ROBARTES, John (1606-85)

Robartes’s forebears made their fortune in Cornwall as merchants and money-lenders. His cousin, Edward Robartes^‡, appears to have been the first member of the family to be returned to the Commons as member for Penryn. It was through marriage into the Hender family that Robartes’s father Richard was able to make inroads into gentry society. He was later prevailed upon to use some of his substantial wealth to purchase the barony of Robartes in 1625 through the (controversial) mediation of Charles I's favourite, George Villiers^†, duke of Buckingham, for an estimated £10,000. M. Coate, Cornwall in the Great Civil War, 5. John Robartes’s own marriages allied him to the Rich family, earls of Warwick, but his interests remained predominantly Cornish. Lauded by Josiah Ricraft as ‘a true Nathanael’, Robartes appears by most other accounts to have been a rather dour and sullen man, though his compendious knowledge of ceremonial and legal precedents and his comparative moderation in religion served to make him a valuable man of affairs. Josiah Ricraft, A Survey of England's Champions (1647), 31. Having succeeded his father in the peerage in April 1634 he took his seat in the Lords on 13 Apr. 1640, where he soon became associated with the parliamentary opponents of Charles I. In 1642 he contributed £1,000 to the parliamentary cause and served with distinction as a colonel at Edgehill and as commander of a brigade at the first battle of Newbury. Coate, 30.

Robartes’s activities in the parliamentary army led to the confiscation of his estates by the king, which were granted to his local rival, Sir Richard Grenvile^‡, and the imprisonment of his children, though they were later released as part of an exchange in return for those of Thomas Arundell^†, 2nd Baron Arundell of Wardour. Although Robartes was appointed to a number of senior posts in the parliamentary army (by 1644 he was a full field marshal), he enjoyed mixed fortunes as a commander and in April 1645 he resigned the governorship of Plymouth under the terms of the self-denying ordinance. He opposed the formation of the New Model and objected to subordinating the church courts to parliamentary commissioners. Out of sympathy with events and intent, very literally, on cultivating his garden, in April 1648 he secured leave to retire to Cornwall. Coate, 139, 143, 247. He retreated from public affairs for the following dozen years concentrating instead on hunting and the development of his estate.

Although Robartes was disinclined to associate directly with royalist adventurers, his well-known disgruntlement and potential influence in the west country led to him being ordered away from Cornwall and required to live in Essex for eight months by the council of state. Harl. 2237, f. 130. He was also required to provide two sureties of £20,000 for his good behaviour. The new administration's efforts to clip his wings failed to prevent him from drifting into the ranks of what John Mordaunt, later Viscount Mordaunt, termed ‘the Presbyterian Knot’. R. Hutton, The Restoration, 127. Robartes remained shy of overt contact with royalist agents and does not appear to have co-operated with any of the royalist conspiracies but by 1654 he was being described in royalist reports as being 'firm for us'. Coate, 285. In June 1659 Mordaunt advised Sir Edward Hyde, later earl of Clarendon, that the recruitment of Edward Montagu, 2nd earl of Manchester, would also engage Robartes, his kinsman Charles Rich, 4th earl of Warwick, and William Fiennes, Viscount Saye and Sele. All of them were by then eager to work towards restoration of the monarchy on the principles set out in the treaty of Newport. CCSP, iv. 235.

Restoration, 1660-61

In advance of the Convention, Robartes attempted to bring his interest to bear in the county elections for Cornwall as well as in four Cornish boroughs (Bodmin, Bossiney, Losthwithiel and Truro) but with mixed results. Hender Robartes^‡ and a kinsman, John Silly^‡ were returned for Bodmin and Francis Gerard^‡ and Charles Pym^‡ were elected on the family interest for Bossiney, but both Robartes’s candidates at Lostwithiel were squeezed out and he failed to make any impression at Truro either. HP Commons 1660-90, i. 154-7, 170, 181. Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton, listed Robartes as one of the lords who had sat in the House during the Civil War and thus likely to be admitted to the restored House of Lords. Robartes took his seat in the Convention on 14 May, on which day he was named to the committee considering the petition of Charles Stanhope, 2nd Baron Stanhope of Harrington. He was also added to the committees for petitions and privileges.

Present on 84 per cent of all sitting days prior to the September adjournment, he quickly became a leading figure in the House. Having for a long time taken a close interest in parliamentary matters, as attested by a number of volumes in his possession containing extracts from the Journals and discussions of precedence, Robartes quickly established himself as one of the principal managers of business within the House. Harl. 2243, 2237, 2325. He was also one of those peers responsible on occasion for drafting legislation. His close study of procedural issues appears to have more than made up for his rather unattractive persona. Hyde later paid tribute to Robartes’s ‘good knowledge in the law, and antiquity’, experience that made him ‘such a man as the king thought worthy to compound with’. He qualified this assessment with the criticism that Robartes’s compendious knowledge was ‘rendered the less useful by the other pedantry contracted out of some books, and out of the ill conversation he had with some clergymen and people in quality much below him’. Clarendon, Life, ii. 19-20. He possessed, though, considerable influence, Clarendon suggested:

He had some parts which in Council and Parliament (which were the two scenes where all the King’s business lay) were most troublesome; for of all men alive who had so few friends, he had the most followers. Those who conversed most with him, knew him to have many humours which were very intolerable; they who were but little acquainted with him, took him to be a man of much knowledge, and called his morosity gravity, and thought the severity of his manners made him less grateful to the courtiers. He had no such advantageous faculties in his delivery, as could impose upon his auditors; but he was never tedious, and his words made impression. Clarendon, Life, ii. 20.

Robartes was named to more than 30 select committees during the first part of the Convention before the adjournment. One assessment calculates that he had the highest number of committee appointments in the Convention. R.W. Davis, ‘Committee and other Procedures in the House of Lords’, HLQ, xlv. 31. Already on his fifth sitting day, 18 May, he chaired the committee, consisting only of him, Saye and Sele and Theophilus Clinton, 4th earl of Lincoln, considering the order to seize the persons and effects of the late king's judges. The following day these same three were named to prepare the material to be offered at a conference with the Commons concerning the regicides. On 19 May, he was also named to a select committee considering the order concerning the fellows of New College, Oxford. On 24 May Robartes was one of three peers nominated to the select committee to consider the Commons' declaration about the Excise. He reported back from this committee the same day and on 25 May he reported from the committee for the ordinance for a monthly assessment.

Besides his role within the House, Robartes appears to have been eager to secure ministerial office. During May, before the king had even returned from exile, reports circulated of his appointment as lord deputy in Ireland. One letter of 20 May noted how ‘my Lord Robartes, formerly accounted a great Presbyterian though a man of much moderation, wisdom, learnings and good natural parts, contrary to all expectation is declared by the king himself deputy of Ireland.’ HEHL, HA 7644. His appointment as deputy to George Monck, duke of Albemarle, as lord lieutenant, was made formally in June. On 1 June he was sworn to the Privy Council, perhaps also through the interest of Albemarle. Add. 15750, f. 59; Lacey, Dissent and Parliamentary Politics, 471. His appointment had been anticipated by the French envoy, Antoine de Bordeaux, though de Bordeaux had also commented that, having been ‘one of the most impassioned against the king’ in the past, Robartes’s inclusion had annoyed some of the old royalists. TNA, PRO 31/3/107, pp. 77ff. On 9 June Robartes reported from the committee considering the House’s choice of a Speaker, communicating the committee’s conclusion that the place should normally be occupied either by the lord chancellor or lord keeper, but that in the absence of one of these or a substitute authorized under the great seal, the Lords should then elect a Speaker themselves. On 14 June Robartes was one of two peers (the other being Francis Willoughby, 5th Baron Willoughby of Parham) noted as having registered his dissent at the resolution to lay aside consideration of what was to be done about those peers who had taken the oath of abjuration against the king, though Robartes’s signature was not then reproduced in the printed Journal under the protest.

