WENTWORTH, Thomas (1672-1739)

Baron Raby under William III, 1695-1702

Thomas Wentworth was the second son of Sir William Wentworth^‡ of Northgate Head near Wakefield in Yorkshire, and grandson of another Sir William Wentworth, of Ashby Puerorum in Lincolnshire, the latter Sir William a younger brother of Charles I’s redoubtable minister Thomas Wentworth^†, earl of Strafford. Through his mother Isabella Apsley, daughter of the treasurer of the household to James Stuart, duke of York, the young Thomas Wentworth served briefly as a page of honour to Mary of Modena, but he quickly threw in his lot with William of Orange and in 1689 joined William’s army in the Highlands campaign against the Scots Jacobites. He went on to serve in every summer campaign in Flanders until the Peace of Ryswick in 1697, even acting as aide-de-camp to William III at Landen. He steadily rose in the army and at court, and was commissioned a cornet and major in the first troop of Life Guards in January 1694 and was made a groom of the royal bedchamber in May 1695.

On 16 Oct. 1695 Thomas’s first cousin once removed William Wentworth, 2nd earl of Strafford, died without any direct male heirs, and Thomas found himself the closest living relation, through the male line, of the deceased Strafford (as both Thomas’s father and elder brother had themselves died within the previous few years). Luttrell, Brief Relation, ii. 495. But Thomas did not benefit from this kinship connection as much as he thought just or equitable. He only inherited the title of Baron Raby, as a special remainder in the original creation of the earldom of Strafford in 1640 had ensured that barony could pass to the heirs of the first earl of Strafford’s younger brothers. He did not receive the earldom of Strafford itself, as that was to descend only through the first earl’s direct descendants in the male line, and thus became extinct at the second earl’s death. Furthermore, although the 2nd earl of Strafford had long complained of his poverty, he left in his will of 9 Sept. 1695 bequests amounting to just under £15,000 and annuities of £460 – but none of them to his cousin Thomas. Controversially, Strafford bequeathed to his nephew Thomas, second surviving son of his sister Anne and Edward Watson, 2nd Baron Rockingham, the remainder of his estate, including his vast landholdings in Ireland and Yorkshire, centred around Wentworth Woodhouse in the West Riding. Sheffield Archives, WWM/D/1493a-b. The second earl had long been on acrimonious terms with Thomas’s father, Sir William, whom Strafford accused of cheating him out of money due to him while serving as his agent and steward in Ireland, and thus he refused to bequeath any part of his estate to a family he distrusted so much. Add. 75361, passim; HMC Lords, n.s. iv. 369-70. Raby’s sense of outrage at what he saw at this unjust apportionment of Strafford’s legacy coloured much of his future life and gave rise to his ceaseless importuning of the great and powerful for further offices and titles, particularly the symbolic earldom of Strafford, which he finally obtained in 1711. It also helped to fester a long and acrimonious battle between him and Thomas Watson Wentworth^‡, or merely ‘Mr Watson’ as Raby insisted on referring to him, which led in part to his construction of the grand Wentworth Castle in Stainborough, Yorkshire, impudently close to Watson Wentworth’s own residence of Wentworth Woodhouse.

Thomas Wentworth’s first encounter with the House of Lords concerned precisely this inheritance, for on the first day on which the House met after the death of the 2nd earl of Strafford, 22 Nov. 1695, he asked the House how and if he should be formally introduced as Baron Raby. The clerks were assigned to search the Journals for precedents. On the following day was read the case of Louis de Duras, Baron Duras, who had been introduced to the House as 2nd earl of Feversham on 21 May 1677, and for whom it had been noted in the Journal that he ‘came in by succession and not by descent’ after the death of his father-in-law George Sondes, who had had a special remainder passing on his title to Duras inserted in his patent creating him earl of Feversham. Consequently Raby first took his seat in the House the following day of business, 25 Nov. 1695, introduced between Francis North, 2nd Baron Guilford and Charles Butler, Baron Butler of Weston (and earl of Arran [I]), and the clerks specifically noted that he was introduced ‘not claiming by descent’, while the House later ordered ‘that the reasons why Thomas, Lord Raby was introduced shall be entered in the roll of standing orders of this House’. Luttrell, Brief Relation, iii. 554.

After this introduction, Raby was a fairly diligent attender of the House and attended 71 per cent of the 1695-6 session, during which period he was named to ten select committees considering private bills, as well as the committees for the sheriffs‘ accounts bill and the bill to prevent counterfeiting of coin. On 9 Jan. 1696 he was placed on the select committee assigned to draw up reasons for the Lords’ adherence to their amendments to the bill for regulating the coinage, but he was not present to take part in the proceedings on this conference over the following two days, despite being appointed a manager. He maintained exactly the same attendance rate, 71 per cent, in the following session of 1696-7. On its first day, 20 Oct. 1696, Raby, with Robert Lucas, 3rd Baron Lucas of Shenfield, helped to introduce to the House John Thompson, Baron Haversham. On the last day of November he was appointed a manager for the conference on the Commons’ resolution to waive privilege of parliament during times when parliament was not in session. Although he is marked as present in the attendance register for 27 Jan. 1697, he was noted as absent when the Book of Protections was read that day and his name came up as one who may have abused the system of granting protections to menial servants. On that day the House made an order vacating all protections and abolishing the practice of granting them. HMC Lords, n.s. ii. 372. Throughout he continued to show his adherence to William III, first by signing the Association on the first day it became available for subscription, and later by voting with the court in favour of the bill to attaint Sir John Fenwick^‡, 3rd bt. However Raby was one of the ‘twelve or thirteen dissenting lords’ who objected to the resolution of the House of 18 Jan. 1697 condemning Charles Mordaunt, earl of Monmouth (later 3rd earl of Peterborough), for his role in priming Lady Mary Fenwick for her defence before the House. HMC Buccleuch, ii. 439-40. On 22 Jan. 1697 Raby was further named to the committee of 17 assigned to draw up an address requesting the king to give Fenwick a week’s reprieve from his execution.

