 15 Dec., when the House debated the occasional conformity bill, Charles Finch, 4th earl of Winchilsea, seemed to argue that the House would be forced by the Commons to pass the bill. Peterborough thought that this was ‘to bully the House’. Winchilsea’s riposte that he was neither for bullying, nor would be bullied, then seemed to lead to a whispered challenge: it was overheard, and the House intervened to prevent a duel.
Peterborough was absent from the Lords from 20 Feb. to 12 Mar. 1705, when he was named as a manager of a conference on the Lords’ amendment to the militia bill, and further business on the bill on that and the following day. Also on 13 Mar. he was named to manage a conference on the amendments made by the Commons to a naturalization bill. Peterborough attended the last day of the session, 14 Mar., having been present on 47 days, 48 per cent of the total, and been named to 26 committees. At some point around this date, in an analysis of the peerage in relation to the Succession question, he was noted as a Hanoverian.
The 1705 Parliament and Service in Portugal
On 2 Mar. 1705 Peterborough wrote to the duchess of Marlborough, that ‘I am sorry to find we are so mad a people’, who ‘show in some public assemblies our folly and pride’, adding ‘I have not had the honour of seeing your grace since I received the queen’s commands in relation to what I first heard of from yourself’. The ‘queen’s command’ was a commission, which he received on 31 Mar., to be commander-in-chief of all troops accompanying the fleet to Portugal. After receiving the sacrament on 20 May, and taking the oaths on the day following in Westminster Hall, he went to Plymouth to embark, arriving at Lisbon on 9 June.
In July 1705, John Methuen‡ in Lisbon gave Godolphin his opinion of Peterborough that ‘beside the life, spirit and resolution which indeed I expected there appears in him a great temper and calmness which seem the effects of a strong judgment’.
At the beginning of October 1705 Barcelona fell to the Allies, with Peterborough very much in the forefront of the action. He was keen to make clear to Godolphin his personal losses in the process, writing that month:
I have in a manner supported all here with my little stock. I sold, mortgaged and took up a year’s advance upon my estate, got all my pay advanced, took all the money up at Lisbon upon my own account, that I could anywise get, and all gone to support of this siege and other services. I have left my wife and children nothing to live upon, little expecting my stay in these parts. I conjure your Lordship pay the bills I have drawn for the last money lent towards raising a Spanish regiment.
Add 28056, ff. 329-33.
On 12 Nov. Peterborough was excused from a call of the House. Following the death on 19 Nov. of the duchess of Norfolk, Peterborough was reported to be challenging her will which left her estate to her husband, Sir John Germaine.
Despite the successes of the campaign, Peterborough’s position in Spain was deteriorating by the spring of 1706. There were personality clashes and disagreements over strategy with the king and his advisors, both Spanish and Imperial, especially the ‘whole Vienna crew’.
By the middle of October 1706 Godolphin knew that Peterborough was ‘preparing materials of all sorts to perplex and embroil all the public affairs this winter’, lodging ‘copies of these papers in the hands of his agents here, to be distributed to such peoples as he thinks will be glad to lay hold of things of that nature’—especially Nottingham.
Peterborough spent several months in Italy over the autumn and winter, meeting allies and negotiating a loan in Genoa. He returned to Spain at the end of 1706, where he advocated a defensive strategy in opposition to the ministry and the other generals, Galway, Stanhope and Charles O’Hara, Baron Tyrawley [I]. Shortly afterwards news arrived from England of his recall. The official letter revoking his Spanish command was sent by Sunderland on 23 Dec. 1706. On 14 Jan. 1707 Sunderland followed up with a letter telling him that the queen had heard that Peterborough had ‘taken up great sums of money there [Genoa] at a most extraordinary price’, and that she had ‘ordered the bills for the said money not to be accepted, the same having been drawn without any authority or permission.’ It was the queen’s pleasure that ‘you return forthwith to England to acquaint her majesty with the reasons and grounds of your proceedings.’ On 16 Feb. Peterborough wrote from Valencia to Sunderland defending his conduct. He added in a postscript that ‘my impatience was great to come to England, but your Lordship will perceive I could not return with honour till after the campaign, under my engagements to the duke of Savoy, and my obligations to the king of Spain as his general.’
I am as sorry for the ill successes in Spain as if the affairs there were under my care. I cannot but be surprised at the measures have been taken in that country, if the proper measures had been pursued for my Lord Rivers arrival, it was plain we might a second time have been possessed of Madrid before any succours from France could have hindered it. I am confident when I have the good fortune to see you that you will be satisfied I have done my outmost for the public service with and without a character.
Add. 70249, Peterborough to R. Harley, 8 May 1707 [N.S.].