Between 20 July and 10 August Robartes reported on 15 occasions from committees of the whole held to consider the bill of indemnity, and particularly those persons to be exempted from it. On 23 July he reported the recommendation that Colonel John Hutchinson^‡ be omitted from the list of regicides while on 1 and 2 Aug. he reported the votes exempting five persons from indemnity and disabling a further 16 from holding office. He reported from the committee of the whole House on 6 Aug. which had been considering the petitions of the regicides Thomas Lister^‡ and Sir Gilbert Pickering^‡, bt. as well as other private provisos within the bill, communicating the House’s resolution that such private provisos should be left out of the bill. On 10 Aug. he reported the completed bill with its amendments and alterations. On 13 Aug. he was appointed to assist the lord chancellor [Hyde] in managing a conference with the Commons concerning public bills. The following day he was one of four peers nominated to assist Hyde again at a conference concerning poll money.

On 16 Aug. 1660 Robartes was appointed to replace Thomas Wriothesley, 4th earl of Southampton, with whom he was believed to be on close terms, as one of the referees to compose differences within the corporation of Winchester. HMC Finch, i. 86. The same day he registered his dissent at the resolution to allow Warwick Mohun, 2nd Baron Mohun, to recover damages for a breach of privilege committed against him nine years previously. On 20 Aug. Robartes was again appointed a manager of a conference concerning the differences between the Houses on the indemnity bill and he had the same role in subsequent conferences on the 22nd and 24th. On 25 Aug. he presented to the House a draft of the expedient to be offered to the Commons concerning those that had signed the former king’s death warrant, which was presented at the subsequent conference of 28 August. Earlier indications that Robartes was to depart for Ireland shortly were contradicted towards the close of the month. The delay may have been indicative of his disappointment at being made deputy to Albemarle, rather than lord lieutenant; it may also have been on account of his heavy involvement in parliamentary business at this juncture. CSP Dom. 1660-1, pp. 200-1. There was certainly no let-up in the weight of business with which he was involved. On 1 Sept. he acted as one of the managers of the conference to consider whether the king’s call for a recess should be interpreted as an adjournment or a prorogation and four days later he reported from committee the bill to prevent ‘inconveniences’ caused by patents and grants made during the previous 20 years. On 7 Sept. he reported from the committee assigned to draw heads for a conference on the poll bill and he was also one of six peers appointed to serve as commissioners for disbanding the army. The following day he was appointed a reporter of the conference considering the disbandment and on 11 Sept. he was again one of six peers named to the select committee to amend the bill for restoring ministers. The following day he was also named to the committee for amending the poll money bill.

Robartes resumed his seat after the adjournment on 6 Nov. 1660, after which he attended on over 90 per cent of all sitting days in the remainder of the Convention. On his first day he introduced the lord chancellor as Baron Hyde. On 8 Nov. he was named to the committee for considering precedents for congratulating the queen dowager on her return to England and the following day he brought to the House’s attention the king’s declaration concerning ecclesiastical affairs (the Worcester House Declaration), which he moved ought to be read. The House subsequently resolved on passing a vote of thanks to the king for the declaration. Robartes was added to the committee for the bill restoring Thomas Howard, earl of Arundel, to the dukedom of Norfolk on 10 Nov. and a week later he reported from the committee for Astley’s naturalization bill. On 6 Dec. he reported from the committee considering the dispute Rodney v. Cole and he subscribed the protest at the resolution to vacate the fines of Sir Edward Powell. On 15 Dec. he reported from the committee for the Royston vicarage bill and four days later he reported from the committee for the excise bill. On 20 Dec., he was nominated a commissioner for assessing the peers for poll money in the morning and during the afternoon meeting reported from the committee for the bill for abolishing the court of wards. Over the next few days he was involved in a series of conferences at the end of the Convention: on the 21st he reported from the committee for the Francis Hyde naturalization bill and was one of three peers nominated to manage a conference on three different bills. He reported back from it that afternoon on the college leases bill. On 22 Dec. he was one of three peers assigned to consider a proviso in the court of wards abolition bill concerning the mean profit of peers, and he quickly reported back their conclusions; later that afternoon he and Hyde were appointed to manage two more conferences. Robartes and Hyde were named the two managers of a subsequent conference on the college leases bill on 27 Dec., and the following day the same two were appointed to manage the conference for the poll bill. At some point during December Robartes received the proxy of Francis Seymour, Baron Seymour of Trowbridge. This proxy appears undated in the register but Seymour stopped sitting in the Convention after 30 November, and the entry in the register appears between entries dated 12 Sept. and 30 December.

Lord privy seal, 1661-9

Throughout the period of the Convention, while he was extremely busy in the House of Lords, Robartes held the post of lord deputy of Ireland. Early in 1661 he was removed from the deputyship following a series of clashes with Albemarle, the lord lieutenant. From the outset Robartes was said to have resented being made deputy ‘to any man but the king himself.’ Clarendon, Life, i. 463-4; ii. 18-23; HMC 5th Rep. 155; Pepys Diary, i. 227-9. In May 1661 the king offered him the vacant office of lord privy seal instead through the mediation of Clarendon (as Baron Hyde had become in April 1661) and Southampton. CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 26; HMC Finch, i. 133; Clarendon, Life, ii. 22-3. The appointment provoked the vast annoyance of Christopher Hatton, Baron Hatton, who had been angling for the place for months with the support of James Stuart, duke of York. Schoenfeld, Restored House of Lords, 150. Hatton was compensated for his disappointment with the minor sop of governor of Guernsey, leaving Robartes free to hold the privy seal for the remainder of the decade.