He was rewarded for his loyalty with a royal grant in July 1696 of the farm of the post-fines, at an annual rent of £2,276. CTB, 1729-30, p. 319. Later, on 30 May 1697, over a month after the prorogation of Parliament, Raby was further promoted in the military to be colonel of the royal regiment of dragoons, a clear sign of William’s trust in his military abilities, but soon rendered redundant by the peace hammered out that summer at Ryswick. The brief period of peace which followed was to set Raby on another career direction, though one which he never seemed to prefer over his favoured military vocation. He was present in the House when it reconvened on 3 Dec. 1697, but left it for a period of several months from 8 Jan. 1698, registering his proxy with Richard Lumley, earl of Scarbrough, when he served as part of the retinue of Hans Willem Bentinck, earl of Portland, on his embassy to France, in what can be seen as the beginning of his long diplomatic career. Raby’s proxy with Scarbrough was vacated by his return to the House many months later on 21 June, only about two weeks before the prorogation. Raby’s only significant activity in this sparsely-attended session (he was present at only twenty sitting days) was his appointment on the penultimate day, 4 July, to a committee of 18 members who were to inspect the Journal for 1640 and 1641, to examine what had been done to the record of the proceedings around the 1st earl of Strafford&rsquos attainder pursuant to the Act of 1661 to reverse the attainder and obliterate its record—a matter of no little interest or importance to Raby’s own claim to the title.

Raby came to two-thirds of the 1698-9 session, the first of the new Parliament, convened in December 1698. He was named to four select committees, including those on the bills to enlarge the Russia trade and to encourage woollen manufacture. On 2 Mar. 1699, he was a manager for a conference on the bill to prevent the distilling of corn. He, like much of the House, was exercised by the Commons’ attempts to tack clauses on to money bills, and on 27 Apr. he was one of the nine members who entered their protest against the passage of the supply bill for disbanding the army, objecting that the clause constituting commissioners to take an account of the forfeited land in Ireland was an unwarranted tack of matter foreign to the bill.. On the day of prorogation, 4 May, Raby was appointed to the committee to consider what steps to take following the lower House’s non-appearance at a conference scheduled earlier that day on the dispute over the House’s amendments to the bill for laying a duty upon paper and parchment. CSP Dom. 1699-1700, p. 217. He had undoubtedly earlier been opposed to the disbandment bill itself, which directly affected his own career, but he was fortunate enough to survive the cull and his regiment of dragoons was one of the few to be maintained after the disbandment of February 1699. Luttrell, Brief Relation, iv. 487.

In the following session, that of 1699-1700, Raby maintained the same attendance rate and much the same concerns as in the previous session, though there is little record of his activities in this session. Siding with the Tories, on 23 Feb. 1700 he voted to adjourn the House into committee of the whole to further the bill that would maintain the old East India Company as a corporation. At the end of the 1699-1700 session he was one of the large number of members who protested against the failure to adhere to the House’s amendments against the tack for the resumption of forfeited Irish land in the Commons’ supply bill. With Edward Montagu, 3rd earl of Sandwich, and others, he attested before the House that Gilbert Burnet, bishop of Salisbury, had disrespectfully muttered disparaging comments during a speech made by James Annesley, 3rd earl of Anglesey, in defence of the amendments and the privilege of the peerage. In the irreverently-written newsletter reporting this incident Raby appears to be referred to by the nickname ‘his majesty’, perhaps evidence that the pride, haughtiness and self-regard for which he was later infamous were already apparent. Add 28053, ff. 402-3.

In March 1701 William III appointed Raby to go as his envoy to Frederick, elector of Brandenburg, to congratulate him upon being crowned king in Prussia, then a distinct entity from the electorate. Luttrell, Brief Relation, v. 30. This new duty prevented Raby from attending much of the new Parliament which first met on 6 Feb. 1701, and which he attended only until 8 April. In his absence a number of matters came before the House which concerned him and with which he was unable to deal directly. He was a proprietor of land in the Eight Hundred Fen in Lincolnshire, and had long been concerned with the riots which had destroyed many of the embankments and had flooded much of the fenland. In July 1699 he had been appointed the head of a commission assigned to examine these disturbances, and on 12 Apr. 1701 when a bill was before the House to confirm the heirs of the original undertakers of the Lindsey Level fen drainage scheme in their rights and property, which the bill claimed included part of Raby’s Lincolnshire land, Raby submitted a petition that the committee hearings on the bill might be postponed for a month until he returned to England. Luttrell, Brief Relation, iv. 535. His concerns were forestalled by the bill’s rejection at the engrossment stage only a few days after his petition was brought before the House. HMC Lords, n.s. iv. 219. The other matter which arose in the House in his absence was the petition and appeal, read on 14 May, of Thomas Watson Wentworth^‡ against several decrees in the Irish court of chancery against him and other executors of the 2nd earl of Strafford in their long-running dispute with Sir William Wentworth^‡ and his heir Raby about Sir William’s alleged mismanagement of the Wentworth estates in Ireland. HMC Lords, n.s. iv. 369-70.

