CARTERET, John (1690-1763)

Described by the Oxford antiquary Thomas Hearne as ‘a subscriber to Homer and a great proficient in Greek and all polite learning’, Carteret succeeded to the peerage when he was just five years old. Bodl. Rawl. Letters 35, f. 26. He was broadly acknowledged in his lifetime to be a man of remarkable scholarly abilities and was similarly fortunate in his extensive and influential family connections. Through his mother, he inherited a claim to the estates of the Granville earls of Bath, a pretension that involved him in the tortuous wrangling over the settlement of the Albemarle inheritance. Through his paternal family, he enjoyed hereditary rights in the Channel Islands, interests in Carolina and relation to the Montagu family. G.R. Balleine, Biographical Dictionary of Jersey, i. 70. A friend of Edward Harley* , later 2nd earl of Oxford, with whom he was contemporary both at Westminster and Christ Church, Oxford, during his long political career Carteret migrated from the Harleyites to association with Daniel Finch, 2nd earl of Nottingham, and the Hanoverian (‘Whimsical’) Tories. He ended up an ally of Charles Spencer, 3rd earl of Sunderland, and an undisputed Whig. A. Ballantyne, Lord Carteret: A Political Biography 1690–1763, pp. 20–1. In his novel Humphry Clinker, Tobias Smollett concluded that ‘there was no minister in this nation worth the meal that whitened his periwig’. Despite this, and despite commanding a number of great offices of state under the first two Hanoverian monarchs, Carteret’s reputation has suffered at the hands of later commentators, who have tended to conclude that he did not live up to his early promise. W.B. Pemberton, Carteret: The Brilliant Failure of the Eighteenth Century, 3–5; Ballantyne, Lord Carteret.

Before he attained his majority, Carteret’s fledgling political influence was noted in a list of clergy thought likely to vote in the 1705 election for Bedfordshire, where he was recorded as the patron of Mr Leith, incumbent of the parish of Bedford (though it was also noted that Leith owed some allegiance to John Ashburnham, Baron Ashburnham, a relatively new force in the county). Christ Church, Oxf. Wake mss 3, ff. 311–12. The same year saw the opening of what was to prove a protracted tussle involving Carteret and other members of the Granville family over the settlement of the Bath estate, when Lady Carteret brought a chancery action against her cousin John Granville, Baron Granville of Potheridge, for non-payment of bequests owing to her and to her children out of the estate of John Granville, earl of Bath, who had died in 1701. Still unsatisfied, Lady Carteret brought a further action two years later. TNA, C10/536/15; C10/516/25. A separate action contested unsuccessfully against one Chapman in the court of exchequer resulted in Lady Carteret bringing in a writ of error before the Lords in December 1708, but the House failed to uphold her petition and on 4 Feb. 1709 resolved instead to affirm the court’s original judgment.

Carteret was noted as underage in a 1708 list of party classifications and again at the time of the Sacheverell trial two years later. From March 1710 he was believed to be actively courting Frances Worsley, granddaughter of Thomas Thynne, Viscount Weymouth. HMC Portland, iv. 537. Carteret’s developing alliance with Weymouth’s family was made even more apparent when Weymouth recommended the young man to Robert Harley, the future earl of Oxford, in September. Add. 70260, Weymouth to R. Harley, 26 Sept. 1710. The marriage to Frances Worsley was celebrated the following month.

In the spring of 1711, while still technically underage, Carteret began to exert his interest in the West Country as a rival to his kinsman, George Granville, Baron Lansdown, putting himself forward as one of the contenders for the vacant lieutenancy of Cornwall. Although Lansdown professed to have ‘as much tenderness for him as anybody can have’, he succeeded in impressing on Harley the dangers of humouring Carteret on this point, as ‘it would be making the queen take part in a private cause and give a decision which I am sure can otherwise never be in his favour’. Add. 70027, ff. 188–9. Harley was warned off successfully and the post was given instead to Lansdown’s proposed alternative, Henry Hyde* , 2nd earl of Rochester.

A little over a month after his 21st birthday, Carteret took his seat in the House in the closing stages of the first session of the Parliament that had commenced the previous November. He was present on 11 of the remaining days (his first sitting coinciding with Robert Harley’s introduction as earl of Oxford). That summer he was employed by Oxford as an intermediary with his father-in-law, Weymouth, whose support Oxford wished to ensure with the offer of a step in the peerage. Weymouth proved unwilling to accept the proffered earldom. He was also said to have declined promotion to a marquessate some years earlier. HMC Portland, v. 33; HP Commons, 1690–1715, v. 640.