The elections to the new Parliament in spring 1661 saw Robartes’s interest in Cornwall squeezed. Although Hender Robartes was again returned for Bodmin and Robert Robartes^‡ (later styled Viscount Bodmin) was returned at Bossiney, Robartes failed to nominate anyone to stand for the county. He took his seat at the opening of the new Parliament on 8 May 1661. Three days later he introduced Denzil Holles, Baron Holles, and was named to the standing committees for privileges, petitions and the sub-committee for the Journal. Present on 85 per cent of all sitting days in the first session, on 15 May he reported from the privileges committee which he had chaired the previous day considering an unauthorised printing of the address to the king. As a result of his report, the offending publisher, Hodgkinson, was sent for to be heard at the bar. The following day Robartes was entered in the Journal’s attendance register for the first time as lord privy seal. Excused on account of poor health on 20 May, Robartes resumed his seat the following day and over the course of the session he was named to more than 60 select committees, in several of which he took a prominent role in as chairman, and he was again noticeable as one of the regular managers of conferences during the session. On 30 May 1661 he took the chair in the committee considering the bill for reversing the attainder of Thomas Wentworth^†, earl of Strafford, a measure he had been instrumental in driving through 20 years earlier. Previous hearings of this bill had been chaired by Jerome Weston, 2nd earl of Portland, and after Robartes adjourned the committee on 30 May without discussion it was Portland who resumed the chairmanship the following day. PA, HL/PO/CO/1/1, p. 11. On 8 June Robartes again chaired a session of the committee for the Strafford attainder bill as well as the committee for the Salwerpe and Stour navigation bill, which was adjourned without discussion. PA, HL/PO/CO/1/1, pp. 19-20. On 25 June 1661 he was able to draw upon his knowledge of precedent to resolve a query caused by a tied vote concerning the petition of Aubrey de Vere, 20th earl of Oxford, to be admitted to the hereditary post of lord great chamberlain. Citing an instance in the 43rd year of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, Robartes advised that in such cases the vote was adjudged to be resolved in the negative, which was accepted by the House. Robartes was reckoned to be opposed to Oxford's cause in an assessment of the following month, presumably preferring the claims of the then holder of the office, Montagu Bertie, 2nd earl of Lindsey. On 17 July he subscribed the second protest against the resolution to vacate Sir Edward Powell’s fines and on 26 July he reported from the conference for the corporations bill. The following day, 27 July, he reported from one conference considering the House’s bill for the imposition of pains and penalties and at the end of the day’s sitting he helped to manage another one. That day he was also named to the committee for the bill for restraining disorderly printing, which was ordered to meet that afternoon. Although no minutes were recorded in the committee book, it seems reasonable to assume that Robartes chaired the meeting as on 29 July he reported from that committee and then went on to report from at least three conferences that day on the disagreement between the Houses on the Lords’ proviso which prevented their own houses from being searched for clandestine printing. Relations became so bad that the Commons refused even to receive the bill for preventing disorderly printing; Robartes left the bill on the table in the conference chamber. On that same day Robartes also reported from a committee with a proviso to be attached to the highways bill and he also reported from conference the Commons’ rejection of the proviso. On 30 July the House ordered that Robartes should deliver the proviso for the highways bill at a further conference. Once again the Houses failed to arrive at an accommodation, with the Commons proposing an amendment, which the Lords rejected as they believed it would have the effect of nullifying their proviso.

Over the three month adjournment from that day at the end of July 1661 Robartes’s duties of lord privy seal kept him in London. He soon attracted a reputation as a difficult taskmaster. Samuel Pepys^‡ complained on 8 Aug. of how he had attempted unsuccessfully to wait on Robartes, ‘which made me mad and gives all the world reason to talk of his delaying of business—as well as of his severity and ill using the clerks of the privy seal.’ Pepys was finally able to secure an audience the next day, after which he conceded that ‘the lion is not so fierce as he is painted’. The predominant response to Robartes was still that he was dour, cantankerous and slow to attend to business. Pepys Diary, ii. 149, 150. Clarendon, not the most impartial of commentators regarding Robartes, also concurred. Having helped to persuade him to take up the post, he then found that Robartes, ‘to show his extraordinary talent, found a way more to obstruct and puzzle business, at least the despatch of it, than any man in that office had ever done before’. Clarendon, Life, ii. 23. Despite this, his knowledge and experience made him an important man of business and during August he was one of four peers to participate in a conference in response to proposals received from Sir George Downing^‡, the English resident at the Hague. Bodl. Clarendon 104, f. 234.

Robartes resumed his seat in the House after the summer adjournment, on 20 Nov. 1661. On 3 Dec. he chaired sessions of three committees and on 5 Dec. he reported back from one of these, that for the bill for the prevention of vexatious suits. PA, HL/PO/CO/1/1, p. 78. Two days later he was nominated one of the managers of a conference concerning witnesses called to the bar of the House. On 19 Dec. he was placed on the committee that was to meet with one from the Commons over the Christmas recess to discuss the news of Venner’s rising. Despite this appointment, Robartes seems to have been out of town over the Christmas period. He resumed his place on 8 Jan. 1662 and on 22 Jan. he reported from committee the bill for reversing Strafford’s attainder, which was subsequently recommitted. Pepys Diary, ii. 236-7; Chatsworth, Cork mss, misc. box 1, Burlington diary, 23 Jan. 1662. He chaired sessions of the committees considering that bill and the herald’s bill the same day. PA, HL/PO/CO/1/1, p. 107. On 6 Feb. he signed the protest at the resolution to pass the bill for restoring Charles Stanley, 8th earl of Derby, to family lands sold during the interregnum. On 1 Mar. he was appointed a manager of the conference for the Quakers’ petition and Robartes appears to have been entrusted with the proxy of Baptist Noel, 3rd Viscount Campden, during this month, for there is a note in the manuscript minutes for 10 Mar. 1662 listing the two men’s names together, though there is no accompanying record in the proxy books. PH, xxviii. 436; PH, xxxii. 248-52. On 30 Apr. he was nominated one of the five reporters of the conference for the uniformity bill. Robartes reported from the conference on the bill for preventing frauds in customs on 3 May. He was chosen a manager on 7 May for a conference on the king’s message to expedite business and on that same day delivered a report of the Commons’ extensive objections to the amendments to the uniformity bill. On 10 May he reported from the committee of three peers nominated to draw up articles concerning the irregularities in the delivery of the bill for providing relief for former royalist officers and he was nominated a reporter of conferences on the bill on 12, 15 and 17 May. On 12 May he also reported the conference on the militia bill which had been held two days previously. Robartes was on 13 May appointed to the sub-committee established to draw up reasons explaining the Lords’ resolutions concerning various of the Commons’ alterations to the militia bill and to design an ‘expdient’ for one of the more controverted points. He was appointed a manager of for a conference on 14 May on this bill and, although he was not appointed a reporter for the subsequent one two days later, on that day he was placed on the committee of six peers assigned to draft a proviso regarding the peers’ provision of arms and horses, which he subsequently reported to the House. The following day he was appointed a reporter for two conferences on this matter, after the second of which he was able to report to the House that the remaining two differences between the Houses, including the privilege of the peers to assess and tax themselves, had been (reluctantly on the Commons’ part) resolved so that the important bill could go through before prorogation. Burlington Diary, 17 May 1662. He was requested on 19 May to manage that part of the conference on the highways bill relating to the Lords’ proviso regarding the altering of bridges. The same day, the day of the prorogation, he subscribed the protest at the resolution to agree with the Commons in omitting from the highways bill these two provisos levying a charge for repairing bridges, which the Commons saw as the Lords interfering in a money bill.