This matter did confront Raby when he returned from his mission and his long involvement in this dispute with his upstart usurper (as Raby saw him) may explain the baron’s high attendance rate in the Parliament of early 1702, when he came to 82 per cent of the sitting days, his highest attendance level to that time. On 19 Jan. 1702 Raby not only submitted his answer to Watson Wentworth’s original appeal, but then submitted his own appeal against other decrees in the Irish chancery which had gone against him. The hearing of these two concurrent appeals was continuously postponed throughout February, but eventually Watson Wentworth’s appeal was heard via his counsel on 28 Feb. 1702. The hearings, which had lasted long, were continued on 2 Mar. when Raby’s counsel William Cowper, later Earl Cowper, gave what Raby thought was a star performance. Cowper suggested that the appellants’ case made their uncle the second earl look like a gullible, easily imposed-upon, fool, as it was premised on the idea that Sir William Wentworth had tricked Strafford into entering into no fewer than 11 disadvantageous mortgages with him. With Cowper’s help, Watson Wentworth’s appeal was dismissed. HMC Lords, n.s. iv. 370-1. Even in the midst of intense partisan conflict in later years, Raby always expressed deep gratitude to and appreciation of Cowper for these efforts in rescuing him from Watson Wentworth’s appeal. Herts. ALS, DE/P/F57, Raby to Cowper, 28 July 1704, 9 Nov. 1705, 30 Sept. 1710, 9 Oct. 1714. Raby’s cross-appeal against Watson Wentworth was successively postponed throughout March as the parties sought to reach an accommodation outside of the House through the arbitration of Sidney Godolphin, Baron (later earl of) Godolphin, and Laurence Hyde, earl of Rochester. These two mediators signed and sealed an award to Raby on 21 Apr., but it was not until near the end of the session, on 18 May, that the House formally allowed Raby to withdraw his appeal without prejudice.

A soldier and diplomat for Marlborough, 1702-10

Raby returned to Westminster from overseeing his regiment’s embarkation to Flanders when he heard the news of the king’s fatal accident, and he was appointed, along with the rest of the House present, to the committee to consider the arrangements to be made at the king’s death and Anne’s accession. On 30 Mar. 1702 he was placed on the drafting committee for the address of thanks for the queen’s speech that day. On 18 Apr. he served as chair of the committee of the whole House in considering the bill for the relief of Captain Thomas Bellew, a Protestant Irish soldier whose lands had been confiscated from him by the Irish Resumption Act of April 1700. HMC Lords, n.s. v. 25. Raby was particularly busy during the last month of the session, in May 1702. On 7 May he was a manager for a conference on the bill for altering the oath of abrogation, and two days later he was a teller in a division. He was placed on 15 May on the committee of 15 members assigned to draw the address to the queen requesting her to prohibit all correspondence between the Allies and the French now that war had resumed, and three days later, after the address had been reported, he was one of 12 members appointed to manage a conference with the lower House. Raby was also nominated to 18 select committees during this Parliament, most of them coming in the period after the death of William III.

With the renewal of the war against France, Raby’s military services were once again needed and he saw action in Flanders during that first summer of campaigning. Occupied with his regiment in Flanders, he first sat in Anne’s first Parliament on 23 Nov. 1702, well over a month after its commencement, and after this late start, he attended just 59 per cent of that session of 1702-3, during which he was named to 17 select committees. He was heavily involved in the debates on the occasional conformity bill and in a note about a debate of 4 Dec. 1702, William Nicolson, bishop of Carlisle, obliquely noted that ‘Lord Raby handsomely apologized for his change of sides’. Nicolson, London Diaries, 139. It is not immediately obvious how to interpret Nicolson’s terse comment, but perhaps Raby had originally been opposed to the bill, but was worked upon to change his mind by his new mentor, military commander and patron, the ministry leader John Churchill, duke of Marlborough. On 17 Dec. Raby was named a manager for the conference on the House’s controversial amendments to the bill and he continued to be involved in conferences on this matter on 9 and 16 Jan. 1703. Upon the report of this latter conference he voted with the ministry, but against the majority, in opposing the House’s adhering to the wrecking amendments. He also took part in the debate of 11 Jan. 1703 on whether a clause against William III’s Dutch followers in the bill to settle a revenue on Prince George, duke of Cumberland, was a ‘tack’ on a money bill, which would directly contravene a declaration which the majority of the house had signed only a month previously against the practice of tacking foreign matters to money bills. Raby, according to Nicolson’s account, ‘professed himself a subscriber, and yet for admitting the clause, because he did not think this a money bill’. Nicolson, London Diaries, 165. He also acted as teller on two occasions in early 1703: on whether costs should be paid to the respondents after a petition and appeal had been dismissed by the House (28 Jan.); and on whether the phrase ‘and to the subversion of the constitution’ should be included in the House’s resolution against the intemperate language used in the Commons’ criticism of the upper House’s exoneration of Charles Montagu, Baron (later earl of) Halifax (18 February). HMC Lords, n.s. v. 168, 193.

In the autumn of 1702 Marlborough had tried to persuade a reluctant Raby to take up the governorship of Jamaica, and Narcissus Luttrell^‡ was even reporting for 12 Sept. 1702 that the baron’s commission for the post was passing the seals. Add. 22222, ff. 68-9; Luttrell, Brief Relation, v. 211, 213. This project fell through, but his military service was at last recognized and rewarded by Marlborough when Raby was made a brigadier-general of horse early in 1703. It was only following Parliament’s prorogation on 27 Feb. 1703, however, that Raby’s situation changed significantly when he was appointed envoy extraordinary to the court of Frederick I, king of Prussia, at Berlin. A character sketch of Raby at about the time of his appointment attributed Raby’s posting to the ‘inclinations’ of the king of Prussia himself and described Raby as ‘a young gentleman, de bon naturel, handsome, of fine understanding, and, with application, may prove a man of business’. Jonathan Swift was years later to dispute some of these points in his marginal annotations to Macky, judging Raby’s understanding ‘very bad and cannot spell’ and pointing out that in contrast to the claim that Raby was ‘of low stature’ the envoy was actually quite tall. Macky Mems., 145-6. Raby formally embarked for his new post on 19 Mar. 1703. By his own account he had first been convinced by the queen to take it up as early in November 1702, and he appears not to have been in any particular haste to arrive, visiting Marlborough at Bonn and Sophia, electress dowager of Hanover, en route before reaching Berlin about 9 June.