Carteret suffered the death of an infant daughter within days of her birth in the early autumn but, despite his loss, he assured Weymouth of his intention of being at the opening of Parliament, being unwilling to ‘sneak the first day’. Further disagreements with Lansdown also occupied his attention at this time over the presentation to one of the family’s West Country livings. Carteret wished to give the place to a school acquaintance but Lansdown had already promised it to a kinsman, Chamond Granville, whom Offspring Blackall, bishop of Exeter, had proved ‘exceeding hasty’ in installing in the parish. Bath mss at Longleat, Thynne pprs. 26, ff. 193, 195.

Carteret joined his father-in-law (whose ‘council and direction’ he openly professed to rely on during this period) in taking his seat at the opening of the new session on 7 Dec. 1711, after which he was present on almost 84 per cent of all sitting days. Ibid. Thynne pprs. 26, f. 183. His continuing friendship for Edward Harley was reflected in a letter to Harley from a mutual acquaintance (Robert Friend, master of Westminster) shortly after the session commenced, reporting Carteret’s eagerness ‘to have you in the world’ and how he ‘wonders why you were not in this Parliament’. HMC Portland, v. 127. Loyalty to Edward Harley in no way precluded Carteret from acting against Harley’s father’s administration, however, and on 8 Dec. Carteret was included in an assessment of peers thought likely to oppose the ministry over ‘No Peace without Spain’. Three days later he received his father-in-law’s proxy, which was vacated by Weymouth’s return to the House on 2 Jan. 1712. On 19 Dec. Carteret was forecast (with a query) as being opposed to permitting James Hamilton, 4th duke of Hamilton [S], from sitting in the House as duke of Brandon. The following day he voted as expected in favour of preventing Scots peers at the time of Union from sitting in the House by virtue of post-Union British peerages.

Despite his early association with Oxford, by the beginning of 1712 (presumably through his father-in-law’s influence) Carteret had drifted away from the lord treasurer and into Nottingham’s orbit. On 2 Jan. he joined with Nottingham and Weymouth in voting against the ministry’s motion to adjourn, though the ministry carried the vote through the employment of Scots votes and those of the newly created peers. Bodl. Ballard 20, f. 74; Add. 17677 FFF, ff. 19–20. On 9 Feb. Carteret joined Arthur Annesley, 5th earl of Anglesey, at a dinner hosted by Henry St John, later Viscount Bolingbroke, to whom Carteret had been introduced by Jonathan Swift the previous year. Jnl. to Stella ed. Williams, i. 200–1, ii. 484–5. Carteret’s alliance with Anglesey and the Hanoverian Tories commenced at about this time and may have been reflected in his chairing the committee for Anglesey’s estate bill, which had been committed nine days after their dinner at St John’s and which he reported to the House shortly after, on 4 Mar. 1712. A further indication of his move away from Oxford’s ministry may be perceived in his selection as teller on 29 Feb., almost certainly for those in favour of delaying adjourning the House into a committee of the whole until the following day, to consider the Place bill. The other teller was Oxford’s loyal supporter Samuel Masham, newly ennobled as Baron Masham. The motion was narrowly defeated when proxies were added.

Three weeks later Carteret chaired the committee considering the Van Homrigh estate bill, which he reported to the House on 25 Mar., and on 19 May he again acted as teller for the division on the question of whether the land grants bill should be committed. On this occasion the ministry (opposing the motion) was defeated by the narrowest of margins and it proved necessary to count the proxies twice, as the tellers were not in agreement after the first tally. The final reckoning was 74 in favour and 73 against the motion. HMC Lords, n.s. ix. 200, 202, 242. At the close of the month Carteret sided with the ministry again in voting against the opposition address to have the orders restraining James Butler, 2nd duke of Ormond, from waging an offensive campaign against the French. PH, xxvi. 177–81.

The death of Carteret’s young kinsman William Henry Granville, 3rd earl of Bath, in 1711 proved the catalyst for further divisions within the family and led to Carteret, his mother, his cousin John Gower, 2nd Baron Gower (later Earl Gower), and another cousin, Katherine Peyton (for whom Carteret acted as guardian), bringing an action in queen’s bench against Lansdown in October 1712 for failing to divide the Bath estate among the heirs. Lansdown maintained that he was the sole heir as the only direct male descendant of the first earl. TNA, C33/319, f. 341; C10/398/48. Although Lansdown appears to have indicated willingness to comply with distributing the personal estate, thought by Swift (who was a friend of both Carteret and Lansdown) to be worth either £6,000 or £9,000 a year, the following year he brought his own counter-case in chancery against Carteret, Gower and Peyton, insisting again on his sole rights to the remaining property. Jnl. to Stella ed. Williams, ii. 568; TNA, C10/398/48.