Robartes took his place in the following session on 18 Feb. 1663, after which he was present on 86 per cent of all sitting days and during which he was named to 23 committees. Nominated one of the peers to wait on the king on the first day of the new session, on 19 Feb., he reported that he and George Villiers, 2nd duke of Buckingham, had fulfilled their commission and offered the king the House’s thanks for his speech. The next day Robartes was one of four peers to be appointed to devise an order relating to protections and on 23 Feb. he was nominated Speaker as a result of the indisposition of the lord chief baron, Sir Orlando Bridgeman^‡, bt, who was himself deputizing for the lord chancellor who was at that time laid up with gout. A commission dated that day authorized Robartes to continue to act as Speaker for so long as the lord chancellor remained unable attend. Durham UL (Palace Green), GB 033 COL (Cosin Letter-books), 1b, no.100; C 231/7, p. 195. That same day Robartes introduced (‘as by the king’s direction and approbation’) the bill designed to bring into effect the policy announced in the Declaration of Indulgence in December, and enabling the king to dispense with the Act of Uniformity and other religious legislation. When the measure came under heavy attack the following month, he was quick to distance himself from it. Haley, Shaftesbury, 165; Clarendon, Life (1857), ii. 95. Sickness seems to have hit the administration of Parliament hard during the session: on 5 Mar. Robartes informed the House of the indisposition of the clerk of parliaments, requiring his office to be undertaken by a deputy as well. Robartes continued to act as Speaker until 12 Mar. when the lord chancellor resumed his place. Following a series of debates in committee of the whole, the bill was referred to a sub-committee for ecclesiastical affairs; Robartes took the chair of the sub-committee on 16 March. A proposal to adjourn was carried by seven votes to four and on 18 Mar. Robartes chaired the sub-committee again, at the opening of which he presented his proposed wording both of the first enacting clause and the proviso for excluding Catholic recusants, though the bill failed to proceed much further. PA, HL/PO/CO/1/1, pp. 295-6, 298. On 23 Mar. he was also placed on the committee to draft a petition to the king regarding the increase of Jesuits and Catholic priests in the realm and in this role he was appointed a manager for conferences held on 26, 28 and 30 Mar. in which the wording of the address was successfully hammered out between the two houses. On 30 Mar. he chaired the committee considering the bill for licensing the water-commanding engine that had been invented by Edward Somerset, 2nd marquess of Worcester; he was one of three peers to oversee this committee. PA, HL/PO/CO/1/1, p. 315. On 2 Apr. Robartes was nominated, with Albemarle, to attend the king with the House's thanks for the king’s message concerning priests and Jesuits and two days later Robartes was again named as one of the peers to attend the king with a deputation from the House of Commons.

Robartes was appointed temporary Speaker again on 2 May 1663. He continued to fulfil the role on the following two sitting days before the lord chancellor resumed his place once more on 7 May. On 11 and 18 May Robartes chaired sessions of the privileges committee examining the procedure for the introduction of peers, taking into their consideration precedents from the reign of Henry VIII onwards to determine how their first sittings should be managed. PA, HL/PO/DC/CP/1/1, pp. 92-94. The following month, on 18 June, Robartes reported from the committee for petitions the case of Clapham v. Bowyer, those involved in the action being ordered to appear at the bar on 23 June. On 26 June Robartes was one of four peers nominated to draw up the forms of submission for Lionel Cranfield, 3rd earl of Middlesex, and John Egerton, 2nd earl of Bridgwater, who had been engaged in a furious dispute. Robartes reported the form of the submission the following day.

In April and May the French envoy, Gaston de Cominges, had reported that Robartes was allied with the cabal who had been responsible for the Declaration of Indulgence — George Digby, 2nd earl of Bristol, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Baron Ashley (later earl of Shaftesbury) and Sir Henry Bennet, later Baron (and earl of) Arlington — were united in opposition to the lord chancellor, and that Bristol was insisting on the admission of Ashley and Robartes to the king’s inner counsels. PRO 31/3/111, pp. 90-1; 31/3/112, pp. 29-31. In mid-July Wharton listed Robartes as likely to support the abortive attempt by Bristol, to impeach Clarendon.

Shortly after the failure of Bristol’s impeachment attempt, Robartes served as Speaker on 16 July, and two days later was appointed one of the commissioners for assessing the peers. He served as Speaker again for the last few days of the session from 23 until 27 July. On 23 July he reported from the committee for the bill for better collecting the excise and he was appointed a manager for a conference on the matter later that day. That same day he also reported from the conference concerning the bill to allow the duke of York to grant wine licences and the following one he reported from the committee established, in response to the report, to draw up heads for further conferences regarding the Commons’ proviso to that bill. Robartes and Arthur Annesley, earl of Anglesey, sought leave on 24 July to enter their protest against the passage of the bill for the encouragement of trade, and particularly its provisions for banning the import of Irish cattle, but in the manuscript and printed journal for that day, only Anglesey’s name appears next to the long protest. Robartes’s apparent omission echoes the earlier occasion when he sought leave to protest along with Willoughby of Parham but then failed to append his signature. His failure on this occasion may have been a simple slip caused by his other responsibilities on the day, though this is contradicted by a report made by Anglesey to the lord lieutenant of Ireland, James Butler, duke of Ormond [I] (who had the right to attend the Lords as earl of Brecknock). Anglesey asserted that he, Robartes and several other peers had all signed the protest, which suggests that it is a mistake in the Journal and not of Robartes’s making. HMC Ormonde, n.s. iii, 62-3. A memorandum by the clerk, John Throckmorton, in the manuscript minutes that between 16 and 26 July he was unable to attend the House owing to his ‘extreme weakness and sickness’ may help to explain the omission: possibly the signatures to the protest were lost as a result. PA, HL/PO/JO/5/1/13. Robartes reported on 25 July from the conference on the excise bill, held the previous day, and he took part in a subsequent conference on the same matter that day, as well as in another conference on the duke of York’s wine licenses bill, from which he also reported. He reported on 27 July, the day of prorogation, from the committee of privileges considering the method of introducing peers by descent, recommending that such introductions should be managed with the minimum of fuss; the House agreed with the committee’s suggestions. The same day Robartes also reported back from the conference held with the Commons concerning amendments to the bill for relief of those disabled from subscribing the declaration of uniformity because of sickness. It has been suggested that Robartes attempted to distract the House's attention from the Commons’ objections to the Lords’ amendment to the bill, which had been recommended by a select committee dominated by peers with Presbyterian sympathies, by drawing attention to one of the Members of the Commons who was said to have criticized the Lords’ suggestion as having ‘neither justice nor prudence in it.’ Although the House resolved to respond to this slight by taking into consideration their privileges at their next sitting, this ploy failed to prevent the Lords from acceding to the Commons’ point and thereby undoing their former amendment. HLQ, xlv. 25.

Robartes returned to the House for the ensuing session on 16 Mar. 1664, after which he was present on two thirds of all sitting days and was named to six committees. It may also have been at some point during this session that he received the undated proxy of his wife’s kinsman, Warwick, who was absent on a number of occasions towards the close of March and throughout April; the immediately preceding entry in the proxy register is dated 17 March. Robartes reported from the committee of the whole House concerning the repeal of the Triennial Act on 30 Mar. and on 5 Apr. he was one of three peers named to wait on the king to thank him for his speech. Named to the committee for the seamen and navy stores bill on 18 Apr. 1664, Robartes took the chair in the committee the following morning. PA, HL/PO/CO/1/1, p. 444. Robartes reported the committee’s resolutions to the House later on that day. Ten days later he was appointed sole manager of the conference considering the king’s message to the House concerning the advancement of trade. On 21 Mar. a dispute between Robartes’s son, Robert Robartes, and Thomas Wynn over the disposition of the estate of Robartes’s father-in-law John Bodvile, came before the House, which presumably also engaged some of Robartes’s attention. The matter was put off in the course of the session, perhaps because of the failure of either party to bring up their witnesses from Wales in time. NLW, Ms 9067E/2393. It was still unresolved two years later. Milward Diary, 44, 56.

Following the prorogation, Robartes was noted once again by the French ambassador as one of those working to bring down Lord Chancellor Clarendon. PRO 31/3/113, p.188. Having attended the prorogation of 20 Aug. 1664, Robartes took his place in the new session on 24 Nov., after which he was present on just under 80 per cent of all sitting days. Named to five committees, on 31 Jan. 1665, with the chancellor again indisposed, he took over the role of Speaker once more. He continued to act as such for the remainder of the session. C 231/7, p. 251. On 9 Feb. he reported from the conference for the bill for granting aid to the king and on 23 and 24 Feb. he chaired lengthy sessions of the committee for Sir Robert Carr^‡’s bill, the effects of which he reported to the House on 25 February. PA, HL/PO/CO/1/2, pp. 59, 64. On 28 Feb. he was appointed one of the managers of the conference for the bill of Nicholas Tufton, 3rd earl of Thanet, from which he reported the following day, when he also reported from the conference for the bill concerning statutes and judgments.