Raby remained stationed in Berlin until March 1711, after having been raised in February 1705 to the more dignified post of ambassador extraordinary. Add. 61137, ff. 115-18. During the time of his embassy Raby continuously bombarded the ministers Godolphin and Marlborough, as well as his other diplomatic and military colleagues, with long letters full of news about Prussian politics. These missives also usually asked these patrons to satisfy him in what he saw as his ‘just pretensions’—the earldom of Strafford; military promotion and a return to his regiment; a prominent and lucrative post in England such as a commissioner of trade; or a more prestigious or more central diplomatic posting. Add. 61137-41 passim. He received some slight satisfaction in his request for further military recognition and involvement with his promotion to major-general in April 1705, despite being far removed from the battlefield. Add. 61137, ff. 70-71; Luttrell, Brief Relation, v. 538. In the summer of 1706, when the king of Prussia was on a visit to the United Provinces after the important victory at Ramillies (in which his Prussian troops had played no part), Raby took the opportunity of travelling with him to the scene of the battle and to take part in that summer’s campaign. On the way he visited Hanover to help further the negotiations for the marriage between the king of Prussia’s son Frederick William and Sophia Dorothea, the only daughter of the elector Georg Ludwig, by which he was able to renew his close ties with the dowager electress and the House of Hanover. Add. 61138, ff. 129-34. Having joined the army in the Netherlands in June, he was in constant attendance upon Marlborough during the siege of Menin and was almost captured during a forage outside of Tournai. Wentworth Pprs. 18-20. Back in Berlin, Raby was from late August 1706 seriously considered as ambassador to the republic of Venice (which he rejected, not wishing to go to ‘an employ so remote’) and then as envoy extraordinary to the Imperial court at Vienna in the place of George Stepney, who was out of favour with the Emperor. By late October Queen Anne, at the request of the king of Prussia, who greatly appreciated Raby, had relented and confirmed him in his Berlin appointment, which was some relief to Raby as Stepney had confided in him that Vienna ‘is now the most disagreeable station we have abroad and will become more so every day’. Luttrell, Brief Relation, vi. 84, 97, 100, 101; Add. 61138, ff. 142-4, 172-7, 180-81, 186-8, 190-193; Add. 7075, f. 59. The duumvirs did not comply with most of Raby’s other endlessly-repeated wishes for advancement at this time, but on one point Marlborough did concede to Raby’s badgering requests, and in April 1708 promoted him again in the army, making him a lieutenant-general and backdating the promotion a full year and a half to January 1707. Dalton, Army Lists, v. 159; Add. 61389, ff. 77-8; Add. 61399, ff. 32, 45; Add. 61139, ff. 118-20, 126-31, 134-9.

Raby took advantage of a brief lull of business at the Brandenburg court to return to England from late May to early September 1708, his only extended period in England throughout the period of his embassy. Luttrell, Brief Relation, vi. 309; Add. 61128, ff. 13-16; Add. 61139, ff. 192-5, 198-203; Add. 61140, ff. 3-4, 6-9. He spent his time trying to shore up his standing in England. He bought an estate at Stainborough, near Barnsley in Yorkshire, where he began to construct his grand residence of Wentworth Castle. He also took advantage of his presence in England to press his many pretensions in person to Godolphin, particularly his desire to be made a Privy Councillor and to be created earl of Strafford. Once again, these solicitations, now even made in person, were unsuccessful, to Raby’s intense frustration.

After his return to Berlin in late 1708 (after an extended tour of Italy) Raby’s letters to the ministers took on an even more querulous and badgering tone, and his ambitions became grander, as he sought either a more prestigious, or more lucrative, diplomatic post, such as a plenipotentiary at the peace negotiations of 1709 and 1710, or to be brought back into the army, as he begged of Marlborough time and time again. But he was also anxious to reassure the duumvirs that, in the context of the growing partisan conflicts in England, ‘I am not engaged in any other interest but yours, nor have I the least obligation to parties or persons but you two’. Add. 61140, ff. 42-3, 57-60. In early 1709 Raby wrote an inordinately long—even by his high standards in this genre—letter to his military colleague and Marlborough’s aide, William Cadogan^†, later Earl Cadogan, setting out his dissatisfaction with his position and with Marlborough’s perceived neglect of him:

I grow old in a strange country, and am forgot by my friends in England; besides, I lose my interest in the House of Lords, where I might say, without vanity, I had more interest when I came away than any young lord in England. And what do I get here? I spend more than the queen’s pay, and see no prospect of getting out honourably. My lord duke takes no notice of designing me one of the plenipotentiaries at the general peace, to which I have all the right imaginable. In England all the good places are given as soon as they fall, that an absent man can get nothing; and in the army the duke seems not inclined to let me come again, though I would subscribe to anything he should propose, if he would let me serve again. Here I want all your friendship; for God’s sake, counsel me what I shall do. I would not be importunate to my lord duke, and I would not live in despair. Wentworth Pprs. 21-23.

Relations between Raby and Marlborough continued to deteriorate during 1710, beneath the outward politeness and flattery of their letters, as the ambassador continued to push for a place as a plenipotentiary in the peace negotiations at The Hague and Gertruydenburg. Add. 61140, ff. 131-4. This prompted Marlborough’s secretary Adam de Cardonnel^‡ at one point to inform the ambassador that the duke was ‘uneasy of late, at your mentioning the same thing so often, after having received his repeated answers’ and to advise him that ‘if you would endeavour to enjoy the present, you might be very happy’. Add. 61141, f. 73.