Herein lay the rub for the ministry: having been deprived of his Spanish commands Peterborough was in a prime position to benefit from the allied defeat at Almanza in April 1707. As Godolphin put it, ‘what vexes me most is to think how Lord Peterborough will triumph’. Marlborough was keen that Peterborough should not be allowed to ‘lay his faults’ on Galway, ‘for that would be to let him triumph’. Instead Peterborough should be obliged ‘to give an account of his behaviour and particularly as to money matters’ when he returned to England.
Peterborough had left Spain in mid-March, sailing not for England, but for Italy. From Milan, on 22 May 1707, he wrote of his intention to visit Marlborough’s campaign on his way home, incidentally challenging the impression that ‘I had an unwillingness to come for England. I can hardly conceive how such mistakes could arise, tho’ I have seen some very strange ones upon my subject’. He promised to ‘satisfy’ Marlborough ‘of the falsehood of that notion’, adding that ‘I would rather put in for a teller’s place of the Exchequer than the command of armies, the most fatal employment for an Englishman, particularly in these parts of the world.’
by a most corrupt management, the only general, who by a course of conduct and fortune almost miraculous, had nearly put us into possession of the kingdom, was left wholly unsupported, exposed to the envy of his rivals, disappointed by the caprices of a young inexperienced Prince, under the guidance of a capricious German ministry, and at last called home in discontent.
J. Swift, English Political Writings, 1711-1714, ed. B.A. Goldgar and I. Gadd, 63.
Peterborough took a long route home from Spain. Before he reached Marlborough’s camp in Flanders, he travelled through Italy, Vienna, and into Germany, stopping to visit the king of Sweden at Altranstadt, and also Hanover.
Peterborough arrived in London on 20 Aug. 1707, and quickly discovered that he had been omitted from the newly constituted Privy Council of Great Britain.
Peterborough attended on the opening day of the 1707-8 session, 23 Oct. 1707. On the eve of the session, Simpson thought that Peterborough had ‘for about a month forborne coming into those places [coffee-houses] or to speak upon those subjects [Spain] and it is believed he has assurances of some employment or that other means have been used to give him satisfaction.’
There was certainly some trepidation in diplomatic circles about Peterborough’s activities. Daniel Pulteney‡ wrote from Copenhagen at the end of November 1707 that ‘those here who do not wish well to our cause had great hopes that my Lord Peterborough and some others would raise such heats in Parliament as to hinder the despatch of public business and the giving the necessary supplies for pursuing the war’.
On 13 Dec. 1707 the Commons were due to consider Spanish affairs, but James Grahme‡ proposed postponing it to the 18th, when he again moved for ‘putting it off’ until 17 Jan.: ‘there were other papers moved for at the same time, by Mr [William] Bromley‡ and Mr [Ralph] Freman‡, which shews they design treating the matter in conformity to their friends in the House of Lords, which looks hitherto towards favouring Lord Peterborough, and laying the blame of miscarriages elsewhere.’ The Commons did take up the case on the 17th and proceeded to examine papers. On 29 Jan. ‘there were some things started to the commendation of my Lord Peterborough, but that was not the design of the day’, which was to address the queen that of 29,000 men paid for, only 8,660 were at Almanza.
Meanwhile, on 12 Dec. 1707 the Lords decided to add consideration of the state of the war in Spain and the expedition to Toulon to the matters to be considered in committee of the whole House on the state of the nation. On 15 Dec. Rochester ‘started’ the matter of Peterborough’s expedition, maintaining that if his actions were as they had been represented he deserved the thanks of the House. Halifax then referred to Freind’s Account. He had, he said, never met with the like exploits but in ‘Quintus Curtius’, an ironical reference to the exploits of Alexander the Great.
On 19 Dec. 1707, when debate resumed in committee of the whole, Peterborough backed the unsuccessful proposal of Nottingham and Rochester to divert troops from Flanders to Spain, saying he was ‘so fully satisfied of the necessity of sending 20,000 men into Spain that he would be for it even tho’ Lord Galway was to command ’em’.
William Wake, bishop of Lincoln, recorded that when ‘Peterborough’s business’ resumed on 13 Jan. 1708, ‘the House sat till near 7 o’clock’.
On 15 Jan. 1708 Nicolson recorded that the grand committee had sat for a second time on Peterborough’s conduct, who had ‘asserted his own innocence with a deal of bravery, in challenging his accusers, here or elsewhere’.
was long and perplexed. He pretended to make it appear that every article of what he called the charge against him was altogether groundless; and then added that allowing it to be all true, he would make it appear that it did not affect him at all. To avoid running in a circle, it was at last proposed, that the articles he had pretended to answer should be taken one by one: that the proofs to should be read separately, and his lordship confine his justification to each particular as it was proposed, that the House might make a distinct judgment of it, if they thought fit.