Robartes attended the prorogation of 21 June 1665, before taking his place in the new session on 10 Oct. 1665. In advance of the meeting of Parliament he received the proxy of Charles Howard, Baron Howard of Charlton, with whom he had previously shared chairmanship of the committee for the bill for resolving differences between John Paulet, 5th marquess of Winchester, and his son, Charles Powlett, Lord St John (later duke of Bolton) in June and July of the 1663 session. PA, HL/PO/CO/1/1, pp. 414, 418, 426, 428. Howard of Charlton remained absent for the remainder of the session and the proxy was vacated by the prorogation. Present on 14 of the 19 sitting days of the session, on 11 of which he served as Speaker, Robartes on 13 Oct. was named to the committee for the distresses of rent bill, from which he reported on 16 October. He remained involved in this bill and on 31 Oct. was nominated a reporter of the conference on it. That same day he also reported from the conference considering additions to the plague bill.

Returning to the House at the outset of the new session on 18 Sept. 1666, Robartes continued to be a very closely involved in much of the business of the House. He was named to the committees for privileges and the Journal on 24 Sept. and to a further 17 committees during the remainder of the session, of which he attended over 95 per cent of all sitting days. In the course of the session he received the proxies of two former royalist commanders, that of Prince Rupert, duke of Cumberland, on 18 Dec. (vacated by the session’s close) and the following day that of Richard Byron, 2nd Baron Byron (which was vacated on 17 Jan. 1667). In November Robartes was also elected to the Royal Society, proposed by Seth Ward, bishop of Exeter. T. Birch, Hist. of Royal Society, ii. 123; Hunter, Royal Society, 198. By now a prominent advocate of the Irish cattle bill, Robartes chaired sessions of the committee of the whole debating the measure on 22 and 23 Oct. and again on 10 November. Carte 217, f. 353; PA, HL/PO/CO/1/2, p. 109. Two days later Robartes reported the amended bill as being fit to pass, which it did, following further delays, on 23 November. Robartes’s apparent volte face on this issue from his opposition to the bill for encouragement of trade may have been indicative of his growing alliance with Ashley against Clarendon, and possibly of his resentment of Ormond’s tenure of the lord lieutenancy of Ireland. Seaward, Cavalier Parlt, 268-70. Nominated one of the lords to attend the king with the vote objecting to the importation of French commodities on 30 Oct., Robartes was later nominated on 22 Nov. one of the managers of the conference for the public accounts, from which he reported back the following day. On 3 Dec. 1666 he reported from the committee of the whole considering the Commons’ votes against the Canary Company patent and on 7 Dec. he reported from the privileges committee considering the same business. On 17 Dec. Robartes reported from a further conference on the Irish cattle bill which had been held with the Commons three days previously and was then named to a committee of seven peers to draw up answers to the Commons’ objections to the amended bill. The following day he reported from the committee of the whole for the poll bill and was again named a reporter on 19 Dec. of the conference for the Canary Company patent. He reported from a further committee of the whole for the poll bill on 22 Dec. and a week later he was named a manager of conferences concerning this and the Irish cattle bill. For the month from 8 Jan. until 8 Feb. 1667 he again stepped into the breach as Speaker and on 12 Jan. he was one of a number of peers to be approached by Bulstrode Whitelocke^‡ seeking their help in stopping the bill for the sale of part of the estate of George Nevill, 12th Baron Abergavenny, which he considered damaging to the interests of his grandson, George Nevill, later 13th Baron Abergavenny. Whitelocke Diary, 713. On 23 Jan. Robartes subscribed the protest against the resolution not to add a clause granting the right of appeal to the king and House of Lords to the bill for resolving disputes over houses destroyed in the Great Fire. Robartes protested again on 5 Feb. at the resolution to refuse the Commons’ request for a conference to discuss the impeachment of Viscount Mordaunt.

Robartes attended two days of the brief five-day session of July 1667, before returning to the chamber on 10 Oct. 1667, following Clarendon’s fall. Present on half of all sitting days in the session, during which he was named to six committees, on 11 Oct. he was again commissioned to deputize as speaker in the Lord Keeper Bridgeman’s absence. On 12 Nov. he reported from the committee of the whole concerning the order for records of impeachments and on 19 Dec. he was one of four peers to serve as commissioners for the passing of five bills, including that for the banishment of Clarendon. Milward Diary, 178. Between 12 and 17 Feb. 1668 he again acted as Speaker, during Bridgeman’s indisposition.

The following month, Robartes proved a vocal supporter of Thomas Skinner in his action with the East India Company. Haley, Shaftesbury, 200. On 30 Mar. he communicated a request from a Commons committee that he might ‘certify them somewhat’ concerning one Turner, who had business before them. Robartes had insisted on securing the peers’ concurrence. Robartes served as Speaker on 3 Apr. 1668 and between 4 and 7 May. On 5 May he was one of several peers appointed to report a conference with the Commons concerning the ongoing dispute between Skinner and the East India Company (though the record of this in the Lords Journal was later crossed through), but when a further conference was convened on 8 May, Heneage Finch, later earl of Nottingham, commented, ‘that which was first observable was that my Lord Robartes from whom we expected the greatest opposition, was absent that day and took physic, which some say was ill taken.’ PA, HL/PO/JO/5/1/15, 5-8 May 1668; Leics. RO, DG 7, Box 4956, P.P. 18 (i), pp. 33-36. Robartes failed to sit the following day, either, when the session was adjourned and he also missed the following adjournments on 11 Aug. and on 10 November. He served as Speaker once more on 1 Mar. 1669 when Parliament was prorogued. After this occasion he was absent from the House for the ensuing ten years.

Lord lieutenant of Ireland and retirement, 1669-79

In spite of his previous brief and ineffective record as deputy of Ireland, in February 1669 Robartes was proposed as a replacement for the serving lieutenant, Ormond, a post that the duke of Buckingham had long angled and intrigued for. HMC Le Fleming, 61; Carte 141, f. 97; PRO 31/3/121, pp. 47-48. Although Robartes declared himself willing to take up the position, he insisted on several conditions being fulfilled before he would agree to the appointment. The majority of these related to the management of the Irish revenue, but he insisted in addition that ‘no complaints be received against him but that copies of them be immediately sent to him and his answer received before any debate be on them’. He also demanded an allowance of £3,000 per annum ‘for his table’. Add. 36916, f. 127. Ormond's displacement and the appointment of Robartes was viewed as a victory for the Buckingham faction, though the king was at pains to assure his sister, Henrietta, duchesse d’Orléans, that by replacing Ormond with Robartes he was not pandering to Buckingham’s ambition. Browning, Danby, i. 66. Robartes’s commission as lord lieutenant was sealed in March 1669, as was the grant for £3,000 towards his equipage, but it was expected to be mid-summer before he set out for his new posting. CSP Dom. 1668-9, p. 225; Add. 36916, f. 128. Rivalry between Robartes and his predecessor, Ormond, created difficulties even before he set foot on the island. Robartes’s characteristic request to Sir Paul Davys, secretary of state for Ireland, to furnish him with various documents relating to procedure on the island caused Davys some anxiety and he wrote in turn to Ormond, asking for clarification of the relationship between the two men so that he could shape his response accordingly: ‘If the terms be those of friendship, he would answer… with freedom, as otherwise with reserve’. Carte 37, ff. 42, 54.