Rewarded by Harley, 1710-11

Marlborough had suspected as far back as July 1708 that Raby was ‘in friendship’ with the disgraced former secretary of state Robert Harley, later earl of Oxford, ‘and all that cabal’ during his brief stay in England and therefore hoped that Godolphin would not countenance his many pretensions. In June 1709 he described Raby to his duchess as ‘impertinent and insignificant’ though feared that he could not afford to snub him too openly, as ‘it would look like malice, and that should be avoided’. Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1048-9, 1273. Raby probably did consult with Harley while in England, and by 1710 Harley saw Raby as a dissatisfied courtier who could be brought over to his new ministry by the promise of favour. He included Raby in a list of peers who should be ‘provided for’ while he was constituting his new ministry and preparing for the elections of October 1710. Add. 70333, memorandum, ‘Much to be done in a few days’. What Harley was able to promise Raby became clear in the following year of 1711 and succeeded in binding the ambassador closely to the new ministry, to the point where Raby was able to assure Harley that:

I am sensible of all the obligations I have to you, which confirms the just character given you of being a true friend to those you profess a kindness for and who rely upon you, as I do assure your lordship I do, and will entirely, for however before I went into England I might have been made believe my obligations were divided between your lordship and another, I am now convinced they are entirely due to your lordship; and being so, your lordship may depend, I am entirely yours; and as much so, as any man can be another’s. HMC Portland, ix. 297.

In March 1711 Raby was moved from his post in Berlin, where he was deeply unhappy and frustrated, to the more important post of ambassador extraordinary to the States General at The Hague, where he replaced the Whig ambassador Charles Townshend, 2nd Viscount Townshend, who had negotiated the controversial Barrier Treaty which to Tory eyes gave too many advantageous trading concessions to the Dutch. At roughly the same time measures were put on foot to draw up Raby’s patent to make him earl of Strafford. Raby’s brother and correspondent Peter Wentworth, an equerry to the queen, thought the patent would be ready by late May, so that Raby would be raised to an earldom at about the same time as his patron Harley himself was to be created earl of Oxford and Mortimer. It was later decided to wait until Raby was actually in England to confer this honour on him (much to Raby’s own disappointment). Wentworth Pprs. 199-204; HMC Portland, ix. 292. Raby arrived in England from The Hague on about 13 June 1711 (only a day or so after Parliament had been prorogued for the summer) for a stay of several eventful months. Despite a flurry of rumours that his patent of creation was imminently to pass the seals and that he was to marry Lady Elizabeth Hastings, sister and heiress of George Hastings, 8th earl of Huntingdon, with a fortune popularly estimated to be about £100,000, neither marriage nor earldom were forthcoming for most of the summer. But in the space of only a few days in early September 1711 Strafford’s fortune and status was radically altered. First his long-delayed patent for the earldom of Strafford finally passed the seals on 4 Sept. 1711, one of a group of six new creations or promotions made in early September. The patent included a special remainder to his brother Peter Wentworth and the heirs male of his body, ensuring that any remaining heirs to the barony of Raby would also succeed to the new Strafford earldom, and thereby avoiding (at least as far as the title was concerned) a repetition of the slight he had felt on not succeeding to the entire Strafford legacy. Only two days after this honour was done him, Strafford solidified his financial future by marrying, not Elizabeth Hastings, but Anne Johnson, daughter and sole heiress of the wealthy shipbuilder Sir Henry Johnson^‡ of Bradenham, Buckinghamshire and of Toddington in Bedfordshire, who brought with her a portion which Swift put at £60,000 in ‘ready money, besides the rest at the father’s death’. Longleat, Bath mss, Thynne pprs. xlvii, ff. 259-60, 266, 269-70, 311-12; Jnl. to Stella ed. Williams, i. 351.

His diplomatic prestige was also burgeoning, for he returned to The Hague in early October armed with the details of the heads of the general peace terms that had been hammered out in secret between the French and English negotiators in late September, and he was assigned to convey these to his old patron Marlborough and to persuade a resistant States-General to accept them as the basis for negotiations. Bolingbroke Corresp. ed. Parke, i. 397; Add. 61125, f. 106, 108-9, 119. Swift predicted that ‘there will be the devil and all to pay’ when the Dutch received this unwelcome news, ‘but we’ll make them swallow it with a pox’. Jnl. to Stella, ii. 372, 379. Strafford, having performed his duty with the States-General, wrote to John Campbell, 2nd duke of Argyll [S], who sat in the Lords as earl of Greenwich, an account of this embassy, expressing his own disdain for both the Dutch allies and his former general and patron:

though formerly they [the Dutch] led us by the nose, yet seeing we will be their dupes no longer, they grow mighty tractable and we may do now with them what we please. Nay they say themselves in their own justification, that it was the fault of our former ministers that nothing was done for England, for they asked no more, and that our ministers never asked anything of them they did not grant. I don’t care to rip up old sores, else here is a great many things to be answered for in this country, which has been certainly the fault of our own ministers. The duke of Marlborough is here [The Hague] but does not make that figure he used to do… I own I pity him to see the changement, but I can’t but be pleased to see some about him mortified, though he nor they never cared for me, though I did not deserve it from them, and till I found he was doing me ill offices, I never left his party. Add. 22221, ff. 62-7.

Strafford further showed his contempt for the Allies and their war effort by his attempts, encouraged by the ministry in Westminster, to block Prince Eugene of Savoy from embarking from The Hague for his triumphant visit to England.