He also claimed that ‘at his going over he sold a manor in Northamptonshire for £18,000; that he took up two years’ income of his estate, amounting to £8,000 which he borrowed of Mr Cornish, at six per cent’, and complained of a recent book ‘which represents him little better than a fool and a coward.’
On 16 Jan. 1708, the matter of this book, Remarks upon Dr Freind’s Account of the Earl of Peterborough’s Conduct in Spain was raised because it ‘contained divers scandalous reflections’ on Peterborough, or as Nicolson described it, it was ‘scurrilous and scandalous’.
On 5 Feb. 1708 Swift wrote to Archbishop King that ‘it is a perfect jest to see my Lord Peterborough, reputed as great a Whig as any in England, abhorred by his own party, and caressed by the Tories’.
On 30 July 1708 Peterborough finally waited on the queen. Godolphin remarked that this, together with Haversham doing the same the previous week, was a worrying portent ‘of what was like to happen next winter when people of his behaviour could meet with encouragement to come to court’. Marlborough, too, was curious, believing that as Peterborough and Haversham were friends, the move had been concerted.
The Parliament of 1708
Peterborough first attended the 1708-9 session on 26 Nov., missing the first four days. Now resident in Bolton Street for the session, Peterborough was active socially in circles not favourable towards the ministry.
In January 1709, the attorney general wrote to the lord treasurer about a draft of a privy seal for discharging Peterborough’s lands from any demands of the crown upon account of his late employment in Spain. Nevertheless, in March Peterborough wrote to the lord treasurer concerning the accounts of his Spanish command. He complained that the reward for all his services was not to be master of his own estate, under the ‘pretence’ that he had had the disposition of public moneys. He asked for directions to be given for the examination of the accounts of the Spanish expedition. Given all this, and his wife’s indisposition (she died in May), he requested him to ask the queen’s leave to go abroad.
Peterborough only attended for two days of the 1709-10 session, 19-20 Dec., 2 per cent of the total. It was probably on 6 Dec. 1709 that Peterborough wrote to Harley asking him when he intended to arrive for the session, ‘if you do not think of coming soon, I intend to go into the country till after Christmas. If I am not much mistaken there are numbers that are governable which is a great point, so that it depends upon the generals whether peace or war’.
The Parliament of 1710
Peterborough’s grievances against Marlborough, and his dislike of Godolphin and Sunderland, allowed Harley to draw him into his ‘Juntilla’ against the ministry in 1710.
Nevertheless, Harley was keen to provide for Peterborough, and on 12 Sept. 1710 his name figures on a memorandum of Harley’s noting members of both Houses to be provided for in a new ministry.
Peterborough was named as general of marines in early November 1710, at a salary of £5 a day, an appointment with the added attraction that it would be seen as ‘lessening’ Marlborough.
Peterborough attended the opening day of the 1710 Parliament, 25 Nov. 1710, and on eight days in all before the Christmas recess. On 29 Dec. he dined with St John, in the company of Swift and Harley, the expectation being that he would be going ‘to Vienna in a day or two’. On 3 Jan. 1711 Swift dined with Peterborough at The Globe, in the Strand, ‘among half a dozen lawyers and attorneys and hangdogs, signing of deeds and stuff before his journey’. However, given that Peterborough was ‘one of those many who are mightily bent upon having such enquiries made’ into the ‘late management’, his mission was to be delayed.
On 8 Jan. 1711 many papers on the subject were presented, including some from Peterborough. His secretary, Aaron Hill, testified as to their provenance. When the committee of the whole resumed its deliberations on the 9th, the key question was the Valencia council of war. Peterborough wanted his ‘recapitulation’ to be read in the committee of the whole, and that Galway and Tyrawley might be called in to answer questions. He also said ‘that to avoid all mistakes, he desired his paper might not be called narrative, which might look like an accusation, for he accused no body; but only a recapitulation of his answers’. Galway and Tyrawley were then called in and the clerk read them the questions put to Peterborough on 5 Jan. and his answers. During the debate about whether Galway and Tyrawley were being accused of anything, Peterborough said that ‘no man can be accused for giving his opinion in a council of war’. Peterborough and Marlborough then clashed over the efficacy of Tyrawley’s answers. Peterborough also had more papers read, saying, ‘he had overcome all his enemies, but lies, and these he had papers enough with him to defeat.’ After Freind had been called in to corroborate Peterborough, Ferrers proposed the motion that Peterborough had given a ‘very faithful, just and honourable account of the councils of war in Valencia’. The motion was put and carried after a debate of about an hour, following a division on the question of whether to resume the House, carried 59-45.