Although it was reported at the close of July 1669 that Robartes was shortly to depart, he was still dragging his feet at the close of the first week of August and it was related that ‘all rubs are not yet removed in that business.’ Durham UL (Palace Green), GB 033 COL (Cosin Letter-books), 5a, no. 28; Add. 36916, f. 140. In his absence it was thought that his duties as privy seal would be taken over by Sir Edward Dering^‡, though Robartes was not in the end being displaced, the office being exercised by commission. Kent HLC (CKS), U275/O2; CSP Dom. Addenda 1660-85, pp. 286-88. Robartes finally set out in early September 1669, taking in Lichfield on his way where John Hacket, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, noted that although Robartes was ‘very complimentary about the cathedral… he gave nothing to the fabric’. Bodl. Tanner 44, f. 149. He arrived in Dublin at last later that month, where he set the tone for his brief tenure of office by doing away with all the planned ceremonials. The London Gazette reported that his reception ‘was intended to have been made with much state and solemnity’, but Robartes waived these entertainments and confined himself to a private meeting with the lord deputy, Thomas Butler, earl of Ossory [I] (who sat in the Lords as Baron Butler of Moore Park) and council. London Gazette, 23 Sept. 1669. As well as being intolerant of pomp, Robartes also proved himself a stickler for regulations. Edward Conway, 3rd Viscount (later earl of) Conway, noted in a letter to John Moore how he was compelled to wait on a licence from England to return to his estates there from Ireland, ‘there being no possibility to prevail with my lord lieutenant to break the strictness of his rules’. Despite this Conway appears to have found much to admire in Robartes’s new broom, adding in the same letter how:

His first business was to inspect the treasury and the army, in which he finds a labyrinth of troubles, but goes through it with admiration and will certainly bring things into such a channel as will make this kingdom flourish, for I cannot find he designs anything but public good… Add. 38849, ff. 52-3.

Nevertheless, within months of his arrival, Robartes’s government was in difficulty. In December 1669 Robartes wrote to the lord keeper requesting that he be recalled. Browning, Danby, ii. 24. The following month it was reported that the king, equally eager to bring his new lieutenant’s unpopular government to a close, had ordered his removal. HMC Le Fleming, 68. Rumours that Robartes had been stabbed to death and that this was the reason for his replacement were rapidly quashed. CSP Dom. 1670, p. 47. Several commentators set out the nature of the grievances against Robartes. One noted the accusations that he had failed to correspond with the secretaries of state, that he had encouraged the common soldiers to defy their officers and had ignored orders from the king. Mapperton, Sandwich mss, Journal x, pp. 101-2. Another reported how his ‘morose behaviour’ had alienated the Irish gentry but also hinted that his discomfiture might be related to factional struggles at court, pointing out that the decision to bring his lieutenancy to a close had been ‘done without the knowledge and since much against the grain of the duke of Buckingham’. Bodl. ms Eng. lett. c. 210, f. 125. The Venetian resident noted how Robartes’s ‘severity’ had ‘done much to aggravate’ the troubles in Ireland and that this was the reason for the king's decision to recall him. CSP Ven. 1669-70, p. 160.

In spite of the extent of the criticisms and the king’s clear eagerness to bring his recalcitrant lieutenant’s tenure of the office to a close, it was a further five months before Robartes was able to return to England. On 21 Feb. 1670 he was excused his absence at a call of the House, being forced to await his relief while confined in Dublin ‘in great pain’: Sir Robert Southwell^‡ commented that since he was a ‘man of humour’, it was a matter of speculation whether he would return to Whitehall or just go straight home to Cornwall. Add. 38015, ff. 117-18. John Berkeley, Baron Berkeley of Stratton, one of Buckingham's associates, had early on been spoken of as Robartes’s likely replacement. He received his formal appointment in March but until he was able to take over the lieutenancy activity in Ireland ground to a halt, ‘the council board being as insignificant as our lord lieutenant, since all petitioners expect the blessed hour of his departure’. Carte 243, ff. 49-50. Berkeley was reported to have left for his new posting in mid-April but it was the beginning of May before Robartes was able to hand the baton on to his successor. He was reported as making a characteristically curt speech, merely telling Berkeley that ‘Action is the life of all government. I have no more to say', before adding that ‘he had found and kept the kingdom in peace and hoped it would so continue.’ Robartes returned to England less than a fortnight later. Add. 36916, ff. 178, 180, 182; London Gazette, 2 May, 16 May 1670; CSP Dom. 1670, pp. 219, 227. In spite of earlier efforts made by Buckingham ‘to secure him a fair reception’ it was made quite apparent that he was out of favour. Carte 50, f. 82. He was commanded to remain at his home at Chelsea and not to appear at court without the king’s prior permission. Clearly annoyed by this treatment, he quit London shortly after, without first seeking permission to do so, and retreated to Cornwall, where he remained in retirement for the following decade. Mapperton, Sandwich mss, Journal x, pp. 280-82; Add. 36916, ff. 183, 187.

Robartes continued to be plagued with misfortune that year. A letter of October 1670 noted that his wife had suffered a miscarriage, which may partly explain his resolution not to return to London that autumn. Cornw. RO, CA/B47/41. Notwithstanding his refusal to take his seat when the session reconvened on 24 Oct. 1670, he was careful to ensure that his absence was covered. On 3 Oct. he registered his proxy with his friend, James Compton, 3rd earl of Northampton, and on 14 Nov. he was excused at a call of the House. Although a former royalist, Northampton, like Robartes, had become increasingly disgruntled with the regime, which may have been the source of their friendship. They had also shared the chairmanship of the committee considering the bill for the marquess of Worcester’s water-commanding engine. Robartes was excused again on 10 Feb. 1671 and he registered the proxy with Northampton once more on 23 Jan. 1673 for the ensuing session. Later that year, he was put out of office and succeeded as lord privy seal by Anglesey. Robartes registered his proxy with Northampton again on 19 Dec. for the next session and was excused at the subsequent call of 12 Jan. 1674. Northampton held his proxy again from 1 Apr. 1675 for that session and Robartes was indulged his continuing absence by the House once more on 29 April. The following year, negotiations for the marriage of his grandson, Charles Bodvile Robartes, later 2nd earl of Radnor, with Lady Martha Osborne, daughter of Thomas Osborne, earl of Danby (later duke of Leeds) failed to come to fruition. To add insult to injury, Lady Martha eventually married one of the family’s Granville rivals instead. Eg. 3330, f. 3.

Noted as absent without explanation at calls of the House of 10 Nov. 1675 and 9 Mar. 1677, Robartes was listed ‘worthy’ by Shaftesbury in a list compiled in the early summer of 1677. Later that year it was rumoured that he was to be restored to the privy seal. Browning, Danby, i. 238. In spite of this he made no further effort to resume his place in Parliament, registering his proxy with Northampton on 20 Dec. 1677 and again on 14 Oct. 1678 for the two sessions meeting in 1678. Both proxies were vacated by prorogation. Carte 81, f. 364.