Following this commission to the Dutch, it was understandable that Strafford was nominated in November to be one of the plenipotentiaries for the planned peace negotiations at Utrecht, which did not formally begin until 29 Jan. 1712. His colleagues were to be the experienced diplomat John Robinson, bishop of Bristol, lord privy seal, and initially the poet-diplomat Matthew Prior^‡. HMC 14th Rep. IX, 360. Jonathan Swift wrote to ‘Stella’ at the time of these appointments that ‘Lord Strafford is as proud as hell, and how he will bear one of Prior’s mean birth on an equal character with him, I know not’. Jnl to Stella. ii. 417. It appears that it may have been the queen herself who objected to a man of Prior’s ‘mean extraction’ being placed in such a prominent position, but Strafford did show his infamous pride by his constant chafing under his position as second plenipotentiary, below Robinson, while outranking the bishop in terms of social precedence. Add. 22220, ff. 95-98. There were continuous rumours of discord between Strafford and Robinson during the negotiations. Wentworth Pprs. 272-3. Swift confided to Stella in February 1712 that the two plenipotentiaries ‘are both long practised in business, but neither of them of much parts. Strafford has some life and spirit, but is infinitely proud, and wholly illiterate’. Swift, Jnl. to Stella. ii. 489. Robinson for his part was anxious to insist that he and the earl worked well together and told his friends that Strafford ‘is a very active and vigilant man and that there is a very happy agreement between them’, though few seemed inclined to believe these reassurances. Add. 72493, ff. 122-3; Bod:, Rawl. A. 286, ff. 413-16.

From the time of his return to The Hague in November 1711, Strafford was amply kept informed of the tumultuous proceedings in Parliament concerning the peace negotiations from regular political correspondents, his own brother Peter Wentworth, an equerry to the queen, and his friend, the chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster and Privy Councillor, William Berkeley, 4th Baron Berkeley of Stratton. Wentworth Pprs. 205-330. At the same time he was receiving regular news and advice from the copious letters of the secretary of state Henry St John, later Viscount Bolingbroke. Bolingbroke Corresp. ed. Parke. Through these letters Strafford learned of the changes at Westminster at the turn of 1711-12, with the dismissal of Marlborough and the creation of 12 new peers, and would have been kept informed of the growing opposition in England to the peace terms he was negotiating, and particularly to the apparent concessions being made to the French. ‘I must tell you the French proposals do not go down well here’, Berkeley of Stratton confided to Strafford on 15 Feb. 1712. ‘Besides Dunkirk which they [the French] must be paid for, I do not see they yield anything, which does not look like people who have had the worse of the war’. Add. 22220, ff. 11-14; Wentworth Pprs. 264-5.

The Peace of Utrecht and the Lords, 1712-13

Strafford encountered this opposition first-hand when he came over to England to present the peace terms in mid-May 1712 at the tail end of a highly contentious session of Parliament, where his presence was bound to increase the partisan wrangling. He had indeed already ‘appeared’ in this 1711-12 session when on 14 Mar. 1712, at the second reading of the bill for making sheriffs’ accounts more easy, John West, 6th Baron De la Warr, presented to the House a petition from the countess of Strafford on behalf of her husband asking that counsel be heard regarding clauses in the bill affecting Strafford’s farm of the revenue of the post fines. This and other petitions regarding the sheriffs’ accounts bill were heard on 17 Mar. 1712, and by 25 Mar. Berkeley of Stratton could tell Strafford with some relief ‘that the sheriff’s bill is not in a likely way of passing, for after three days fruitlessly spent about it they have been forced to refer it to a private committee, where in all probability it will draw in length and come to nothing’. HMC Lords, n .s. ix. 214-16; Nicolson, London Diaries, 595; Wentworth Pprs. 278, 281. On 6 May, about a week before Strafford arrived in England, Berkeley of Stratton warned him that a bill to set up a commission of enquiry into all crown grants made since the Revolution was on the anvil in the Commons, which again directly affected Strafford with his grant of the farm of the post-fines. Add. 22220, ff. 28-29; Wentworth Pprs. 288-9. But the bill was a government measure promoted by the ministry and Oxford, foreseeing strong opposition to it in the House, asked Strafford not to vote against it. More than a year later, at a time when Strafford was once again feeling insufficiently rewarded by the ministry, he reminded Oxford of his compliance to his wishes on 20 May 1712, when the bill for a commission came to its third reading in the house:

all I can brag on to show you my gratitude to your Lordship is that when you desired me to forbear voting against the bill for resumption of grants, though the thing then seemed to turn on my single vote and I had so great a stake depending and had even the queen’s leave to vote as I would, I then told your Lordship if you would take it as a mark of my friendship and respect for you I would not go to the House, which you was pleased to say you would and afterwards to assure me you took it for such a mark of friendship you would never forget it. HMC Portland, ix. 384-5.

At the division that day, the ministry, ‘notwithstanding the creation of twelve new peers and the influence of my lord treasurer’s staff’, lost the bill, though only very narrowly as the voices were equal on each side – confirming Strafford’s later claim that the outcome depended on his single vote and abstention. BLJ, xix. 162-3.

Strafford sat in the House, for the first time in over nine years, at its next sitting on 22 May 1712 and was formally introduced as the earl of Strafford, almost a year after he had received his patent of creation. It may not have been a coincidence that the queen also attended the House that day and one commentator speculated ‘and then perhaps the world will be appraised of the meaning of Lord Strafford’s journey, which hitherto continues a mystery’. BLJ, xix. 162-3. Evidently there was a sense that with Strafford’s arrival there would be news of developments in the treaty negotiations, and the earl’s first intervention in the House did indeed concern the peace. On 28 May 1712 Halifax revealed to the House the existence of the ministry’s orders to the captain-general James Butler, 2nd duke of Ormond, not to engage in offensive measures against France pending the negotiations. This sparked a fierce and lengthy debate in the House—three hours long according to one commentator—and a Whig-inspired motion for an address to the queen requesting her to order Ormond to engage the French in battle. Strafford, at the heart of the peace negotiations which relied on this clandestine cessation of arms, argued strongly in favour of these ‘restraining orders’ and at one point had an altercation with his former patron Marlborough who had questioned the veracity of one of his statements, prompting Strafford effectively to call his former general both a liar and a villain. At the division Strafford voted against the address, which was defeated 68 voices to 40. Bodl. Rawl. A 286, ff. 413-16; Bodl. Ballard 36, fol. 127; BLJ, xix. 163. After this controversial division, Oxford sought to reassure the House that ‘there was not a separate peace, and that the same would be foolish, knavish and villainous’, and to confirm this assurance, Strafford successfully moved for an address to the queen requesting that she cause to be laid before the House the papers relating to the previous peace negotiations at The Hague and at Gertruydenberg 1709-10. Timberland, ii. 372.