In the midst of these family disputes, Carteret continued to be actively involved in the heated political debates of the closing years of Anne’s reign, but, in spite of his consistent opposition to Oxford’s ministry the previous year, in March 1713 Swift assessed him as a likely supporter of the government in the forthcoming session. He took his seat on 9 Apr., after which he was again present on approximately 84 per cent of all sitting days. On 8 May he was noted among ‘3 or 4 Tory lords’ to have been the only objectors to the passage of the commissioners of accounts’ bill. BLJ, xix. 166. On 28 May he reported from the committee considering the bill enabling the sale of the manor of Morley to satisfy the debts of the late William Savile, 2nd marquess of Halifax (of whose estate Nottingham was one of the trustees), and on 31 May he was listed among those whom Oxford wished to contact over the French commerce bill. Although Carteret was once again ranked among those against the ministry in showing early opposition to the imposition of the malt tax on Scotland, John Elphinstone, 4th Lord Balmerinoch [S], noted him as one of those who deserted ‘to the enemy’ in the course of the long debate in the committee of the whole held on 8 June, thus assisting in securing the government’s victory by the margin of 64 to 56 votes. Scot. Hist. Soc. Misc. xii. 159–60; Bodl. ms Ballard 38, f. 194. Carteret’s return to the ministerial fold on this occasion was short-lived and on 13 June he turned away from the government once more over the ratification of the French commercial treaty. On 25 June he may have been among those peers named to the committee appointed to examine the port books since the Restoration, though there is a discrepancy between the record in the Journal, in which his name appears, and that in the manuscript minutes, where it does not. HMC Lords, n.s. x. 147.

Carteret was missing from the opening days of the new Parliament but he returned to the House a week into the first session on 23 Feb. 1714. He was present thereafter on 77 per cent of all sitting days, during which he again chaired a committee for a private estate bill (that of Richard Coote, 3rd earl of Bellomont [I]). Absent from town over the Easter period, Carteret was expected to return on Easter Monday, after which he persisted with his association with the whimsicals. Add. 70260, Weymouth to Oxford, 21 Mar. 1714; K. Feiling, Tory Party, 466. On 5 Apr. he divided with the Whigs, in company with several other Hanoverian Tories, against the ministry on the question of whether the Hanoverian succession was in danger under the present government. His defection was considered particularly important as he was ‘one of the darling champions of the high Church’. Bodl. Ballard 38, f. 197; NLS, Wodrow pprs. Wod. Lett. Qu. VIII, ff. 82–3. Three days later he was one of the ‘straggling lords’ who returned to the ministry’s side, voting in favour of two amendments to the Whig address asking for a bounty to be placed on the Pretender’s head, recommending rather that there should be a reward for bringing him to justice should he attempt to invade and leaving the timing of the declaration to the queen’s discretion. Wentworth Pprs. 366–7. Nottingham forecast Carteret as a likely supporter of the schism bill towards the end of May and Carteret accordingly voted in favour of the measure on 15 June, for which he also acted as one of the tellers.

Although he had at one stage been one of Bolingbroke’s dining companions, Carteret’s warm support for the Hanoverian succession prevented him from backing the secretary in his manoeuvrings against Oxford. Ballantyne, Lord Carteret, 17. He attended just three days of the brief session that met in the wake of the queen’s death in August, but his constant support for the new dynasty meant that he was swiftly picked out for promotion. In October he was appointed a gentleman of the bedchamber and in November he finally concluded an agreement with Lansdown over the settlement of the Bath estate, which he recommended to Lord Gower, explaining stoically that ‘the surest points of law don’t always prevail’. Add. 22220, ff. 127–9. Carteret’s association against Lansdown had been weakened by the deaths of his brother, Philip, and his ward, Katherine Peyton, but he emphasized in presenting the details of the settlement to Gower that ‘we shall get if this agreement takes place … considerably more than our original pretension was’.

The agreement also held a further incentive, which was that it simplified matters with regard to the ongoing parallel dispute between Bath’s heirs and Ralph Montagu, duke of Montagu, over the Albemarle inheritance. Nicolson, London Diaries, 564; Staffs. RO, D 868/7/26a. Resolution of the dispute and favour under the new regime was further demonstrated when, the following month, a warrant was passed creating the dowager Lady Carteret Countess Granville in her own right, leaving the title of Bath available for Gower to claim. Carteret undertook to do all he could on Gower’s behalf, having in his previous letter protested that he himself lacked any ‘vanity … in relation to title’. Staffs. RO, D 868/7/26a, 26b.

Carteret continued to thrive under both George I and George II, who valued his intellect and interest in foreign affairs. Through his loyalty to the dynasty he acquired a reputation as being unusually pro-German but he failed to achieve the kind of dominance of domestic politics demonstrated by the Pelham brothers or Robert Walpole* [192], later earl of Orford. A.C. Thompson, Britain, Hanover and the Protestant Interest, 1688–1756, p. 201. Details of the later and arguably more important chapter of his career will be dealt with in the next phase of this work.