Return to Parliament, 1679-85

In the proceedings against Danby in 1679 Robartes was initially thought to be counted alongside the opponents of the former lord treasurer (despite his long-term absence from Parliament). One of Danby’s own assessments in early March 1679 noted Robartes as doubtful, while a further list of 12 Mar. included Robartes’s name among the opposition peers that were absent from the session. The following month Robartes finally put an end to his long retirement in the country and returned to London. His appearance after so long a spell in the wilderness fuelled speculation that he was shortly to be put into ‘some good employment’, and was perhaps related to the negotiations that took place in advance of the meeting of the new Parliament. It was thought that he would be included in the new Privy Council, as he was when it was reconstituted on 21 April. Verney ms mic. M636/32, Sir R. to E. Verney, 14, 21 Apr. 1679. Robartes was listed as first attending on 15 Apr., when he was added to two existing committees: one for the bill for hindering Danby and other office-holders from taking advantage of their places; and the other for the estate bill of his fellow Cornishman Cornishman, Charles Mohun, 4th Baron Mohun. However, a letter of that date, commenting on the passing of the bill of attainder the previous day, stated that Robartes had been one of those to move the king for the speedy passing of the bill. HMC Ormonde, v. 51. This report is supported by a list of those voting for and against the attainder in the division held on 14 Apr., in which Robartes is included among the bill’s supporters.

Having at last returned to the House, Robartes was thereafter present on 31 per cent of all sitting days in the session—though if those days are included when he was probably present but his name was omitted from the Journal’s register, his attendance appears to have been slightly higher, closer to a third of all sitting days. After a decade’s absence, he quickly resumed his former activity as a manager. On 16 Apr. he reported from the committee investigating Weld House, noting that Humphrey Weld^‡, the man under scrutiny, had attempted to circumvent an earlier order to build a wall to prevent back access to a private Catholic chapel, by building the wall but inserting a doorway in it so that access remained unrestricted. As a result Weld was ordered to be arrested. HMC Lords, i. 126. The following day, Robartes reported from the committee of the whole on the habeas corpus bill and, although he was again omitted from the attendance list that day, on 24 Apr. 1679 he was named to the committee established to consider the Commons’ objections to the answers of the five impeached lords. Excused at a call of the House of 9 May on account of poor health, Robartes resumed his seat three days later and on 14 May he entered his dissent at the resolution to pass the bill for regulating the trials of peers. Named to a further four committees, on 16 May he chaired the committee for Charles Dale’s bill, which was adjourned to the following day. Robartes reported it on 17 May. PA, HL/PO/CO/1/3, pp. 357-8.

Robartes’s return to London was no doubt the cause of speculation that he would soon be restored to office and on 13 May his name was mentioned again in connection with the government of Ireland. Previously noted as being one of Ormond’s ‘envyers’, by the middle of May Robartes was thought to be one of three competitors for the lieutenancy, which was eventually granted to Arthur Capell, earl of Essex. HMC Ormonde, v. 4, 96. In spite of his earlier hostility to Danby, on 22 May it was reported that Robartes had joined with Lord Chancellor Finch in arguing in favour of permitting the bishops to exercise their votes in Danby’s trial, a move calculated to assist the former lord treasurer as the bishops were expected to support his acquittal. Verney ms mic. M636/32, J. Cary to Sir R. Verney, 22 May 1679. Why Robartes should have altered his stance with regard to Danby is unclear, though he may well have been uncomfortable with the increasingly radical tone of some of the government’s opponents. On 26 May he was appointed one of the managers of the conference for preserving good correspondence between Lords and Commons. When the House resolved to adjourn into a committee of the whole to consider the results of that conference and called for a chairman to be nominated, Robartes once more drew upon his exhaustive knowledge of precedent by pointing out that until 1642 such committees had had no chairman. HMC Lords, i. 40. On 27 May he probably voted for the right of the bishops to stay in the House during capital cases.

Robartes’s efforts on Danby's behalf did not go unnoticed. In June 1679 Danby wondered that ‘the king gives no better encouragement to my Lord Roberts, who he may keep as a bridle upon my Lord Shaftesbury, if he pleases’ and it was no doubt to do precisely this that Robartes was on 23 July promoted in the peerage as earl of Radnor. Browning, Danby, ii. 87. Robartes's original choice of title was reported to have been earl of Falmouth. It was also speculated that he might take the title Truro, but shortly after he settled on Radnor instead, apparently because of the prior existence of the viscountcy of Falmouth that had been awarded to the king's bastard son, George Fitzroy, earl (later duke) of Northumberland. CSP Dom. 1679-80, p. 196; Verney ms mic. M636/33, J. to Sir R. Verney, 17 July 1679; Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 19; Chatsworth, Devonshire collection, Group 1/B, newsletter to Devonshire, 2 Aug. 1679. Another story, related by the Cornish antiquary Thomas Tonkin^‡, told how Lady Mohun precipitated the change after she teased the new countess of Falmouth (as she was briefly known) about her title. She was said to have dubbed her the countess of Penny-come-quick, a reference to the notorious corruption which was endemic in the corporation of Falmouth. Magna Britannia, iii. 99-103. Any alteration appears to have been made relatively quickly as there is no evidence of changes being entered in the docket book, whereas the creation of Charles Gerard, earl of Macclesfield, who had initially intended to be styled earl of Newbury, is recorded in the book with the old title scratched out and the new style added above. HMC Le Fleming, 161; C 231/8, p. 12.

Throughout August 1679 Radnor was offering advice to Danby’s brother-in-law, Peregrine Bertie^‡, about the efforts to secure Danby’s release, though he appears to have been reluctant to act directly on Danby’s behalf. When asked if he would speak to the king in support of Danby’s enlargement, he was reported to have asked to be excused, explaining that:

the king is too artificial for me, I can guess at none of his intentions, nor will I expose myself to be used as my Lord Danby has been, for how the king can intend to make good his pardon, and at the same time be principally advised by my Lord [Halifax George Savile, marquess of Halifax] and Lord Essex whom he has heard say such things about his pardon to his face, I do not understand. Add. 28049, ff. 62-63.

Although unwilling to intercede with the king, Radnor waited on Halifax the following month and informed him that he intended to be in town throughout the winter, presumably to be on hand for further developments in the Danby case. In response Halifax appears to have suggested that if Radnor and John Maitland, duke of Lauderdale [S] (who sat in the House as earl of Guilford), ‘would but come to them… in their opinions about the pardon they should join with them heartily in all other things and they might have what they pleased.’ Ibid. ff. 72-73.

By the autumn of 1679 there seems little doubt that Radnor’s position had altered fundamentally and that he was by then committed to upholding the court. His decision paid him dividends and in October he replaced his former associate Shaftesbury as lord president of the council. London Gazette, 23 Oct. 1679. Radnor’s change of stance appears to have caught out those responsible for planting information relating to the sham ‘meal tub plot’, revealed at the end of October 1679, including him among the list of ‘Presbyterians’ conspirators who they claimed were conspiring to set up James Scott, duke of Monmouth, as heir, and also placed him among those contemplating exile when the conspiracy failed to work. Glos. Archives D3549/2/2/1, no. 31; Jones, First Whigs, 112; Mr Thomas Dangerfield’s Particular Narrative of the Late Design to Charge those of the Presbyterian Party with a Pretended Conspiracy (1679), 31. The following month, Radnor joined with Sir Henry Capel, later Baron Capel of Tewkesbury, in insisting on the commitment of Lady Powis for her role in the plot, ‘having the same evidence against her they had against Mrs Celier’ and fearful that if they did not ‘they would be accounted unjust to the one or partial to the other.’ Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. ii. 199-200.