One commentator predicted that this row would prompt the ministry to lay the peace terms before Parliament in a week’s time. Ballard 36, fol. 127. Sure enough, on 6 June 1712 the queen delivered a long speech to both houses setting forth the agreed treaty conditions. The following day the speech was debated, and Marlborough roundly condemned the ministry, for ‘the measures entered into, and pursued in England for this year past, were contrary to her Majesty’s engagements with the Allies; did sully the triumphs and glories of her reign, and would render the English name odious to all other nations’. In response, ‘Lord Strafford spoke a great deal and with a notable malice against the Dutch, not without reflexions, as was judged, upon my Lord Marlborough’. What in effect Strafford delivered, in an ungrammatical and halting speech (he ‘had not expressed himself in all the purity of the English tongue’ as one commentator obliquely put it), was a harangue against the Dutch resistance to the Peace, which he attributed to ‘some members’ of the House ‘who maintained a secret correspondence with them and endeavoured to persuade them to carry on the war, feeding them with hopes that they should be supported by a strong party here’. Marlborough responded to this transparent aspersion on him ‘very strongly in his mild way’, but Cowper, to whom Strafford always expressed friendship and appreciation for his earlier role in his appeal against Watson Wentworth, was far less mild. He regaled the House with the comment that

this noble Lord [Strafford] had been so long abroad, that he had almost forgot, not only the language, but the constitution of his own country. That, according to our laws, it could never be suggested as a crime in the meanest subject, much less in any member of that august assembly, to hold correspondence with our Allies: such Allies especially, whose interest her Majesty had declared to be inseparable from her own, in her speech at the opening of this session. Whereas it would be a hard matter to justify, and reconcile, either to our own laws, or the laws of honour and justice, the conduct of some persons, in treating clandestinely with the common enemy without the participation of the Allies. Timberland, ii. 375; Christ Church, Oxford, Wake ms 17, f. 239; HEHL, Stowe mss 57 (7), pp. 74-7.

Following this debate, Thomas Wharton, 5th Baron (later marquess of) Wharton, moved to include a clause at the end of the proposed address of thanks for the queen’s speech that would encourage the queen and her allies to work together for a ‘mutual guarantee’ that would avoid any of them engaging in a separate peace with France. After Wharton’s mistrustful clause was rejected by a majority of 45 voices, Strafford was placed on the committee of 19 members assigned to draft the address of thanks. BLJ, xix. 163-4. A week later the House passed a series of motions expunging from the Journal all the reasons given in the protest of 28 May against the rejection of the address requesting the queen to allow Ormond to engage France in offensive war. It was noted that these motions were largely redundant as the offensive (to the ministry) reasons for the protest had already been printed and widely distributed, contrary to a standing order of the House against publicizing the proceedings of the House. Strafford was placed on the committee entrusted with discovering the printer and publisher of the reasons, and bringing them before the House.

Almost immediately after the session was prorogued on 21 June 1712, Strafford was sent back to the continent with specific orders from the queen to pursue the peace regardless of the concerns of the Dutch. He spent the next several months helping to hammer out the peace in Utrecht, while the constant delays in the negotiations led to a series of postponements and prorogations of Parliament, as the ministry was anxious not to reconvene the Houses until it could present a comprehensive peace treaty. Berkeley of Stratton attended virtually every single one of the prorogations of Parliament from July 1712 to March 1713, and he expressed in his many letters to Strafford his frustration over the halting progress of the peace negotiations. Add. 22220, ff. 32-61; Wentworth Pprs. 292-3, 295, 297-8, 300-1, 305-6, 310-13, 315-18, 322-4, 326-7; BLJ, xvi. 124-8. Strafford himself was not inactive in domestic politics during these months, and he was able to extract from the ministry further office, honours, and income for his diplomatic services. He returned briefly to England for a period from 12 Oct. to about 6 Dec. 1712, when he was reported to have brought the treaty by which the States General formally agreed to the cessation of arms to which Britain, France and Spain had agreed earlier that summer. Add. 72496, ff. 18-19. While in England, he was present to attend a prorogation of the House on 6 Nov. where he acted as a commissioner of prorogation. He may have sat by virtue of his new office for in the last days of September his appointment as first lord of the Admiralty had been made official, and he took advantage of his sojourn in England to wheedle out of the Oxford ministry a grant of a further bonus of £2,000 p.a. on top of the usual salary of this office. Further reward awaited him during his stay when on 25 Oct. he was elected a knight of the Garter, and for several months afterwards Strafford badgered the ministry to be allowed dispensation to wear his star of the Garter while conducting negotiations on the continent, even though he was still only a knight-elect of the order. He received support for this licence by his co-negotiator Bishop Robinson, who appeared well-versed in the regulations of the order. HMC Portland, ix. 353. A fellow knight-elect, Henry Somerset, 2nd duke of Beaufort, reassured Strafford that he, despite what the ambassador had been told, had no objection to Strafford’s wearing his star while abroad in Utrecht—as long as he did not dare do so in England. Add. 22221, ff. 154-7.

Strafford was still at Utrecht or The Hague for the entirety of the session of April-July 1713 when the Treaty of Utrecht was finally laid before Parliament, but he was in effect an invisible presence at Westminster in all the proceedings of that spring as it was largely his handiwork that was being so hotly debated. He was kept regularly informed of how the treaties were faring in Parliament by his brother Peter, and particularly by Berkeley of Stratton, who was only able to sigh with despair in June 1713 that ‘my head is so full of the business of trade, with hearing of nothing else, within and without the House of Lords, that it puts out all other thoughts, and yet [I] know so little of it, that I should get no credit with speaking of it’. Add. 22220, ff. 72-3; Wentworth Pprs. 337-8.