When the House resumed its deliberations in committee of the whole on 11 Jan. 1711, Peterborough opened the debate because, with his departure imminent, he wanted an opportunity to clear himself from the heads laid against him by Sunderland when secretary of state. In a long debate about the events of 1707, both Godolphin and Marlborough sparred with Peterborough. Peterborough had the satisfaction of seeing the House agree to the committee’s resolution vindicating his claim that the insistence of Galway, Tyrawley and Stanhope in the conference held at Valencia on an offensive war had led to the defeat at Almanza and to the failed attempt on Toulon.
with a heart full of the greatest respect and gratitude. No services can deserve such a reward; it is more than a sufficient recompense for any past hardships, and to which nothing can give an addition. I cannot reproach myself with any want of zeal for the public service. But your lordships’ approbation of what I was able to do, towards serving my queen and country, gives me new life; and I shall endeavour, in all my future actions, not to appear unworthy of the unmerited favour I have received today from this great assembly.
Timberland, ii. 318-30.
That was the last day Peterborough was present in the House for this session. He had attended on 11 days of the session, 10 per cent of the total.
Having taken his leave of the queen on 11 Jan., on the day after the debate and his vindication in the House, Peterborough registered his proxy with Shrewsbury and sailed from Greenwich.
When Swift met up with Peterborough on 3 July 1711 he found him ‘violent against a peace, and finds true what I writ to him, that the ministry seems for it’.
The solution seems to have been to despatch Peterborough back to Vienna as ambassador, an appointment which a newsletter writer reported as early as 21 July.
Peterborough was absent for the whole of the 1711-12 session, but even in his absence, he cast a shadow over ministerial thinking. On 10 Dec. 1711, in the aftermath of the vote on ‘No Peace Without Spain’, Oxford included Peterborough on his list of loyal peers to be gratified. Nor was Peterborough entirely content, writing in December from Augsburg asking to be made more useful or to return home to ‘York Buildings, my bottle of claret and Dr Swift’.
At the beginning of 1712, Alexander Cunningham, about to depart from Venice, wrote to Oxford that having frequently been with Peterborough, he wished to remembered to the lord treasurer—‘we had a world of debates, but knowing him to be an injured person, debated nothing he said of Lord Sunderland and some others’. On other matters ‘we spoke freely’ and Cunningham ‘saw him lay out a world of money, but could not get him in with the virtuosi here, who had not put him to so much charges as the others that haunted his house’.
your lordship remembers the time and place where we met yourself and some others, I desired then to prove myself your friend, when you had many enemies which I esteemed such to the public upon many accounts, and for being yours, we were persecuted with the same hatred, we had the same foe to defend ourselves from, and were attacked almost in the same manner, so that many reasons created a correspondence and inclination, the one I shall continue with the greatest sincerity and the other shall endeavour to deserve from your lordship.
Add. 70249, Peterborough to Oxford, 3 Oct. 1712 [N.S.].
Return to England, 1713
Keen to play a more active part in domestic politics, Peterborough sought, and obtained, leave to return to England.
On 26 Feb. 1713 Oxford listed Peterborough as one of those peers to be contacted before the forthcoming session. He attended the prorogation on 3 March. On 14 Mar. Swift recorded that Peterborough was ill of his old bruise and ‘spits blood’, blaming its reccurrence on an Italian lady he had brought with him.
On 1 June 1713, when the Lords considered the state of the nation, Findlater (formerly earl of Seafield [S]) made a motion for leave to bring in a bill to dissolve the Union. Peterborough was one of the first Lords to speak against it, joining Oxford and others in opposing it as impracticable and only achievable through the same authority that made the Union.
On 8 June 1713 in a debate in committee of the whole House on the bill imposing a malt tax on Scotland, the main speakers were North, Leeds and Peterborough, rather than the more prominent members of the ministry.
Peterborough was nominated to the Order of the Garter on 3 Aug. 1713, and was installed on the following day. Apparently, he did not pay his fees (nearly £300) offering ‘his note’ instead.
Peterborough continued his own eccentric course until his death on 25 Oct. 1735, on his yacht off Lisbon. He was buried on 21 Nov. at Turvey. All four of his sons predeceased him (two in infancy), and he was succeeded by his grandson, Charles Mordaunt†, 4th earl of Peterborough. His daughter, Henrietta (1682-1760) had married in 1707 Alexander Gordon, marquess of Huntly, the future 2nd duke of Gordon [S]. Although Huntly was a Catholic, all her children were brought up as Protestants, including Cosmo Gordon†, 3rd duke of Gordon, a future Scottish representative peer.
There seems to be general agreement as to Peterborough’s enigmatic character, talented but unpredictable. Burnet summed him up as ‘a man of much heat, many notions, and full of discourse’, but ‘not a man of solid judgment nor of a firm virtue’. He had ‘republican principles in him to a very high degree, but all his thoughts are crude and indigested, and a little heat brings secrets easily from him, especially to those who go into his notions and flatter him; for vanity is his weak side’.