Having already been identified falsely as an opponent of the court engaged in plotting against the crown, in January 1680 Radnor found himself arraigned by the Commons as one of several ‘evil counsellors’ to be recommended for removal from the king’s presence during a particularly ‘hot day’ in the Commons. HMC Ormonde, n.s. v. 562-3. During the summer he was insulted while out driving in his coach by an inebriated trooper of the Life Guards, who threatened Radnor’s coach driver with his carbine. The trooper was arrested shortly after but Radnor allowed the matter to drop. CSP Dom. 1679-80, pp. 493-4, 503. Radnor’s improved relations with Danby were perhaps reflected in his being nominated one of the delegates to determine the disputed marriage between John Emerton and Bridget Hyde in August 1680. The same month he examined Israel Tonge’s son in council about the veracity of his father’s testimony. Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 52; CSP Dom. 1679-80, p. 597. In the period immediately before Parliament sat in October 1680, Radnor was said to have been one of those attempting to impress upon York the danger of his predicament ‘and withal that they must secure the Protestant religion without respect of persons’. Verney ms mic. M636/34, Dr W. Denton to Sir R. Verney, 13 Oct. 1680. Henry Sydney, later earl of Romney, met with Radnor and Finch early in October, speaking to them ‘both very freely’ about the issue and Radnor was again one of the party when Sydney met with York and several other prominent figures the following week. Sidney Diary, ii. 108-9. Radnor was then one of a minority of privy councillors to argue in favour of York leaving the kingdom. Chatsworth, Devonshire collection, Group 1/G, ?Sir John Gell to Devonshire, 21 Oct. 1679.

Radnor took his seat in the new Parliament on 21 Oct. 1680, introduced in his new dignity between his friend Northampton and William Craven, earl of Craven. Present on 68 per cent of all sitting days in the Parliament, Radnor was absent at a call on 30 Oct. but returned to the House on 3 Nov., after which he was named to five committees during the remainder of the session. On 12 Nov. he reported the substance of evidence presented at the bar by Lady Dacre and Challoner Chute’s counsel over Chute’s appeal. The following day, in the absence of the lord chancellor, he again acted as speaker. C 231/8, p. 38. He did so again on 15 Nov., on which day he also voted to reject the exclusion bill on its first reading. On 23 Nov. he voted against appointing a committee of both Houses to consider the state of the nation. Three days later Radnor informed the House of the king’s agreement to appoint a fast day in response to a joint address of both Houses. Having argued earlier in the session, presumably in support of Danby, that no impeachment should hold after a dissolution without a specific order of the House, Radnor found William Howard, Viscount Stafford, guilty on 7 December. The following day, he acted as Speaker once more.

In advance of the new Parliament elected in March 1681, Radnor was forecast as being in favour of bailing Danby. In spite of this and an earlier resolution that he would be in attendance at the Oxford Parliament, he failed to turn out, perhaps distracted by the last sickness and death of his youngest son, Warwick Robartes, at about this time. Verney ms mic. M636/35, J. to Sir R. Verney, 23 Mar. 1681. His own ill health may well also have deterred him from making the effort. Castle Ashby mss, folder 1091, ?W. Howard to Northampton, 24 Mar. 1681. Losses in his family by then may well have taken their toll. The previous year, his skill as a physician had proved unequal to the task of reviving his daughter-in-law, Penelope Robartes, who had collapsed while travelling in her coach. She died soon afterwards.

In the spring of 1681, by now elderly and infirm, Radnor was thought to be contemplating retirement. Tanner 36, f. 11. That April, he opposed plans to farm out the administration of the penal laws and a new proclamation against nonconformists. Verney ms mic. M636/34, C. Gardiner to Sir R. Verney, 5 July 1680; M636/35, J. to Sir R. Verney, 11 Apr. 1681. In spite of the earlier forecasts that he would support moves to bail Danby, Radnor was reported to have joined with lord chief justice Francis North, later Baron Guilford, and lord chancellor Nottingham (as Baron Finch had become) in arguing against Danby’s release when it came to be debated in Council. Browning, Danby, i. 347. The reason for this apparent change of heart is uncertain. It may be significant that in July he was one of three privy counsellors to refuse to sign the warrant for committing Shaftesbury, but perhaps more significant were rumours circulating in August that there was to be a new lord treasurer: one of Northampton’s correspondents commented, ‘I am sure if honest Radnor were the man, it would be happy for the king and kingdom.’ Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. ii. 281; Castle Ashby mss, folder 1092, ?W. Howard or H. Legge to Northampton, 11 Aug. 1681. Radnor was appointed one of the six commissioners for receiving petitions that same month. In September his name was mentioned in connection with rumours of feverish activity in anticipation of York’s expected return as well as of Shaftesbury’s appointment as ‘prime minister of state’. Castle Ashby mss, folder 1092, ?W. Howard or H. Legge to Northampton, 18 Aug. 1681; Verney ms mic. M636/36, Dr W. Denton to Sir R. Verney, 29 Sept. 1681.

Despite his continuing significance at court, Radnor’s local influence appears to have been less secure. Early in 1682 he was unsuccessful in trying to block efforts by Anthony Ettrick^‡ to be included in a visitation commission at Poole. Tanner 129, f. 122. Radnor's motivation was presumably his desire to protect local nonconformists. His family suffered a further loss in February 1682 with the death of his son and heir, Robert Robartes, Viscount Bodmin, leaving the young Charles Bodvile Robartes as heir to the earldom. Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 165. Radnor’s own health seems to have been failing too. Absent from council in April on account of sickness, in September he was said to have sought permission to be excused further attendance at council. CSP Dom. 1682, p. 148; Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 221. Over the next two months reports circulated about his intention to stand down from his office and how he had been offered £7,000 to resign his place to Halifax. Beinecke Lib. OSB mss 1, box 1, folder 23, W. Blathwayt to E. Poley, 22 Sept. 1682; Verney ms mic. M636/37, J. to Sir R. Verney, 23 Oct. 1682. Even so, it was not until August 1684 that Radnor was finally relieved of office, being put out ‘by a most civil letter from the king’ which allowed him to continue to draw his pension, though Radnor refused to take advantage of this last example of royal generosity. NAS, GD 406/1/3296.

In spite of his increasing frailty, Radnor outlived Charles II and was sufficiently well to take his seat at the opening of the new Parliament on 19 May 1685, after which he attended almost 65 per cent of all sitting days. He was also named to 14 committees. On 22 May he registered his dissent at the resolution to reverse the order of 19 Mar. 1679 allowing impeachments to continue beyond a dissolution and on 26 May he reported from the committee for privileges, outlining the complaint of Thomas Windsor, earl of Plymouth, who had been refused his answer by one of the masters of chancery because he had declined to swear on the Bible. As a result it was ordered that no peer should be required to do more than swear upon his honour and the master in question was summoned to the bar of the House to make his submission. Radnor subscribed a further dissent on 4 June at the resolution to reverse Stafford’s attainder and on 25 June he chaired and reported from the committee of the whole considering the northern borders bill. He sat for the last time on 2 July and died just over a fortnight later at his residence in Chelsea. Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 354; Verney ms mic. M636/40, Lady P. Osborne to Sir R. Verney, 20 July 1685. Radnor was buried at Lanhydrock and succeeded in the peerage by his grandson, Charles, styled Viscount Bodmin, as 2nd earl of Radnor. Magna Britannia, iii. 167-85; Ath. Ox. iv. 179. Administration of his estate was later disputed between the new earl and Radnor's surviving younger son and sole executor, Francis Robartes^‡. TNA, PROB 11/381, PROB 18/17/56.