Strafford remained in the Netherlands after this session to tie up the many remaining loose ends and to continue as ambassador to the States-General, and was not in England when he was formally installed as a knight of the Garter by proxy on 4 Aug. 1713, a ceremony reported to him by his courtier brother Peter. Wentworth Pprs. 347-9. Soon after Strafford had another punctilio of honour over which to fret and obsess. He had long resented the formal precedence over him of Bishop Robinson in the British delegation at Utrecht, which Robinson enjoyed as lord privy seal even though Strafford was above him in social rank. This situation was altered when Robinson was replaced as lord privy seal, and promoted within the Church to the see of London, in late August 1713. Robinson’s requests to return home, as he perceived that he was ‘under a disgrace in the face of all Europe’ by his demotion which placed his former underling Strafford above him, were refused by the ministry. Add. 72496, ff. 102-3; HMC Dartmouth, i. 318. Strafford for his part insisted that a new commission for the plenipotentiaries needed to be drawn up reflecting their change of positions and offices, in which he assumed he would be preeminent. Add. 22220, ff.. 95-98; HMC Portland, ix. 382-5. A compromise was eventually reached where a new commission was issued dividing the diplomatic responsibilities of Strafford, who was to deal with Spain, France and Italy, and Robinson, who was to work on northern European diplomacy, with a special remit to accommodate the Emperor and France. Add. 72496, ff. 106-7.

This arrangement still did not satisfy Strafford and he came over ‘in disgust’ to England for another brief stay in mid-October 1713. Although in September 1713 his brother Peter had exulted to him that ‘we Tories carry the elections everywhere’, Strafford did not remain in England to attend the first session of the new Parliament. Wentworth Pprs. 351-4. He was back at The Hague and Utrecht by 13 Feb. 1714 when Bolingbroke was able to inform him of the imminent opening of Parliament by a commission from the ailing queen. Add 49970, f. 29v. Once again the absent Strafford was kept informed of proceedings by his regular correspondents Peter Wentworth, Berkeley of Stratton, and a recent arrival in the House of Lords, his cousin Allen Bathurst, Baron (later Earl) Bathurst. Wentworth Pprs. 358-405. He also heard frequently from Bolingbroke, who continued to assert his confidence in the Tories and their ultimate success, despite the divisions between them:

Had we dared in the last session, as we have done in this, to oppose at the same time the Whigs and those who detach themselves occasionally from us, the peace had been long ago sanctified, commerce opened with France, and the cry about the Protestant succession silenced. The reverse of this we did and the reverse of this happened… But my lord to stand for more than a month the severest inquisition into the conduct of three the busiest years of a century, to account not only for what has been done but also for every step by which it was done, neither to divert enquiries by the common artifice of courts, nor to screen ourselves behind the throne, these considerations give me I confess some satisfaction, since the conclusion of all that the opposers have been able to fix no blame, nor to charge any one man. Add. 49970, ff. 2-3.

The Hanoverian Succession and opposition 1714-39

Strafford continued his abrasive diplomacy with the States General during these months after the Peace, when there were further discussions about the Dutch Barrier, thrown into question by the attitude of the Emperor and his vice-regents in the Austrian Netherlands. As Strafford confided to the exiled Jacobite Thomas Bruce, 2nd earl of Ailesbury, in Brussels, he had little sympathy for the Dutch, who ‘deserve a little of that uneasiness they have caused us by their opposition of every measure the Queen has taken’. Add. 22221, ff. 20-21. He was still stationed at The Hague when the queen died on 1 Aug. 1714. Owing to his position as first lord of the Admiralty he was a regent or lord justice for the interim awaiting the arrival of the elector of Hanover, now George I, to Britain. The issue quickly arose whether he should be recalled from his diplomatic post to take up his role in the government of the realm, or whether he should remain where he was. While the lord treasurer, Charles Talbot, duke of Shrewsbury, was in favour of recalling him to Westminster, many of the Whigs in the regency, who formed the majority of the lords justices, overruled the duke and left Strafford to twist in the wind at The Hague. Wentworth Pprs. 414. Strafford himself wrote to Cowper asking his advice on how he was to take the requisite oaths as lord justice while abroad. Add. 22221, ff. 252-3. The autumn months saw anxious correspondence between him and Berkeley of Stratton concerning the anticipated changes in the ministry upon the king’s arrival and the feared ostracism of the Tories. Add. 22220, ff. 119-32; Wentworth Pprs. 409-10, 412-13, 416-17, 420-1, 427-9, 435-6. Strafford’s position was rendered fragile by George I’s evident preference for the Whigs and his dislike of the Peace which Strafford had helped to negotiate. From the autumn of 1714 Strafford was divested in quick succession of all his offices – as ambassador, colonel, first lord of Admiralty and Privy Councillor – and was never appointed to further office under the Hanoverians.

Berkeley of Stratton had worryingly informed Strafford in October 1714 that ‘the Whigs are inveterate against you’, but took some comfort that ‘I reckon much their spleen will evaporate in words, and since the bishop of London is taken into the Council, I know nothing you can be accused of, of which he is not a sharer’. Add. 22220, ff. 127-9; Wentworth Pprs. 427-9. This confidence was misplaced, for with the Whigs in power again, Strafford alone, and not Robinson, was blamed for the ‘dishonourable’ Peace of Utrecht. He joined the other Tory leaders Oxford, Bolingbroke, and Ormond as the principal targets of the Whig attacks and campaign of retribution in the new Parliament.

Strafford’s successful deflection of impeachment and the remainder of his parliamentary career will be examined further in the second part of this work. Strafford died of the stone on 15 Nov. 1739 at his house of Wentworth Castle at Stainborough.